The Never Ending Story....... Ah Server

So...No, this is not a post about a flying dragon-dog, it's actually another episode in the long drawn out agonizing story of my server rebuild. 

When last we visited my version of the "100 Years War" (really 116 years), I had changed directions with the motherboard, and moved on to the much newer version of a Supermicro server board based on the LGA-1155. It has subsequently gotten a low powered Xeon processor, and matching 8Gb of ECC memory. All this along with the installation of 6, 2Tb drives and the PSU, you'd think that I'd have been done and moved on by now. 

Then, I got hung up on this.... OK, there's been other stuff like my garage workshop, but this has been a head-scratcher for me. Oh, not of the can't figure it out variety, but of the "do I really want to do this" sort. "This" is an Icy Dock Black Vortex 4-in-3 drive cage. The concept being that you can stick one of these things in 3, 5.25" drive spaces and give yourself 4, 3.5" drive bays that are actively cooled with a 120mm fan. It's a pretty cool (no pun intended) concept, and it would give me expansion in the ridiculously large Fractal XL R2 case that has 4, 5.25" bays in it. Unfortunately, this thing requires that the drive mounting tabs that hold those 4 drives would need to be cut off or bent back out of the way. That bothered me. Don't ask me why, but permanently altering this hither-to unmolested case was not something I wanted to do. So, there it sat. The XL R2, with the Icy Dock sitting on top of it in my office for the last 2 months.

Then, I bought another case. Looks familiar doesn't it? Looks kind of like the Silverstone PS-07 that the old server was built in doesn't it? That's because it's a Silverstone CS380.

There it is for reference. The difference? Despite it's shape, it's NOT Micro-ATX. It's a full-sized ATX case, with....

8 drive-bays.....

on a "hot-sway" back-plane! And don't forget the on-board dual 120mm cooling fans for the drives. Despite the off-the-shelf ability to hold the same number of drives, this case is fully 7" shorter than the XL R2! Given where it's going to go in my office (inside a cabinet), this is a much better solution. No, the Icy Dock won't fit, but hey..... I'll find a place for it to go. Time to finish this build!