As the title suggests, I'm looking for a small case. The smaller the better. I love the Lian Li Q25B, but it's too large for this application. It needs to fit several drives and mini ITX board, but that's it. I'm open to using 2.5" drives, but 3.5" would be prefered.

 

Thoughts???

Anyone have experience with this "DIYPC V3Plus-B Black Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case "?

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811353014

 

It looks just barely large enough to fit the bill. The one 3.5" bay could be split into two 2.5" bays. I also have a spare 2.5" hot swap bay that fits into a rear slot. That would give me 4 2.5" bays or two 2.5" bays and a 3.5" bay.

 

Anybody see a reason why this wouldn't work? Anybody have a better idea?

That case only holds 1 3.5" drive plus 1 2.5" drive (or 2 2.5" drives).

 

Otherwise it looks quite nice -- so if that will satisfy your drive needs, then go for it.

 

If you need room for more drives, take a look at the Lian-Li Q27B, which can hold 3 3.5" drives:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112400

Check this out:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811345017

It is a very nice case and doesn't look cheap.

A friendly advice- be extremely sure that you are not going to need an expansion later as this will cost you additional expenditures.

 

Best regards.

Thanks for all the opinions. The needs have changed so I've actually decided to go in a different direction with the whole project. The new design will have much larger storage needs so it's either back to the venerable Lian Li Q25B or the U-NAS NSC-800. the Lian Li is cheaper, but I've already done it, and the NSC-800 is downright cool.

 

... or I might just say "screw it" and go with an HP Microserver and just use larger drives.

That's the case I was looking at but I am concerned about the heat

 

Sent from my Nexus 4

 

 

The PC-Q25B will almost certainly keep the drives cooler with it's large fan blowing air directly across the drive cage (this works much better than trying to "pull" air through hot-swap cages.

 

A couple other minor thoughts:  (a)  Your license will be less expensive, since a Plus license is all you need to support 6 drives, whereas the 8 drives in the NSC-800 require a Pro license;  (b)  there are several good mini-ITX motherboards that have 6 SATA ports onboard;  but none currently shipping with more (there have been a couple announced - but they're likely to be in the $500 range) ... so you'd need to use an add-in card to support the additional 2 drives in the NSC-800 => a minor cost, but certainly more internal heat to contend with.

 

... or I might just say "screw it" and go with an HP Microserver and just use larger drives.

 

You never said how much storage you really need ... but this comment implies it's not really a lot.

 

If 8TB is enough, you could use the smaller Lian-Li I suggested above.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112400

 

... and put 3 4TB drives in it => getting 8TB of protected storage and using the free Basic license.

[or 10TB with 3 5TB drives if you can wait a couple months]

 

That's the case I was looking at but I am concerned about the heat

 

Sent from my Nexus 4

A valid point.