There are not many reasonably priced options when shopping for a rack mount 3U-4U server chassis with 16+ SAS/SATA hot swap hard drive bays. So, I ended up choosing between the ~$325-$350 NORCO RPC-3216 and RPC-3116 chassis. The only discernible difference between the two is that the RPC-3216 uses MiniSAS connectors and the RPC-3116 does not. Having found
the server hardware shopping experience to be reminiscent of what it was like to do the same with a PC, circa early 2000s… it was not clear to me which one I wanted to match up with the motherboard I selected, so I took a chance and opted for the RPC-3216. It meets all of the criteria that I was looking for in a server case, but has some quality and baffling layout issues.