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

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.

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.

I'd been looking for a 2U 12-bay chassis for several months and came across this one. This format/size seems to be a bit rare so I thought this was a good find. More on that later... The case itself is pretty well-built. My rack doesn't have rear mounts so I can't make use of the rails. I had an easy time fitting in my mini-ITX board, HBA card, and 12 drives. I'm running TrueNAS SCALE and most things run great. I like the form factor, the finish, and the look. The main issues I have with this case are two-fold: The power button sticks out and is really easy to accidentally press if you are handling the server while it's on. I wish it were recessed or there was some sort of cover. I ended up taping a piece of cardboard around the left ear to make a shroud to make it harder to accidentally bump into the power button. The other issue is with the backplane. I don't think it's rated or designed for 12Gbps, although it does seem to function OK with my LSI 9305-16i HBA card. I'm using SFF-8643 to SFF-8087 cables to connect my HBA card to the backplane. In my Zpool I have a mix of Exos and HGST drives. The HGST drives all functioned fine, but the Exos drives have intermittent write errors. I first checked the firmware of the HBA card and my drives and made sure everything was up-to-date. I changed out the Gtek10+ cables for more expensive SuperMicro cables and no dice - I still received intermittent write errors. I ended up finding a forum post about how limiting link speeds on the HBA card to 6Gbps made the author's similar issue go away. I did the same, limiting and verifying that all the Exos drives were limited to 6Gbps and sure enough, I didn't get anymore write errors. Because I know the HBA card is good, the cables are top-quality (SuperMicro), and my drives are fine (no errors in my old system), then the only remaining link can be the backplane. I can't find any information online about it so I can only assume it is some generic or proprietary backplane made for this chassis. Due to this issue, I really wish I had just gone with a SuperMicro CSE-826BE1C4-R1K23LPB chassis instead. Anyone who knows anything would know that the chassis isn't going to give you any trouble, and you'd be able to use full 12Gbps speeds, not that it matters much unless you've got SSDs. So all-in-all, I'm not super bummed that I'm limited to 6Gbps, but at the same time I wish I'd with the SuperMicro instead. If this case were $100 cheaper I'd probably feel differently. Regardless, it still is pretty decent value, so three stars on that.

The overall build quality is extremely cheap, even cheaper than you'd expect given the price. The metal is extremely thin, and actually arrived slightly bent, despite the foam packing in the box. The PCIe covers are break-outs. The rails are horrible. They don't fit a standard depth rack. Fortunately, my rack is adjustable so I was able to decrease the depth a bit for the rails to fit, but they're also not really the right width either. I had to loosen the bolts on my rack to get just enough clearance for the rails to slide properly, and even then it takes some jostling to get it to come out all the way. Sliding it back in is worse. The cables for the front IO are routed externally for some reason, and there's a piece of metal covering them. The problem is this piece of metal doesn't have clearance for the rail, so the grind against each other as the rail moves. I thought about removing it, but that friction is the only thing actually retaining the server. With the guard removed, the server is free to slide out at any time if your rack is even slightly off-level. I have to imagine that problem would only be worse if the drive bays were all full. Speaking of the drive bays, my backplane seems dead on arrival. I've tried testing disks in different bays, tried different SAS ports, even tried using an HBA card instead of connecting the backplane to the motherboard SATA. The disks are powered, but they're not recognized by the OS. If I connect the disks directly to the motherboard, without the backplane, they're detected just fine, so the problem clearly isn't the disks or the motherboard. Oh, and like someone else mentioned, the power button is in a terrible place. There are no handles to grab onto, so if you want to slide the server for any reason, it's extremely easy to hit the power button by accident, which is obviously undesirable Honestly the only reason I went for this chassis over something else is because I really wanted something that supported an ATX power supply, instead of server power supplies. But after spending how many hours troubleshooting this backplane, I can definitely say it wasn't worth the hassle. Probably going to try and return it, even though repacking everything seems like another massive hassle.

The 4 fans wouldn't work together with my X11SSH-F motherboard. They were extremely noisy when I managed to get 3 of the four to work. I had to replace them with Noctua NF-A8 fans. The rails are horrible. They stick and don't fully extend for full access to the case unless you secure them close to the keyhole on the rails. The 12-bays work fine, but documentation is lacking. It took a minute to figure out what where Bay 1 was and what the order of the bays were. Having 12-bays gives the ability to have very good storage capacity. Airflow seems to be adequate as temperatures maintain within acceptable levels.