While my Freenas box is build in a Sharkoon case I own actually 2 Fractal Design Define R5 cases. One for my main desktop and one for a "lab" computer. I wanted to have my drives for my Freenas box in hot-swap bays I already owned, otherwise I most certainly would have used an R5 for the Freenas box as well. The R5 is sturdy, nice looking (to me anyway), silent and roomy. It's finish is great and you don't have to be afraid to cut your hand on rough edges. It has 8 internal slots for 3.5 inch drives and behind the motherboard tray 2 slots for SSD's. If you don't need the 2 external 5.25 slots you can use that space for harddrives as well. The case accommodates all ATX format motherboards (mini-itx is also possible). There is also plenty space for case fans (7) and you can easily find place for a radiator in the top of the case. A radiator in the front is possible as well. Building a system in this case is a breeze. Everything is good accessible. And the cable management is excellent with Velcro straps.I'm looking for inspiration for doing a Fractal Define R5 build.
If you have done one, I would love to hear about it, your experience, your components etc..
I purchased the case and am researching what to put inside it.
Thanks!
Hi, I am not at home at the moment (being in India for 2 weeks) so I can't take measurments of the drive cages. I keep an eye on this thread and if you don't have an answer at the end of next week I will be happy to do that for you. About the position of your hdd's: If you mean that the hdd can be mounted on the caddy " the wrong way": yes that is possible. There is room for that and I think there will be enough space for the cabling. But I cant help but wondering why you would do that, because you move the cable clutter away from the cable management side.Can one of the fractal define r5 owners be so nice as to measure the height and width of the two hdd cages stacked on top of each other? Also, I have read that the hdd can installed in the bay facing either side of the case - true?
Thanks in advance for any insight
I'm looking for inspiration for doing a Fractal Define R5 build.
If you have done one, I would love to hear about it, your experience, your components etc..
I purchased the case and am researching what to put inside it.
Thanks!
Another happy R5 user. Could you possibly giveI have a R5 for my FreeNAS and it's a great choice! :) Component wise, I have nothing special, just a E3-1230v5 Xeon CPU, Supermicro motherboard, 32GB DDR4 ECC memory, cheap SSD boot drive, 6x4TB HDD, etc!
Another happy R5 user. Could you possibly give OP the measurements of the HDD gages? I will not be home until the end of the coming week and possibly even a week longer. I dare not ask my wife to open up the PC :).
Hi, I am not at home at the moment (being in India for 2 weeks) so I can't take measurments of the drive cages. I keep an eye on this thread and if you don't have an answer at the end of next week I will be happy to do that for you. About the position of your hdd's: If you mean that the hdd can be mounted on the caddy " the wrong way": yes that is possible. There is room for that and I think there will be enough space for the cabling. But I cant help but wondering why you would do that, because you move the cable clutter away from the cable management side.
Short and good: It can't be done in my opinion. Even when cases like the Cooler Master CM Stacker were on the market you would have a hard time fitting 24 bays in a case like that. And with all the cabling and bays cluttering up the available space, cooling could be problematic. And getting power to 24 bays in such a rig comes with its own challenges. Like @ChriZ stated, 24 bays is well in the domain of a real server case. Of course a rackmounted server case come with it's own problems. They are not really build for a home environment. They are bulky and often can produce a fair amount of noise. The build in fans are more designed for cooling then for silence (they can be replaced for silent fans of course). And the WAF is about zero.I can't think how you would get 24 drive bays into the R5, and even if you did, trying to keep them all cool would be another major challenge.