iStarUSA D-3100HN 3U Compact 10 x 3.5″ HDD Bay Trayless Hotswap microATX Chassis (Black HDD Handle)

2 reviews for iStarUSA D-3100HN 3U Compact 10 x 3.5″ HDD Bay Trayless Hotswap microATX Chassis (Black HDD Handle)

1. Rated 5 out of 5

   Phoebe Monahan (verified owner) – December 8, 2022

   I love this chassis. I am using it as a NAS server for home use. It fit my needs perfectly because it is compatible with readily-available consumer hardware (mostly, keep reading to learn what issues I ran into). While finding a used enterprise-grade chassis might be cheaper, those come with all sorts of firmware challenges, uncommon or proprietary connectors, and very specific hardware requirements. The D-3100HN avoids all of this. The drive enclosures use simple SATA III connectors. It fits a full size ATX power supply while also fitting a full size ATX motherboard. (Note: the bottom edge of the motherboard sits below the power supply so some headers may not be accessible. Use an mATX or smaller motherboard to avoid this). So, it is feasible to build a home NAS server in this case with regular desktop computer parts you may have laying around (or plan to buy). That said, it is worth noting that this is a 3U case, so only reference height (and shorter) expansion cards will fit. The GPU I planned to put in this case is slightly taller than reference height, so it sticks out in such a way that I cannot close the top panel. If you plan to use a GPU that requires additional power connectors, make sure the power connectors are on the end of the card rather than the side. Otherwise, they will similarly stick out and you won’t be able to close the top panel. Additionally, GPUs with a backplate will not fit in the top PCIe slot. The backplate will conflict with the rear 80mm fan mounting bracket. The bracket can be removed, bent, or otherwise modified if you cannot remove the GPU’s backplate. I was initially worried that air flow would be an issue when all 10 drive bays are filled. But the drive handles are vented and there is surprisingly good air flow. It’s not the best, but it is enough for a storage server. If you’re running GPU- or CPU-intensive applications, heat build-up might become an issue. If you plan to put this in a rack like I did, you’ll want to pick up the corresponding iStarUSA TC rails. I went with the TC-Rail-20 and it works great. The entire 20.5 chassis slides out of the rack for easy servicing. One gripe is that I think the top panel should have been tool-less. A total of 6 small screws need to be removed in order to remove the top panel. Most of the cost of this chassis is wrapped up in the two 5-bay drive enclosures/adapters, but I think some of the cost could have been spent on making entry into the case easier. I would take off half a star if I could for this reason. My only other gripe is regarding the hard drive LED activity indicators. They are solid blue while there is a drive installed. When there is activity, the LEDs blink from blue to purple, which is very hard to see (intentional?). I would have preferred they blinked from blue to off to make it more visible when there is activity. A small detail that probably just reflects my personal preference for having lots of blinky lights in my rack 🙂

2. Rated 5 out of 5

   Raphaelle Hauck (verified owner) – May 28, 2022

   I purchased this chassis for a few reasons, first and foremost because my “rack” is actually an old network cabinet and thus limits the depth of components for me to around 20″. This chassis was designed to fit in an AV rack or stack of AV components (it even comes with feet that would make it blend in perfectly with other 19″ AV components in a stack) and is thus much shorter than most rackmout disk storage chassis out there. It was perfect for my application. The other reason was that this was used in the build of an Unraid server, and this 3U chassis was the closest I could find to matching the custom 3U case (also by iStarUSA) used by LimeTech in their 10/4 storage server. Inside, although this is a short case compared to the 25″+ most rackmount cases come in at, I never felt cramped while building inside it. The case material is aluminum, so its lighter than you might expect, but the fit and finish are fantastic. The only negatives I can think of for this case (and they’re minor) revolve around the fans and the drive bays. The fans are frankly what I’d expect, but they’re loud, I replaced them with Noctua PWM fans. Though this is a breeze for the 2 case fans, its harder for the 2 fans mounted to the HD cages. Those cages are essentially a seperate component, the BPN-DE350SS drive cage by iStarUSA. The fans mounted to them use a shallower than average depth, and use a proprietary connector to connect to the backplane. It took some modification but I was able to attach my Noctua fans directly to the back of the cages using shorter screws and removing the fan shroud. I then connected them to the regular PWM ports on my motherboard. The backplane on the cages does NOT use the standard mini SAS connector, it instead has 5 sata ports corresponding to each drive bay, and 2 sata power ports. The other holes on the back of those cages you see are switches to control fan speed if you use the included fans. The only other thing I’d mention, and this is neither a positive or negative, is that the front 2 USB ports are USB3, so in order to connect them you’ll need an internal USB3 header on your mobo. The IvyBridge era mobo I used had external USB3 but not an internal header, so in my build those ports are unfortunately not connected. In conclusion none of the tiny annoyances were even worth me removing a star, I was delighted with this case during the build, and now in use. Pros: – Fantastic Build Quality – Unique short depth – Spacious interior – Great disk density for 3U – Professional look and feel Cons: – Just average fans (fine in a closet, but not for a rack sitting 8 feet away from your desk.) – No mini-SAS on backplane (will need to use mini-SAS to SATA breakout cables from most HBAs)