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#776 - iStarUSA D-300L-M6 Rackmount Case |
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Written by Zach Jeffers
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Saturday, 27 January 2007 |
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Page 6 of 8
Going Inside:
Opening the top of the D-300 case, you will find that the case is split into two compartments. There is the power supply and motherboard compartment in the back; the hard drive and other bay compartment up front.
Starting at the back, we first take a look at the motherboard tray. You can see that there a large amount of motherboard mounting holes. The D-300 tries to ensure a wide field of compatibility with todays server boards. The next surprise was to see that the motherboard tray is removable... just as long as you don't have the motherboard installed! This is definitely a tease and it would have been very easy to accommodate a motherboard while still keeping the removable functionality.
 
At the back of the motherboard tray, is the seven expansion bay slots. Nothing new here. It would have been nice to see some tool less options implemented. To the right, you can see the single included 60mm fan. There are two spots for the fans, yet only one supplied. Two would have been preferable. Removing the fan, we see that it is a YS Tech FD126025HB. A bit of Googling shows us that this fan's specs include 26 CFM at 34 dba. A lot of noise, but nothing new to a server room.
 
Now the power supply area. The D-300 has a removable 3U/PS2U adapter plate. This is held in by two screws and two tabs. This is meant for easy removal of the power supply, but as you can see from the pictures, when a power supply is mounted, there is simply not enough room to remove the unit.
  
In the middle of the case, separating the two compartments of the D-300, is a metal brace. This brace has many functions. At the bottom, there are two pass-throughs for power leads, drive cables and anything else you might need. Now, speaking of leads; the leads included in this case are the longest I have ever seen. They are so long in fact, that they can even go through the case, straight out the back! This is very nice, but also very frustrating for any kind of cable neat freak like me.
 
On the left side, when looking in from the back, you can see two 80mm fans mounted to the cross brace. On the right, you will see card holders for the extended PCI and PCIX cards. Behind these is a third 80mm fan. This is nice as this fan can cool a series of data crunching RAID cards.
  
Now, you might have noticed that the fans are completely surrounded by steel caging. Well this is a good thing. They are removable, but with out the need to disconnect any power lead! A couple of screws and the fan module comes out. The fan's power lead connects to the cage's serial-like interface which then, when installed, connects to the case's serial-like interface, then connecting to its own power lead that can be left alone. Awesome design!
   
In the front compartment, you will find the “two to three” adapter cages and the two internal 3.5 inch bays. On top of the internal 3.5 inch bays, you will find an eight pin lead. This lead is short and not labeled. After contacting iStarUSA, they mentioned that it is for a case accessory. This is a PCB monitoring board with part number IS-F08. This accessory will give you the ability to have an alarm sound when the temperature gets too high, or if a fan fails, etc. It would have been assumed that this was a part of the case and I was sad to not have that functionality that is advertised.
 
The two internal hard drive bays are mounted vertically and do not have a fan in front of them. They do, however, have plenty of ventilation holes that pass to the filters that are found in the front doors. To get the drives in, you will need to remove the middle brace out of the case. This was kind of disappointing to see that you would practically have to disassemble the entire setup to get to these bays.
The “two to three” cages are mounted on top of anti-vibration rubber feet. This is fairly common in server cages, but still recognized as a good design as it reduces vibrations as well as makes removal of the cages very easy. With the cage removed, you have access to the internal speaker. You can also see how much ventilation is available for the hot swappable drives.
   
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