Norco 4U Rackmount Components RPC-4308

Bought this to build a FreeNAS server with 6 2TB WD Red drives... Was surprised not to see any verbose reviews on here, ended up finding some on newegg, but I'll echo what I agree with from those reviews: Pros: - The short depth is nice for home use (like in an IKEA LACK rack) - Great value for the money, pretty good looking case. - Power/cabling for drives was brilliant - 2 molex connections from PSU runs both backplanes. Even if I didn't want hotswap, I think it was worth the money to be spared the nightmare-mode puzzle that is wiring 6 drives using the normal PSU SATA power cabling. Cons: - Stock fans are horribly loud. I'm talking like vacuum cleaner loud. Like buy 2 good 80mm fans to replace them immediately or your wife won't let you even run it in the basement loud. - Poor ventilation for HDDs. You can work around this by masking off some of the front grate from the inside (remove the drive cage to do this) to force more of the air to come through the drives. - Doesn't clearly state there is NO cable for the backplane (SFF-8087) with case. a 8087 *REVERSE* breakout is required if attaching backplane directly to motherboard SATA connectors. So despite a couple very easily resolved issues, this was the perfect case for my home NAS. Very satisfied so far.

great case but the backplanes on mine have not worked from day 1 no matter what I done so I just removed them and hooked drives up individually. Would have been a 5 star otherwise... Note: do not use a tall cpu cooler if you want to use middle drives and you can install 80mm fans in the front if you disassemble case to get to screw holes for drive cooling.

I've purchased two of these cases and DO NOT recommend them. In one system, drive bay number 2 keeps disconnecting. In the other system, drive bay number 5 keeps disconnecting. Both drive bays can't stay connected for more than a day. After troubleshooting my PCI SATA cards and SAS-SATA cabling I've confirmed both systems have a bad backplane. The chassis is setup with two backplanes: one for the top row and one for the bottom row. Thankfully ZFS can fix the corruption the drive disconnects cause, but this puts unwanted burden on the drives. I've contacted NORCO about this issue and have received no response from them for over a month. Worse yet, I suspect the backplanes themselves are proprietary NORCO parts so I can't even find a source online to replace them myself.

Arrived a week early. The backplane is compatible with SAS drives. I have 8 12Gb/sec SAS 3 drives connected to a LSI 9207-8i through the two backplanes and they work as expected. Front mesh has mounting for 4x80mm fans. Comes with 2x80mm fans mounted in the back. I didn't remove the drive bays, only the front panel/grill to put the system together. While it was a little cramped doing it that way, I was still able to put a system together without much trouble. Exceeded expectations and am happy with the purchase. The speedy delivery was a much appreciated bonus as well.

Works well in my home lab. The drives do not get enough air flow without some modification. I added five 80mm fans across the front of the case. I swapped all fans with PWM ones to control noise. I also made a plastic air baffle in order to force the two rear fans to pull air through the drives, this works ok.

Perfect short-depth rack for my NAS, sadly the backline doesn't work. Another point is that Norco doesn't exist anymore so difficult to find part.

Very nice case!

I got this for a FreeNAS server running in my closet. It's not easy to find a case short enough to fit in a smaller rack like mine. This is overall a pretty good case, though there are a few minor annoyances that make me ding it a star. Pros: - Compact for small spaces. Most 4U cases are much deeper. - Includes 2x80mm case fans which move a LOT of air. The trade-off is noise (most likely because they are 3-pin and thus no PWM support), but I won't hear that in my network closet. - Fits a full ATX motherboard without an issue. - Drive trays are solid contruction. Cons: - Not even a single instruction sheet. This wouldn't be much of an issue if not for the box of various metal brackets with no obvious purpose. - There's an 80mm case fan bracket included for a third fan, but I can't for the life of me figure out a single place to mount it in the case. I was thinking it could be mounted in the front behind the grill (which would be a great place to add more), but none of the screws seem to be long enough for that to work. I ended up buying some third party fan mounts to add more. Important notes: - The SAS backplane doesn't include cables. The Monoprice SFF-8087 ones work great and are pretty cheap. - Each SAS backplane only has a single molex power plug for 4 drives. If your drives need a lot of juice, make sure your power supply can deliver it over a single connector.