Icy Box IB-AC643 Internal Mounting Frame for 2x 2.5 inch SSD/HDD to 3.5 inch Bay

So good I bought a second one for another PC! This allows you to mount two 2.5" drives in a 3.5" internal desktop slot. The two drives go on top of each other, but remain within the height of a standard 3.5" slot. There is sufficient gap between the two, to allow for a bit of airflow and vibration. The open floor also gives further room for airflow. Four 3.5" mounting screws and 8x 2.5" mounting screws are included, so it's a complete kit.The only downside is that screwing in the bottom drive is a bit fiddly, as you have to poke your screwdriver through the outer 3.5" frame to screw into the lower 2.5" drive. A magnetised screwdriver or pick-up claw is helpful here and I'm not going to dock stars for that, although if the manufacturers ever come up with a second version, it would be helpful if the bottom drive screwed in from the base rather than the sides. This is not a problem for the top drive.Note that the top drive cannot use a right-angle SATA cable, as this would bump into the lower drive's connector; use a cable with a straight connector.Heavy duty matt-painted metal. Very strong and high quality. Highly recommended.

While having the option to mount two SSDs on this one mount is great, it has the following drawbacks:* When a drive is screwed into the lower mounting point (in either of the two different ways you can do so) the SSD inputs will not be clear of the back of the metal mounting, which can make plugging in the power and SATA cables difficult, especially if you have 90 degree angled SATA cables. This was the case with both my Samsung 840 and 850 series SSDs.* The screw holes for the lower mounting points can be very difficult to get to if you don't have the appropriate screwdriver. You need to use one that is both long and thin, in order to fit through the outer holes and extend far enough to get to the inner hole to screw in. Ideally the lower mounting point would be screwed in using the screws on the underside of the SSD rather than the side, but that is not an option with this mount.There are other dual mounting point frames available on Amazon Prime for £5 that don't have these drawbacks. I recommend you consider them instead.

I replaced the drives in a NAS box, with 2.5" drives to reduce the noise.These are almost perfect for that.I'm using a mixture of 9mm and 15mm drives. The 9mm for boot/smaller RAIDs, and the 15mm for tha main storage RAIDs.If you put the 15mm high drives in the lower position, you can fit a 2nd drive.With a 9mm in the lower position, a 15mm will fit in the upper position.Some of my bays only had holes from below for the 2.5" drives. So I had to find some longer screws, to reach the lower drive, and bolt directly into that.So the side screws of both drives, bolted the drives to this frame, and the longer screw went though the case into the lower drive, holding the drives+frame to the case.

Supplied with 2 sets of screws for 2.5 inch drives and 1 set for mounting this frame into the PC.If your current hard drives mount with the side screws (like the Dell PCs I have) then I think this would work a treat, but for my Lenovo desktop, where the hard drive mounts with the top screws, this frame does not have any holes in the right place. This meant I had to drill and tap holes in the frame, which I was then able to mount in the PC - not ideal but it did the job adequately after the modification.

This is great, everything aligned fine and it comes with the screws you need to attach the two SSDs and also the unit itself into the PC case (8+4). I was a little concerned about temperature with the two SSDs so close together, but while they do run hotter than I maybe thought (I've never used SSDs before), it's all well within tolerances.One word of warning, which is no fault of the frame itself: having the SSDs so close together caused me a slight problem when attaching the SATA power connectors. Mine were daisy-chained together on the ribbon cable, and *really* didn't like bending out and back in to tightly. I ended up buying a separate adaptor (Molex power to two SATA, from Maplin for immediate use as I was going to town, but there are cheaper ones on Amazon) that had individual SATA power plugs and so didn't stress the connectors on the SSD.I also had a slight issue with the SATA data cables: they are generally single connections so you won't have the same problem as above, but don't expect to be able to fit a right-angled connector, which many come with (one will interfere with the other, and the other won't fit due to the frame's chassis). I was able to fit my right-angled end to the motherboard, but flat-only cables would be easier.