NORCO RPC-4224 4U Rackmount Server Case with 24 Hot-Swappable SATA/SAS Drive Bays

Pros: - Excellent price point for the features it offers.
- Chassis feels solid and heavy duty.

Cons: As noted in previous reviews, the backplanes are wired incorrectly, specifically the molex connectors are inversed. This overlooked issue by Norco resulted in the death of two Intel server boards upon first power-on. It also forced me to perform full diagnostic scans of twelve (12) Seagate ES 4 TB SAS drives, each taking 8 hours or so to complete a Long DST. 32 Gigabytes of ECC memory also had to be tested thoroughly.

Until I figured out what the issue was (thanks to the NewEgg reviews below) I basically wasted time (testing components, troubleshooting) and money (pre-purchased new boards, backup components, shipping costs for RMAs with other suppliers, employee costs, etc.) something of which Norco can't give back to me by simply sending fixed/correct backplanes.

I can't believe the QA department (if it even exists) could let such a mistake go through. I have seen DOAs before, but this was a nice gift to make the rest of my components "DANA" (Dead After Norco's Arrival, I just made that up).

Unfortunately, after this incident, I can no longer trust Norco's product lines. When you have 4,500$+ worth of hard drives alone sitting in a defective case like that, it makes you wonder what else they have overlooked in terms of quality control.

Fortunately, NewEgg accepted my returns and even took care of the shipping costs.

Other Thoughts: I will never buy Norco products again as the thought of having 400$ 4TB SAS drives connected to it and shorting doesn't sit well with me.

I am now trying to find an alternative case and/or solution to house 24 drives in a single chassis, while trying to meet the same price point for my client. SuperMicro's offerings are starting at 1,000$ a piece. I might just have to bite the bullet.

I am building a FreeNAS/ZFS solution for a client.

Pros: Great Price. Cheapest 24 bay solution I know of.

Cons: * BE CAREFUL *
Check the backplanes BEFORE you turn on your power supply. Make sure that none of them have the power connectors opposite of each other. The molex connector should have the 45 degree slots on the bottom, so the top part of the connector is flat. If this is opposite, contact Norco immediately for a replacement. It will wreak havoc.

They need better Quality Control.

Other Thoughts: With the 120mm fan wall (as cheap as $18 shipped from other retailers), this thing is great. I replaced all of the fans with quieter ones that have similar CFM.

Pros: TONS of room for hard drives. The drive trays seem to mount and function really well.
Cheap.

Cons: Kind of cheap construction, but that is expected at this price compared to others in category.

Non-existant manual or instructions. Bunch of random metal bits come with it and I have yet to figure out what they do.

Nowhere to mount another internal drive (boot disk, etc.). Ended up getting a SYBA SY-MRA25023, this allows you to mount a 2.5" disk in a PCI slot space and access it from the rear of case.

Other Thoughts: Might get the 120mm fan center wall, depending on how temps look when fully populated. I also used some painters tape to cover vent holes in unused drive bays to force air through populated ones.

Case is going to be REALLY heavy when fully loaded with drives, suggest placing in location before filling, or having a couple people to move it.

Also note that NO mounting hardware is included with this case, must buy separately.

Pros: Excellent Warranty - didn't need to send defective part back
Great Price

Cons: Low Quality Plastic
Fans constant speed

Pros: Extremely easy to set up. I've never owned a server case before, and I really don't know what people are complaining about the fact that there are no instructions. There's no mystery to setting this case up.

Cons: A few sharp edges.

Other Thoughts: I changed out the 4x80mm fan plate for the 3x120mm fan plate as recommended by another user. I changed out the fans for some quiet Enermax Enlobal bearing fans that are pretty much silent.

Pros: Holds 24 drives for $400. Drive trays are solid, case is solid. worth the money. very well designed.

Cons: Doesn't come with rails.

Other Thoughts: It would be nice if it had a place to put 2 internal hard drives for a mirrored OS.

Pros: - Disk sleds line up well with the backplanes.
- Lots of space for mobo + PCIe cards, even big ones.
- Lots of space for PSU

Cons: Fit-and-finish quality is low. For example, I replaced the middle plate to put in 120mm fans, and I had to put a ton of force on the case to make it line up. Like... 100+ lbs of force.

As another example, screw holes don't really line up. Putting the cover back on the case is a full body workout to make it line up correctly.

The handles on the front cannot be secured into a rack with screws because the hole for the screw is directly lined up with the rail holes on the side. Your rails will block securing the front with a screw.

Other Thoughts: I racked this in an iStarUSA WO15AB using iStarUSA IS-26 rails. Other than the con listed above, it worked perfectly and I can slide case entirely out of the enclosure.

If you replace the stock fans with low-noise fans and get the replacement middle plate for 120mm fans, then the noise is totally reasonable.

12" from front: 45 dB.
60" from front: 40 dB.

Other people have had problems with non-functional backplanes. Mine worked fine.

Pros: Well designed. Logical layout for a 24 bay server.

Cons: Implementation. The quality control on this server is absolute garbage. A blind man could construct a better product.

All of the little QC issues I could ignore except for the big one: One third of the drive bays DONT WORK. Pulling the SAS boards and you'll see that the craftsmanship is absolutely awful. Any engineering student with five minutes of instruction on how to use a fricking soldering iron could do a better job than these bozos.

To add insult to injury the drive bays require a special screw from Norco that doesn't come with the case. You have to buy it from their site for another $30.

Other Thoughts: Any positive review of this case is probably the manufacturer hiring shill reviewers. I had to spend over $200 buying various things to try to make this case work.

I will NEVER buy from this manufacturer again.

Pros: Plenty of room on the inside for ATX sized motherboards. Lots of cooling.

Cons: 80MM Fan wall. It would do much better with the 120MM fan wall and would bump this up to a 5 egg rating. You can buy the 120MM fan wall but it should come with it.

Other Thoughts: I bought this case for my home built server (not a whitebox server) to use for serving media to the home as well as labs.
Norco 4224 Case
Asus P8BWS Workstation/Server Motherboard
16GB ECC RAM
Mushkin 120GB SSD for OS
EVGA 560 2GB Video
Highpoint RR 3560 Raid Controller
4 2TB HDDs in R6 configuration.
I was able to remove the back 2 80MM fans without causing an increase in temp but lowering the overall noise of the case.

Pros: I wanted to like this case. I read a lot of reviews and it sounded like sure thing. The case does have Tons of space inside. The metal work is nice and clean. All edges are finished. Power supply fits cleanly to the side and there is room to accommodate most any power supply. The hot swap hd trays work well. They slide smoothly into the chassis and lock cleanly. Some complain about the fan noise, I have been around servers and this one has very acceptable fan levels.

Cons: Unacceptable quality control and too much is missing. Since there are a number of good review I will explain in detail

1. 2 bad backplanes of 4 tested. Wasted time testing hds and other things before I found this out. Seen posts from others with the same problem. 1st and 3rd were bad so far. Have not tested 5 & 6.

2. I ordered Norco SATA cables and 1 was bad. Compound the problem I had determining the backplanes were bad. Replaced both with 3Ware and everything is working finally.

3. Individual backplanes each need its own power(2 connectors possible). I bought an expensive server ps and it doesnt have 6 molex, let alone the 12 you can use.

4. Cheap fans with molex connectors - not 3pin. Wont connect to mb so cant be managed or monitored. Really expected more on such a simple thing.

5. No mounting hardware what-so-ever. If you want mount this in a rack you are have to buy rails or use the ears in the front.

Other Thoughts: Norco needs to rethink their cases. The box is nice but that's all and is lacking to much to be a real server. The way they arrive they are unusable. Some suggest replacing the middle fan shroud with larger fans. So lets think this trough

1. You pay $400 for box
2. You pay $100 for small ps, or $300-$400 for a good redundant.
2. You buy the correct shroud
3. You replace the fans with good ones
4. You buy rack rails, there is NO MOUNTING HARDWARE INCLUDED
5. You purchase power splitters

You spend all your time putting it together $600-$900 and you still have a case with 6 cheap un-managed backplanes that I wouldn't trust in a production environment.

For the same $ you can buy a Supermicro with all these things and much higher quality. Shop around you can get one with a SAS Expander.

At $400 Norco needs to up ante. It should include a power supply & rails. They have to so something about the quality control on the backplanes, ideally it would be a single unit