Whaler_99

Ahh yes, I think we all look at our "babies" with a bit of a twinkle in the eye... course mine has the god aweful look of four different cages... dare to be different I say. Shawn

I was thinking the same thing - the 60mm just seem very weird when you can go a bit bigger, get better air flow and be much quieter. I can only think there is some techinical issue with using the 60mm as some of their other cages use 92mm... Shawn

Great review PeterB - thx very much for that. I wonder how loud the system would be with all three of the fan assemblies on the threee cages intact and running. Also, replacing them with some quieter ones may be a pain - 60mm is a non standard size. Can you detail the fan connector for me, in case someone was interested in replacing them? Thanks! Also, maybe i missed it, with the cages installed and under pressure, how smoothly did all the drives slid in and out of the unit? Shawn

Thanks for the info Ramon - good stuff! Shawn

Well sure, I could JAM them in. But honestly, on mine, there was no way it would work. Have you looked at the pics I posted? Do you have the same backplane as I do? I know the Corsair plugs peice is pretty large, maybe thats the difference, Corsair adds more plastic or something to make the grip easier... Shawn

CREATED WIKI I created a Wiki article to allow us to pull everthing together. Rather then a new user sifting through pages of posts to find various reviews, still post them here as well, but also be sure to add them to the new Wiki section I created. That way we can centralize them. To add you review, go Here, click the link down under the heading "Benchmarks..." and contribute!! If you have already added something, please be sure to update the Wiki with your info. We can always come back here to comment on things. Looking forward to yours Peter! Shawn

Can you get the temp on the drive during your next parity check please? Be interesting to see how this may affect it. I run the stock fan with the one empty slot closed. The 4 drives in it right now are at about 30 C and during a parity check bump up to maybe 32C. Shawn

Got a good chuckle out of that last part. In my Antec 1200 I did get my SM cage to fit between the tabs I had left, like you said, every third set. But, it was REALLY tight getting it to fit. Shawn

What do you mean by this? See This. Essentially a Sata I has a throuput of about 150MB/s. Some of the fastest mechanical drives can saturate that bus speed, and it is known the newest SSD drives can pretty much saturate a Sata II bus as well. But, in unRaid, when writting to the drive with parity, even using a 7200 RPM drive, you get about 30MB/s or slower write speeds. Writting to a cache disk can get you 60 or so MB/s. So, in unRaid, a SATA I drive has enough speed/bandwidth.... to bad they didn't make 2TB Sata I. There has been other threads where the discussion came down to something like my SATAII drive is only running at SATAI speeds... but for unRaid doesn't really matter. This may make more of a difference say in a large RAID0 hardware based array, or for some application/usage that can really push the drive. If you check in This forum on drives and controllers, lots of good info... Shawn

So, are you stating that it does work, period, or that it does work, but not fast, at 6Gbp/s speeds, or something else. Course this thread isn't so much about benchmarking the drives, other threads for that. How are you measuring "speeds"? Shawn

I don't "believe" so - someone else can correct me if I am wrong. The backplane is typically just for routing power and connection signals. There should be no reason why a Sata 6Gbp/s drive shouldn't work or a 3TB drive, as long as the controller itself supports it. Now, of course the SATA III is backwards compatible to SATA II, so not really a bit issue there. With unRaid, a Sata I port is more then fast enough. I just did a quick check on the Norco product site for the SS-500 and it does list 6Gbp/s support. Checking google, there does seem to be mention of people using 3TB drives as well. Shawn

Well, one thing that comes to mind, you are going to notice the noise. If you are going from an almost silent setup to running a 5x3 cage, you are going to hear it. Even my Colermaster 4x3 units which have a VERY quiet fan, are still noticable when everything else is quite. Running an 80mm fan to cool potentially 5 drives, you need to crank some RPM and airflow out of it, which means some dB as well. Try the under volt though - might be a good comprise between a bit quieter system and a bit warmer drive. But, I fear, you are destined to hear fans, Personally, I will trade a bit more noise for cooler drives, especially as you load the cage up. One reason a lot of us with large builds hide them away in closets, crawl spaces, garages, etc... Shawn

There have been some discussions on the whole trayless solution in various threads... How stable the drives might be though and cooling concerns are two of the biggest unknowns. If you pick one up, feel free to add your findings to the thread. Shawn

Thanks for the note and glad it could help you decide. Shawn

Seems like regardless on the model, some of us have gotten good fans and some have gotten loud ones. The SuperMicro cages usually have a rep of a LOUD fan, yet mine is probably the second quietest of the lot. Course, I am running an Antec 1200 with 4 cages, so that is a BIT subjective. And yes, I did not like the power inputs on the Icy Dock either. Shawn

Test results are up on the Norco. Manage to beat the iStar cage by a degreee or two. Overall seemed to be fewer temp reading going up to 32C - more stable management around 30-31C. Very good results. Shawn

Correct Shawn

A fan controller might work, but seems a bit overkill to quiet a fan. As the fan is completly mounted "within" the back of the case, routing the cable out may be an issue as well. You can replace it with a 80mm, 4pin fan - no recommendations directly. But if you search, you want to look at a fan that has decent CFM versus RPM to make it quiter. You may have a bad fan also - mine unit is not overly loud. Shawn

Added results of the first set of tests to the 1st post. Now to move a bunch of drives around. Better have that screen shot handy. Shawn

According to the website, the DF-85 can hold 9 drives internally and has 3x5.25 bays, so you could add a single 3x5 Cage, for a total of 14 drives. I looked at this case as well, but drew away from it because I could never figure out if you could actually remove one of those 3 drive/fan assembly units and add in a 3x5 cage. I didn't think so, so went with the Antec 900 instead. The front fans have speed control, so you can turn them right down but still have some good cooling otherwise. Shawn

The iStar came in today. Loaded 'er up with hard drives, let them "aclimate" and now running 5 preclears to see what temps we get. I have a 1TB, 3 x 500GB and 1 x 320GB - all Seagate, 7200 RMP drives... Shawn

The Temps! Let me preface this by saying, all fans are stock, not modified in anyway. These are in an Antec 1200, the two rear 120's running on low, the top Big Boy, 200 running on low. All my drive are 7200 RPM except for parity drive, which is 5900. Drives are Seagate, Samsung and Hitachi. SuperMicro - 4 drives installed, 1 being parity Starting Temps (lowest of all drives) - 25 Celcius Highest Temp (Of any one drive) - 28 Celcius (this was the parity drive) IcyDock - 3 drives installed Starting Temps (lowest of all drives) - 28 Celcius Highest Temp (Of any one drive) - 35 Celcius Norco, 3 drives installed Starting Temps (lowest of all drives) - 26 Celcius Highest Temp (Of any one drive) - 38 Celcius There is the very unscientific results.... One drive in the Norco seemed to run hoter then the rest for some reason. Still waiting for iStar RMA return for some real testing via preclear scripts... Shawn

Just to update... I just ran some parity checks to correct more then 224 million, yes million, parity errors I had. This in turn provided for some good temperature readings on three of the cages, iStar one still not back from RMA. I took screen shots throughout and will post tomorrow, or I guess later today (or crap, days blending into each other....) so you guys will have some indicator of where the temps were. I still will run the 5x7200's preclear test once the iStar arrives on all four cages. Initial findings.... the SuperMicro ran the coolest... and in some cases, by as much as 10 celcius less. And that was the parity drive. But, some difinite numbers later tomor... today... OCD... Shawn

Yes, I believe there is... but more to the point of just standing there and looking at the unit. If I sat down to bring up the GUI to flash activity lights, I could easily look at my notes as well and know. Was more just an "aside" that I had noticed about the cages... Shawn

Some updates.... With replacing a couple of disks and preclearing others, I have been moving disks around. As I was standing there yesterday staring at my tower, as I am found to do on occasion (don't you?), I noticed something. What drive trays have disks in them? Without refering to my notes? Hmmm... well, they all have power lights to show powered on disks, except the SuperMicro. Ahh... not a big deal, but right then, was somethign I noticed as a bit of a "bug" with the SuperMicro units. Also, Newegg shipping me back the replacement on my iStarUSA cage, should be here next week. As this will be an "empty" cage, I can start testing running 5 x 7200 drives in preclear to get some temp readings. Question - what command should I run? Just telnet in 5 times and run 5 standard preclears? Or is there a specific command you guys would like me to run? Cheers, Shawn