talmania

I think the important thing to remember when considering any case is how important is it to you to obtain the highest level of quietness possible (realizing up front that it will cost you!)? These higher end cases mentioned above have the initial "foundation" of serving as an ultraquiet case. For example if quietness is important to you I wouldn't consider anything that didn't have rubber grommets for the drive mounts to absorb vibration etc. 120mm fan mounts are an absolute must. It all depends on how important "quiet" is to you and what your definition of it is. I've built dozens and dozens of systems over the past 2 decades and I've found there's a sweet spot (for me) of price and quietness. I've gone nearly the whole gamit and found that a solid case (like the Sonata or Antec P180/P182) and some quality fans and quiet PS are typically enough for my liking without resorting to fan controllers, water or other alternatives.

I've had this board running for a whole week now ( ) and absolutely love it so far. The IPMI is invaluable as the norco is just sitting in the garage on a shelf with my patch panel etc. So glad I grabbed this board!

In the past few days I've been researching various small form factor PC's to handle 1080p I'm looking squarely at the Zotac and am super pissed I missed out on that newegg shell shocker. Anything else I should consider other than the Zbox or Revo? I don't really want to build my own but I guess I could...

I just got mine a week ago and the SAS connectors are all on the right side (when looking from the back) so I guess there's still old stock floating out there. I was hoping the fan plate install would be a much more smooth process than you've described Matt. Thank you very much for the pictures and explanation.

Oh it's definitely a moot point in the end. The reverse breakout cables don't need to be fully populated but as each 4 drive backplane grouping comes off a single 8087 connection only one backplane can connect to the onboard SATA and the others have to go to a add-in card.

Hmmm....ok so I have an older 1.8 (or maybe 1.6) mac mini that I NEVER use. Would that be a good candidate?

You could start with just one drive and have no parity. You assign the drives as you go and absolutely you can start out with only 2. Assign one the first data drive and the second (and larger drive) as the parity and you're up and running!

I've read some very good things about the Fractal Designs R2 case which has been recently updated with the R3. For that 6-8 drive range you might consider it for its mac-like design and quiet performance (or at least the complete flexibility to become near silent). I believe that AFP support is coming in version 5 so if you don't have a problem using SMB until then you can dive right in. Look to Raj's recommended build thread here for more info: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7998.0

I can't believe this didn't occur to me earlier but with the Norco chassis you are essentially reduced to using motherboard ports in multiples of 4. In my case the 6 ports on my X8SIL-F can't be used because as far as I know there are only reverse breakout cables (of 4) and 8087 to 8087 cables. What are others doing in this case? Converting to esata or using the internal 2.5" drive bays? I had always assumed 30 drives (3 SASLP-MV8 cards + 6 onboard) but had mistakenly assumed that all 6 could be used by the hot swap ports. I'm embarrased and should have my geek card revoked!

Welcome! I would definitely look at Raj's thread titled "Raj's Prototype Designs". Here's the link: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=7998.0 Alot depends on what you want to spend but having just built a 20 drive server I chose the following components: Norco 4220 chassis Supermicro X8SIL-F Pentium G6950 processor 2GB Crucial Corsair 750W PS Went with the motherboard for IPMI/Remote management. Intel NICs, supermicro stability--its a great motherboard!

Thx OP! Ordered 2---with these prices my server is expanding rapidly!

I am not sure how to read these results. Do you think I could possibly have problems or do you think it is good? Just finished my preclear run as well and mine look extremely simlar to yours. Not sure what it means but it reports the same items.

I just want to say that in my 15 years of work in IT I've never seen such awesome cabling jobs as I see in this thread. Unreal and simply works of art!!

Woah...I just assumed that because it was "windows" that XBMC could handle ISO/BDMV structure. Sounds like I should do a bit more research beforehand! I don't necessarily need menus etc but am well into the process of ripping my sizeable BD collection to ISO. Would prefer not having to take another step to MKV but bonus would be space savings....and now you can see my waffling.

I've chosen my media storage server for the foreseeable future (Unraid of course) but have been waffling lately when considering which route to go with for my media players. Currently have a WDTV Live and a old Popcorn Hour A110. What is most important to me is ease of use and user interface (for the wife and kids). My number one priority is format/container support and the ability to play BD menus. I've been strongly leaning towards the upcoming Dune media player (yet to be released) running Zapitti but lately have been considering something like the zbox running xbmc or some other variant. I get the whole appliance vs PC debate and am technical but have to this point leaned towards appliance based on the usability for others in my household. How is the XBMC interface for ease of use? Once running is it rock solid? Which route did you choose and why did you make that choice?

Excellent work--thank you! Helped me figure out what some of the appropriate commands should be.

I currently have a 6TB WHS server and a 6TB ReadyNas NV+ server and am finalizing a Unraid Pro build which will consume the data of the other two (mostly media). The biggest factors for me were 1) HUGE scaling cost of WHS (hated the idea that my initial 20TB build would have 20TB of completely wasted space). The larger you get the smaller the scaling cost with Unraid. 2) The low hardware requirements--I ended up building new since I wanted a big chassis and IPMI but I have lots of leftover parts and any one of them would have worked perfectly for unraid. 3) Already mentioned but any drive loss beyond the initial first means only the data on that drive is lost. This coming from a senior windows admin too.

For example not noticing the $10.00 off coupon on LimeTech's homepage before placing an order. It's going to a great product so I don't mind. Can't wait till I get the reg file and can get things up and running! Is clicking refresh on my inbox going to speed up the mail delivery any? So excited!!

Thanks Raj for the link to that thread---VERY useful and didn't find it before with a search. I ended up buying a G6950 as my local Fry's had it for 90 and the 530 was at 129. I couldn't be patient and just buy online--had to have it now! I learned my lesson the hard way because the RAM I was planning on using for the motherboard was a 4GB ECC Registered DIMM I had lying around and ECC-reg wont work with a non-xeon cpu. Ended up finding a thread here which linked a crucial module and ordered that one. I'm anxiously awaiting its arrival today! I don't see myself moving all 10GB at once but rather slowly migrating to unraid so I think the cache drive will be helpful. At least it'll give me an excuse to test it out. My thanks to all for the feedback!!!

Same here...I just barely put my X8SIL-F in my 4220 last night and just ordered one because. Guess I'm already working towards my second unraid box!

Finalizing my plans for my first UNRAID storage server (almost exclusively for media) based on the following parts: Norco 4220 Supermicro X8SIL-F Processor (undecided i3-530 or x3430--yes total overkill but potentially repurpose in future) Corsair 750 PS (or perhaps an older 500w Seasonic depending on what the 12v says) WD Green 2TB for parity A whole box full of dozens of drives ranging from 250GB to 1.5TB. My big question at this point is should I be considering a cache drive? What speeds should I expect with vs without? I even have a spare 300GB Raptor I could spare to be a cache drive though I doubt it would make a huge difference based on my understanding (which may be totally wrong btw! ). I'm planning on migrating ~10TB of data from my current Readynas and WHS servers to the new Unraid box. Thanks for any and all advice!

Grabbed one as well--thanks OP!!!

I have not tried BD ISO. i am waiting for my drive from newegg if i get it before someone confirm i will let you know Thanks!!

Do they play BD ISO?

My thanks to the OP for the post--just placed an order for the 4220 and the soon to be released (hopefully!) fan bracket. I'll just buy a second unit in a few years when this one fills up!