Housing HDX cards in PC tower vs TB3 chassis/enclosure

[rockafella]

Hello - I started another thread about whether the HP Z4 can truly only support two HDX cards (like Avid says), or not. (I am thinking they are being cautious, and also leaving room for more video cards.) Anyway, I figured this question merits its own thread - has anyone run both configurations of multiple HDX cards via expansion TB2/TB3 chassis AND also running inside a tower case?

I don't think there would be any performance difference - other than using up a bit of the TB2 bus, even 3 HDX cards should be minimum impact (plenty left over for 10G network connection, NAS/drive storage, etc.).

I was thinking PC tower case (a good one) might help insulate the noise and also cool the cards enough to keep the fans from coming on. On the other hand, perhaps chassis is better - don't have to splurge on the more expensive (and much larger!) PC towers (and that isn't just for Z4 vs Z8 - same goes for building my own - maybe I even consider something small form-factor, almost NUC-like, which would be way better if I DID ever need to be portable).

So - pro for TB chassis -

1. ability to locate far away from control or recording room, IF using expensive optical (and apparently fragile, from reviews) Thunderbolt cables.

2. Easier to be portable (can even use with another, separate laptop system, or even other desktops, if traveling between studios - not that that's happening anytime soon!).

The only downsides I see for TB chassis -

1. quite a bit extra cost vs just getting larger PC case and motherboard to hold more cards;

2. Possibility of getting flaky thunderbolt card or driver updates that might cause another layer of trouble?

If anyone has tried both, or even just has other pros/cons I am not thinking of, feel free to chime in!

For now, I've gotten a chassis from an online dealer at a good price (TB2 only still, but that's what HDX cards work best with, so oddly, it's the best bet vs waiting for Sonnet's new TB3 3-card chassis to materialize). I figure I'll try that way first, since I only have my laptop now anyway. Maybe if it's not too loud, and I like how it works, I'll scale down any future PC upgrade, or even just keep using my laptop (which is pretty monster-ish on its own - reguarly can get 1,200+ on Cinebench R15, but it took a LOT of tinkering to get all the Dell bloatware to never run again and to stop increasing DPC latency, as well as only using an external ethernet connection, and disabling both the onboard NIC and WiFi).