[ccoager]

I am looking to build a new server soon and use a lot of hard drives. I have found that economically speaking, external enclosures are much more expensive and also limited in bandwidth. Now I am considering large computer cases for the job. I am leaning towards the Lian Li 343b case.

Back to my price point, the Lian Li 343b case is ~$350 for 18 5.25" bays, which can be expanded. A quick Google search reveals that an 8 bay RAID enclosure would cost ~$479. So for about half the slots you are paying more, does that make any sense?

Are there any comparable cases to the Lian Li 343b with a lot of drive bays? Are there any cons to this case?

[Brian]

I don't know cases very well, but there are several companies like Icy Dock that do a good job of helping you maximize your bays. We use their products in our test rigs - the 4 in 1 for 2.5" drives is pretty slick.

[qasdfdsaq]

A lot of the extra cost in RAID enclosures (and the same within the 'main' case) is the extra cost of hot-swap drive trays and backplanes. These are never cheap - even in the 4-in-1 IcyDock's Brian mentions, most of the markup in that is from the hotswap bits - $10 of metal and $90 on the hotswap capability.

If you just want to stuff a load of drives into a system with no hot-swap capability you'll be fine with the Lian-Li. If you need to hotswap, then there won't be a huge price difference between external enclosures and a pile of internal hotswap trays.