Question 1

How loud is this case under moderate and full load?

Accepted Answer

There is a stock 4" fan inside the front panel below the RAID bays and a grille in the back with mounting for a 5" fan, also with a removable plastic cover.

When you first power up a supermicro board with the front panel fan plugged into the first fan connector, it will briefly spin that fan to full speed. It obviously has the potential to be somewhat loud. But then as the BIOS screens progress it immediately quiets down to a very moderate speed.

On a supermicro X8 series socket single cpu 1366 board with 1.87/2.66 ghz low power series xeon, I noticed that with a smaller, flat 1U-rack style CPU fan, when the machine experienced sustained 100% cpu usage the combined temperature of cpu and case would get hot enough to trigger the motherboard to speed up the case fan, although not to the same hypothetical maximum speed as at power-on. That was still a lot louder than normal and would also trigger the 'temperature warning' beep from the motherboard (which cant be disabled nor can its temperature setpoints be changed in the BIOS.)

Though the 1U style fan should have been adequate for the CPU in question, changing the CPU fan to a $100 liquid CPU cooling block and radiator solved the problem. The cpu cooling block pump is nearly silent and the radiator fits neatly in the 5" grille in the back and has its own 5" fan.

Despite the resulting configuration having one pump and two fans, the total sound level is readily suitable for a home or office environment. The pump is silent. The case fan and the radiator fan give a slight hum. Even at sustained 100% system load I do not believe I have ever once heard the case fan speed up. The temperature warning beep has never come on.

Question 2

What is the speed of the backplane? Is it SAS 12GB/s, 6 GB/s?

Accepted Answer

6 Gigabit per second.

Question 3

I am thinking about buying super micro MBD-X10SL7-F-O Micro ATX board for this case.  Super micro's website does not specifically list this board and case being optimized for each other.  Has anyone else combined these two?  anyone else running Unraid in a similar build?

Accepted Answer

Yes that will work. This is an ATX case, therefore will also work for micro atx. You just place the standoffs where required.

Question 4

Can I use Wester Digital Red Drives in the SATA bays?

Accepted Answer

Almost a year ago my colleague and I built a server for a client based out of this make/model. We used WD10EZEX (1TB, Blue), so Red should be fine. That said, we found that we couldn't directly install MS Windows Server 2012 R2 and I believe it was due to some kind of conflict with Server and the hardware RAID controller. We made the bare metal server Ubuntu 14.04 and set up the RAID via Ubuntu's software config. We then virtualized Server 2012 R2 on VirtualBox. There are also a few "don't feed after midnight" rules to observe in this arrangement: (1) Server 2012 R2 doesn't play well when asked to soft reboot, so a virtual power down is recommended, then activate from Linux command line. (2) When updating the Linux side, be sure to properly shut down the Windows Server before rebooting. (3) You'll need to write scripts to automatically start Server upon rebooting Linux. (4) You should be able to access Ubuntu through command line or SSH or putty or whatever. Access to Server is through Tight VNC.

Now that I'm reading this, I'm wondering how we both got through this with our sanity intact. Good luck to you! :)

Question 5

Will a standard ATX mobo work inside this case?

Accepted Answer

Motherboard compatibility is 12" x 13" E-ATX.  I installed an Asus Server motherboard which fit easily.

Product SKUs
CSE-733TQ-500B	SuperChassis 733TQ-500B (Black)
Form Factor
Form Factor	Mid-Tower & Workstation chassis support for max. motherboard size - 12" x 13" E-ATX
Processor Support
Processor Support	Supports dual, single Intel® / AMD processors
Dimensions
Height	16.8" (427 mm)
Width	7" (178 mm)
Depth	20.9" (531 mm)
Weight	39 lbs (17.7 kg)
Available Colors	Black
Expansion Slots
Expansion Slots	7x Full-height, Full-length expansion slots
Drive Bays
Hot-swap	4x 3.5" SAS / SATA hot-swap drive bays SAS or enterprise SATA HDD only recommended
Peripheral Bay	2x 5.25" peripheral drive bay 1x 3.5" bay
SAS / SATA Backplane
SAS / SATA Backplane	4 x 3.5" SAS / SATA Backplane with SES2
Front Panel
Buttons	Power On/Off button System Reset button
LEDs	Power LED Hard drive activity LED Network activity LED System Overheat LED
Ports	2x Front side USB ports (USB 2.0 ready)
System Cooling
Fans	1x 92mm Front Thermal Fan
Operating Environment (System)
Operating Temperature Range	10° - 35°C (50° - 95°F)
Non-Operating Temperature Range	-40° - 70°C (-40° - 158°F)
Humidity Range	8 - 90% non-condensing
Non-Operating Humidity Range	5 - 95% non-condensing
Power Supply
Power Supply	500W AC power supply w/ PFC
AC Input	100 - 240V, 50-60Hz, 7-3.5 Amp
+5V	20 Amp
+5V standby	3 Amp
+12V1	17 Amp
+12V2	17 Amp
+12V3	17 Amp
+12V4	18 Amp
-12V	0.5 Amp
+3.3V	15 Amp
Certification	80 Plus Bronze Certified
Regulatory (Power Supply)
Power Supply Safety / EMC	USA - UL listed, FCC Canada - CUL listed Germany - TUV Certified Europe/CE Mark EN 60950/IEC 60950-Compliant CCC Certified

Brand	SUPERMICRO
Model	CSE-733TQ-500B

Chassis Type	Mini-Tower
Color	Black
Motherboard Compatibility	12" x 13" E-ATX / ATX
Power Supply	500W Bronze Level Certified High-Efficiency Power Supply

External 5.25" Drive Bays	2
Hot-Swap Drive Bays	4 x 3.5" hot-swap SAS / SATA drive bay with SGPIO
Expansion Slots	7 x Full-height, Full-length expansion slots

Dimensions	16.80" x 7.00" x 20.90"
Weight	37.00 lbs.

SUPERMICRO CSE-733TQ-500B Black Mini-Tower Server Case

SUPERMICRO CSE-733TQ-500B Black Pedestal Server Case

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Item#: N82E16811152234