NORCO RPC-4220 4U Rackmount Server Chassis w/ 20 Hot-Swappable SATA/SAS 6G Drive Bays (Mini SAS Connector) - OEM

Pros: 20 drive bays
Additional bay for slim CD/DVD, internal bay for hard drive / SSD. Edges were pretty smooth, no cuts. Box feels very sturdy. holding it by the handles did not feel like they were going to break. All backplanes worked as they should. Drive caddies are very rigid for how light/thin they are. Supports standard power supply.

Cons: You have to unscrew 10 tiny little screws to move the fan-wall that partitions the component area from the HDD bays. This is required if you want to hook up the power and SAS cables. Seriously though, that was the only real negative I could find.

Other Thoughts: The case is rather large when you look at it externally. Not too wide, the main case is 17.25" wide, the faceplace with the flanges to rack mount it are wider. The case is about 25.5" long. Seems big, but once you have it open and start putting in your stuff. It's not all that big. I have a mATX board in, and I had to find a place to mount an Intel SAS expander. Not a con, just something to consider. Otherwise my FreeNAS build is working very well. My config is

GigaByte AMD Mainboard
Athlon x2 3.4Ghz
8GB RAM
LSI 9211-8i SAS controller
Intel SAS expander
750Watt Modular Power Supply
4x3TB HDD (RaidZ1)
4x2TB HDD (RaidZ1)
4x1.5TB HDD (RaidZ1)
4x400GB HDD (for testing)

Pros: Cheap, comes with many power supply adapters for the many types of power supplies available. Mobo fit excellent and the standoffs and screws fix excellent. It has a solid backplane for all 20 drives and supports sata and sas 6gbs. Has support to redundant molex connectors on the backplanes. Hard drive trays feel a little cheap, but not bad for the price and i'm sure they will function in the future with no problems. The center fans are exceptionally easy to remove individually with just a push of a button (this is important because you have to remove them to install all the cables).

Cons: no product manual. There are small jumpers on the individual backplanes but I have no idea of what they are for, or what I would use them for. The pci brackets are brake away or punchouts, which at first was ok, however when I installed a couple of pci I cards I had to put pressure on the cards to get good fit, not much and nothing really bad. Another thing is if you install any 2.5" drives you can only mount 3 of the 4 screws, which are not included. Wish the back 2 fans were counter rotating high flow to match the 4 fans in the middle of the case.

Other Thoughts: I think I gonna need another case in the near future.

Pros: would've been a good server

Cons: trying out the different bays and a spark and the smell of burned electronics. there goes my hard drive

afraid to try and lose another drive.
sent back for a refund

Pros: Using the chassis for a somewhat budget oriented server build. The advantages are that it takes a number of motherboards and a very large power supply. The hot swap bays are okay. Not the best I've ever used, but certainly no the worst. The fans move some serious air, do a good job of keeping components cool, and even sitting on my desktop aren't particularly loud.

Cons: There's some minor sort of build issues. Its nice the fans in the center come out so easily, but it would be even nicer if it wasn't also so easy to bend or break the power connectors putting them back in, especially with the mass of cables in the area.

Pros: The chasis is very nice and well built with plenty of space. The stock fans that come with the case are not nearly as loud as I thought they would be.

Cons: I gave the case 4 stars because my only real complaint is the limited amount of space between the backplane and the fans makes it VERY TIGHT to plug in the SAS connectors.

Other Thoughts: I also had to tighten and loosen the backplan when installing several of the drives because when installing the drive the connection was not made for drive to spin up. I guess a mm of connection space was all it took, because after getting them set correctly, no further issues.

Would also have been nice to have a four pin molex connection to the backplane fans so that their speed could be adjusted.

Pros: (1) I can confirm that the RPC-4220 does in fact fit into a EIA standard rack using RL26 ball bearing rails, but JUST. There actually is some friction between the rails and the rack opening edges during closing. Alignment is absolutely critical, and the cheap metal on the rails may need to be "adjusted" with a rubber mallet... they flex inward when you tighten the ears to the rack rails, and they need to be straight. To be clear, these are the RL26 Heavy Duty Ball Bearing Rails sold directly by Norco at ipcdirect dot net, NOT the RL26 friction rails sold here at newegg.

(2) Cheapest way to get 20 removable 3.5" drives in a rack mount case. I picked this over the RPC-4224, trading 4 additional drives for a slim optical drive and room for two 2.5" "boot" devices. 20 bays divides out nicely into two groups of 10 devices for a RAID6 8+2, which is better than alternatives because 8 is a power of 2 and divides out any sized IO uniformly (4kB = 512*8, etc.)

Cons: (1) The RL26 ball bearing rails have 6 mounting holes, but the front two are not usable on this case because the drive bays are too close to the outside wall of the chassis. There is a small tab to help keep the rail aligned, but it's cheap and I'm not thrilled that all the weight relies on it.

(2) Even the heavy duty BB rails leave about 3" of the chasis inside the rack at full extension. The only way to remove the lid of the chassis is to release the locking tabs and slide the case dangerously close to falling out. I would suggest ejecting most/all drives before doing this.

(3) I also consider fan replacement and the 120mm fan wall from "ipcdirect dot net" to be necessary parts, bringing this case to $400 shipped. The stock fans are absurdly loud, and for a "home datacenter" you'll want 3x 120mm at the wall and low rpm 80mm on the back.

Other Thoughts: Not sorry I bought this case, but Norco could have resolved the issues above without adding much if any expense. The rails they sell should fit and provide full extension. The rails should affix to the case at the front with a screw, very securely. The case and rails should not be within a 1mm tolerance of fitting inside standard racks. At the end of the day, though, I'm not aware of any current alternatives to the RPC-4220 and RPC-4224. I look forward to a day when Norco has more competition, and everyone steps up their game.

Pros: It's an okay case, it keeps your components together, and it's rackmountable. Comes with nicely organized screw bags, and a lot of metal adapters to fit all kinds of components inside the case. Has enough fans to make sure your hard drives stay cool.

Cons: Very heavy. Despite the pure metal box, it feels extremely flimsy once you get into installing your components. Getting the mini-SAS cables and molex connectors in cannot be done without taking away the 4 fan partition which takes unscrewing 10 screws. Whoever designed the case clearly never tried it out. Just because you leave 1 inch from backplane to fan partition doesn't mean a SAS connector will fit.

Then the molex ports you have to hold on to while connecting cable from your power supply unless you want to break them. They move a lot while you gently push the connector in. I felt like it was going to break on me every time I connected one.

HDD trays are very low quality and feel like they'd last about 5-6 hot swaps. Tray #11 has a problem where the HDD busy LED is always on regardless of the HDD being idle. It happened twice for one of the trays not to get recognized by my controller. Had to power off, swap cable. Cable is fine on another connection in the same case.

Other Thoughts: If you're serious about having a server built with this, try another manufacturer. I bought it for the 20 HDD bays and I'm running mini-SAS cables from my Mac Pro sitting right next to it.

All the while installing this I kept asking myself "Why does this cost so much?" This is not worth 40% of its price! It's just because of the server market I suppose... rip off businesses that build data centers. Seriously, this has a worse quality than a $50 consumer budget PC case that came with one of the barebones I've been purchasing lately.

Even Rosewill RX-8 has solid HDD trays that won't let you down after a lot of hot-swaps (have done that, own 2 rx-8s).

Pros: This utilitarian case has 20 removable drive bays, sturdy construction, plenty of space, adequate cooling. I am glad that I found this case while researching parts for my home server rebuild. Delighted with this case - i considered the 24 port version, but by the time i need more than twenty 2-3T drives, drives will be larger, etc. I like the front panel on the 20 bay case better anyhow.

Cons: Absolutely no documentation included or available from NORCO's site. I have optional parts that I don't know the purpose of. Mid-plane fans and rear fans are extremely loud - I replaced the mid-plane with the NORCO 120mm fan optional part and replaced the rear fans with silent 80mm fans - nearly silent now. Unless you have a 30 inch deep 19" rack, this case will be an eye-sore to the spouse - the only portion that is finished is the front panel. This really isn't an issue for a server that will be hanging out in your wire closet.

Other Thoughts: Don't forget your SFF-8087 cables. I am using a sata-to-sff-8087 reverse cable from norco to collect four of my sis SATA on board ports and 4 sff-8087 to sff-8087 cables from my 2 dual sas port cards.

Pros: Lots of room, seems sturdy. Pretty easy to setup. Screw baggies come labeled. Very reasonable price.

Cons: It can be a little tough to get the power cables properly attached. The fan section sits a little close, so I had temporarily remove the backplane, plug them in, then squash the cables.

Other Thoughts: A lot of people said the case/fans are loud. I have all the fans running and 16 drives in it right now and it is quieter than any other similar setup I've seen. These are not 80mm desktop fans (and shouldn't be), so I'm not sure what people are expecting.

There are two plates to mount SSD/laptop drives. They come off and an you can secure the hard drive with screws on the bottom. Use the screws that came with the HD.

Also if you have a right angle SATA power cable it probably won't fit for the small drives b/c of the shelf. Had to use adapters with a flat head, no biggie. Also make sure you buy a power supply with enough (10+) "Peripheral/Molex" (not SATA) connections.

Pros: lot's of drive bays
good cooling
nice features
barebones

Cons: loud
heavy
rackmount (not a con for some)

Other Thoughts: I use this case as a home media server (lots of dvd's and tv shows). At first I was put off by the rack mounting, but my requirements for lots of drives drove me to choose this case.

I ended up mounting the case on its side attatched to my garage wall. A few minor customizations, secured the case to some 2x4's and secured the 2x4's to some studs and the case is very secure. The case is loud, but I don't mind the noise in my garage.

I threw in a mobo and an HBA adapter and can now connect up to 20 drives with no issues. I haven't gotten around to tuning it yet, but it works great with Ubuntu and zfs (which is awesome by the way).

My only regret with the case is that I didn't get the 4224, I thought I would be able to use the slim drive area for something, but not so much, and I'd like the extra drive bays.