RackChoice M-ATX/Mini-ITX 2U Rackmount Depth 21.5" Server Chassis 6Gbps hotswap 12bays Support ATX PSU with 120mm Fan, Include Sliding Rail and Minisas to SATA Cables

I'd been looking for a 2U 12-bay chassis for several months and cameacross this one. This format/size seems to be a bit rare so I thoughtthis was a good find. More on that later...The case itself is pretty well-built. My rack doesn't have rear mountsso I can't make use of the rails. I had an easy time fitting in mymini-ITX board, HBA card, and 12 drives. I'm running TrueNAS SCALE andmost things run great. I like the form factor, the finish, and the look.The main issues I have with this case are two-fold:The power button sticks out and is really easy to accidentally press ifyou are handling the server while it's on. I wish it were recessed orthere was some sort of cover. I ended up taping a piece of cardboardaround the left ear to make a shroud to make it harder to accidentallybump into the power button.The other issue is with the backplane. I don't think it's rated ordesigned for 12Gbps, although it does seem to function OK with my LSI9305-16i HBA card. I'm using SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 cables to connect myHBA card to the backplane.In my Zpool I have a mix of Exos and HGST drives. The HGST drives allfunctioned fine, but the Exos drives have intermittent write errors. Ifirst checked the firmware of the HBA card and my drives and made sureeverything was up-to-date. I changed out the Gtek10+ cables for moreexpensive SuperMicro cables and no dice - I still received intermittentwrite errors.I ended up finding a forum post about how limiting link speeds on theHBA card to 6Gbps made the author's similar issue go away. I did thesame, limiting and verifying that all the Exos drives were limited to6Gbps and sure enough, I didn't get anymore write errors.Because I know the HBA card is good, the cables are top-quality(SuperMicro), and my drives are fine (no errors in my old system), thenthe only remaining link can be the backplane. I can't find anyinformation online about it so I can only assume it is some generic orproprietary backplane made for this chassis.Due to this issue, I really wish I had just gone with a SuperMicroCSE-826BE1C4-R1K23LPB chassis instead. Anyone who knows anything wouldknow that the chassis isn't going to give you any trouble, and you'd beable to use full 12Gbps speeds, not that it matters much unless you'vegot SSDs.So all-in-all, I'm not super bummed that I'm limited to 6Gbps, but atthe same time I wish I'd with the SuperMicro instead. If this case were$100 cheaper I'd probably feel differently. Regardless, it still ispretty decent value, so three stars on that.

I have had it for a few weeks now and finally was able to install TrueNas Scale onto this with 8 drives thus far as that is all I can afford. I am a little upset I bought for $50 more than what price is now. I contacted Amazon 7 days after purchase and they would not offer me anything other than return original and purchase another at lower price. Yeah... so I kept it. I have 4x4TB and 4x8TB drives in two pools. There is NO manual on hooking anything electrical up for this case. Zero. Nada. So this neing my first NAS build in a rack form factor (using a back plane) was trial and error. Not much room in this case but that is why I bought it to get rid of my big ATX 12 year old Desktop computer used as a NAS that took up way too much space under my desk. Reliable it was though. Will mount this into my server rack along with a QNap NAS which is slow as my dog if he had no legs. Luckily he still does have all four. I have learned a lot about building NAS in the last year and this case, although overpriced at what I bough should last me 5 or so years. That is what I was looking for along with space saving rackmount.Edit: Kudos to this company refunding me the $50 after seeing this review. That means a lot to me and will probably order from them again if I need another server case. It has been working flawlessly for the last few months and is now sitting in a 15u rack. Thanks again to CICHENG INC. Updated to 4 stars from 3 as the 4 fans are loud. I changed them out to Nocturas at half the decibel level but the trade off is the original fans push much higher volume of air. I monitor the temps and so far they are fine. YMMV.

I bought this case as I needed a cheap way to sanitize drives. I own an MSP and we get hundreds of old servers hard drives each year to destroy. We offer shredding but many of our clients want a greener option that doesn't destroy the drive. We've done that on a one-off basis using a regular PC and some drive destruction software that offers certificates of destruction.We bought one of these instead of the eight bay Silverstone case. I would have probably gone with Silverstone except it requires a TFX power supply and I didn't find any that offered the correct number of Molex connectors required. This case accepts a regular ATX power supply which are ubiquitous and cheap.Build quality:This case has a very nice sturdy frame. The tolerances on the drive trays are tight so be prepared to work a little bit to get them back in the first time you pull them out. The trays themselves can be used tool-free as they have bumps on one side of the tray to hold a 3.5" drive in place. For long term use you should plan on using screws, but this deserves a mention for anyone using this case the way we are. The case accepts mATX or smaller motherboards and I happened to have an old one sitting around that I used in this.Backplane:The backplane is hot swap and does its job well. I used a LSI Broadcom SAS 9300-8i 8-port 12Gb/s SATA+SAS PCI-Express 3.0 Low Profile Host Bus Adapter and two 10Gtek Internal Mini SAS HD SFF-8643 to Mini SAS SFF-8087 cables to hook up eight of the drive bays. The motherboard I used had six SATA ports, four of which are hot swap so I was able to hook up the bottom four backplane slots using the cables that came with the case.Fans:The fans are loud and move a lot of air. This is not a big deal for us as it lives in our office workroom but if you are using this in your home it could be a concern. I tried using the system before I hooked the fans up and the drive bays got extremely hot. Once I connected the fans I was able to have 12 drives running without it overheating.Rails:They didn't fit my shallow rack so I didn't use them.Bottom line:I might buy another one of these to use a NAS down the road. To me this represents an extremely good value for a 12 bay server chassis.