Technology CS380 8-Bay Compact ATX Tower case, CS380B-X V2.0, Black

It is very light and smaller than I expected, compared to my mid tower desktop case, but it's solid enough. The three fans are quiet. Wish they could make the two 5.25 inch bays more useful . Haven't put in the 8 drives yet. Will report back when everything works (or not). PS: all 8 drives in, running ZFS RaidZ2 no issues so far. Update: Has been running my ZFS 8-drive Raidz2 for quite a few days. No problems .

I'm admittedly more used to building in modern consumer desktop cases, so take this review with that in mind. Bought this case with the intention to repurpose my old gaming PC hardware with some new drives for a NAS. Pros: Size. It's pretty compact for a full size ATX case that takes a standard power supply. Drives! 8 Bays and this 5.25" expansion slot is huuuuge. Love the existence of the SATA/SAS backplane as well Sound. It's relatively quiet and unassuming. Huge plus for a home server. Cons: Materials. The aluminum panels feel very flimsy. I would have preferred some sound dampening material. It's not loud, but it could certainly be quieter Price. I wouldn't worry much about materials if it weren't so expensive. I suppose most of the cost is in that backplane, but the $230 I spent could definitely net a much higher end feeling and looking case.

My case came missing a motherboard standoff. Also, two standoffs were screwed into each other super tight and I had to use two wrenches to get them apart. One of the standoffs is missing black paint on the bottom part of the thread. For $239 that's pretty annoying. I've bought cheaper cases that separate screws/materials in different packages by thread/purpose. I have a set of assorted screws and standoffs from MicroConnectors and the motherboard standoffs I have of course won't thread into the case. In my line of work, I QC hyperscale servers and I'm very organized when I assemble and disassemble any computer. I emptied the single bag of mixed screws into a magnetic tray and organized everything on that, so I'm very certain that the standoff wasn't misplaced. I will contact Silverstone support and if they send me a standoff I'll change this.

I added Dynomat to the centers of the panels and roof to dampen the vibration noise. I also bought this (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B010FAW5KM/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) and cut it into the opposite side to allow me to mount a set of push fans to keep the drives cooler. Temps were within range without it but I was not liking 46c on 1 or 2 of the drives. doing this made the temps drop by 10 degrees C. The initial case is light, this is nice considering the 11 drives I installed into it. Keep in mind that this case will become very front heavy.

I bought this because it fits my needs well (a large NAS system) but the build quality is a little lacking. The metal is a bit thin.

Nice case with a lot of drive bays, cabling is clean, and the airflow is great. Multiple removable drive bays. Pair this with a decent Adaptec RAID controller and you can build a NAS, or a DVR with a bunch of capacity.

Everything works well

The backplane and the drawers for the hard drives are the 2 features that justify the price of this case. Yet the backplane is excessively cheap. I ended up ripping 2 of the connectors off the back during my build. When I build my machines I usually do a rough setup where I kind of just slap everything in the case, power it on and make sure it works, then go back and reroute cables and strap things down at the end. That way I don't waste time cable managing a DOA build. The backplane uses several female SATA data ports to connect to your motherboard. It was clear that these were not the most robust mounts to begin with, but it turns out they actually have nothing physically securing them to the board. They just friction fit over the top of the delicate data pins. If you have never really looked at SATA connectors before they have small plastic notches or hooks on the male ends of the cables that ensure they are securely seated in the port. So when I went to disconnect the SATA cables from the backplane the plastic housing of the port came off with the cables, leaving the delicate data pins protruding from the backplane. Luckily I was ultimately able to reseat the port housings back over the pins where they came off. But it took an hour of stressful pin straightening to make sure they all lined up and didn't get mangled. If this board breaks Silverstone does not sell replacements as far as I can tell, and the spacing between the bays is unique to this case so 3rd party replacements will not be an option. The only recourse would be to remove the backplane and lose the hotswap convenience that is the only justification for this case. Up to now my home NAS builds have just used normal consumer desktop cases with no hotswap bays. Storage systems I have provisioned for professionally have been from enterprise OEM's. This is the first product I have purchased in this "prosumer" segment of the market. I am not sure if this is standard for this market segment, but from now on I will stick with either the cheaper standard consumer cases or pony up for something enterprise grade I can rely on. Either other solution will be far more robust in the end. Buyers will be lucky to get 1 working build from this case.

Good product for NAS and other purpose.

I went with this case because I needed more hard drive space for my Plex Server, This can hold 8 x 3.5" drives and has 2 more 5.25" drive spaces which with an optional adaptor can hold 2 more drives. Its a mid size case so cabling was a little tight, but one Big Plus with this case is the single back plane for the 8 x 3.5" drives, meaning the drives are hot swappable and only one power cable was required. The back plane supports SAS and SATA Drives. The only negative thing I would say is the case seems a Flimsy, but it does the job at a decent price,

Very strong and durable