Norco RPC-4224 24 Bay 4U Storage File Server Case Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2011-05-08
·
2,198 words · ~10 min read
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So today we're going to be unboxing something a little bit different. I
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don't think we've done anything like this. Okay, so this is a computer case.
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This is probably the largest computer case we've unboxed on the show before.
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It comes in a stylish brown box which
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includes no information about the product inside whatsoever except for a
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part number. So, 10 points if you know
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what this is already, although I really doubt it because it's a brand new
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product from Norcco Tech. Now, Norcco
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Tech is a little bit different from Norcco that makes bicycles.
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Now, Norcco is not really focused on uh you know what kind of high-end video
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card fits in their case or you know how
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many uh you know stylish plastic bezel
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designs they have or what kind of aluminum chassis they're using. Norcco
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is all about functionality on the cheap.
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So, this is a 4U ATX case that is
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designed. You know, I'm just going to have to bring this down to the ground
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because there's no way I can uh it's so heavy. It's a 4U ATX standard
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case that is designed to load up with as many hard drives as you could pretty
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much need as a home user. So, let's just
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uh keep working on getting this box open. You can see it is double boxed to
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protect it during transit. And here is
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the case itself. So, this thing weighs
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like about as much as I do. So, I'm going to have to find some way to unbox
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it. And
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uh this may be my most difficult unboxing yet. So, we're going to go
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ahead and tilt it this way and then tilt it this way. And finally, there it is.
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The RPC 4224.
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So, four, it is a 4U case. I don't
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remember what the first two stands for, but the 24 means it holds 24 hard
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drives. So, let's go ahead and put this down over
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here. Okay, like I said, steel construction.
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It's not going to fall apart. They actually have a wide variety of uh rack
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mountable chassis that are designed for just building little file servers. And
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what makes them great for home users is the fact
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that unlike enterprise level chassis or
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um or barebones, they're cheap. This
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case only costs in the midunds versus
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what you might pay for something from a super micro or from another rack
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mountable chassis brand which might be as much as $1,000 just for the chassis
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itself. So, like I said, 24 hot swappable, uh, 3 and 1/2 in, also 2 and
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1/2 in compatible. You can see it has 2 and 1/2 in mounting holes, hard drive
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bays. Okay. And these all run off a very
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large back plane. Now, I might have to run inside and get a uh screwdriver. So,
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just pause that video. Okay. So, we got the case open. That was step number one.
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So, I want the cameraman to come have a look at the inside of the case, which is
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where we will find all of the things that make this otherwise very plain
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steel box uh worth a lot of money and uh
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what make this one a particularly good value compared to the other stuff out on
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the market. So, first I want you to have a look at the inside here. The interface
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that actually runs that 24 drive
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um hot swappable like massive storage
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compartment here. So, this this whole part of the case is dedicated to this
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back plane. Okay. So, you can see here there are actually uh two redundant
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power inputs. I'm not talking about the fans yet, cameraman. There are two
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redundant power inputs. So if you're using a redundant power supply, it means
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you take one Molex from each redundant power supply and plug it into each of
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these two Molex here. So you can see there's a total of six. Okay? So that's
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6 * 4 is 24. All right? So that means 12. Six on each power supply. And then
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over a little bit further, you can see there are
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SFF887 connectors. So there's a total of six of those, each of which runs four
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drives on each one of these PCBs here. You can actually remove these. Although
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it's not really necessary to do so, and I can't really think of a reason to do
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it, but I'm going to do it anyway because that's what unboxing is all
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about. Like, you know, just taking stuff
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apart for the Oh, there it is. Okay. So, you can see here we've got activity
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LEDs. We've got the actual SATA or SAS.
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You can run either SATA 2 or SAS drives
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off of this back plane. So we you can see we got the four interfaces here.
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There's the connector I was talking about. Here's the power inputs. So this
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distributes data to all four drives and this distributes power to all four
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drives redundantly. So even if one of your power supplies fails in a case like
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this, if you're using a redundant power supply, the other one will continue to
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power the drives. The case does not or the u the system does not even need to
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be shut down. So now if I can figure out how to get this back in there, that
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would be
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tremendous. And my battery ran out. Okay, now let's talk fans. So this case
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includes six what appear to be 80 mm
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fans, although the ones at the back might be No, I think these are all 80
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mm. So these ones here, the four that are mounted on kind of a a mid plate,
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those are all a single set of blade fans.
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Now, they're normal fans, okay? As
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opposed to the counterrotating fans at the back. I'll get more into those uh
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when we talk about them. But these eight
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eight four 80 mm fans draw air through
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the front of the case. So, if you look at the front of the case, we have ventilation holes over every single hard
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drive. So they pull air through there and then all the way through the entire
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interface back here and then push it into the case. So these are all about
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static pressure. These are going to be high RPM fans. They actually all run off
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a single Molex connector though, which is very convenient. They've already gone
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and wired all of the fan. Don't move around so much. They've gone and wired
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all of the fans into a little PCB down at the bottom of the case. So, I'm going
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to tilt this so you can have a look down there. See? Just like that. So, the
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power goes in there and then gets distributed to all four fans. So, these
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are going to be quite loud for you cases. In fact, any rack mountable case
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is generally not designed with silence in mind. So, that's something you have
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to bear in mind. If you wanted to build yourself a file server based on a case
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like this, you would either want to replace the fans with something quieter.
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Mind you, remember there's loud fans in here for a reason. There's a lot of heat
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being generated if you actually have 24 hard drives running in here. So, you
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want to make sure you're removing it effectively. Or alternately, you can go
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ahead and throw it in like some closet somewhere where you don't have to listen
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to it. All right, let's move into the actual motherboard compartment. You can
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see this is an EATX motherboard compartment. That means you can put in
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up to an EATX motherboard. Although the beauty of Norcco's cases is you can just
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use a standard ATX power supply, a standard ATX board if you want to build
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yourself a simple home server, and boom, you're done.
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So, you've got seven PCI expansion slots, and I want to have a closer look
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at these counterrotating fans. You can't really see it too well from the Oh,
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maybe you can. Maybe you can. Okay, so there's actually two full sets of
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blades. The reason for that is because at the back of the case, you've only got
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three fans. So, one power supply fan, two 80 mm fans here that actually have
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to move out all of the air that those four at the front drew in. So, that's
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why we're using a very advanced design where it's going to be high RPM. It's
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got two sets of blades which are spinning in opposite directions, counter
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rotation, because if you actually spin the blades in the same direction, you
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don't get any additional benefit. So, those are going to be very high static
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pressure, very high air flow fans, and extremely loud. I think we've talked a
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lot about the features of the case in general. Let's talk about why you'd
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actually buy one. If you have a ton of storage space and you don't you're not
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content with just a simple NAS, then you can buy one of these. You don't have to
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run all 24 drives. They've actually got
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two U cases, three U cases, and other four U cases that take fewer drives. And
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not all of the cases they have have the SFF887 connector. So many of them uh
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including the I believe it's the 4020
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although I may be wrong. That one I believe uses simple SATA 2 connectors.
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So you could run SAS drives, SATA 2 drives. You could just take a standard
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desktop motherboard, fill it up with PCI uh four port SATA cards and then run
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them to drives. And I mean, if you're not running a high-end RAID array, if
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you're just running like a Windows home server or something like that, that kind
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of setup could be perfect versus spending a ton of money on like a more
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expensive rack mountable case or trying to find a desktop case that's really
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going to hold an appropriate number of drives cuz I believe the 4020 holds 20
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drives. Now, if you are doing something high-end, you can take this case and you
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can turn it into something really file server worthy with just a RAID card. So,
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this is about a $1,500 RAID card. This is an ARA RX1680 EX 24. So, if you
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wanted to use this particular case to its full potential, meaning you're
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running 24 drives in RAID six or
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hopefully not RAID 5, if you got 24 drives, or if you're running uh several
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arrays in varying levels of RAID, this
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is exactly the kind of thing you'd want to use. So, you go ahead, you put like a
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nice reliable motherboard in there, or maybe you buy a cheap uh cheap tie or
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super micro board. You go ahead and throw a card like this in there, and
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there are your six 8087 connectors. You
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can actually run up to 24 drives off a
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card like this. So, for two grand, you can have the case and the card. All you
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need to do is throw in some valuepriced hardware for all I care. I mean, if it's
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just going to be a file server, you don't have to be too worried about that. and you can run basically any hard drive
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setup that you could pretty much want in
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a case like this. So, I think that covers everything I wanted to say about
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the 4224 from Norcco. And thank you for
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checking out my video blog. I will actually be doing a build in this case
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just to show it and uh for the fun of it, I guess we might see what kind of
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numbers we can pull out of 24 hard drives and RAID six or whatever it is we
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decide we want to do. So, thank you for checking out my video blog, and I hope
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you've learned something useful about Norcco and their uh I mean, it sounds
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expensive, but believe me, these are inexpensive rack mount cases. Oh, one
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last thing I did want to explain for our viewers who aren't really up on all of
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the server terminology, what 4U means.
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4U is 4* 1 U, which is the height of a
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rack. Okay, so a 1U rack mountable case,
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you're using lowprofile heat sinks, low power hardware. It's going to be about
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this thin. A 2 U is like this. A 3U is like this. And a 4 U is like this. So,
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it just means how many rack spots that one case takes up.