Preview: Supermicro SCGS50-000R – a “gaming” chassis

One of Supermicro’s distributors provided us with a sample of their newest midi-tower enclosure, the Supermicro SCGS50-000R (CSE-GS50-000R/SuperChassis GS50-000R). It is part of the so called “Gaming” series of products, and also S5 chassis lineup. It comes in two different versions, one with fully black painted body (including internals), the SCGS5B-000R, the other one is only black painted on top and sides (our Supermicro SCGS50-000R), the rest comes with transparent finish on the basic SECC. If you visit their website, only one of them is listed in the Gaming product range, so you take a bet where it actually belongs (is it Gaming, S5, SuperChassis, what??). These cases are priced slightly under 3000 CZK (101 Euros in Germany, 100 bucks in the US, in Australia I only found a single crazy shop with price tag of 347 AUD). So not entirely cheap, priced somewhere in top mainstream/entry high-end.

Supermicro SCGS50-000R

Both versions however share front red plastic panel with brushed black aluminium plating and also side panel with perforations. At least there is no window for a change, not that I like those perforations any better. What is very nice though is great expandability as it has many fan and drive positions. There are two 5.25″ external positions and three cages for up to 10 drives (six 2.5″/3.5″, four 2.5″ only). If you would however expect to find easily accessible information about the fans on Supermicro website, you would be mistaken, the obsolete style of their site is not even good for servers in 2017, let alone retail products.

As a server-manufacturing company, Supermicro still makes quite detailed manuals. So if you want to learn something about the case, you have to buy it (there are nice drawings on the box), download 17MB manual (rly?) or visit Hardware Insights which provides you with all the information (-; Lets start from the front, where you can put up to two 140mm fans. The rear then only supports one 120mm fan, but you can put two more into the side panel (or single 140mm). The Supermicro SCGS50-000R ceiling can hold up to three more 140mm fans and finally two 120mm positions are on the bottom. According to the manual, there are no bottom positions though I can see them with my bare eyes. So it seems not even the manual is so good after all.

Three 120mm fans come with the Supermicro SCGS50-000R (two front, single rear), with some kind of enhanced, sealed bearing rated at 30000 hours @40 °C. In the front panel, there is easily removable plastic frame combined with dust filter, but also the bottom and top positions have fan filters. They are of the nice type which we found in the SilentiumPC Aquarius M60W: plastic mesh with magnetic strips. So you can remove them in a second and clean whenever you choose. On the front panel there are also the USB 3.0 ports and audio jacks, this is pretty much standard these days.

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