iStarUSA D-400-6-Black Black Steel 4U Rackmount Compact Stylish Server Chassis 6 External 5.25" Drive Bays

Pros: Solid Construction, Good hinges on the bay-doors. Decent construction provided it doesn't see too much field-action. The steel thickness leaves a little to be desired, but it's still a sturdy case. The drive bays fully detach and lift out, for VERY easy drive installation. The power supply has plenty of clearance. You CAN use larger ATX boards in this case, but I imagine things could get cramped pretty quickly. This case is not as deep as I thought it was, but in my situation that's ok. I think this is a very comfortable fit for longer 5.25 drives and an M-ATX board.

Cons: The steel is just a little thin. Some of the machine work done to fabricate the case resulted in some sharper edges (most edges aren't folded over for safety, so work and cable-manage with mild caution) No real regrets though

Other Thoughts: The exposed front of the drive bays aren't really precisely machined. When you install drives, you get little gaps on either side. Not a show stopper...and might actually improve airflow, but clearly not intentionally.

Pros: Good solid case for your server system. The doors on the front are tough and can be locked to keep little fingers from pushing buttons they shouldn't. Can be mounted on a sturdy rack with no problems with just the mount brackets on it.

Cons: A little bit heavy for some people when you have a full system installed but since its a server case once its put in somewhere most people won't move it much anyway.

Pros: Nicely perforated top and sides, which lets my components breath. Doors are metal ... I was expecting them to be plastic. I have numerous dirve cages already so I didn't need anything but this stripped down model. This company sells multiple variations of this same case, with their own drive cages added, with or without power supplies. I actually HAVE one of their 3-bay drive cages, but I'm not using it with this chassis right now. Overall this is a well built chassis, and I'm happy with my choice. It mounts nicely on my small wooden rack, with most of the side and top ventilated areas uncovered by the rack and my other components. Yaay!

Cons: My Supermicro P4SME+ board has headers for NIC activity LEDs but this box can't use them. There are two unused LEDs on the box that require a proprietary connector (for overheat AND fan indicators). Also, my board now has two unused fan headers since only an 80mm exhaust fan came with the the chassis. Even though I am using two Evercool 3-to-2 drive cages, with their own 80mm fans, the temperatures of my four Q6600 cores are now 7-14 degrees (F) higher. Not a deal breaker, since I have yet to turn on the air conditioning in my "server room" (read: "bedroom"). I'm sure this will improve after I turn the AC on.

I have two Thermaltake laptop drive carriers in the the 3.5" bays. Was kinda hard getting all the wire stay in place, but everything's working well now.

Other Thoughts: Today is the hottest day of the year so far (it's almost 90 degrees today) so I'm lamenting the thermal issues this chassis has introduced to my life. I took my components out of a well ventilated but cheeep Thermaltake mid sized case where my quad core CPUs idle temps were 38 degrees. They are now 45 degrees. Bleh. Time for the AC!

Pros: Nice size box, able to install 6 5.25" removable HDD trays. Make for a nice rackmounted NAS box. Seems very well contrstructed working in this box was painless. After adding power supply and hard drives this thing is very heavy over 50 lbs. See other thoughts

Cons: None really, if there is one the fans don't have the monitor wire that I like so I can connect them to the motherboard and get data back. No big deal, if you need that then just by some and replace the ones that came with it.

Other Thoughts: This box is hugh (hense 4U) it has an internal bar running from the left side of the case to the right side to give the case strength. You can take it out if you don't need it, or it gets in your way (No issues for me). Also if you are going to rack mount this you may want to get yourself some rack rails, I can't see mounting this thing just by the side rails on the case itself, although it seems strong enough where you could probably do that.