X-Case X465E First Impressions

My current server lives in a ThermalTake Core X9 case. While I like it a lot, and its generous dimensions have allowed me add lots of PCIe cards,  its proving itself to be somewhat toasty, especially for drives which are often reporting high temperatures.

The system lives in an attic space that heats up over summer which does not help with thermals. The unwieldy size and din generated by multiple fans makes moving location somewhat tricky.

For the past few weeks, I've been toying with the idea of slimming down and going for a rack mount setup. In this mindset, I came across the X-Case X456E from xcase.co.uk. This is touted as a 12 slot 4U rackmount server case. This piqued my interest as the extra PCI slot capacity is something that I'd modded in to my current case, and here it was, out of the box.

This trick is achieved by moving the PSU to the front of the case. The compromise here is a reduction in hard drive capacity (8x 3.5"). However, happy to live with this and use a second chassis for any additional drives, I went ahead and bought one.

There were a few obvious improvements to be made which I documented in this first impressions video;