2The search for a 12 bay 5.25″ full tower case

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I have an ori­gin­al Cool­er­Mas­ter Stack­er case (STC-T01-UW) that I use for my serv­er. It is great because it has 12 5.25″ extern­al drive bays. Strictly speak­ing it has 11 useable as 1 of them is taken up by the power but­ton and front-usb mod­ule, but this can be mod­i­fied if necesary. This spec­tac­u­lar case is great for fit­ting lots of HDDs for a stor­age array. My sys­tem cur­rently has 10 reg­u­lar size HDDs and 2 SSDs in it which fit eas­ily with plenty of cool­ing. As I want to build a second serv­er to migrate the older drives into I am look­ing for anoth­er case with equally impress­ive capacity…

The CM stack­er is espe­cially impress­ive as it can be mod­i­fied to fit many more drives than I am using. It is pos­sible to fit 2.5″ drives side­ways with 5 to each 3 5.25″ bays (as shown on an amazon page), so in the­ory with stand­ard adapters it would be pos­sible to fit 20 drives in this arrangement.

For even more extreme mod­ders there is an example on the mad­shrimps for­ums with a mod­i­fied ver­sion of the case with an incred­ible 47 HDDs fitted.

I should note that the reas­on I like cases with 5.25″ bays in par­tic­u­lar is that I like to mount drives 3.5″ HDDs, one to each 5.25″ bay, with “bun­gee-cord”. This keeps the drives close to silent and also helps pre­vent the vibra­tion of 1 drive affect­ing oth­er drives. Bun­gee-mount­ing has been a trick of silent com­put­ing enthu­si­asts for a long time — I found with stor­age arrays it helps keep the noise down but also allows for cool­ing air to pass the sides as well as top and bot­tom of drives which should help their longev­ity. The pic­ture isn’t mine but does show a text­book example (albeit with a 2.5″ drive in a 3.5″ bay, cour­tesy of All­About­Cir­cuits Forums

Unfor­tu­nately the stack­er is no longer made, so I have been on the hunt for any oth­er case that also fea­tures a min­im­um of 10 5.25″ bays, and ideally 12 (or more!). There is an old list on the unraid for­ums, but this dates back to 2011-12 so all the sug­ges­ted drives are unavail­able. This post also fea­tures some cases that only offer 9 bays which aren’t suit­able for my needs. I also found a red­dit post with a few sug­ges­tions but most of these are also hard to loc­ate, so I have com­piled a list which I am using to check ebay reg­u­larly for a reas­on­able priced deal. If you are aware of any oth­er mod­els please add a com­ment below and I will add them to the list. Oth­er­wise, I hope this helps you to loc­ate a suit­able case second-hand.

Cool­er Mas­ter Stack­er Ori­gin­al STC-T01 series

  • Has 11 5.25″ extern­al bays (12 with a mod)
  • Info: Use­ful thread com­par­ing the 810 with the original

Cool­er Mas­ter Stack­er 810 series

  • Has 11 5.25″ extern­al bays (12 with a simple mod)
  • Info: Use­ful thread com­par­ing the 810 with the original

Cool­er Mas­ter Cos­mos S

Thermal­take Kan­dalf VA9000 series

Thermal­take Kan­dalf VD4000 series

Antec 1200

Lian Li PC-P80

Lian Li PC-A77F

Sharkoon Rebel 12 Eco (aka Sharkoon Rebel 12 Value)

Xig­matek Elysium

Zal­man MS1000

Other options

The fol­low­ing cases only have 9 5.25″ bays, but if that is suf­fi­cient for you, have a look at the list

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2 Comments

MPMore Power

I’ve been on this hunt a few times myself. I still have my Alu­minus ultra in black (only 5 5.25 bays) and looks sim­il­ar to a chieftec. In the early days it was such a pain try­ing to use the garbage drive trays that would always end up diag­on­al because they did­n’t fit well so I dug up some info on hot­swaps. After that the 12+ bay hunt began. Slim pick­ing even today espe­cially if you want a full tower instead of a box. Any­how great post. Cheers

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BAb A

I have a STC-T01-UW case (black and sil­ver). Has­nt been used in years. Might list on ebay this week­end if still interested.

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