[Info]
- 15 bays
- 4U
- up to 6x 120mm and 2x 80mm
- E-ATX/SSI-EEB or smaller
- ATX PSU
[Recommendations, Resources, and Other Info]
[Flip the fan wall] / [Don’t use front fans]
[Liquid cooling - AIO]
[Rack Mounting Rails]
3 Likes
Hello all!
I have the Rosewill RSV- L4500U as well! I have had it for many years. Honestly, its served me well - but I am very tired of the lack of hot swap drives.
I run UnRaid, and I have been in the process of upgrading my (15) 4TB HDD’s to 14TB HDD’s.
I find I am plauged with loose cables, and read errors due to the tight fit of all the cables.
Does anyone know if the ICY DOCK 5 x2.5”/3.5” SATA/SAS Hard Drive Backplane Cage in 3X External 5.25" Bay (Amazon Link) will fit inside?
Ideally - I don’t want to lose any drive capacity, so I want to switch out all (3) 5-Bay Standard Drive bays for (3) 5-Bay Hot-swap drives.
I have seen that some people have had some success with this with other Rosewill models.
Question
1.) Does anyone have any recommended 5-Bay Hot Swap drive enclosures which I can install inside the RSV-L4500? I want to install (3) 5-Bay Hot Swap Drive enclosures
2.) Will the ICY Dock 5 Bay hot-swap drives I linked above fit? I am not sure if it will fit by the looks of it… But I am unsure of this.
What do you all recommend I do to accomplish (15) Hot-Swap drives within this case?
Thanks all!
3x $170 dollars to add bays that (probably) won’t work?
Save yourself time and money and buy a different case with what you need
1 Like
Will one of those cages fit? Maybe. The front drive section of the Rosewill L4500U does fit standard 5-1/4" drives if you stand them up vertically. The metal brackets holding the existing drive cages in place are removable and will fit the standard hole spacing of a 5-1/4" drive, and they are positioned so when you slide a 5-1/4" drive into a bay, it will snap in with the front of the drive flush with the front of the chassis. Of course, fitting a single 5-1/4" drive and filling the entire front with these cages is two separate things. My concern with that Icy Dock cage is that it only has one set of screw holes at the bottom of the cage, so when you slide it in in the vertical orientation, it won’t be completely secure. With some careful measuring and drilling, you could potentially add a set of holes on the top so it is secured in two locations. Or maybe you could modify the brackets to remove the prongs that would go in the holes and glue the brackets to the cage in the appropriate locations. Or maybe with 3 of them in side by side they would hold each other in? The only way to know for sure would be to buy 3 and install them. But by the time you pay $169 apiece for 3 of them, you’re almost at the price of a SuperMicro hot swap chassis with 24-36 hot swap bays already installed.
I have been looking, and its pretty hard to find something that is within the $600 range and has many bays. I would love to spend more than $600 even, I just want more bays.
I have been spending hours and hours searching for cases with 24 bays or more, and they all seem to be in the $1,200 range, and also they come with MoBo, RAM, CPU, etc.
Is there something you suggest I look at? I would LOVE LOVE LOVE any suggestions you have!
Thanks a ton!
Goals
- More Bays
Yea, that is a very good point. I have been scouring ebay and reddit /r/homelabsales with no luck of finding one of the 24-36 bay chassis cases.
Do you know where I can find one? I don’t mind spending alot (within reason of course). This is a home-server, and I use it all the time, and have already outgrown my 15 bay Rosewill that I have posted about.
I have spent hours looking with no luck, I would REALLY LOVE anything you can do to point me in the right direction of where I can find a Chassis with maximum bays.
Thanks! <3
I’ve just ordered an RSV-L4500U, and waiting on delivery., as the first step towards building a new NAS (a replacement to an 8 yr old i3 based NAS I am currently running in a Fractal Design Node case that is getting both old and too small for my data appetite).
Just a quick query in respect to SAS/SATA breakout cables… whats the typical length cable required to reach the drive bay cages from the PCI slots? As I’ll be running 2 x 8port controller cards (meaning I’ll need 4 x breakout cables in total), I’ll be needing at least 2 cables to reach the furthest drive cage (the cage closest to the power button) so I’m looking for advice on that cable length, and likewise advice on the cable length for the middle and shortest distance cages just so I dont have to be concerned about tucking away excess cable
Any suggestions on appropriate cable lengths and advice on running them through the case would be appreciated.
Has anyone ever tried to mount a 280mm rad in this case? I have a spare NZXT x62 laying around I’d prefer to use over having to buy a new cooler.
Edit
This is what I ended up doing. Not sure how this will work out but it seems fairly solid.
Looks good to me.
1 Like
I found these 140mm fan mounts on Thingiverse. I’m thinking I might be able to use these to better mount the 280mm rad. I’m going to try and print these out over the weekend and see how the fit.
I’m also an owner of this chasis. I’ve got mine full to the brim with 15 HDD’s. Recently I was not happy with the temps of my drives, so I switched from the air blowing in from the front (three 120mm fans), through the middle set of fans (3 120mm fans in the middle inside of the chasis), and out through the back (2 80mm fans), to out through the front, so in from the back starting with the 80mm fans, through the 120mm middle fans and out through the front.
Seems my results are better temps, but this seems counter intuitive. Everything I’ve known has always been the opposite.
I’m gonna offer my reasoning for why I tried this, and then why I think it might be providing better results. And my hope is to find an optimal solution as well as to share my results.
So, I decided to make the switch when I kept notice that the front of the chasis was warm. At first my thought was, I have the fans in reverse, so I checked them, and no, they are pulling in from the front and blowing into the case as expected, but I could feel a radiant heat. So I put some paper in front to see if it was sucking in, and it was. It hit me that what I think is happening is that the fan is blowing the air against the 3 filled drive cages and then just finding space out of the sides somehow, and space out of the front. Basically the fans seemed to only be hitting the very front of the drives and not making it through the gaps between the drives and cages and into the case. My guess is also that the middle fans were just pulling in air from other holes in the chasis, so the CPU never seemed to get hot, becasue air was finding a way in, just not over the drives.
That’s when I thought, maybe, if I can get the air to build up a little more speed, it’ll have a better chance of making over and through the gaps in the drives and cages. So, I flipped all the fans starting in the back, and then the middle and then the front. Now the back is pulling air in and shooting it in over the CPU (it’s unraid and the CPU is never a heat problem), and then it’s getting pulled and then pushed by the middle fans over the drives, where they have some suction because of the front.
To be honest… I have no idea what I’m talking about. I’m not case aerodynamics expert by any stretch. This is all just my guess because I was tired of getting the heat warnings from unRAID.
I’m currenlty in the middle of a rebuild of two drives after an erroneous failure because of not enough power, so that’s when I decided to undergo all this. And while rebuilding (which is disk I/O heavy), the drives are cooler than they have ever been before.
With that, I’m done. Here’s hoping this thread isn’t forgotten and someone else has a similar experience they want to share or help me adjust my thoughts because maybe I’m wrong.
What is “not happy” with the temps of the drives? I don’t see any numbers here.
Also what fans? Where’s the case and what’s room temperature like? Is the door still on the case? Is it closed? Is the filter still installed?
WOW, I wasn’t expecting any response. I’m new to the forum and figured this was an old thread. SWEET!
Here are my temps before switching the fans to back in front out:
And here are my temps now:
Note, that my temps in the before, are actually in the lower range that they are usually at, I’m regularly getting temp warnings from UnRAID. Some of my drives can get up to 52 or 53 pretty regularly.
I’m doing a rebuild as I write this, so I won’t know for a few days, but normally, with this much activity, the drives would be spitting out warnings.
The fans in use, up front are the only three i switched from the stock ones that came with chasis. They are Arctic F12 PWM 120mm’s. The stock ones which I have in the middle fan rack are BOK BDM12025S’s 120mm… and the rear ones are the same brand but 80mm.
Both temps are completely reasonable. Adjust your Unraid warning thresholds to be 50/55C.
Your temps do look a bit on the higher side. You should provide some pictures of the internal setup.
Oh, sorry I failed to answer the other questions:
The case is in my garage, I do have it insulated and I have a mini split (AC) installed. I keep it between 80 and 77, depending on if i"m in the garage or not, as my WFH office is in nice corner in the garage.
Door is still on the case? Yes it’s closed, and there is a dust filter that came with the case and it is installed. I’ve had the case and my server running for a while and there isn’t any dust build up to speak of really. Also, I’ve left the door open before to see if there’s any improvement and has little to no impact as far as I could tell.
That’s fair, glad to hear that the temps are reasonable. Any thoughts on the fan configuration?
What is the fan configuration? I can’t tell what you mean. Diagram?
Pictures are necessary at this point.
The fans that came with the case, as far as I can tell, are rubbish and ought to be replaced, perhaps with Arctics, or whatever you prefer.