TLDR: If you were building a NAS for 8 HDDs and 1 SSD today, what case would you use?

I’m going to be rebuilding my system soon (currently using an old PowerEdge T610) using one of my other older (R5 1600) systems and I’ve basically hit a road block on picking a case.

I’ve got 8 HDDs that need to fit in the system after it’s rebuilt (plus at least one SSD) so I’m kinda limited in that regard.

The rest of the system is planned out (mostly because I’m reusing old parts) it’s just the case I’m stuck on.

I’m wanting to avoid rack mounting currently mostly due to space (and wanting to keep it under $200)

I was thinking maybe the Fractal Design Define R5, the Fractal Design Node 804, or the Phanteks Enthoo Pro 2 but I’m open to suggestions.

  • SteveDinnEnglish
    1·
    6 months ago

    I am using a normal desktop case with an external usb-c 8-bay JBOD drive enclosure from Mediasonic. I’m using mdadm to combine the drives with RAID-6. I know I’m not getting the performance that I could with native SATA, but it can still saturate my 1Gbps network, so it’s good enough for serving video, audio, and some other web-based apps.