budget home nas - could a secondhand Dell T3610 workstation work?

[onceler]

I'm looking to build a small nas for home use (backups, media server).

I have the disks I'll be using (4 WD Reds), and a few PCs I could use / pull parts from, but none of them have (or support the use of) ECC memory, and buying a new motherboard/cpu/ram, while possible, is more costly than I'd like.

Second hand, however, I've found a few possibilities - including the workstation listed in the title. It comes with a Xeon E5-1650 v2 and 32GB of ECC ram, so I know they're more than sufficient. The motherboard has 6 sata ports (and plenty of slots for extra adapters, should I need more). The case, though... Google tells me that the case it comes in is only designed to fit 2 HDDs. A third could be mounted in the 5.25" bay, but without resorting to dodgy duct-tape-based solutions, that's all (and I'd rather avoid using duct tape to hold together the server that will be holding my data!). So I know I'd need to transplant the innards into a more suitable case, but google has not told me the dimensions of the motherboard, or if the power supply is a standard size, or any other such information that would hint at how easy transplanting it into a standard tower case would be (see previous comment re: duct tape)

Does anyone have experience with those Dells?

 

[m0nkey_]

From the spec sheet:

Up to three 3.5" or four 2.5" internal SATA, SAS or SSD drives

Okay, so it looks like you have fit 3 x 3.5" in the internal drive bays. What you'll need is a 5.25" to 3.5" bracket, which you can easily find on Amazon or Newegg to mount the fourth drive.

https://si.cdn.dell.com/sites/docco...Documents/Dell_Precision_T3610_Spec_Sheet.pdf

 

[onceler]

Okay, so it looks like you have fit 3 x 3.5" in the internal drive bays. What you'll need is a 5.25" to 3.5" bracket, which you can easily find on Amazon or Newegg to mount the fourth drive.

https://si.cdn.dell.com/sites/docco...Documents/Dell_Precision_T3610_Spec_Sheet.pdf

If only it were that easy! However, that "up to three 3.5" internal drives" already includes mounting the third in the 5.25" bay. The same spec sheet says (on page 1)

Room for up to two 3.5” or four 2.5” tool-less hard drive

Images of the system innards (e.g. https://goo.gl/images/bCHNKT) confirm this. Two drives fit right in, a third could be bracketed, but the fourth has nowhere to go. Hence the case swap plans.