DoeBoye

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Everything posted by DoeBoye

  1. I like ruling out the PSU first because: It's often the culprit A compatible working tester PSU can be found in many other systems, unlike CPUs, ram etc... If one is available, it doesn't hurt to swap it out and confirm or rule out the PSU as the issue. A flaky PSU can still fail, whether the system is at idle or under load (Though I agree, it does tend to usually happen under load... Mind you, the OP *does* state that the issue was usually noticed while recording tv or ripping video...)
  2. +1 for power supply. I know you've heard it a bunch of times already, but that's what I'd swap out first. I know it can be a pain in the ass to start replacing parts till the problem is cured, but sometimes that's the only solution. If you don't want to buy a new one before you know, maybe harvest one from another system just to test... As far as the CPU is concerned, if there's no problem with the fan, it's possible the heatsink isn't seated properly.... Any chance you swapped out the processor or the heatsink and fan lately?
  3. FYI: Jomp in the other thread mentioned that his 80mm Noctua fans fit without modification.... They are excellent fans, but significantly pricier then these ones...
  4. Lucky! . TBH, I only tried the ones I linked to, and a couple of old no-names I had lying around the house, but I do know other members (Rajahal for example) have experienced similar issues with the rear fans... Those Noctua fans are fantastic (I'm using 120mm Noctuas on the fanwall in front of the drives), but a bit pricey. In my case, I was looking for some cheap quiet guys, which is how I came across the ones I'm using...
  5. Thought I'd mention, in case it wasn't clear by the description: These fans use a 4-pin power plug (Like a CPU fan). My motherboard cpu fan header is right beside the rear fans (and because you can stack them, they all plug into the same header. Not too worried about amp draw, seeing as all 3 fans are fairly wimpy), so it was a perfect fit, but if your motherboard is laid out differently, make sure there is an accessible 4-pin fan header available... The fan seems to have a 3-pin header version, but doesn't look as common, and I have no personal experience as to its noise level... (Though it has the same flimsy cage, so still easily modified) Link to manufacturer
  6. No Problem! I've had so much help on this board, I'm trying to give back what little I've learned re: cooling: You could be right. I never actually tested without them on, but I figured since they are fairly inexpensive, may as well keep fans in that location (especially as they really don't add anything to fan noise). I actually tried just one at first, but the OCD in me couldn't stand it . The other nice thing about them is they are PWM fans, and their plugs are designed to 'stack'. In other words, you can plug them into each other and plug them into the same PWM header on your mobo. Not a huge deal, but keeps wiring nice and clean. I personally don't use PWM, since they are already so quiet at full speed, but for those absolute hard core "I-suspend-my-hardrives-with-elastics-and-panty-hose" types, it might be an added feature .
  7. Well then! Even better! I also just read that OpenELEC appears to support trim for SSDs right out of the box! That's another reason to test it out! . ANyone know if that covers Garbage Collection as well?
  8. No worries! Keep in mind, I'm not speaking from experience with this board, so I'd do a bit more poking around before purchase, but it certainly looks promising!
  9. For those who are considering replacing the fans on the rear of the Norco case, Just thought I'd post a link to an easily purchased fan that actually fits, with a minor tweak. For whatever reason, in Norco's infinite wisdom, the stock fans are just a smidge narrower than standard, so replacing with 2 other 80mm fans can be challenging... These are the ones I used: The Arctic Cooling Arctic F8 Pro PWM 80mm Case Fan. All it took to make them fit is trim an inch or so of the plastic cage around one of the fans with a pair of wire snippers (Obviously on the side that comes in contact with the other fan). No skillz required! Because they don't have a rigid frame like most fans, it's extremely easy to do... If you can run with scissors, you can 'mod' this fan . Hope this helps others looking to quiet down their Norco! PS: These fans are quiet. Once I replaced them and the middle ones with 120mm fans, my server could sit beside the desk without being irritating (not that it does... but it could! ) DB [EDIT] Here's a link to the fan on NewEgg
  10. Looks like I just got myself a weekend project! Huzzah!
  11. Here's some good timing. NodNarb012 just posted an i3 board that seems to behave well with unraid and is reasonable priced. Newegg doesn't seem to want to let you buy it without a combo, but Amazon.ca is selling it for less, with free shipping... Here's the google shopping results for the US...
  12. If the asRock has a card reader, just pop in an old SD card (We all have those 1-2 GB cards floating around I'm sure ). Works a treat and saves you from mucking about with your working installation....
  13. Well, by "any board will fit", I meant that physically you are not restricted. As far as support for 24 drives, you'll definitely have to select a board that has 2 4x or higher PCI-e slots. so you can support 2 8-port SATA controllers (Something like the Supermicros MV8). I would also try to pick a board that has 6 on-board SATA ports, if possible, as that brings your total up to 22. The last 2 drives (assuming unRaid ever supports more then 22 drives), can be run using a 1x 2-port card that can be had for $8 off ebay (Check deals forum), or $15 from monoprice.com. You might want to check out some of Raj's "recommended builds", as he has put together a number of builds with parts that work well together. If you can't find any board in the recommended builds in your neck of the woods, you might want to go to NewEgg and use their fantastic advanced search option to try and identify a suitable board. You can select the criteria required (multiple PCIe slots, 6 sata ports, i3 support etc. etc...), and then from the list it outputs, see if you can get any of those boards where you live. NOTE: Before buying, I would check to see if anyone has had success with it (Or at the very least, the same chipset).... What do you plan on using this system for?
  14. This is exciting! I was just planning to install this on my test XBMC installation (Read SD card in my Revo) to see how it behaved. Glad to hear you are so positive about it. I tried XBMC Live as well for awhile, but found it much too restrictive. My only complaint with the version I am now currently using (Minimal Ubuntu install with XBMC), is that the channel mapping for 7.1 LPCM sounds is messed up. This is a common issue it seems with 7.1 sound and XBMC, and though people have posted solutions, none of them seem to work for me. It's an irritation more then anything, as fixing it just adds an extra few button pushes for every movie, and of course, it reduces the WAF slightly... Anywho, what is your experience with 7.1 sound and OpenELEC? Does it map channels correctly? Also, the auto-updating sounds cool, but are you limited to updates from the OpenELEC developers, or can compiled nightlys (when they come back) etc. be installed? Thanks!
  15. +1 for Hitachi 5K3000 drives! Also, you might want to consider buying 3TB drives instead of 2TB (The 5K3000 comes in both flavours).... Especially if space is an issue... You need to trick unRaid into thinking they are smaller for now (search the forum on how to do this), but once support for larger than 2.2TB drives comes to unRaid, you'll be 1TB ahead of the game... I have 4 5K3000 drives now in my array (Well, 2 *in* the array, and 2 as cold spares), and they run faster (slightly) and cooler then any of the rest (WD Greens and a couple of 7200RMP Seagates). Also, all 4 precleared without a hitch. Personally, I've lost confidence in the WD EARS drives. I'll be sticking with the 5K3000s until WD decides to EOL them (WD bought Hitachi Global Storage recently)... They go on sale pretty much every week for $69 for the 2TB guys, and the 3TB ones are dropping in price regularly. I bought mine for $129, and I believe I just saw them in Good Deals for $110...
  16. Pretty much any board will fit in that case, seeing as you have no space restrictions. If you're looking for economy though, why not go AM3? (Unless you already have the processor). The boards tend to be cheaper, and the CPUs are much cheaper. You can get a Sempron 140 for $35. The Sempron is more than enough for unRaid, but if you need more processing power because the server will be for multiple purpose, you can get a x2, x3, x4 for still less then the i3...
  17. I totally agree about the slide out convenience. For me, it was more about getting something I knew would work. If I was buying locally, I would have for sure gotten some sliding rails, but as I was ordering over the internet, I didn't want to risk it! If you're comfortable that the Newegg rails will work in your rack, I would get them too!
  18. Re: Rails: I ended up getting a rail kit by Gruber ($28.64 per kit). Shipping was $10 to Canada for 2 kits (one for my UPS). Oddly enough, I'm not seeing them for sale directly from Gruber anymore. It seems like they may have moved to an ebay store... (Or just out of stock). Not sure if it's as good a deal anymore, but I can say I'm quite happy with them. The only thing I should mention is that they are not the traditional "bolt the server into the rail kits" rails. The rail kits bolt into the rack, and the server rests on those rails (like it's sitting on a shelf). You can bolt the server at the front into the rack if you desire, but I did not bother as the server is heavy enough not to go anywhere... I think the biggest plus to this type of system is that it should work for just about any rack with square mounting holes. I got a bit nervous when I was looking around because it seems like every rail kit had some incompatibility with certain racks and/or server cases (The rails you linked to have some comments to that effect), so decided to go with the almost sure thing...
  19. Excellent point! When I moved the drives, I failed to mention that I also moved the (forward/reverse... dang it! Can never remember which it is! ) breakout cable along with them!
  20. That's the beauty of these cases! There's nothing stopping you from re-arranging them now and seeing if it makes a difference! Since I got my norco case, I've moved my drives' positions 2 or 3 times. I finally settled on starting in the bottom left corner with parity, then cache, then the rest of the data drives from left to right. Unconventional, I know (I started with the logical top left corner), but this allows me to leave the top unused backplanes unplugged. When I eventually need them, rather then jamming my hands in the tiny space to try and plug the molex power plugs in at the very bottom, I can just plug em in at the accessible top plugs... . (I use the unpowered empty bays to store my precleared spare/spares. Any time a drive dies, I can pull out the fresh tray, pop it in, and rebuild .) Just make sure to take a screen shot of your drive order in the management console before you start moving stuff, as unRaid is going to complain when you start moving drives around!!!
  21. +1! I just finished a re-build going from a 590 case to a 4224, and I purchased both MV8 cards I would need, even though I technically didn't need the second one right away. Better safe then sorry. Especially since we are limited to only a few 8 port controllers to choose from... re: fans: When I first got my 4224, I tried with stock fans. WAY too loud! I replaced the 2 rear fans with quieter ones, and it got noticeably less noisy. The 4 80mm fans that come stock are still too loud though, in my opinion. I tried undervolting them, which definitely reduced the db output, but in the end I ordered the 120mm fan wall and installed 3 silent 120mm fans instead. My 4224 has become virtually silent (for a server case )! And temps are still well in the safe zone. I haven't run a parity check yet with the new fans, but I just precleared 2 3TB drives, and a 2TB drive simultaneously, and none of the drives went over 35 degrees
  22. Hi Joe, Can I just confirm that by this statement you mean: Once unRaid supports 3TB drives, to 'reset' 3TB drives back to original size, the hdparm is all that is required. No need to rebuilt data on content or parity drives that are being re-sized?
  23. I've been running XBMC for a couple of years now, and I've never seen anything weird happen automagically. Any time it breaks, it's because I've messed around upgraded something . Are you sure it even can auto-update? Any time I've updated, it's been manually, and frankly, I haven't seen any updates since December (svn35648), as they have currently turned off compiled nightly builds... I would first point at your network, but since your HD content is not stuttering, my guesses would be: 1. Corrupted codec on the media player? 2. Is the SD content on a different drive then the HD content? If so, perhaps the drive is dying? Maybe put some SD Content on a usb key and play it directly (taking the newtwork/unraid box out of the equation)... [EDIT] Grammar
  24. Thanks Brit! I'll give this a whirl tonight. Can I just copy and paste the relevant code into my go script, or does it need to be modified to work with unRaid?
  25. So I upgraded last night to v5.0-beta6a to solve an issue I was having with communicating with my UPS (Thanks again for the fix, Joe L), and I noticed that Cool n Quiet appears to work now with my AMD x4 600e! In the short amount of time I've played with it though, it doesn't seem to automatically slow down the processor. Every time I check with: cat /proc/cpuinfo it shows it running at full speed. When I type modprobe powernow-k8 however, it slows down to 800mhz and doesn't seem to ever speed up again (From my limited amount of testing). So, the question: Do I need to put "modprobe powernow-k8" in my go script, and will it only slow down when not in use, or does it not need the modprobe, and will automatically do it on its own (And I just haven't waited long eough to see it happen...)? Thanks!