Selfhosted

Fractal Design, definitely. The model I'm using is no longer made but they have very good ones today too. Look into the Define and Meshify lines. They have models that can utilize the full height of the case for HDD/SSD slots with openings on both sides for maximum ease of cable routing.

The Define 7 or Meshify 2 is most likely what you want. They only come with 6 HDD brackets included but you can buy more and they have slots for up to 11.

The R5 is another good choice, I like those brackets more, but it's not so flexible as the others I mentioned, and the 5.25" bays will most likely go unused and just take up space.

Don't get the Node 804, it's much larger than it seems (check out yt videos) and is cramped and hard to work in.

Highly recommend cases by Fractal.

For self hosting I'd recommend either one of the Meshify 2 or Define 7, depending on local price and your specific needs. I personally went with the Meshify 2 XL and was blown away by the quality of the case. It's built well and allows for a variety of configurations. It also makes maintenance very easy as the filters and side panels can all be removed without any tool to handle dust build up.

Fractal Design Define 7 XL

You can fit 18 HDDs into it plus 5 SSDs at the same time without custom mount points.

Though you do need to buy the extra brackets and trays.

Not my build exactly but a example.

https://forums.unraid.net/topic/97612-fractal-design-define-7-build/

Fractal seems far superior at least in the budget range. Personally just bought a R5 second-hand for roughly 40euros. Totally worth it imo 😁

I’m using a Fractal Meshify 2. It’s big, but I highly recommend it. It can hold 11 HDDs. I’ve only got 6 in mine, and it’s quite roomy.

804

I used a Fractal Design case for a home server in the past. Pretty happy with them.

I really like the Node 804 even though the design is quite old - probably close to ten years old now. Fractal Design are still manufacturing it, which is rare for case designs that old.

I recently built a NAS using an 804. I had to fit mine into my server closet which isn't deep enough to fit a regular PC case, so the 804 fit my use case well.

I've only got three drives in it (2 x 20TB Seagate Exos X20 for data and 1 x 14TB WD Purple Pro for security cameras) but I wanted the ability to expand in the future, and I wanted to use a Micro ATX motherboard rather than a smaller one.

A Noctua NH-D15 fits fine, even though the spec sheet says it won't fit.

I know you said you're against rack mounting, but JUST in case:

I love the look and tidiness of a nice rack mount system. So I got a Chenbro 4U case. It's perfect for reusing my old components, and it has a standard size area on the front to install a hot swap HDD cage.

I'm currently using one of the Rosewill rackmount chassis (https://www.rosewill.com/rosewill-rsv-l4412u-black/p/9SIA072GJ92847), fits well in my half rack along with my Unifi gear and HP ProLiant. I probably would've gone with something else if I had to buy it though- this was sorta a hand-me-down from a former roommate who didn't want to take it with him when he left.

I have both Fractal Design and SilverStone cases... love them... but the internal layout is not 100% of the consideration

Have a think about airflow and cabling... some of them have weird air flow designs and if you're putting the machine inside something, or next to something, then that can make more impact on day-to-day use.

For example, I have a Node 304 (not enough drive space for you) because it fits nicely inside Ikea shelving. But the front air flow under the front bezel did mean I keep that machine near the front of the shelf, not pushed back.

And also consider hotswap drive bay caddies that fit smaller drives into large drive bays. Sometimes these have weird power connections, but if you don't have them do you have enough PSU leads? So, are they absolutely essential? Possibly. Possibly not...

Maybe not the answer you were lookong for, but those are my main considerations now...

So I recently went through all of this headache. I started really wanting hotswap that didn't look like it was from the 90's. I also needed like 8 drives capacity which rules a lot of the popular cases out.

I thought about it for a while and I don't really touch the drives at all on any of my previous Nas builds so that meant I didn't need hotswap.

Eventually I decided that rather than try to hide the case away I would make it a feature of my living room and I went with the tower 500 and I really love it and everyone that has gone over has mentioned how cool it looks

Jonsbo N3 sounds like a good fit

Using a U-NAS NSC-810A. Not the cheapest, but I love having hot pluggable disks with my TrueNAS build.

https://www.u-nas.com/xcart/cart.php?target=product&product_id=17640

I can vouch for the node 804, although I haven't used the others so I can't say which is the best.

I use a fractal design node 304. It's pretty cool, but has all the limitations and problems you would expect from a case that size.

I went with this https://www.silverstonetek.com/en/product/info/computer-chassis/cs382/. It's pretty decent but you are putting a hard cap on expansion. Also the fans it comes with are pretty loud so I'd replace them.

For 9 disks I would need to print a bigger case, but this one suits me well for now 😉

Fractal Design Define 7

Love fractals build quality

I'm using an old HP z420 box. It supports up to 128gigs of ecc ram (which I have), has tons of drive and SATA options.

It could be possible to repurpose the chassis for custom builds too.

I am using a normal desktop case with an external usb-c 8-bay JBOD drive enclosure from Mediasonic. I'm using mdadm to combine the drives with RAID-6. I know I'm not getting the performance that I could with native SATA, but it can still saturate my 1Gbps network, so it's good enough for serving video, audio, and some other web-based apps.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

[Thread #375 for this sub, first seen 26th Dec 2023, 23:45] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

I got out of the "surplus hardware" a while ago; way too expensive and noisy to run, so super recommend ditching the poweredge. for home use, I ended up just going with a USB3 JBOD for storage, and a Intel NUC (which I think they don't make anymore). it runs a ton of virtualized servers under kvm, a virtualized NAS, all without issue because it honestly spends most of its time nearly idle. point is: it's definitely nice to have it all in one case and with high speed storage but maybe having to find something that can house a ton of drives isn't a strict need if you aren't actually going to put a ton of load on it.

Used to have a node 304. Very happy I got a hot swap Roswell 4u case

Just because it's a bit different to what you asked, and no one else has said it, I've found great results with the Terramaster D5-300 and D4-300. Make sure you get the USB 3.1 type Cs, but I've been fine with the plain rather than ones loaded with RAID.

For every USB 3.1 socket on the back I get 5 drives, I can increase capacity incrementally, and for spinning rust they are faster than they could transfer anyway.

I've replaced my machine with a Dell USFF box now and it all works great.

Completely understand if it's not your thing but you can add a drive box to your existing system without replacing anything. I'm currently up to 16 drives.

Lenovo thinkcentre m710q 🫡