[geeks] cases with 5 hot swap drive bays

[Lionel Peterson]

On Mon, Jun 11, 2012 at 8:28 AM, RichTea <mail at catsnest.co.uk> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 10, 2012 at 10:41 PM, Lionel Peterson
> <lionel4287 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> No, but it met every other criteria you listed...
>>
>> Lionel
> It has been mentioned on the list before but, The HP Microservers (i think
> the N40L is the current version) Is a very nice little server, Its only got
> 4 drive cages but also has a bay for a "DVD drive" (a 5th sata port).
> They say that it is not hot swap but a friend of mine has had no problems
> hot swapping (I have not been brave enough to try!).
> They are quite cheep in the UK ~ B#250 and you get a B#100 re-bait so B#150.
> They are also low power they have a 150W PSU. you would also need some to
> upgrade the memory as it comes with 2G, I also added a dule Gbit ethernet
> card to mine as it come with just 1 built in.
>
> Ritchie

The N40L is great, but here in the states they are closer to $350 -
not a con, just a difference.

At that price-point, it starts to become a permium you are paying for
a low-power server over a BYO mini server, once features are taken
into account.

The Chenbro chassis I listed earlier ($140 at newegg), plus an Intel
Server mini-ITX MB (S1200KP $135 at provantage), an i3 Sandy Bridge
CPU ($100 almost everywhere) and an 8 gig RAM kit (DDR3 ECC) is about
$75 (newegg) and since the MB includes two Intel Gb NICs, there's no
need for an add-in card, for a total cost of around ($140 + $175 +
$100 + $75 = $490 (plus S/H, tax, etc)

You can save a fair amount if you use a desktop miniI-TX MB OR choose
to go with an AMD E350-based MB/CPU combo, like the ASRock E350M1 for
about $100 at newegg.

The Chenbro + AMD E350 MB/CPU + 8 Gigs of RAM ($40, since ECC not
supported) would come in right around $300 (a bit more if you add an
Intel NIC, a bit less if you can go without it) and would be quite
similar to an N40L in many regards.

The Microserver comes in at $350, add the 8 Gig DDR3 ECC upgrade for
$75 and a second NIC ($30 for an Intel NIC) and you are looking at
around $455 (plus S/H, tax, etc.)

The Intel board can take faster CPUs, has some nice server management
features, and can expand to 16 Gigs of RAM...

Were an N40L closer to $150 or $200 it would garner much more
attention here in the US - at $350 it looks a bit over-priced or
under-spec'd...

-- 
Lionel Peterson
lionel4287 at gmail.com