bang for buck case with many HDD slots sought

[Unique]

i'm looking for a budget bang for the buck case that holds 6+ HDDs and an optical drive. doesn't have to look pretty or fit big graphics cards. no particular budget, but there seems a few around £50 that do 6/7 drives and the price jumps up a fair bit for more. for another £25 if i can get a few more drives in then thats worth it. around £100 max for something that gives a dozen drives is fine but i can't see anything like that

also, any ideas about a cooler for an i5 to overclock, that doesn't require the mobo to be removed to isntall - or at least one where you put the backplate on but you can remove the fan to upgrade cpu without pulling the mobo out the case? again something budget, no watercooling. £30 ish perhaps

thanks!

[Pob255]

Well there was the good old sharkoon rebel 12 where with a couple of extra bits you could go up to a massive 22 drives eg http://lime-technology.com/forum/ind...&topic=10427.0
but trying to get hold of them is going to be very hard now.

more sensible, fractal design R4 http://www.scan.co.uk/products/fract...-with-silent-1 8x 3.5" drives + 2x 5.25" drives

Other things to look at http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...525-bays-black should work with any tripple 5.25" bay or this http://www.scan.co.uk/products/silve...hot-swap-black (note you need an additional back plate if you want the hotswap)

I'll admit this is one area where the current trend for dropping 5.25" bays shows it's weakness, the size of a 5.25" bay means you can do much more than just put an optical drive into it.
Also why I don't see the need for dedicated 2.5" bays as you can easily put a 2.5" drive into a 3.5" bay, but the only thing you can put into a 2.5" bay is a 2.5" drive

[Ttaskmaster]

i'm looking for a budget bang for the buck case that holds 6+ HDDs and an optical drive. doesn't have to look pretty or fit big graphics cards. no particular budget, but there seems a few around £50 that do 6/7 drives and the price jumps up a fair bit for more. for another £25 if i can get a few more drives in then thats worth it. around £100 max for something that gives a dozen drives is fine but i can't see anything like that

For £100, you're talking Corsair's Carbide range.
For about £90, you can get the 400R or 500R (I own the latter) which have 6 HDD drawers and will hold up to 4 optical drives. You can also get parts to convert any of the 5.25" bays into HDD/SSD holders too.
The 500R comes with 3x120mm fans (two intake, one exhaust) and one 200mm fan all included, plus bags of room for all your various bits, including a large cutout backplate window for removing coolers.

But that said, the Coolermaster Elite 430 can be had for around £30 and is almost as good as the 500R. Most cases seem to meet your requirements...

[Unique]

thanks guys. the sharkoon rebel 12 looks perfect for my needs but it's not available. even the smaller rebel 9 looks pretty good. i see they have some available models with less HDD space but still more generous than other budget models, so i'll do a bit of searching

the coolermaster 430 was one that caught my eye too, as it's cheap, a decent brand and had more space than most budget models. most cases i saw had a max of 3 optical bays, i didn't see any with 4, which would mean a 4x3 caddy would be usable. i don't need to hot swap

as i'm planning to build from scratch i'm taking my time in planning as the total cost is going to be a few quid, a fair bit more than my usual upgrades from old gaming machines or modding/butchering prebuilt dells or whatever. i have a decent mobo and a couple of CPU options, and plan for a decent PSU of about 750 watt, and 8gb ram, and that should last a fair while. so i really want to get the right case, as changing cases is a PITA. i have an antec 300 which i've squeezed a lot of drives in, but ideally i want a case thats designed for lots of drives, and if i can also squeeze an in built SDXC card reader and USB3 and even esata into things then all the better, but those are very secondary to the drives

the fractal with 8 plus optical, meaning 9HDD with one in the optical bay and a card reader, sounds decent and looks pretty cool. i probably won't use the optical much so the door is great. this machine is for the bedroom so the least amount of stuff that lights up is what i'm after. i just used black tape on my current bedroom machine to cover the lights