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joseph b.

joseph b.

Joined on 04/20/04

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Product Reviews
product reviews
  • 4
Most Favorable Review

Worth Every Cent

iStarUSA D-400-6-ND Black 1.2mm SECC Zinc-Coated Steel 4U Rackmount Compact Stylish Chassis 6 External 5.25" Drive Bays
iStarUSA D-400-6-ND Black 1.2mm SECC Zinc-Coated Steel 4U Rackmount Compact Stylish Chassis 6 External 5.25" Drive Bays

Pros: Very Solidly built. Roomy, Great ventilation.

Cons: I had to pay shipping? Pretty petty but hey free shipping is always better :-)

Overall Review: This was a great case to put my Home server into. I only use a m atx board but everything fit right in there. I added my own power supply and swapped out the fan on the back for two 80mm Antec tri cools You can get them from here. With those on low and my 80+ psu and low noise cpu cooler you cannot hear this case from 2 feet away. That was important to me because it is in my guest room and I don't want to have turn it off for people to sleep over. I would not hesitate to buy another one of these cases. As a matter of fact I just did. Only I got the one that comes with the 3x5 Sata backplane in it. I am gonna put the backplane in this machine and put my gaming rig in the other case. I am going to be converting all my pcs into this line of cases. Tired of juggling towers around and going with a full rackmount system.

Small mods make great backplane

iStarUSA BPU-350-Red 3x5.25" to 5x3.5" SATA2.0 Hot-Swap Backplane Raid Cage
iStarUSA BPU-350-Red 3x5.25" to 5x3.5" SATA2.0 Hot-Swap Backplane Raid Cage

Pros: Very nicely constructed. All aluminum and feels very sturdy. I got one of these included in a 4u server case from here. The rear fan was quite loud on high. medium noise on low. I replaced the rear fan with a Antec tricool dual BB fan. You can find them here on the egg. Now I run it with 3 EADS 1TB green drives and a 750gb drive. All the drives run nice and cool.

Cons: Gave it 4 eggs for the fan although the fan really is about a half egg off. No half egg options.

Overall Review: If you replace the fan here are a couple notes. The header is proprietary so you will have to splice it on to the new fan. Also the typical 25mm fan barely fits inside the housing. It kind of blocks cooling for drive 1 and 5. So I put the fan on the back of the housing and even on low it keeps the drives extremely cool with no noise whatsoever.

Great drives for the price

Western Digital WD Green WD10EADS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive
Western Digital WD Green WD10EADS 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive

Pros: Great price for alot of storage. These make no noise and run nice and cool. Low power consumption for the win

Cons: I have to pay tax when ordering from Newegg. (have to put somthing here )

Overall Review: I have 3 of these now running in a 5 HD backplane from IStarusa. They run 24/7 in a windows home server and the drives never even get warm. I notice no decrease in speed and my files transfer very fast. My system disk is however a 750gb seagate. Maybe in time I will switch it to one of these as well.

I am Happy

Silverstone CFP52B Bay Device
Silverstone CFP52B Bay Device

Pros: Lots of room for air to pass between the drives. Keeps drives 7 degrees cooler than my Athena power backplane did. Even with the Add on plug on the back to make it true hotswap trays. Also very Quiet. There are rubber spacers on the trays where you screw in the Hard Drives. They do an excellent job of quieting the HD chatter.

Cons: I miss my led lights showing me what each drive is doing but hey its hiding in a server so I really don't need that. Other con is Newegg doesn't carry the add on pieces to make this slide in hotswap bays.

Overall Review: Sorry Newegg I love to shop with you but had to order elsewhere so I could combine the shipping with the hot swap plugs.