sirwired

PC Power and Cooling makes power supplies that could only be termed "legendary". They have been in the PSU business since approx. the dawn of time, and make the best PSUs out there. The drawback, of course, is the price. But a PCP&C supply does not have any BS wattage numbers, so you could be pretty sure that what you get is what is promised in the add. If your business ran on your unRAID server, a PCP&C supply is the only one I would use. (My unRAID is just a DVD server, so it just gets an Antec.) SirWired

I think your customer will really like unRAID's price and reliability. However, I would not sell it to them without a support contract with you. I say this because while I, as a computer geek, have had no major issues figuring out how things work (or posting here when they don't), things that might seem intuitive to you during, say, a drive expansion, are not going to be real pleasant for a user that doesn't really know how it works. SirWired

It looks like a login prompt to me, just with some logging messages appended to your display... Hit enter, and you should see the plain login prompt again. SirWired

The problem with some of these online calculators is that they are meant for typical PC's, or maybe gaming PC's. Our servers require pretty much nothing but gobs and gobs of 12V current that isn't limited to just supplying the mobo/CPU. That makes PSU selection a little trickier than an online calculator that just adds up the watts. The CPU's required to run most unRAID servers is barely even a rounding error compared with the 12V necessary to power the drives. It looked like the "Pro" version of Outervision one would work, but the NewEgg one is useless for our purposes, since all it spits back is a wattage number. SirWired

If it is currently set for RAID-5, you cannot perform any visibility tests until the card is set to JBOD. SirWired

Pull the board out of the system and find the biggest chip on it. It should say something like "Intel", "Realtek", "Marvell", or maybe just have a corporate logo on it. SirWired

How low of a power consumption do you have in mind? Some of the modern mainstream processors and motherboards don't suck down too terribly much, and are less expensive. SirWired

Of course, if you are using eight disks, you will already be using a fair-sized uATX or ATX case, so you might as well get yourself a cheap uATX mobo... SirWired

Given that unRAID is a NAS server, I don't see the limited bandwidth of a single 300MB/sec SATA port as being an issue, except during parity re-build. That said, I would strongly suspect that not all SATA adapter chips support these things... SirWired

Well, my new drive came in today. WD sent it 2nd day air on Monday (I requested it Saturday). There was no charge for that speedy shipping, which I thought was a nice touch. It fired up just great and actually works. It was a "recertified" drive, which I have mixed feelings about, but I suppose it is not a surprise since I got it from the factory instead of the retailer. I guess with the "recertification" it has probably been burned in, which I am guessing had not been done with the other one, since it died in about 30 seconds. SirWired

I just started up my unRAID with a FoxConn 945G7MC-KS2HV. Cost: $38 @ the 'Egg. 4 onboard SATA (ICH7) 1 PCIe x16 1 PCIe x4 2 PCI Onboard GigE (Realtek 8110SC. Seemed to work just fine w/ 4.2) It was the cheapest motherboard that would support something better than a Prescott, had on-board video, and did not have a SiS or VIA chipset. (I did not want to have to dig to figure out which SATA chip they used.) The only issue I ran into was that it did not POST out of the box. Turns out that my particular board did not have the latest BIOS, and would not recognize my Conroe-L Celeron 420. After some back-and-forth with FoxConn support (their support folks that respond to their web inquires were quick, I'll give them that) I got FoxConn to mail me a new BIOS chip (the same day, even) with the latest and greatest on it free of charge. Luckily it is socketed on this board. After that, it POST'd right up, and unRAID started without a hitch. (It turned out my drive was bad, so I couldn't actually use my new server, but that wasn't the mobo's fault.) SirWired

Grrr... After getting a motherboard that wouldn't POST without a BIOS upgrade (which had to be physically mailed to me on a chip from FoxConn), now my WD SE 16 750GB doesn't work either. I tried to bring it up in UnRAID, it got about 15 seconds through a format, and then got stuck in "Stopped: Valid Configuration" After rebooting, messing w/ BIOS settings, un-configuring and re-configuring, re-installing unRAID on the key, I still got the same message. Syslog just showed that it couldn't read some boot file off the drive. The drive was recognized just fine... model no, s/n, temp, capacity. On a lark, I burned a WD drive diagnostics CD, and it fails the most basic SMART tests... Back to WD it goes. Luckily, unlike NewEgg, WD cross-ships... BTW, limetech, the error handling could use some work... "Stopped: Valid Configuration" is not a particularly useful error message, and the drive showed up as "Green" the whole time, even though it did not, in fact, actually function. SirWired

One thing to consider is that the CoolerMaster Stacker is meant to be a case that holds a huge pile of drives. Not so much the P182, which I think is geared more towards the gamer crowd. This means that there will be a lot of airflow dedicated to cooling the CPU and PCI-e slots. But in your case, the CPU will barely be drawing anything, and you won't be having three power-sucking video cards in your slots. Instead, all of your heat will be coming from the front, and your hard disks will be putting out a lot more heat than any optical drive. SirWired

Well, I don't mean to be pedantic here, but I'd say either your SATA controller is defective or it is incompatible with your drive. Is it so generic that you cannot get tech support for it? SirWired

Well, color me surprised! I actually got Foxconn to send me out a new BIOS chip! They claim it will be going out USPS today. I opened the support call yesterday evening, had my first response before bed, and no more than a half-hour lag today between my feedback and their response! I am quite impressed. Some of the back-and-forth responses were a little unimpressive... but once we got out of the stage consisting of: "We're just going to paste a standard template in the e-mail form and hope you go away", things went much better. I think they tried to intimidate me when they stated I needed a PLCC puller and agree that if I screwed up the board, I wouldn't call it their fault. Heh. A PLCC puller is about the easiest thing they could have asked for... even if the chip was soldered down, that wouldn't have been a problem either; the lab I work in has a full solder re-work station. Unfortunately, everybody I know either doesn't have an Intel at all (much less an LGA 775), doesn't know, has a laptop, or their box is several years old. What an interesting group of friends and colleagues I have... Borrowing a $70k PCI-express bus analyzer would have been trivial, but I can't scrape up a $30 Cedar Mill or Prescott from some low-end PC... (we all have laptops as work machines) If the BIOS update doesn't work, back to NewEgg it goes, and I guess I'll spend more than $38 this time. SirWired

Grr... Foiled again! Well, I received all my new toys, plugged everything up, and then... no POST. I write Foxconn, and their reply is that my processor is so new, I may need a BIOS update to get it to POST. Their helpful suggestion is to "use a spare, older, processor" to boot it up, flash the BIOS, and then use my shiny new Conroe-L 420. (a.k.a. Celeron 420). If I owned a spare processor, it is already what I would be using here, since I am such a tightwad... To top it off, I work for a large computer company you have all heard of, but when I go trolling the lab for spare parts, the lab tech informs me that since it is a server lab, he doesn't have any Socket 775's lying around... Grr... literally millions of dollars of parts lying around in one room, and I can't find a stupid outdated POS LGA 775 Prescott lying around for me to borrow... *sigh* RMA-ing for a replacement won't help, since the 'Egg will just send me another board w/ an outdated BIOS. Right now, I have sent Foxconn a request for an alternate solution, like mailing me a new BIOS chip, which is oh-so-helpfully socketed on this particular board. If I have no luck there, I guess I will just have to return it and buy a better board... And I was so proud of my $180 server (disk not included) SirWired

Well, I finally pulled the trigger... My final order was a little different, due to some last-minute promotions. The case got changed to an Antec Solo, which I expect to be much quieter and definitely has better drive ventilation than the Rosewill, without having to pull out the Dremel. (It was on sale with a rebate + free shipping... couldn't turn it down.) The PSU got changed to a Antec NeoHE 380. Again, this was done primarily for noise and price reasons. The specs of the PSU's are slightly different, with the Antec having three rails, all of which max out at 15A each. To me, it appears that this will result in me being able to "steal" more power from the CPU/mobo, which doesn't need it. (A single-core Conroe-L and 1GB of memory, plus GigE and SATA just isn't going to pull that much.) This unit is also more efficient than the Sparkle. Total came to $330, including shipping, after rebates, w/ one 750GB drive. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. I think I can run my max six-drive goal in this case without too much trouble, and I don't anticipate too many issues with cooling. SirWired

Case: Rosewill R6A34-BK 0.8mm SECC 120mm Fan ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail This case is based on an older Antec design, and is also shared by HEC and a Thermaltake design. It has 4 external 5.25 bays, and 5 internal 3.5 bays. The 3.5 bays have a fan mount in front of them. Mobo: Foxconn 945G7MC-KS2HV LGA 775 Intel 945G Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail This is about the cheapest 945 Chipset mobo I could find on the 'Egg. I am concerned about the Realtek 8110 LAN chip. Have those issues been fixed yet? PSU: SPARKLE ATX-350PN-B204 ATX 12V 2.0 350W Power Supply - OEM This PSU has 16A on the 12V2 rail... will this be enough for six (or more) drives? I know some folks have said Tom recommends "the 350W Sparkle", but which one? This one seemed to be pretty nice. CPU: Celeron 420 - This seems to be creeping up in price; I wonder why? Mem: A Generic 512x2 kit... HDD: Just a single 750GB WD SATA So, what do you folks think? SirWired

If the case I selected won't work too well, can somebody suggest a specific, inexpensive, case and PSU that will? (Unfortunately, there is no Fry's within a reasonable distance to me...) I would like the case to have at least 3 5.25 bays so I can use a 4-in-3 cooled drive module, and a 120mm fan parked in front of the internal 3.5 bays. For this much drive power, I reckon a single-rail 12V supply seems to be necessary, but I honestly don't know the wattage, or which manufacturers can be trusted to provide a useful one. SirWired

Well, this is what I have so far: ARK 1012 Black/ Silver Steel MicroATX Mid Tower Computer Case 350W Power Supply - $31 Foxconn 945G7MC-KS2HV LGA 775 Intel 945G Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - $38 Intel Celeron 420 Conroe-L 1.6GHz LGA 775 35W Single-Core Processor Model BX80557420 - $44 2x512 generic memory - $23 2xSATA power adapters - $6 1 x WD 750 - $150 Total : About $300 + $30 shipping from the Egg. And this certainly is a bargain-bin system, but I have a few questions about it: 1) Will that PS even come close to handling a full 6-drive load? (1 internal 3.5 + 2 ext + a 4-in-3 enclosure) 2) Will that sound like a jet engine if it doesn't burn out? 3) Instead of buying a new, current, CPU + mobo, is there a reputable source online of discontinued CPU + mobo + mem combo that will work? I don't need a system nearly this fast just to shovel DVD's over the wire, do I? Of course, I would likely need to add a SATA card to some old board, bumping the cost back up. 4) I keep reading about Realtek NIC chips not working too hot... that been fixed yet? SirWired

Right now, I am simply overwhelmed by the amount of hardware available, and I really don't know where to begin. This box will be used solely as a server for ripped DVD files to my Media Streamer. As such, I don't need much bandwidth at all... almost anything that boots should do just fine. I don't have an extremely large DVD library (maybe 150 or so), so a 12-bay case is probably overkill at this time. To start, I was probably going to go with three 750GB SATA drives, with a general idea of eventually expanding to six drives total. However, I am fairly price sensitive, as the final setup MUST pass the Wife Acceptance Factor. It would also be nice if the server was quiet enough to stash behind the TV (14' away from the couch where I watch TV from.) But I understand if this is not possible. If it isn't silent, it at least needs to be fairly quiet, so the noise is not bothersome in whatever room it eventually gets stashed in. What is the cheapest build I can get away with? For CPU, I was going to use the Celeron 420, coupled with the cheapest 512MB or 1GB I can find. For drives, the cheap, and ubiquitous, WD SATA 750's. Beyond that, I really don't know what to do for the mobo, case, and PS. (For instance, the popular CoolerMaster stacker is not going to work at a PS-less $120. Nor is the P5E-VM DO mobo at $115.) Lastly, what happens if I start with only a single drive? Will it then just run without RAID protection? If I do this, I can roll the server purchase in with the media streamer. When I need more capacity, I would then purchase a couple more drives. SirWired