I have a Silverstone DS380.
ITX form factor, SFX power supply.
Houses 8x3.5 and 4x2.5.
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Beginning of January 1st 2024 this rule WILL be enforced. Posts that are not tagged will be warned and if not fixed within 24h then removed!
I have a Silverstone DS380.
ITX form factor, SFX power supply.
Houses 8x3.5 and 4x2.5.
Wow I should have checked better before doing my ugly hack with 2x5 hot swappable 3.5 caddies. In the end I paid the same...
Thanks! I love that case, that's what I use for my main server. In this case I was interested in a prebuilt, which may be easier to find and with all main components included and thus possibly cheaper. I updated my main point as I understand it may not have been obvious.
I don't think you'll find an SFF that'll hold multiple 3.5" drives. Many regular desktops won't hold that many drives.
Thank you for taking the time to answer. Indeed, the title is a simplification, but I was hoping that the body of the text would highlight that it does not have to be a literal SFF but just something on the smaller side.
Sorry, I didn't catch that.
I'm working on something similar. I currently have an SFF that I've shoe-horned three 2.5" drives into. I had to get a power splitting cable for them (it's surprisingly designed for this power splitting, even though there's nowhere to mount all the drives).
Would 2.5" drives meet your cost point? You can fit 4 of them in the space of a single 3.5 with adapters designed just for this.
Another option (that costs more) is a PCIE card that hosts 4 M2 drives. If I could afford it, that would be my approach. But 4TB M2s are still pretty pricey.
I've looked around a lot - it seems like it will cost no matter which way I go. A Mini-ITX case isn't cheap, and that's probably the most compact case that can support multiple drives.
Thanks for the follow up. I wish I could afford multiple TB of nvmes but that is unfortunately out of my budget, but it would definitely be better for latency, notice and power draw. This time I will have to stick to HDDs, but I'll keep looking :) Enjoy your setup!