I’m new here and looking to get a case that will support a few more drives without breaking the bank. My current setup is running a Gigabyte C246-WU4 motherboard with a XEON E-2288G and 32GB of RAM. I have 20 drives hooked up using the 10 motherboard ports and a bunch of cheap SATA cards. I really want to just swap all of this into something that can hold 30+ drives and call it a day. I am specifically looking at the Supermicro 36 bay since it seems like the best combo of cheap/dense storage. Is there anything I need to look out for compatibility wise? It seems like these cases all have backplanes that would just require an HBA card or two or expander but I don’t have any experience with rackmount stuff or Supermicro in general.
The SuperMicro 36-bay would be a good option for that many drives, as long as you get one that has the SAS2 expander backplanes (BPN-SAS2-846EL1 for the front 24 bays and BPN-SAS2-826EL1 for the rear 12). These backplanes have a built-in expander, so you can run all 36 drives from a pair of cables going into a single SAS controller like the LSI 9207-8i. If you shop around you can maybe find one cheaper than that if you look for a while, just make sure you get an actual 9207. It will have ports coming out the rear of the card instead of the top. Also you need to get one with a low-profile bracket. Both of these are necessary to fit in the reduced height of the SuperMicro 36-bay. As far as other compatibility issues, you might need a low profile cooler for your CPU. Also, if you are using any SATA SSDs, you’ll need to make arrangements to keep them connected directly to the motherboard, since most SATA SSDs don’t like going through SAS controllers. This might mean getting a Molex to SATA power adapter, and possibly some Velcro or double-sided tape to attach the drive to the side of the chassis.
Perfect thanks! So it sounds like I don’t need to worry about any problems with fitment or power connections? One of the sellers I messaged on eBay made it sound like the case would only work with proprietary Supermicro motherboards which didn’t sound right.
Do you have a link to the listing you were looking at? SuperMicro does have some boards and chassis that are proprietary, but I wasn’t aware of any in the 36-bay variety. Every SuperMicro 36-bay chassis I’ve ever seen would fit standard ATX/E-ATX boards, and came with redundant PSUs with a power distribution board that had standard 24-pin ATX, dual 8-pin EPS and a couple of 4-pin Molex connectors.
Here is one listing I was looking at: Supermicro CSE-847E16-R1K28LPB 4U Server Chassis 2x1280W 36-Bay BPN-SAS2-846EL1 | eBay. Is there any easy way to tell from the model number or picutres?
That one supports standard ATX/E-ATX boards. You can usually tell from the pictures, it has the standard ATX I/O rectangle cutout and expansion slots. If you can’t see the interior, Google the model number and the official SuperMicro specs page should usually be one of the first links. Here is the page for that specific chassis, which calls out the motherboard dimensions under Form Factor
The ones that are proprietary will say so here.
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