KingfisherUK

For backplanes with these connectors you would need a reverse breakout cable - this will allow 4 SATA ports on a controller card/HBA/motherboard to connect to a single SFF-8087 or SFF-8643 connector on a drive backplane. With the LogicCase 43400-8HS I linked to earlier, mine has the "older" SFF-8087 6GB SAS connectors but the website now shows it comes with SFF-8643 12GB SAS, so if you do go for one of these cases, I'd either check with the vendor or wait until you have it to check which connector it has and therefore which cables you need since you could get "old" stock.

Not sure what price you will find it for where you are, but I've got this: https://www.servercase.co.uk/shop/server-cases/rackmount/4u-chassis/4u-short-storage-chassis-w-8x-35-sata-hot-swap-bays---eatx-motherboard-support-sc-43400-8hs/ Current UK price is £202.40, so (assuming you are in US), that's around $230, only just over your $200. Might be worth looking to see if anyone outside the UK stocks the LogicCase SC-43400-8HS. I've also found what looks to be an identical case here for $200 plus shipping: http://www.plinkusa.net/web4U08S.htm

I have the earlier version of that chassis - it's mechanically identical to your one. just the drive trays and backplanes are different. As nice as the hot-swap fan functionality is, you have to ask yourself if you are realistically ever going to use it? I pulled out the hot-swap fan trays, plastic rails and power board, mounted three Coolink SWiF2 120mm fans direct to the fan wall with rubber mounts (the mounting holes are already there) and plugged them direct onto my motherboard. (Supermicro board has LOTS of fan headers) Been running that system for over 2 years with no noise or temperature issues, just had to edit the IPMI settings to accept a lower minimum RPM without alarming. I would have preferred to use Noctua fans, but at the time there were none available and I don't see any point replacing perfectly good working fans now.

The Exos is basically an enterprise grade drive. Ironwolf is designed to be optimal for NAS use. At the end of the day, I would just compare the spec sheets. Exos: 270Mb/s max sustained transfer rate, 2.5 million hrs MTBF, 5 year warranty. Ironwolf Pro: 240Mb/s max sustained transfer rate, 1.2 million hrs MTBF, 5 year warranty. Ironwolf: 210Mb/s max sustained transfer rate, 1 million hrs MTBF, 3 year warranty. All are 7200rpm, unless you are looking at the smaller (6TB or less) non-Pro Ironwolf drives. To be fair, I have one server with Ironwolf drives (a mix of 4TB and 6TB 5400rpm models) and another with all Exos and the 7200rpm speed is definitely noticable over the slower Ironwolf disks I have, but reliability wise I've had no issues with either. Ultimately, if the Exos are cheaper for the same capacity, then there is no reason not to get them.

100% agree with this - recently went from 22 x 4TB + 2 x 6TB parity to 5 x 18TB + 1 x 18TB parity and the power consumption difference was noticeable.

The main server (with the 2650 v3) has a Quadro P400 installed for transcoding in the Plex and Tdarr containers. Given the relative scarcity of those DDR3 E5 CPU's (and likely higher prices as a result?) could you not get a similar or equal spec DDR4 E5 and some DDR4 RAM for the same money?

I thought the E5 v3 series CPU's only supported DDR4? Found an article on Toms Hardware about that board and it seems only very specific CPU's support DDR3: https://www.tomshardware.com/news/ddr3-ddr4-x99-motherboard-intel,40252.html Interestingly, none of those "compatible" CPU models are listed on Intel's ARK website for the E5 v3 family: https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/series/78583/intel-xeon-processor-e5-v3-family.html Even searching for the spec code (SR1XK for the 2696 v3 apparently) brings up no results on the Intel website. As for if they are still good processors, I have two Unraid servers running on them - one on an E5-2650 v3 and the other on an E5-2609 v3 (will be upgraded to E5-2650L v4 soon). The primary one (2650 v3) runs Plex, -arrs, NZBget, Home Assistant, etc. with no issues.

Seagate all the way for mine, mainly for the warranty. My first (currently main) Unraid server has 22 4TB Ironwolf drives in the array with 2 6TB Ironwolf drives for parity, been running that for around 18 months now without issue. Just built a second server (initially for testing purposes but will migrate as main server eventually) has 6 18TB Exos X18 drives (one for parity) and so far, all good. Each to their own at the end of the day, I know Seagate had their issues with some of the Barracuda drives a few years ago, then WD had the whole CMR/SMR fiasco so none of them are perfect.

If memory serves (I used to support HP kit in a previous job), the disk status/activity lights on the Gen8 and onward servers/caddies only work when used with HP controllers.

It did work with the firmware that was already installed (can't remember the version though) but I plugged it into a Windows Server based machine to update the firmware to the latest available. There is a Mellanox Firmware Tools plugin available for Unraid but I didn't notice this until after I'd updated via Windows.

That's the exact same card I have (also got mine from eBay) so can confirm it works perfectly, had it in my server for nearly 9 months now.

Another Mellanox ConnectX-3 user here (CX311A), connected to switch via 3m DAC cable

300mm deep rack mount is a tough ask, even before your requirement for 8 hot swap bays. Only thing I've found is the following but it is exactly 300mm deep and at 220mm high it equates to 5U: https://www.xcase.co.uk/collections/nasbox/products/x-case-nasbox-n8c

For comparison - my server is primarily a media server (Plex, Sonarr, Radarr etc.), also running Home Assistant in docker, Nvidia Quadro P400 passed through to Plex for hardware decode. 24 drives = 22 x 4TB + 2 x 6TB parity + 2 x 1TB SSD cache (BTRFS RAID1). Xeon E5-2650v3 (10-core/20-thread) 2.3GHz CPU 2 x 32GB DDR3 ECC RAM This was built from spare components I had lying around (apart from new drives) and it barely breaks a sweat handling the above. Others will no doubt have other comparisons but compared to mine I think that spec you have linked to should be fine.