I have an Antec 900 case which I currently use in my dual purpose Win7/Hackintosh machine - I don't particularly like it for this purpose as the Gigabyte Mobo (X58A-UD3R 2) sata ports are just too close to the end of the drive cages and are horizontal to the board and tend to make accessing cabling and neat cabling almost impossible - the plugs tend to always have mechanical stress on them which is less than ideal. It is obviously a fairly long board. The only away around this is to not sit the existing drive cages flat and leave them protruding a bit...So the plan is to find a more appropriate case for that Gigabyte Mobo and re-purpose the existing case for a 12 or 15 drive unRaid server.

 

Looking at Raj's recommended Mobos even the server class SuperMicro looks like it would be fine as the onboard Sata are located vertically at the bottom.

 

So a question a little bit off topic - can anyone recommend a better, deeper case for the current Gigabyte mobo?

 

Just one other thing - I have a couple of SNT 4 in 3's that I used on an old RAID box which I no longer use. I don't see the SNT's (the Chenbros seem identical) discussed much here.  They do seem very sturdy if a little fiddly with the lock when pulling drives - so I'll probably use them to get up and running as there are very few drive cages available in Aus.. whether I go IcyDock, Norstar or iStar I can only really find overseas suppliers.

 

Any gotchas there?

Chuckling. Wondering what you asking?

 

In regards to the Antec 900, which I have, using this with a large mobo and some cages can make things very tight. I upgraded to a 1200 (see my sig) and have a LOT more room.

 

Shawn

 

Actually the only question was on a better case for the X58A-UD3R

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3449#ov

 

And whether the SNTs were any good for unRAID?

 

Sorry for the confusing first post...

 

 

That is actually the mobo I have on my gaming system - it sits in a HAF X case - so lots of room, but with those SATA ports the way they are, you woudl need pretty much a full tower case like an Antec 1200 to give you ample room for the board, the SATA cables and the cages.

 

Cannot speak directly to that cage, never had one, but a pick make it look a lot like the ICY Dock model.

 

Shawn