SilverStone had a pair of CS Series enclosures on display at CES this year, with both ATX and Mini-ITX form-factors covered with these storage-oriented designs.
Beginning with the larger CS380, an enclosure that had previously been shown at Computex in a Micro-ATX form-factor. This slightly modified final version now supports a standard ATX motherboard for additional build flexibility, but this enclosure is really all about the hard drives. With eight 3.5-inch HDD trays up front (along with a pair of 5.25-inch bays that can each be replaced with hot-swap HDD trays, sold separately), there is plenty of storage space for a NAS or storage server build.
Inside, a pair of 120 mm fans keep the hard drives cool, and while the bare metal interior looks plain by modern standards these CS Series enclosures were build with enterprise standards in mind. The rest of the interior is pretty standard for an ATX enclosure, with a bottom PSU placement, 120 mm rear fan, and 7 expansion slots.
The smaller of the two storage enclosures, the CS280, is a mini-ITX design that scales storage support down to 2.5-inch drives.
Offering 8 HDD/SSD trays and supporting standard mini-ITX motherboards with up to a 2-bay, full-height expansion card, the CS280 provides a lot of build flexibility. While it would make a very compact storage server or hold a tremendous amount of SSD storage for a high-speed NAS, the CS280 could also house a compact, high-power gaming rig with a GPU like AMD's R9 Nano – if you desired this much storage support, that is.
Panels in the front of both cases allow view of HDD activity lights
The two enclosures differ beyond size as the CS380 has a plastic front panel/door, and the smaller CS280 features a brushed aluminum front panel and a more rounded appearance. These enclosures will be priced a little higher than typical consumer drives given their construction and purpose, but we will await final retail pricing (and availability) to see where they fit in the market.
PC Perspective's CES 2016 coverage is sponsored by Logitech.
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Maybe it’s just the photo but
Maybe it’s just the photo but the CS380 drive doors look terribly cheap. The CS280 look much better. It’s nice to see a new pair of cases coming along with support for hot swappable drives though. I had a lot of trouble finding an affordable 10-bay ATX tower to load up with some 4×3 hot swap bays.
The primary difference was
The primary difference was matte vs. glossy plastic finish. The flash from my camera made this more pronounced than it was in person, and the trays felt solid enough in both enclosures.
An ATX case with eight
An ATX case with eight hotswap bays. Yes please. While I love the DS380 I would have liked to use an ATX motherboard and PSU instead of ITX motherboard and sfx psu. Now I can. Eventually.
I’m not thrilled that they
I’m not thrilled that they made the CS380 larger. I prefer the original Micro-ATX design shown at Computex. It was a more gradual step up from the DS380.
Did the CS380 ever make it to
Did the CS380 ever make it to market? It has nice functionality for a home NAS. My only real criticism is the seeming lack of external access filters.