I-Star D-Storm Series D-300 3U Rackmount Server Chassis Review

     For the build up I used a Asus PC-DL Deluxe motherboard.  It is a full size ATX board with dual processors.  As you can see here it fits nicely with plenty of room for expansion cards.  I will be using the on-board Promise SATA raid controller for the drive configuration.

     I used a pair of KingWin KF-72 SATA drive cages to install my two 160GB drives in a RAID0 configuration and quickly found out that having both in one drive cage was not going to work.  I needed to use the IDE connectors for the system drive and the DVD-RW.  A quick reconfiguration placing each of the KF-72's in the top of each drive cage and placing the DVD-RW on the right side and the EIDE drive on the left made this configuration fit.  If I were to do this again, I would use a 3-in-2 SATA internal drive cage either through a third party vendor or use either of I-Star's TC-Istorm or BPU-230 series of drive cages to set up a RAID5 configuration.  My druthers would be towards the BPU-230 since it has hot swappable capabilities.

     So here we are everything installed and ready to run.  As noted earlier I had to remove the aluminum stiffener to put the drive cages in because of the depth they had.  Once removed, everything went in very easily.  I didn't spend a lot of time on cable management and used what I had on hand.  Using rounded cables for both the system drive and the DVD-RW drive would make things a little tidier, but as it is there is plenty of room for air flow and getting to different areas of the chassis is not too difficult so I'm going to run with it as is.

     Here's the front showing the installed KF-72 units as well as the DVD-RW.  The EIDE drive is mounted hidden in the 3.5" drive bay on the left side to help keep things cool.

Here are the hardware monitor readings from the bios with the system running at an idle.  Everything looks about normal.

     After running Sandra 2005 burn in for about an hour these are the readings from ITE SmartGuardian and Motherboard Monitor.  Note that the 3v, 5v and 12v readings are all well within limits.  The negative side of the house is a different matter entirely.  The odd thing is both have entirely different readings for the -5 and -12 volt.  These values coupled with the vcore reading from CPU #2 of 3.13v seem a little suspect.  I'm going to disregard these, since the server seems to be running perfectly and the values contradict each other greatly.

Specifications:

Conclusion:

     I've worked with several different rackmount server chassis and each has had their own benefits and drawbacks.  Setting up the I-Stars D-300 was a breeze, the feel of the chassis was solid and the fit and finish is top notch.  I would recommend this for anyone that is building a server and doesn't have their heart set on a 1u or 2u. The 3u design is very easy to work with and has effective cooling without being excessively loud.  The drive bay configuration is very flexible and I-Star has many accessories available that work with this chassis to customize to your exact needs.