Tybio

Update on results: Before this change and adding 3x140mm fans at the back of the chamber my drives were spiking into the 50's with the default fans. After the change, I've had to turn the fans down to let the drives hit the sweet temp spot (high 30s). With these fans (and the Noctua 140mms in the back) I'm able to run them under 50% which means dead silent operation other than the sound of air moving through the case which I have to lean down and get within a few inches to clear. So I'm labeling this a success, I hope others find this information useful! Next on tap for me is likely swapping out my 8 year old xeon with a threadripper and setting up a gaming VM so I can retire my desktop and get back down to a single computer.

What motherboards are you guys using?

So we've been chatting in the Shogun thread over in the Compulsive forum, and a few people have asked about the mods I'm doing to my 5-in-3 cages, so I thought I'd document them in a thread that makes it easy to search. The goal is to have a quiet server, I'm not going to repost a build thread as I basically just built Shogun with my old rack-mount guts as the components. Other than the D600, the other main thing I had to sort out was the 5-in-3s. What I did was remove the cowl and fan that come with the drive and replace them with Noctua fans. So first the parts list: iStarUSA BPDN-DE350SS: https://www.amazon.com/iStarUSA-BPN-DE350SS-BLACK-3x5-25-5x3-5-Trayless/dp/B008RRZI14 Fans: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NEMG62M/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 PWM Hub: https://www.amazon.com/SilverStone-System-Cables-Black-CPF04/dp/B00VNW556I 2 packs of 10 machine bolts:https://www.lowes.com/pd/Hillman-10-Count-4-to-40-x-1-1-4-in-Round-Head-Zinc-Plated-Phillips-Slotted-Combination-Drive-Standard-SAE-Machine-Screw/3036648 Weather Striping: https://www.lowes.com/pd/Hillman-10-Count-4-to-40-x-1-1-4-in-Round-Head-Zinc-Plated-Phillips-Slotted-Combination-Drive-Standard-SAE-Machine-Screw/3036648 Process: 1> Remove Cowl 2> Unplug 3-pin fan connection 3> Toss both in the freaking trash, they are junk 4> Cut Weather stripping to form a "Box" around the fan stand-offs (see pictures) a> Make a small snip in the flat rubber between the two "D"s and pull them apart, you only want it one wide; This also makes it easy to cut matched pairs 5> Test the lengths before you remove the tape and expose the adhesive a> Don't worry about covering the 3-pin connection or the fan selector switch (mine overlap the latter slightly) as you will not ever use either again. 6> Expose adhesive and attach but don't press down hard, let the fan do that. 7> Seat replacement fan over stand-offs 8> Take out one screw and one screw, use the bolt as a spacer by spinning it up the length of the screw until it nexts against the head. 9> Screw fan into cage. a> Make sure before you tighten that the weather stripping has contact with the fan all the way around. b> Before you tighten, if it looks good you can press the stripping into place...the glue is nice and secure but I made sure they were well seated before tightening the fans. 10> .Position PWM hub in a nice space with easy access to the fans (I used the double sided tape it came with to mount out of the way 11> Connect fans to hub, hub to MB 12> Spend a few hours trying to sort out the auto-fan-control plugin to sort out what PWM header is the right one and get all the options set. I hope this was helpful! I've attached some pictures

The problem with direct writes (for /me/) is that it causes disks to spin up a lot. In the evening during the TV season I'll get 2-5+ episodes a night, spinning up the drives in a staggered way for each one is pointless when I can cache them and then move them at once. For the Movies share, it would make sense to do that as those tend to be larger and less frequent additions. ie: it is a balance, usage management combined with cache size :).

I haven't seen anyone running one that's posting, EPYC is only available from custom builders I believe, they don't sell the chip alone last I saw...but I haven't been paying much attention. I guess I'm wrong! Who knew :). Though it looks like they don't score as well as the TRs...not sure what's up with that.

Got it, thanks for clarifying! That's great information, I think what I'll do is use some Molex runs with SATA adapters, that way I can get it down to 5 drives per PSU run with one of the runs "splitting" to feed the two SSDs on the side. I'd think that's going to be about as good as I can possibly balance things.

Help me out, I don't think I'm following. If startup is 2A then how could one avoid going over 1.5A for SATA power even with dedicated PS-drive modular cables? (Not to mention that most modular PSUs only have 4/5 "accessory" connections for things like drives) I'm sure I'm not following and we are somewhere in the middle. Like for 15 drives use 3xSATA power split properly or somesuch. Remember, the cages have 2xSATA power each, so by definition the best I can do is 2.5 drives per SATA power.

There is a post here about ordering extras, the PSU is this one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01HXYRJYK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 so fully modular. Another user posted a source for cables, perhaps I'll just get 2 more as the Seasonic comes with 2xSATA Power and 4xSATAPower. I could home run all my devices with 4 of the 2x cables and never have to worry about power again.

The Seasonic has a 6-pin connector on the PS side :). I'm sure that the power supply can deliver the load, the reason I'm checking in is to make sure that the SATA cable can carry enough power for 3 5-in-3 cage from the power supply to them (2xSATA power connection for each cage).

Quick question all, I'm getting a seasonic 650W for my new build, but it only comes with 6xSATA power, I need to run 3 5-in-3's that each take 2 connectors and 2 SSDs outside of the 5-in-3s. In my old system I just had a sea of Molex splitters and ran off of two power supply lines...however I'm wondering if you can run 3x5-in-3 off one 6-pin connection to the power supply via an extender, or if I should split them between two (which would mean ordering another cable). This will power 15 drives, Mostly 8+TB IronWolfs at this point.

This is great info! Thanks a lot for posting, I've been working around a lack of 6-pins for a while...much better to get the right ones than do adapters and splitters!

True enough, mine are not exposed so I tend to just check every now and then. I believe you can check from the UI even, but anyway, the code is not hidden behind a support contract, anyone can download.

I don't think that is the case for the small business switches, at least I have no contract and haven't needed one for upgrades...but then, the software is so well baked that I also don't need to upgrade See for yourself, no login needed to download: https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/switches/sg300-10-10-port-gigabit-managed-switch/model.html#~tab-downloads

These come with a web-ui that isn't horrid. However they are so feature rich that the UI has a LOT of options, QoS, VLANS, SNMP, 802.1x, bonding...the list goes on and on...so they aren't "Simple" either

I really like the Cisco small office switches, they are expensive but have almost the same feature set as the enterprise switches, and they are /tanks/: https://www.amazon.com/Cisco-SG300-10-10-port-Gigabit-SRW2008-K9-NA/dp/B0041ORN6U/ref=sr_1_6?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1525268104&sr=1-6&keywords=cisco+switch

Very cool! Would love to hear how it goes and what hardware you are using :).

Did you put the 7920X in your server? Or is it running in a desktop to the side?

Indeed, so only during checks or rebuilds etc. I'm thinking my next server will have 15 drives in the array max, and the Cache/extra drives will go on the MB controller...so this solution would save me from getting a big LSI, or two of the smaller ones. Then I can dual link it and have no limitation in the chain (Not that it would really matter much!) Thanks for the info

So that would mean 110MB/s per channel on single link (2200/20). Is that the right way to look at it?

Are you dual linking it CHBMB? I've been thinking about going this route, but the larger Intel expander is too expensive, and I wasn't sure the smaller one would work single-linked...if it is dual linked then the number of ports becomes a sticking point (4 or 16 drives). I'm just not sure how the math works out for spinners and single vs dual

I'm thinking about doing the same thing, but I think I'll start slowly and build out my new chassis and disk caddies and wait for the point release to come out and have the community test it for me before I buy the MB/CPU/RAM.

Good choice, I got one shield to play with, loaded Kodi on it and never looked back. Within days all my TVs were converted to shields and I've not had to think about them a single moment since. Just work.

They have the PC-A79 with 3 fans up front, not sure they are on a door however.

That's sort of where I came down, I run into another issue that isn't storage/transcoding related with Kodi on my Shield, 4k HDR content is not properly translated for non-HDR sets so looks totally washed out.

Hey all, I'm trying to plan my transition to 4k content in advance, as when we struggled for years moving from SD -> 720p -> 1080p with transcoding and playback devices it was a /nightmare/. So I'd like to put some thought into this and start getting content now. The main issue that I see is needing multiple versions of each media file. As most CPUs struggle to transcode 4k down to 1080p, you need to have some "staged" versions. However I know Radarr can't deal with multiple qualities of the same movie, and Kodi would just add them both as unique items in the list. Plex is a bit better about it, but still requires the user to nudge it if none of them can direct play. I'm thinking about installing a second Radarr (I use linuxserver.ios docker, could install binhex) and give it a new mount point so I can at least start building up my 4k library. I'd likely have to do the same thing for Sonarr, but that would be a /nightmare/. I could setup the new instances to ONLY grab 4k content, which would allow merging things later. The real problem is on the player side, I often stream outside my house and right now I can't transocde one 4k HDR movie (remux) on my CPU: E3-1275 V2 @ 3.50GHz I'm struggling with how to balance ease of use with functionality while not just ignoring 4k as I do have a set and would like to start grabbing content that can use it. What are you all thinking? How are you solving this issue? Or am I alone in struggling here?