mifronte

Is 19.5" cables long enough? These are the Norco reverse breakout cables for the Supermicro SAT2-MV8 cards.

I have read that the dual molex connectors on the Norco 4220 backplane are for dual power supplies. If you are using only one power supply, then connect one column set only.

I contacted Norco in CA regarding the 4224 and was told that it is at least two months away. The 4220 is fine for me if it came with the 120mm fan plate. What to do? My build is now just waiting on the case and some reverse breakout cables.

Well, I think I just purchased my last component except for the Norco case and SATA to SFF-8087 Mini SAS reverse breakout cables. See the first post for the updated list of components. For the power supply, I went with the Seasonic X750 Gold since the Corsair CMPSU-750HX was mainly out of stock everywhere. Hopefully Norco will either release the 4224 case or the 4220 with the 120mm fan plate.

I ended up ordering the Kingston KVR800D2E5K2/4G after my order for the HP Smart Buy RAM got canceled due to insufficient stock. I too could not find the voltage and CAS Latency specifications for the HP RAM. Also the 1 year warranty on the HP RAM compared to the limited lifetime on the Kingston made me go the expensive route, especially when I do not know when I will have all the parts to put this server together.

Would anyone with some knowledge of RAM let me know if these two are comparable? HP 2GB Smart RAM and Kingston 2GB Value RAM This is for my SuperMicro X7SBE motherboard which calls for DDR2 800/667 MHz of ECC/Non-ECC Unbuffered DDR2 SDRAM. I would really like to buy the HP at the lower price, but the Kingston is documented as working with the motherboard by other Unraid users.

Would anyone know if the dual/single memory channel is a feature of the memory slots or the actual memory modules?

Thanks bcbgboy13. I have really been looking for memory in piece-mealing my Unraid server build. My motherboard is the SuperMicro X7SBE. The specs for this is identical to the Kingston KVR800D2E5 memory modules that is compatible with the SuperMicro board. I don't know too much about memory, but my guess is this should work too?

Thanks Joe L. I thought about running the full read/write/read, but decided not to do it since I would have to still run the pre-clear script later when I have a dedicated server. For now, my intention is to quickly and confidently identify good drives from dead drives and so I am only performing a short scan, long scan, full write, and a final short scan. One drive arrived with plenty of bubble wrap, but half of the drive was unwrapped. Luckily there were foam peanuts in the box. According to Seagate, the short scan gives you a 90% confidence that the drive is good. The long scan gives the remaining 10%. I read that on their support web site.

I have been running the SMART test, short disk scan, long disk scan, and full zeroing writes on the new drives that I've been receiving in anticipation of my Unraid build. The 2TB drives that I am testing are: 3 Western Digital WD20EARS 3 Seagate Barracuda LP ST32000542AS 1 (with 2 more coming) Samsung Spinpoint F3EG HD203WI Using the WD Data Lifeguard Diagnostics for Windows utility on my Windows XP laptop, I have noticed that the WD20EARS are the slowest for the full zeroing writes. We are talking about 6 hours longer than the Seagate and Samsung drives! I was not using the jumper on pin 7 & 8 on the first 2 WD20EARS and the long disk scan would take 20+ hours and the full zeroing write would take about 17 hours. On my last WD20EARS, I placed a jumper on pin 7 & 8 and the long disk scan took less than 10 hours (on par with the Samsung and Seagate drives). But the full zeroing write is still taking over 16 hours compared to about 10 hours for the Seagate and Samsung drives! 01. To clarify, pin 7 & 8 are the left most pins on the WD20EARS? 02. Now that these disks have passed all the pre-clearing tests, I wished there was just a way to write the pre-clear header on these disks instead of having to run them through the pre-clear stages again once I get my Unraid server running. I decided to pre-clear these drives under Windows since I could not afford to have my only computer tied up running Unraid while pre-clearing these drives. I needed to quickly determine if the drives are good just in case I needed to return a bad drive.

Thanks starcat. I am still looking to find a bargain for the AOC-SIMu!+ card. In the meantime, I have ordered four 2TB drives and hope to have a total of nine by the time I am ready to build. I think the bottleneck will be waiting for the Norco 4224 case with the 120mm fans to be released. By the way, if anyone sees a bargain for the Corsair CMPSU-750HX, let me know. I am also on the watch for bargain for the Kingston KVR800D2E5 RAM modules and a 2 GB USB flash drive.

I apologize if this has alreay been covered in another thread (I have not been able to find a way to search within a thread only like on AVS forum.), but for the EAR drives, do you need to install the jumper prior to running the preclear script?

I think I will run the preclear_disk.sh by booting my Windows XP laptop from a distro like Knoppix or Ubuntu. It's just that I want to quickly determine if the new drives are good and right now I am only familiar with using the respective manufacturer disk utilities. Eventually I will have to familiarize myself with using preclear_disk.sh, I guess this would be good time with three 2TB drives. Do I need to be running with root privileges? This should be interesting...I will attempt to run 3 instances simultaneously. Just hope I don't accidentally run it on my Windows XP system drive with all my critical data.

@Rob_Esc, I cannot confirm since I do not have a case yet and so have not even open the motherboard other to ensure it arrived in one piece. The SuperMicro AOC-SIM1U+ I ordered at Amazon by Buy.com turned out to be the AOC-SIM1U and so it was missing the SKT-0240L kit. Buy.com apologized for the listing mistake, but would not honor the mistake by sending me the more expensive AOC-SIM1U+.

Since I do not have all the components to complete the build yet and some of the new drives will be arriving, I would like to fully test and clear the new drives to detect DOAs. Normally I use the manufacturer's disk utility to fully SMART test and to zero out any new drives. Is this equivalent to the preclear_disk.sh script? Will Unraid detect these drives as being pre-cleared? If no, is there a way to mark these drives with the pre-clear signature without having to fully test and zero out the drives again using the preclear_disk.sh script in the future when the build is complete?

NewEgg has the SuperMicro X7SBE Open Box item for $169.99 + $8.57 shipping. Be sure to read the open box policy well before ordering.

Just to confirm that the Kingston KVR800D2E5/2G works fine for the SuperMicro X7SBE. The SuperMicro site does not list this particular module as being tested. It only list the KVR800D2E5/1G and KVR800D2E5/512.

Did you buy the only two? I can seem to find the open box item searching NewEgg.

@starcat, check out the GELID Solutions FN-PX12-15 120mm Case Fan with Intelligent PWM. I think I may get this fan to replace the 120mm fans that will be included in the Norco 4220 or 4224 case. The fan comes recommended in the AVS HTPC forum. Although I will be locating the server in a utility closet in the basement, on side of the closet happens to be my entertainment rack for my home theater. So a loud server will definitely be heard just like a loud HTPC.

So for someone who is in the process of building a server using the X7SBE server board, would it be best to buy 4-pin fans and configure it with the Bios? Any suggestion of quality low noise 4-pin fans?

Starcat, I am rooting for you to get this figured out and working so that I can enable this feature too. Just curious, wouldn't you need a 4-pin fan to enable the 4-pin settings? I hope the new Norco 120mm fans come with a 4-pin connector.

Great! That makes it easy to determine if I receive the correct item. I suspected that is the difference between the two items, but the manual on page 2-1 has a note that indicates the SKT-0240L is included in the AOC-SIM1U/AOC-SIM1U+. And then on page i, there is a note that says KVM-Over-LAN is only for the AOC-SIM1U+. So I started to think that the KVM-Over-LAN feature might be an extra chip on the card or something. Oh well, it is up to fate and Amazon via Buy.com now. I placed the order with Amazon and just hope for the best

I assume the AOC-SIM1U is the old one and that I will be able to tell the difference immediately? It is not like the card looks identical, except one will have a different chip on the board that a lay person won't be able to distinguished? I also checked eBay, and they do not have the lowest price. I think I will order from Amazon. Too bad my Prime trial ended yesterday

Buy.com has two item listed at two different prices: IPMI 2.0 SYSTEM MGMT CARD KIT SUPERMICRO - AOC-SIM1U for $64.24 IPMI 2.0 SYSTEM MGMT CARD KIT SUPERMICRO - AOC-SIM1U+ for $82.74 Amazon has this item listed (fulfilled by Buy.com) Supermicro Add-on Card AOC-SIM1U+ - Remote management adapter low profile for $64.24 Since the SuperMicro web site says the AOC-SIM1U+ supports KVM-Over-LAN, I believe this is what I need instead of the AOC-SIM1U. I am thinking of ordering from Amazon and hopefully get the correct one. For owners of this card with the X7SBE, can you provide further clarification? Urgency is requested because Amazon is showing only 1 left in inventory.

Expired deals should be kept for a pricing history. Us bargain hunters would like to determine a true bargain by looking at historical deals.