Blog Articles by Richard Parry | Logic Case

We are pleased to announce the introduction of an excellent Mini-ITX NAS Chassis to our range of Logic Case products, the SC-N400.

The new chassis is ideal for home or office use, and due to it allowing any standard Mini-ITX motherboard it can be used with many combinations of internal components, allowing for excellent upgrade potential.

The NAS chassis is an attractive looking case. The front has a high gloss, piano black finish around the bezel. The actual front has a mesh filtered (matt black finish) lockable door too, which protects the drive bays within, and the power/reset switch and activity LED’s. The chassis itself is made from high quality steel in a black matt finish.

The case itself is only 7.75” Width, 7.5” Depth and 10” Height, making it one of the smallest hot-swap NAS cases on the market – smaller than many standalone NAS systems. It also weighs only 4KG in total (minus PSU and internal parts).



What sets this case apart from the rest is the 4-Bay 3.5” 6Gbps SATA hot-swap bays. This makes this tiny case one of the smallest Mini ITX cases on the market with built-in hot-swap. What’s more is the hot-swap will work with all motherboards – at the rear of the hot-swap module are 4x standard SATA connectors, which could connect either to an add-on RAID card, or directly to the motherboard.

In addition to the 4x hot-swap bays there is also room internally for a 2.5” hard drive or SSD. This makes it ideal to install a single drive for running an OS, such as Windows or Linux, and leaving the 4x hot-swap drives for the data storage.

To give an idea of the storage potential please see a quick chart below of the capabilities;





The actual casing of the system can be easily removed using thumb screws to allow full internal access to all components.

At the rear of the case there is a space for a Flex ATX 1U PSU, which we also supply in a range of wattages, including 80plus efficiency. The most popular PSU is 320W ATX and will be more than sufficient to run the most demanding of Mini-ITX Motherboard/CPU/RAM combination, an add-on card as well as the 4x hot-swap drives.

To add to the flexibility of the case it will also accept a standard single width, full height PCI card. This could be either a graphics card, or a RAID/HBA controller – or left blank for future expansion. Most Mini-ITX motherboards have a single (maximum) PCIe slot.





To help with airflow there is a single rear mounted 3pin 80mm fan. This is a very quiet fan, but could be changed-out for a 4pin or super-quiet fan without any modification to the chassis.

To order this product or discuss your requirements in any further detail please contact us or call us on 0800 652 1649 (+44(0)1827 303670 from outside the UK) and we would be happy to help.

I thought I would let you in on a small secret – We’re expanding our Logic Case range to now include PC Cases and Home Server Cases.

Our new PC Cases range will include Tower (Mini ITX, Micro ATX and Standard ATX) and Desktop models, suitable for both home and business use. These models will range from simple cost effective models up to high-end gaming/enthusiast chassis, designed for massive expansion and suitable for water-cooling etc.

Our new Home Server Cases will include a range of quiet, home NAS style server cases. Most of these will be Mini ITX in form factor, and allow for standard ITX motherboards to be added. Some will be fixed internal drive bays, whereas we predict our best sellers will be with models that include 4+ Hot-Swap SATA bays. These small units look great in any person’s home network.

Watch this space!

Before we launch our range of new PC and Home Server cases if you would like to discuss your requirements please contact us or call us on 0800 652 1649 (+44(0)1827 303670 from outside the UK) and we would be happy to help.

We’re pleased to announce that we can now provide real-time feeds to our customers. This feed is provided in CSV format and complies with EDI standards. The feed includes our full products database (same as what is shown on our site), but more importantly includes real-time stock figures, links to download high-resolution JPG photographs and PDF datasheets. It also includes marketing information such as Product Name and Description.



Our feeds are available by FTP Server. We can either push the FTP document to your own server, or you can download this from our dedicated, secure FTP site.

If you’re not already taking our product feeds please get in touch and we would be happy to discuss how we can supply this feed to you. By taking our feeds this will greatly enhance your ability to get current pricing, stock updates and also technical/image information for your own website or supplier stock software.

If you’re a system integrator and looking for a distributor please check out our Where to Buy page.

If you would like to discuss your requirements please contact us or call us on 0800 652 1649 (+44(0)1827 303670 from outside the UK) and we would be happy to help.

We’re pleased to announce a new model for our very popular aluminium chassis family.

This new chassis is 2U in rack height, 400mm deep, so is perfect for installing in wall cabinets or small comms-cabinets and as a result is ideal for applications such as NAS, Firewall, Router or simple workgroup server applications.

Internally the chassis has support for 6x 3.5” hard drives (or SSD’s when used with a suitable bay converter), 4 low profile PCI-E expansion slots, standard ATX PSU Support (80mm fan only) and Micro ATX motherboard support.

On the front bezel, which is entirely manufactured from CNC machined aluminium is a simple but effective look. The bezel has an open area for 2x USB ports, and the usual Power and Hard Drive LED’s, plus push switch power and reset buttons. The entire front bezel also acts as a discrete air-vent, as it has louver’s throughout to allow air through into the case. Airflow is aided by 2 front mounted, quiet running 80mm fans. These are directly in front of the 4 hard drive bays, allowing excellent forced cooling.

Also on the front bezel is an area where a custom sticker/logo/branding can be affixed. Ideal for our customers who are marketing a product range using this chassis. 

We can also offer OEM on this as well as all of our other cases. This could include subtle changes such as making the front a specific colour, or the entire chassis, to making adjustments to the metalwork internally. Just get in touch to discuss your requirements.

Finished in an industrial quality, black paint finish this chassis wouldn’t look out of place in any companies comms rack or server room.

To read more information about this product please visit; http://www.logic-case.com/products/quick/SC-2400/

If you would like to discuss your requirements for this case, or any of our other cases please contact us or call us on 0800 652 1649 (+44(0)1827 303670 from outside the UK) and we would be happy to help.

It’s here – 12Gbps SAS 3. The latest batch of chassis we have coming in are now fully SAS 3 12Gbps enabled, allowing the next generation of 12Gbps SSD’s to be used for lightning fast data transfers – twice the speed of SATA III/SAS II 6Gbps.

We've found an excellent chart giving the SAS Roadmap;





These backplanes are still backwards compatible though, so will continue to work with existing SATA I/II and SATA III Drives, as well as SAS I and SAS II.

Not all of our current in stock chassis have the new backplanes fitted, so if 12Gbps is a requirement for you and you intend to use a compatible HBA or RAID Controller and drives please get in touch to ensure the chassis we supply have the 12Gbps backplanes fitted, otherwise the existing standard 6Gbps would be fitted.

We would recommend LSI controllers for 12Gbps drive connectivity. Please take a look at their offering at; http://www.lsi.com/products/host-bus-adapters/pages/default.aspx#tab/product-family-tab-1

If you would like to discuss your storage server requirements, and unsure if 12Gbps can be beneficial to you please contact us or call us on 0800 652 1649 (+44(0)1827 303670 from outside the UK)

We’ve just launched our latest product, the SC-H250. This is a simple but effective little device, allowing for 4x 2.5” SATA/SAS drives to be connected in hot-swap into a single 5.25” Drive Bay.



SC-H250
- Supports 4 Bay SATA-I, II amd III /SAS Hot-swap  6GB/s
- Steel material, ROHS Compliant
- Electromagnetic shielding
- Molex power connections
- Supports hot-swap
- Supporting all operating systems
- 2 x 40mm Ball bearing fans with air duct
- Supports RAID 0,1,5,6,10 functions (RAID card required)

To view more information on the SC-H250 please visit; http://www.logic-case.com/products/quick/SC-H250/

If you need any spare parts please contact us or call us on 0800 652 1649 (+44(0)1827 303670 from outside the UK) and we would be happy to help recommend the suitable parts.



Struggling to find a screw to complete your project – need a spare disk caddy for a cold-spare – need some replacement fans – we have them in stock for our full range of products and available for immediate delivery.



We have a massive stock of spares for every model of chassis, currently including;

1. USB Cables and Connectors
2. Front Panel PCB’s (with LED’s and Switches)
3. Screw Kits
4. Replacement Metalwork (Brackets, Drive Cages, Rear IO Windows)
5. Drive Trays (Hot-Swap)
6. Fans (Fixed and Hot-Swap)
7. PSU Brackets and Adapters
8. Plus many more…

We’re populating our website with our spare parts, so if you can’t find what you’re looking for immediately please get in touch.

To view our online catalogue of spare parts please visit; http://www.logic-case.com/products/accessories/spare-parts/

If you need any spare parts please contact us or call us on 0800 652 1649 (+44(0)1827 303670 from outside the UK) and we would be happy to help recommend the suitable parts.

Are you looking for a high capacity storage server chassis? We have a wide range of rackmount server cases that accept multiple fixed, or hot-swap hard drives.

We have a huge range, but today I thought I would detail our larger chassis that can accommodate a lot of storage drives (SSD’s or hard drives).

Logic Case SC-1304



Starting from 1U were have the SC-1304. This chassis accepts up to an EEB Extended ATX motherboard, has 4x 3.5” hot-swap drive bays and takes a single 1U PSU. This is a popular, low cost, but versatile chassis. The backplane on this supports 6Gbps SAS and SATA and uses discrete (individual connectors on the rear). Also each drive bay supports both a 2.5” and 3.5” drive. No adapter is required and screw holes are available on the caddy for both drive sizes.


Logic Case SC-2112



On to 2U we have our flagship model, the SC-2112. This chassis accepts a CEB (standard ATX) motherboard so is relatively short depth, as a depth of only 550mm, but accepts 12x hot-swap SATA/SAS 6Gbps drives. Each caddy also takes 2.5” and 3.5” drives, so can be used with a combination of SSD or traditional hard drives. Assuming 12x 4TB drives are used you could install 48TB of available storage in this chassis. The chassis also accepts standard 2U single PSU’s and 2U redundant PSU’s. It is a perfect marriage of components to make a brilliant rackmount storage server.


Logic Case SC-2332



Another 2U model is our SC-2332. This is a 650mm deep chassis and accepts an EEB Extended ATX motherboard, single 2U or redundant 2U PSU. The feature of this chassis is its 32x 2.5” Hot-Swap Bays (7mm Max Height). Each bay supports a SAS or SATA hard drive or SSD and will run at 3Gbps or 6Gbps. Connectivity to the host system is through MiniSAS connectors. In total there are 8x MiniSAS connectors on the system. Our customers frequently use a single port SAS Controller along with a SAS Expander to make this a cost effective, high capacity storage system.


Logic Case SC-316



Our most popular 3U storage chassis is our SC-316 range. It has 16x 3.5” Hot-Swap Bays, all compatible with 2.5” drives (SSD’s and Hard Drives) and is compatible with SATA and SAS running at 6Gbps. There are 4x MiniSAS connectors (1 per backplane). Within the chassis is room for an EEB Extended ATX motherboard. There are two versions of this chassis; ATX PSU Support and 3U/2U ATX PSU Support. The SC-316-ATX will take a maximum of a MicroATX motherboard, but allows a cheaper ATX PSU to be used, such as our SC-ATX550, a cost-effective 550W Server-Grade 80plus PSU. The SC-316 will accept the EEB Extended ATX board and is compatible with a single 2U PSU, redundant 2U PSU and redundant 3U PSU.


Logic Case SC-4324



This is by far our most popular 4U storage chassis. It is a fantastic large chassis that will provide enough capacity for many installations, from small SOHO to large enterprise. The chassis has 24x 3.5” hot-swap bays, each supporting 3.5” or 2.5” SATA/SAS drives. The case accepts up to an EEB Extended ATX motherboard and has plenty of internal cooling to support the drives and any combination of motherboard, from a Micro ATX up to an EEB with dual CPU. The chassis accepts a standard ATX PSU (any ATX PSU, e.g. 120mm fan, 140mm fan or 80mm fan) using an adapter bracket that’s included. Brackets also included allow for a Mini Redundant PSU and a 3U Redundant PSU to be installed, making this system a highly available and reliable server solution. We have customers who use this chassis with 24x 4TB Western Digital RED 6Gbps SATA drives, giving 96TB of available (pre RAID overhead and disk overhead) storage capacity in 4U!


Logic Case SC-4364



The final system in the series – The Logic Case SC-4364. This is an absolute monster of a storage system in 4U. This chassis accepts 64x 2.5” hot-swap drives (7mm height). These can be traditional hard drives or SSD’s, or a combination of both. The backplane is 3Gbps and 6Gbps compatible, with MiniSAS connections to connect to expander cards or HBA/RAID controllers within. While 2.5” drives are not at the capacity of 3.5” drives yet these systems still pack a punch with the amount of drives they can accept. Let’s run the numbers. Each system will accept 64x drives. Assuming each had a 2TB drive installed this would allow you to get 128TB of available storage in a single chassis. If you populated a full 42U rack with these chassis, placing 10 systems in the cabinet (leaving 2U spare for switches and PDU’s etc) this would give 1.28 Petabytes of available storage (1,280TB, or 1,310,720GB!)

We are happy to introduce our new range of high quality all-copper CPU coolers designed for 1U and 2U Server applications.

Our fantastic range consists of Active (with a fan) and Passive (no fan) Intel and AMD socket CPU coolers.

Both the active and passive coolers are an all copper construction for excellent thermal cooling of the CPU. Our cooler ranges have been tested to Intel and AMD standards.

Our 1U coolers use a squirrel/blower style fan, which pushes very large CFM of air over the CPU but keeping the noise level to a minimum, compared to that of traditional fans.

All our active coolers are 4 pin, allowing for PWM to the motherboard. This allows the motherboard/BIOS to dynamically control the speed of the fan and is a huge leap forward compared to previous’ models of 1U active coolers that were 3 pin only.

To view our full range of CPU coolers click this link; http://www.logic-case.com/products/accessories/cpu-coolers/

We’re proud to announce the launch of a wide range of server power supplies in both Industrial 1U, 2U and standard ATX form factors.

Our new range are 80 plus Gold PSU’s. We will be introducing an 80 plus Bronze and Platinum range of PSU’s later in the year.

Our range of 80 plus PSU’s currently include;

1U Industrial Rackmount PSU



1U Single 500W; http://www.logic-case.com/products/quick/SC-SG1U500/
1U Single 600W; http://www.logic-case.com/products/quick/SC-SG1U600/
1U Single 700W; http://www.logic-case.com/products/quick/SC-SG1U700/

2U Industrial Rackmount PSU



2U Single 500W; http://www.logic-case.com/products/quick/SC-SG2U500/
2U Single 600W; http://www.logic-case.com/products/quick/SC-SG2U600/
2U Single 700W; http://www.logic-case.com/products/quick/SC-SG2U700/
2U Single 800W; http://www.logic-case.com/products/quick/SC-SG2U800/
2U Single 900W; http://www.logic-case.com/products/quick/SC-SG2U900/


We have also introduced a fantastic 320W 80 plus Flex ATX PSU. The Flex ATX PSU’s are special small form factor 1U and are designed to go in a number of our very short depth 1U chassis, such as our SC-1250 and SC-13250 models.

1U Single 320W Flex ATX PSU, 80 plus



http://www.logic-case.com/products/quick/SC-FLEX1U320+/

To compliment our range of Server ATX PSU’s we have introduced 3 new models, a 500W, 600W and 700W 80 plus Bronze PSU’s. These ATX PSU’s are standard PS/2 style commonly used in tower PC’s and servers. We also have a very wide range of rackmount chassis that accept ATX PSU’s.



To view our full range of ATX Power Supplies please click; http://www.logic-case.com/products/power-supplies/atx-power-supply/

August has seen some brilliant new product lines and technologies being introduced in IT. There was the introduction of the new Supermicro 10th Generation (X10) motherboards and 12Gbps SAS was announced.

September is shaping up to be a fantastic month – with Western Digital releasing their 4TB Red NAS drives and Intel finally releasing their new Core range of Haswell based CPU’s. Also towards the end of September Intel will release the new range of E5 Xeon CPU’s, with core counts up to 12 cores, 24 threads and 30MB of L3 Cache – blimey!


If you’ve not already tried the Western Digital Red drives we suggest you do. They are 24/7 NAS suitable. They are full-on, so are not green – but that’s how most people want them – especially for RAID where powering-down would otherwise cause damage to a RAID array. Most new RAID controllers and motherboard SATA controllers should support this new 4TB disk size.

Also some good news is all of our chassis with 6GBps backplanes (either Discrete SATA or SFF-8087 MiniSAS) are fully compatible with these new 4TB hard drives. You should however check with your RAID controller, HBA or motherboard that these will be. A lot of manufacturers are checking compatibility with their hardware, so please check with your vendor first though.

12Gbps SAS is still a very new technology, with currently only LSI leading the market with their new 9300 and 9311 series of controllers that support this new technology. As soon as we have 12Gbps backplanes we will publish a new blog article and will contact our individual customers to let them know – Exciting stuff!

We’re on YouTube!

We are working hard on producing high quality videos of all of our Logic Case products. The videos will be soon available on YouTube so please Subscribe to our YouTube Channel and keep checking back!

We can also provide re-branded videos if you would like to resell our products through distribution under your own brand name. Just get in touch with us on +44(0)1827 303670 to discuss your requirements. We do all photography and video production in-house, with professional camera and lighting, so can easily cater for your needs and requirements.



Please click the YouTube logo above to access our YouTube channel. Please don’t forget to subscribe!

We’re now on both Facebook and Twitter!

We will be frequently offering competitions, posting news and events updated and more on both Facebook and Twitter.

Please click here to Like Us on Facebook and click here to Follow Us on Twitter!

We’re proud to announce the successful launch of our very own interactive product finder.

The product finder has been designed to allow for a quick and easy way to find your ideal chassis, based on a number of search parameters – always returning one or more available products or chassis.

You can for example select the chassis height (1U, 2U, 3U, 4U etc) and then select the Depth. This would then show the available chassis and saves you the time hunting through cases to try and find the right depth for your application.

You can also search by the drive bays, so if you wanted 12 hot-swap 3.5” bays – not a problem – just select from the dropdown and it will instantly show you compatible chassis.

Also on our product finder is a PSU finder. Just select the wattage of PSU you need and it will display the available power supplies that we have available for your search. We stock both industrial and standard type power supplies so have plenty of choice to suit your requirements.

Why not give it a go – Click here to access our Product Finder!

We’re proud to announce we’ve built some fantastic product matrixes on our site that integrates real-time with our product database.
We’ve got 3 matrixes setup – Chassis Matrix, Storage Kit Matrix and Power Supply Matrix.


 
The Chassis Matrix will allow you very easily see in a simple list all of our rackmount chassis and what they include, such as the rack height, order code/product SKU and more importantly depth, height and how many internal or external drive bays. It also accurately advises what PSU options are available for the chassis which will hopefully help customers find their ideal chassis very quickly.



 
The Storage Kit Matrix shows our storage options and what chassis they will fit into off the shelf.




The Power Supply Matrix shows our full range of power supplies and what chassis these PSU’s fit into.

Of course if you have any questions about compatibility or would like to discuss your exact requirements please call us on +44(0)1827 303670. Our team would be happy to help with recommendations on chassis, power supplies and options for your exact needs and requirements.

In case you didn't know we have an RSS feed of our weekly IT and Server Systems blog

http://www.logic-case.com/rss

You can use this in your own software and it will update when new blog articles are available - give it a try!

Do you currently have a chassis that you want to add hot-swap to, or additional hot-swap? There’s a simple solution – Our SC-H300 or SC-H500 hot-swap modules.

These modules are designed for installation into chassis with 3 or more spare 5.25” drive bays. You can use these modules in any kind of chassis and they don’t even need to be Logic Case chassis either.

SC-H300



This allows for 3x 3.5” SATA hard drives to be installed into 2x 5.25” drive bays.  There is an 80mm fan at the rear to cool the installed drives. The unit has front mounted LED indicators to show the status of each drive, both for its active state and also the disk activity. There is also an LED to show the fan status. If the fan fails or drops below a specific RPM the indicator will show and there will also be an audible alarm.

SC-H500



This is the same type of product as the SC-H300, but supports 5x 3.5” hard drives into 3x 5.25” drive bays.

On the rear of all of these are 2x Molex Power Cables and standard SATA connectors. The 3 drive model (SC-H300) has 3 SATA, and the 5 drive model (SC-H500) has 5 SATA connectors.

The hot-swap modules are SATA 6Gbps compatible and will also work with previous generation drives in a mixed combination mode, so you could use 6Gbps (SATA 3) and 3Gbps (SATA 2) drives if you wanted.

We have built a Storage Kit Matrix on our site so you can easily identify which of our own chassis our hot-swap modules will fit into, just click here to view this matrix.

If you would like to discuss your exact requirements or are unsure if these hot-swap modules will fit into a different brand of chassis please contact us or call us directly on +44(0)1827 303670.

We’re pleased to announce the marriage between Logic Case and Supermicro – May they function long term in rack cabinets all around the world!

That’s a bit too geeky – But thought we would share our excitement.

We have been working closely with Supermicro in the United Kingdom to ensure compatibility of our chassis with their motherboards and server solutions.

By using our chassis with Supermicro means a lower initial cost of purchase per unit.

Our chassis have full compatibility with a wide range of Supermicro motherboards. To discuss your requirements please get in touch or call us on +44(0)1827 303670.

We’re pleased to introduce some new product lines. JBOD’s!

JBOD enclosures are purpose built for use as storage enclosures with SAS and SATA architectures.

The JBOD enclosures we have support a variety of drive configurations with in-built SAS Expanders. The models we currently have available and recently introduced are 12 and 24 bay versions.

These are JBOD’s with a built in single-port SAS Expander manufactured by Asus and a Zippy/Emacs Redundant Power Supply. This combination allows for an Enterprise grade hardware DAS (Direct Attached Storage) solution and is perfect for use as additional storage for single servers or for virtualisation environments.

Each JBOD has a single SAS Expander built in. This allows a single 8088 external cable to be connected to a suitable HBA/RAID controller that supports SAS Drives. Although the technology used is SAS, the drives you use in the chassis can be a combination of SATA or SAS. This does depend on your RAID card, but most RAID cards support both.

Our JBOD’s are also SAS II, so are SAS I (3Gbps) and SAS II (6Gbps). In addition they are SATA Compatible, so will work with SATA II (3Gbps) and SATA III (6Gbps) drives.

You can use a combination of SSD or traditional hard drives up to 3TB (as of our current testing and market availability) drives in each enclosure.

Please take a look at our JBOD selection by clicking here. To discuss your requirements or to get more information please contact us or call us directly on +44(0)1827 303670