Heffa

Thanks for the fan control! I can now run a parity check without worrying about temperatures.

ASRock - E3C226D2I

Any update on being able to control fans from the plugin?

My old server was five years old and started getting hard drive warnings, rather than replace the drives I figured I'd go for a completely new build. I wanted to keep the new build small as the old one fits in my IKEA unit under the TV. After looking at a couple of cases I went for the Silverstone DS380 as I liked the hot swap bays and it would fit. I was aware of a design flaw inherent in the case but there is an easy work around as you'll see below. I've written this up all in one go so the issues I mention in the updates have already been resolved. Here are the specs: OS at time of building: 6.3.1 CPU: Intel® Xeon® CPU E3-1231 v3 @ 3.40GHz Motherboard: ASRock - E3C226D2I RAM: 16GB (2x 8GB) Crucial Server Memory, DDR3 PC3-12800 ECC Case: Silverstone DS380 Drive Cage(s): Built in 8 bay hot swap Power Supply: 300W Silverstone ST30SF Strider SFX SATA Expansion Card(s): None Cables: 15cm Akasa Super Slim SATA III, Akasa PWM fan splitter Fans: 120mm Noctua NF-S12B REDUX PWM x 3 Parity Drive: 4TB WD Red Data Drives: 4TB WD Red x 3 Cache Drive: 120GB Kingston SSD Now V300 Total Drive Capacity: 8 x 3.5", 4 x 2.5" Primary Use: Plex Media Server, backup storage Likes: Very quiet, cool, low power usage Dislikes: Cooling design flaw Add Ons Used: Plex Media Server, pre_clear plugin, unassigned devices Future Plans: More dockers, Time Machine backup Boot (peak): 98W Idle (avg): 30W Active (avg): 47W Light use (avg): 35W Update 1 The build went smoothly, although the case is tricky to work with. It's very small and there is no room for any cable management. If you ever use the same case be sure to read the manual as it well tell you the best order to install components in. I'm using a SanDisk Fit USB plugged into a front usb port, its small enough to allow the door to be closed. I ordered short (15cm) thin SATA cables hoping to cut down on excessive cables however they were just a bit too short and I was only able to connect 4/6 ports, 25cm cables would have been perfect. The PSU is great as the fan only spins up when its under heavy load which so far is never. The motherboard does not have enough fan headers for all three fans but the hard drive caddy has two headers on it. Unfortunately this means the fans run at full speed all the time. The USB3 cables from the front header are annoyingly inflexible and long, curling them up was the best way to deal with them. The Design Flaw There is a known problem with this case; due to the design of the hard drive bay the to fans adjacent two it provide insufficient cooling. Idle temperatures for drives hover around 32C and during parity check one reached 46C! The issue is that there is little space for air to flow through to the drives (you can see the slots in the third picture), this only gets worse the more drives you use. To fix this you need to prevent the air from flowing anywhere but through the slots. I cut a piece of cardboard and slotted it between the two fans and the metal that raises the motherboard. Doing this results in over a 10C drop in temperatures. Checking parity again maxed out at 33C, a huge improvement. Update 2 Ordered three Noctua fans, another hard drive, and a fan splitter. Now all the fans are hooked up to the motherboard the case is almost inaudible.