Silverstone RM23-502-MINI - Micro-ATX

RM23-502 2U dual 5.25" drive bay ATX rackmount industrial storage server chassis with USB 3.1 Gen1 interface. Review: No questionable design choices when you understand - This is a great case, it does not require an SFX power supply and it supports a full size ATX motherboard. That's the punchline, folks. If you want a 2U case you're either dealing with SFX power supplies or ITX / mATX boards. Not with this case. You can use nearly any PSU you want. And considering you could never use 1300w of components in this case, this is a non-issue. 850W Seasonic? Easy. They put the power supply in the front of the case, which yeah, is arguably weird. But if it was in the rear you could not have an ATX board. Or they could have tried to smush an SFX in there or used some proprietary PSU but that would be awful. This is the best of both worlds. And yes this does mean there is an auxiliary power cable going from the rear to the front, and it requires a somewhat sharp bend to plug into the PSU but when you properly disassemble the case and carefully bend the cable its no big deal at all. And yeah, you gotta buy a 2U cooler. Its a 2U case afterall... While there are some low profile coolers that would work, you don't really want the airflow going that direction in a 2U case. I even created a custom magnetic dust filter for the front which makes it even better. Great case. Review: Great case for gaming/editing machine to use in rack. Lots of room. Easy fit with AIO water cooling. - I've had this in use for a few months now. If you don't have an extreme setup or anything, this will do nicely. My older editing rig that I wanted to test this case out with is listed below. I wasn't sure how this was going to work -- would the airflow be good? Would everything fit? How noisy would a 'basic' server case be (clanking, rattling, etc)? So far, I'm very pleasantly surprised at how simple this change over was. Reading the comments, it made it seem like it would be more trial and error, which I didn't experience anything other than a straight forward drop in. With the rack in my closet, I never realized how quiet my computer room could have been many years prior to this. Wish I did this a long time ago. Way more expensive than going a simple desktop case but well worth it. When editing or gaming in this case, my temps are not any worse than with my high flow desktop cube case I had (Corsair 540). I typically stay ~55-58c during video rendering and during gaming the gpu is ~60c with a mild fan curve. Even in the closet, the stock fan curve was louder than I wanted but kept temps down in the low 50's. So I figured the trade-off of >10c for much quieter sound was worth it. So if you're worried about this case not having all the fans you've become accustomed to with gaming cases, don't fret. A good AIO cooler (the Arctic II is excellent and fits great in this case!) and two Noctua 80mm fans on the rear keep the flow decent with minimal sound. Components i7 6850k (oc'd to 4ghz) x99 Titanium ATX mobo R9 Fury 4 x SSD's Arctic II 240 Cooler I ended up not using the gpu bracket or hdd cage. I just stuffed my 4 ssd's in the area for 5.25 devices since I'll never use that for anything. Cable management is easy but not as much of a requirement for something that will be tucked away. Sure, you still want it clean and easy to work on as well as keeping the restriction of airflow down, with that in mind, it's nothing to get the cables out of the way. The case is solid and sturdy. When put in the rack with the lid, no rattles from the case whatsoever. With the front lockable door open or closed, it made no difference in my temps, so I just keep it closed. Love the usb-c port on the front! Mild cons: It's pricey. Can't find good quality sliding rails to work with it. Will be moving my other 2 computers into these cases over time.