SUPERMICRO CSE-M35T-1B 3 x 5.25" to 5 x 3.5" Hot-swap SATA HDD Trays

Pros: - Great Air Flow
- Vibration Resistant (possibly because of its heaviness)
- Large 90mm fan instead of smaller, less reliable fans. Easily replaceable with inexpensive ones (fans do wear out!)
- Fan Alarm (Configurable)
- Holds 5 Drives in 3 x 5.25 slots
- Very Robust design, I've been using it for over a year (2 years) and have since bought a second
- Great Price!

Cons: - According to other reviews, the included fan is loud. I bought a replacement with the unit itself and never used the original so I can't verify this (was like $6 for a fantastic, whisper-quiet replacement)
- My case has guide rails on the 5.25 inch bays that had to be bent to accommodate. It was not difficult, this is also clearly necessary to hold 5 drives in 3 x 5.25 inch bays, 4 drives in 3 bays do not requires this though
- Drives require drive sleds and screws (included). There are 4 drive backplanes that don't
- Fairly deep, do measurements in your case first.

Other Thoughts: I bought a 9x5.25-bay PC case to use with this product and couldn't be happier with the results. I currently have 2 of these in the case holding 9 drives. I previously had a 4 drive in 3 bay in there, but the vibrations were killing drives. This thing is solid as a brick and very quiet with the 90mm fan. The only downside is that guide rails might need to be bent to get it in, it just cant be helped to have 5 drives in 3 bays instead of 4.

If you don't mind bending some guide rails (not hard), possibly replacing the fan (easy and cheap to do), and the depth wont give you issues in your case, this is simply the best product of its kind out there, especially for the money.

Pros: Nice build quality
***See Cons***

Cons: This review is to update my test findings with this product.

After extensive testing both on my own and with Supermicro support, I found that the problem with my backplane was that the drives themselves were not being inserted enough onto the backplane connectors. To verify this, I removed a drive from the hot-swap tray and seated it fully on the backplane connector. This took some propping and supporting of the drive, but the drives performed flawlessly when installed this way.

As soon as the drive is installed in the tray, the errors came back. Performed this test over and over with repeatable results. Supermicro tech support was not very helpful, and because I didn't find this problem until after the return period had expired with newegg, there was no returning them.

Other Thoughts: This would be an almost ideal setup if you have this requirement in your build. Something as simple as the tolerances in the drive to the backplane make this product a huge failure.

Pros: Very nice construction.

Cons: Drive performance dropped to unacceptable levels after installing drives into this backplane. Multiple tests performed with drives installed and connected directly to the SATA cables. No other variable changed other than the introduction of the backplane. Write speeds of a 7200RPM SATAII drive dropped to approximately 10MB/s when drives were installed. When the same drive was connected directly to the SATA cable (bypassing the backplane), my transfer rates were at about 130MB/s.

Other Thoughts: I purchased 3 of these drive bays, and all three of them have the same performance problems. Supermicro tech support did a test on one of these units in their lab by copying a 3GB ISO file from one drive to another in windows and said it took less than 4 seconds. My tests were performed with 50GB files to eliminate any caching in RAM.

Drive performance SUCKS when using any of these drive bays.

Pros: Very solid construction, latches and levers work well and are thin but don't feel flimsy. Hot swapping works fine.

Cons: I'm using this in a home server in a tower chassis so most of my complaints would not apply to a server chassis in a server room. This drive enclosure requires the support tabs in the chassis drive bays to be bent down because the sides of the enclosure have no indentions to allow for the tabs. Even with the tabs bent down or removed, the drive enclosure is a hair too big so it is a very tight fit.
The fan is quite loud and doesn't seem to change speed based on drive temp. I'm going to have to find a much quieter fan.

Pros: Love the ability to store 5 HD's in space fo 3 bays. Very good design, sturdy. The added cable, provided your Motherboard, or SAS card is capable, is a great feature as well.

Cons: The only con which I knocked off 1 egg for is the length. The fan on the back sticks out a bit farther then others multi-disk bays. If you have a smaller case, or a short rack mount case this may give you some issue with hitting against the motherboard or power supply.

Pros: 5 Drives in a 3 bay spot and hot swappable what more can you ask for? Quiet! This unit has been installed for more than a year, and also have a second one as a backup just in case its discontinued. This has been bullet proof running 24/7, it is used to house 3 drives that basically never get removed and 2 drive get pulled every 2 weeks in a backup rotation. Installing the drives is never a problem, they easily slide back into case and locks securely. Cant say enough about this enclosure.

Cons: Loud. This unit was installed at the same time major case mods were made. Water cooling with Delta fans attached to the radiator, which run around 4000 rpm, seemed to be the source of fan noise. Well a year later and installing a NF-B9 Noctua fan on the CSE-M35T this unit is now the quietest part of my build. To those wondering how to change fan speed these fans include two resistor leads that allow you to reduce fan speeds, which wasn't needed for me.

Other Thoughts: If you buy this unit do yourself a favor and get the Noctua NF-B9 fan and replace the stock fan.

Pros: works as advertized. rock solid san ace fan. what else do you expect from supermicro, they always make good stuff.

Cons: price? you get what you pay for, assembled in america.

Other Thoughts: didnt come with the blue foxconn cables picured, but instead came with the "normal" generic red cables, not a big deal, but after working with foxconn blue cables I was kinda looking forward to having 5 of them becuase they are easily the best OEM Sata cable.

Pros: I've seen and/or used the more expensive chenbro, icy dock and istar equivalents but this one is not only better built, it is also the cheapest. 92mm fan in the back as opposed to the more common 80mm.

The fan is loud but it is very easy to replace. Mount uses 4 standard fan screws and the connector is a standard 3 pin.

After swapping the fan to a 1400RPM unit it is very quiet and 5 x Hitachi 5400RPM 3TB drives in this bay all stayed under 40C (36-38C) at all times during a 6+ hour raid integrity check.

Cons: Very heavy. Probably heavier than some of the cheapo PC cases out there.

Pros: Solid Design, Good Airflow, Heavy, Individual Harddrive activity lights, SanyoDenki Fan is awesome and not nearly as loud as other reviews made it out to be.

Cons: SATA Cables included were not ones pictured, ones pictured look like foxconn cables, this comes with generic red sata cables.. was kinda excited that I wouldnt have to order some cables to replace, but alas I still have to

Other Thoughts: after reading the reviews here I figured that this would come with one of those 7k RPM SanAce, but turns out its prob right around 4k rpm. that being said its still too loud for my computer while running at full speed, but that can be said about ALL of the fans in my case, thats why there is a thing called a fan controller. I just soldered a resistor inline and now it runs nice and quiet.
being that I am very picky when it comes to computer parts, I seriously sat down and looked for a flaw in this and couldnt find one.

Pros: These drive cages are noticeably cheaper than their competitors. They are easy to install (under the right conditions, see below) and the drive bays/trays are solid and easy to use.

Cons: 1) As mentioned by other reviewers, this cage does not fit exactly into a standard 3-bay space. It's about .5mm too big. now this isn't a problem unless you are tight on space. I'm deducting a star for this reason.

2) The 92mm fans on these cages are really, really loud. If you do not have a server room, garage or other out of the way place to store the machine you will want to replace the fans. I used Noctua 92mm fans and the machine now runs whisper quiet. I actually have it in my living room, near the entertainment center and I never notice the sound. Also, the fan cages are a bit flimsy and prone to pop off on their own. Oh, and these are 92mm fans, not 90mm fans as stated in the description.

3) I knew this going in, but worth mentioning. There are no slots/grooves in these cages to accommodate any guide rails in your case. So you will need to make sure your case doesn't have them or be prepared to bend them out of the way.

Other Thoughts: I installed 3 of these cages into a 9-bay Azza Helios 910 case to use and an unRaid server. I had to leverage, pound, and curse a lot, but they did finally go into the case. The fit is so tight that I didn't even need to screw the cages to the case (though I did, just to be safe). I have them loaded with 10 WD Caviar Green WD20EARS 2TB drives and they all run smoothly, quietly and at around 25-45 degrees.