DAS w/Front Fans I wound up adding 3 arctic P8 80mm fans for extra cooling. I’m also going to look at adding the rear connectors mentioned earlier in this thread. I replaced the rear fan as mentioned in this guide as well. Seems to work well. Will be finishing it off this weekend.
Thanks for the pictures. I was looking at adding fans to the from of mine also.
Why is it necessary to add more fans?
I could not seal back up the case without it overheating the power supply. I used this Fan Bracket .
Well looking at my temps all are very good at the moment so i may not need any more fans. Can you post pics if your setup? You should be able to close everything and still have good airflow. The back fan sucks air out of the case. Im alao using all sas drives so im using the sas setup.
Overheating according to what?
The unit shut down repeatedly.
DAS Album I saw that my drives were running above 40c. With the case open, the drives / psu never shut down. Nothing else different. Also with the case shut up, backups running, etc. Has been running all week with the new fans closed up.
I ended up snagging the 8 bay enclosure from Ebay, added a LSI 9201-16E card to my ThinkServer TS140, and shucked 3 WD externals to add 22TB of storage. I did swap out the original CFI-branded 80mm fan with the Arctic P12 and it made a significant difference. No heat issues - only 3 of 8 bays are populated - and this new setup runs like a tank. Thanks to JDM_WAAAT for creating this suggested build and to everyone who has contributed their experience and wisdom.
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Does anyone know what those hdd led cables are connected to?
I also modded that case but lost the activity led when I removed the original SATA splitter backplane.
Thanks!
The Two Ports Mini SAS SFF-8088 To SAS 36Pin SFF-8087 are no longer available unfortunately and I am looking to clean up and secure the cables. I bought 2 of these Two Ports Mini SAS SFF-8088 To SAS 36Pin SFF-8087 PCBA Female Adapter With PCI | eBay and am curious if there is a centronics mounting bracket available or do I need to modify the short bracket to mount it in the das?
There are some centronics mini-sas adapters on pc-pitstop, but they are over priced.
or ebay
bah I just realized that you had already purchased an alternative. I would just mod one of the brackets (snip-snip) and hot glue it =)
Thanks. I may still order that ebay one. That actually is perfect. I’m going to try to mod the half height bracket first and we’ll see how it goes. I guess I was thinking of drilling a couple of holes to mount it.
Maybe someone could design a new bracket to be 3D printed? 
I am going to take the 1/2 height pci bracket, snip off the end, drill 2 holes and see if I can mount what I have this week. I just got all the wires in and will post back when complete.
So I finally got the missing cable in to do the remaining clean up on the connectors. So I just spent $113 in connectors and cables to replace $30 ones but it is significantly more secure.
I added
2 - Two Ports Mini SAS SFF-8088 To SAS 36Pin SFF-8087 PCBA Female Adapter With PCI for $41
2 - Mini SAS 36P SFF-8643 to SAS 36P SFF-8087 Raid Data Server Cable 50cm US for $20
2 - CABLEDECONN Mini SAS26P SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 1M External Cable Attached SCSI for $32
2 - BORSVAEN Mini SAS to SATA Cable (SFF-8087 36Pin Male to 4 SATA 7Pin Female),Mini SAS Host to 4 SATA Target Hard Disk Data Cable - 0.5M for $20
TO REPLACE
2 CableDeconn Mini SAS 26P SFF 8088 Male to 4 SATA 4Pin Female 2m 6.6FT Cable with Latch,Mini SAS Host/Controller to 4 SATA Target/Backplane for $30
To mount this in the DAS I just took a half height pci bracket that came with the card and bent the tab back, drilled two holes and I was in business. I’ll post the final specs in the gallery.
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I’m thinking of taking a 4-bay CD-ROM copier I found at Goodwill and making it a DAS unit. It won’t look very cool in it’s boomer 90’s look but whatever…
Is it advisable to run one of these LSI cards off a regular windows desktop? Otherwise I’ll end up having to build a Unraid server as well.
This is a newer version of what I have
My experience with windows and lsi cards is you have to make sure windows will recognize it and there are drivers if you want to take advantage of any features of the card other than hba pass through of the drives. You will need to do software raid per se so something like windows storage spaces (which has its own issues). The lsi cards are easier to use if you buy them flashed to IT mode.
That should be a 5-bay case, once you remove the 4 burners you can remove the controller from the top slot.
This box was a 9 bay dvd burner case, now fitted with 3 x 5in3 cages.
I would stick with the 8-bay mini das chasis if you can get a hold of one, and avoid the big dense box with hot swap bays.