[calibos]

In the planning stages of a new media server build and did up some Sketchup models and renders.

The Server will be in a Corsair Carbide Air540 case with room for 29x 3.25" HDD's and will run Flexraid and a MySQL DB for Library sharing on a WHS2011 VM with an instance of Openelec XBMC and Win7 on 2 other VM's.

Also pictured is a Gaming/Rendering workstation build I am planning inspired by the Mac Pro 2013.

[jdoggvt]

That looks pretty sweet. I'm considering an Antech Twelve Hundred but 29x HDDs would certainly do the trick. I'm curious as to what's needed to hold so many?

[calibos]

Large household of 7 adults, 6x XBMC media players, 4x desktops, 3x laptops, 2x Tablets, 7x Smartphones, everyone with their own favourite shows and movies (some overlap obviously), everyone buying Blurays, everyone with their own music collections etc. Fairly lossless BluRay rips desired as movies will sometimes be watched on 1080p projector where heavy compression becomes more noticeable.

I think you get the picture!

We've got 10 drives ready to go in. 4 from two old Dlink dual bay NAS, 3 homeless legacy 750&1000GB drives and 3 two Terabyte media drives in the desktops. so straight from the get go it'll be 1/3 full.

[jdoggvt]

I suppose I was a little vague I meant how do you fit that many HDD's in that case? I looked it up a bit online but didn't see anything about 29x drives. I'm going to consolidate all of my disparate drives into one case next week probably with that antec case, but 29x would be a lot better!

[nooryani84]

Very nice!

[calibos]

You can see 27 of the 29x Hotswap bays in the real and rendered pictures?

The hotswap bays are from the Corsair Obsidian 900D monster case. I bought them from the Corsair website. 9x 3 bay caddies = 27.

This is a desktop case with air and water cooling in mind. Its form factor is intended for your Mobo, GPU's Fans/Rads to go on the left side of the case with the windowed side panel visible in my pictures. The PSU, your reservoir, cable mess, Optical drive etc go on the right hand side of the case. Hidden away.

As soon as I saw the case,my first reaction was that it would make a cool looking server. Very quickly I realised that not only was it an interesting idea but emminently feasible. With a bit of modding it would be possible instead to a fit a large amount of HDD's on the side the mobo would usually go and fit the mobo on the other side instead. There is less clearance on that side of the case but it doesn't matter. Its a server, so no tall GPU's nor tall CPU Heatsink/fan combo's required.

Its going to weigh a metric tonne though when its loaded up with drives

[calibos]

Some new renders I made in Sketchup and Indigo Renderer of my Summer Haswell-e XBMC media and multiseat Game-streaming server build. I have the case and the HDD caddies but am obviously waiting for the launch of the silicon. ie. Haswell-e and GTX880's before starting the build and case-modding. Will also be using the server as a network renderer client for my own PC.

[calibos]

[Solidify]

I would love to see photos of the rest of your home theatre and PCs.