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 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.

This is a relatively well designed case that could've been a great case at no real additional cost if they made better decisions. It's a good size, with good, workable space in side for wire management and just fitting components in. The documentation is terrible, but this wasn't my first RackChoice chassis and they've all been like that. Things I liked: - A well-designed backplane with drive trays that work well - Reasonable cooling via the 4 80mm fans. Certainly better than the 40mm screamers you find in 1U cases. - Reasonable routing options for cables in the case Things I didn't: - I should not have to spend a half hour peeling protective plastic off the case. That was a first, and boy did it annoy me. - There's no excuse for how bad the power/reset/USB panel is on there. There's no excuse for being limited to USB-2 in 2026, and the sheer stupidity of the power switch is really shocking. As other reviewers said, you have to be really careful not to bump it. The next time I have a reason to shut the server down, I'm just disconnecting both buttons and I'll route them to the back and put a couple pushbuttons in an expansion slot panel. Thankfully I can reach the back of my rack. - The rails. Oh, the rails. First off, they're the worst rails I've ever seen on any rack device, bar none. They mount stupidly, they don't really fit well, they bind. If you're looking at them and scratching your head, watch the video they posted in the listing. The way they work is so dumb, you kind of need to see it to figure it out. - I wish the PWM fan headers on the backplane had a PWM input so you could control the speed via software. The screaming 4800rpm is entirely unnecessary unless you're completely stuffing the server with drives. I used a $5 PWM fan 5-way breakout for them and ran them off the motherboard. Unfortunately, there isn't much competition for chassis in this size range, and in this price range. You're kind of stuck with this or a used SuperMicro, so the important thing is most of the stupidity in this option can be worked around.

In a nutshell; this 2U chassis has some oddities and downsides, but overall it does the job and considering the price, it's a lot cheaper than most 12 bay 2U cases. Pros: - 12 hot-swap drive bays - Comes with four 80mm fans (not quiet, but far from the loudest) - Very solid metal construction, doesn't feel flimsy - Comes with enough screws to install everything, including 12 hard drives - Comes with three 4x SATA to SFF-8087 cables - Comes with rail kit Cons: - Included rail kit is hot garbage. It'll work, after fighting with it for a while. - Power button on the front was stuck, I had to permanently remove two screws from the back of the plastic cover that houses the buttons and USB port in order to let the power button operate normally - Drive caddies/sleds feel cheap. They're built alright, there's just a lot of friction when inserting/removing. - Micro ATX motherboards that have 90-degree SATA ports will be un-usable in this chassis. Build: CPU - Intel Core i7 12700K Motherboard - ASUS Pro WS W680M-ACE SE RAM - Corsair Vengeance DDR5 64GB Cooler - Noctua NH-L9x65 PSU - EVGA 850 GT NIC - 10Gtek X540-T2 10GbE CNA The biggest con was the SATA port issue. When installed, a micro ATX motherboard sits at about ~5mm from the metal rail where the fans attach to, not leaving enough clearance for the 90-degree SATA ports on my motherboard. It was probably my fault for not researching enough beforehand, but I solved that issue by purchasing a "180 Degree Dual SATA Male to Female Connector". In the end, I had to remove one of the four included fans anyway so that I could access the SlimSAS port on my motherboard. There is a video review of this chassis on Youtube where the reviewer notes that the front USB port does not connect to anything. This is false. The USB header is bundled with the front panel connectors, but it's a 4-pin connector so it could be easily mistaken for something else if you're not paying attention. The front panel has the following: - Green Power LED - Yellow Networking LED - Red HDD LED - Power Button - Reset Button - Single USB 2.0 Port I would have liked to see a USB 3.0 port, however its not a big deal. I also ended up connecting the networking LED to the IPMI locator LED header on my motherboard, as I do not have a network activity LED header on either my motherboard or 10Gb NIC. All in all, I don't regret this purchase. I'm using three of these as I'm building a 3-node Proxmox cluster with them. I originally intended on purchasing the 8 bay variant of this chassis, however it went out of stock when I was ready to purchase. It was only a $50 difference between the 8 bay version and this 12 bay version, so I went ahead and bought three of these. For the price, this chassis is significantly cheaper than the other 12 bay cases out there.