Chris Pollard

The parity gets up to about 40C during parity, the cache drive sits at around 30-35, Disk 1 doesn't exist any more All of the other disks hover around 28-35 during parity. They are all 5400RPM apart from the Parity and cache which are 7200RPM. The Parity probably isn't in the ideal slot as far as cooling goes but it makes the cabling more logical.

Here's a pic of an empty one open :- Drives come out easy enough, just pop it out and undo 4 little screws. Yes the 5-in-3 has 5 sata cables (red and orange in the picture) going into a backplane, also 3 molex power cables. The 4-in-3's have 4 sata and 2 molex. Review of the 5-in-3 with more images here :- http://www.bigbruin.com/2006/mb455spf_1

Here's mine :- Slightly different look to most and capacity for lots of drives. I'm not particularly neat so the cables are a bit of a mess . Its in my spare room so its noisy too. Parts :- Asus M3A32-MVP Deluxe AMD Athlon 2650e 15w 2x2gb DDR2 2x512mb DDR2 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 x2 IcyDock MB454 SPF x2 (4-in-3) IcyDock MB455 SPF (5-in-3) Asus 8400GS 256mb (PCIe Gfx) 7x 1.5tb Samsung HD154UI 1x 2tb Samsung HD203WI 1x 2tb Samsung HD204UI/Z4 1x 2tb Seagate ST32000542AS 1x 500mb Samsung HD501LJ (Cache) 1x 2tb Hitachi HDS72202 (Parity) Kingston Datatraveler 1gb USB Flash Drive. WinPower 450W PSU Lian Li PC343-B (Case) 3x Cheap 120mm Fans and Filtered Grills. Things still to do :- Find a PCI Graphics card that will play nice with the 2 SAS cards. Managed to get my Diamond Stealth 2500 working, saved 20w Internal USB Header 80+ Modular PSU Maybe add another 4gb of RAM (for SABnzbd) Passive CPU cooler maybe too, CPU runs very cool. If you used 5-in-3's you could fit a tasty 30 drives in the front, plus using some special Lian Li Drive bays mounted at the back, another 6 drives there. The case also has room for dual PSU's if needed.

So neat and tidy! I might have to post pics of mine later, it looks like a bird made a nest inside the case