From a non-technical standpoint, I can report that so far so good. Regarding if it is safe or not, I would have to defer to any electrical engineers. Here was my mindset going into the build
- Use a 12v single rail PSU
- Not go crazy with power splitters (ended up removing the connectors and adding it to the original as pictured). I figured the weakest point would be at an adapter/splitter.
- Majority of the disks will be spun down idle. Utilizing this server mainly for plex and I organized the structure so that a group of media (example season 1 of a show) to be on a single disk.
- Hopefully my punchdown technique of the power connectors is adequate.
Since there seems to be a lot of concern on safety, I found some info on the wire itself.
AWM STYLE 2468 18AWG 80°C 300V
Cable specifications:
conductors gauge (AWG) 18 material bare copper cord size (strands) 41 x 0.16 jacket material 80°C, 48P, PVC color black diameter (mm) 4.4 ± 0.10
electrical properties rated voltage (V) 300 rated temperature (°C) 80 rated current (A) 7 insulator resistance (Ohm/Kft) 2.5
operating temperature (°C) -10 ~ +80 resistance at 20° C (Ohm/Km) max 23.2 spark test (Kv) 3.0/4.0 humidity rating <75%
I didn't know about crosstalk or bundling could be an issue. I just did some quick searches and found a lot of people talking about it as you said. I'm curious to see what symptoms would occur if it happened.
For example, i'm not noticing performance degradation as my parity rebuilds are averaging 180-220 MB/sec. I would be concern if there is any data corruption.
I appreciate everyones comments and feedback and I take it constructively whether positive or negative. So far i'm really happy with the build and unraid has been fabulous. Thank you for recognizing that there was a lot of time and effort put into this and I also want to make sure my investment lasts.
The remaining 4 SATA cables are actually right under the 4 that you see on top. However taking a second look, you really cant see that there are 8 cables running to the side from that angle.