Well, darn...

"Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing." (granfury) 09/23/2018 at 21:01 • Filed to: None

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Went to look at this case today, but it wasn’t going to do the job. It looks like it has tons of 5.25" bays, but only the top three are usable; I need at least 5, and I could actually use more . There was a very high-end Z77 motherboard, which is just what I wanted, but the PCIe x16 slot was fried. In addition, it had a decent Corsair 850W modular power supply that I managed to snap up for $25 .

The motherboard I ordered last week has yet to make it to the post office. I bought from this particular seller because the comments frequently mentioned his fast shipping, but I see no evidence of that. The post office has a tracking number but have yet to receive the package, which means I sit and wait for the guy to it to the PO . It’s a good board, but I was the only bidder an d got it for half of the Buy It Now price;  I wonder if it is suddenly going to be unavailable (and then relisted... ) I understand I’m going to have to wait for the I/O shield to come from Hong Kong, and will have to pull the board to install it, but at this point I wonder if I’m going to get the shield before I get the board despite the fact that the board is only coming from Arizona...

Nom De Plume > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 09/23/2018 at 21:31

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At least five 5.25" bays! What do you burn your entire life to tape concurrently throughout the day on top of needing a DVD drive or two and a fan controller?

Nom De Plume > Nom De Plume 09/23/2018 at 21:32

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Postal Service tracking can be  awful. It might show up to your door before it shows they received it.

That Bastard Kurtis - An Attempt to Standardize My Username Across Platforms > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 09/23/2018 at 21:32

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CM Storm Trooper, I’ve got one of those. Nice case, I think I’m using 3 of the 5.25 slots for optical and two more for a HDD and SSD. I also haven’t looked inside that computer in years so I could be mistaken. 

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Nom De Plume 09/23/2018 at 23:00

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Well, there’s the BD Burner, a couple of double-height cooled racks for 3 3.5" HDs (I could probably cut back to just one) , a 4-bay hot-swap module for 2.5" drives, a fan controller (optional) that can hold another 3.5"HD , 10-disc optical disc storage module (optional, but I really like it ), a 2-bay 2.5" drive rack (optional now that I have the 4-bay), and an audio/video port module. I’d like a 3.5" drive hot-swap module as I have dozens of drives I need to check out and migrate, but that’s probably best handled by an external device so I can move it between computers. I wouldn’t mind having a second optical drive available as well, and this could probably be incorporated into one bay with the media card reader and a notebook optical drive.  

Then there are the things that need 3.5" bays - USB3 module, USB2 module, media card reader , and a smaller fan controller if I don’t want to use the 5.25" one .

If I had something with more 5.25" bays I’d like to move the DVD duplicator out of its dented/damaged case and into the bottom of the tower (3 bays right there), but I guess I could just use an old SCSI case or small ATX case for that. Maybe I could incorporate the DLT drive into that as well. Now I’m kind of sorry I ditched the 7-bay SCSI case; I could have re-purposed that.

Perhaps I can find something that combines into one bay a media card reader, USB2 and USB3 ports into one device, but most of the ones I’ve seen are rather cheap and naff, whereas I currently have three high-quality metal devices that do those functions now. A good tower would have the USB ports included, so that would save some bays, and part of the reason I’m looking for a new case.

Yeah, I’m asking for a lot, just like I’ve got tons of stuff to fill the available PCI/PCIe slots, and hate wasting them (covering up a slot by the video card) or not filling them. I know that leaving some open are necessary to prevent slowing down others, but it still feels a little painful not being able to fill them.

Nom De Plume > Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. 09/23/2018 at 23:45

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Respectfully, if you are buying hardware. Buy hardware that actually solves your problems. 10TB HDD’s.  A  modern case with front panel card reader among a few other options you sorely need. Couple that with a modern board and processor which offer enough PCIe lanes to make all this work. Accessory fan controllers with apps not front panel space just as a for instance of what has a sophisticated solution nowadays.

You are digging a hole that is only going to be harder to get out of. Beyond the point of maximizing capability already. You appear to just need a shove in the right direction.

I don’t fault you for one reason alone. DDR3 vs. DDR4 prices. Selling all your still usable good quality stuff wouldn’t overcome this. What you like is what you like also accounts for a lot.

Full of the sound of the Gran Fury, signifying nothing. > Nom De Plume 09/24/2018 at 00:06

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At this point it’s all about the case and accessories and not the guts. I’ve got a decent, but older, i7-3770 and 32GB of DDR3 , and combined with the GTX 1080 the performance is more than acceptable for my needs at this time . The SSDs are also fairly recent and can be moved to a new machine should I go that route some day , unlike the CPU and RAM. The HDs and SSHDs are also newish and decent capacity (2 , 3 and 4 TB) and can also be moved. The other hard drives are used kind of like floppies in the old days, storing stuff not often used and for backups.

A case with lots of ports and bays would be great, but I can re-use what I have if I can’t find what I need at a reasonable price. Heck, I may even pull out the ancient Antec I’ve used for more than a decade. Maybe I’ll look into some multifunction USB/media reader device to free up some bays; I’ve already spent this much in time and money, so what’s another $50...