[Pimp Your Rig]

Thought it was about time I got in on the Quick Sync thing so made a new server to replace my trusty old Ryzen 5 2600 set up (in a Be Quiet Silent Base 800 case).

 

Went with the following (purely used for Plex and Roonserver)....

Antec P101 Silent case
Gigabyte Z590 D motherboard
Intel Core i5-11500 CPU
Be Quiet Shadow Rock 3 CPU cooler
Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200Mhz 4x 8GB
Corsair P3 m.2 PCIE Gen. 4 NVME 1TBx1

Be Quiet System Power 9 600w semi-modular PSU

Seagate Exos 16TB x5
WD 14TB shucker x1
unRAID OS Plus

 

Managed to follow the guides for setting up the iGPU to hardware transcode. It seemed daunting but really was a breeze.

Thanks to the people who shared the knowledge.

 

I'll harvest the hard drives from the old server and hopefully sell it on locally as a "just add storage and OS USB". Not sure what interest there will be in deepest Devon but we'll see. I already have

a 15 bay front loader for back ups so can't justify keeping it.

 

 

 

 

[[FS] UK - Icy Dock ToughArmor MB994SP-4SB & StarTech 25SAT35HDD]

Icy Dock ToughArmor MB994SP-4SB still available ?.

[Tower cases with 5.25" drive bays top to bottom...]

Sharkoon T9 case picked up on ebay for less than £30 a couple of years ago. Only recently got around to finishing it off with the Icydock 5in3. In hindsight I wish I'd used these in the first place as they don't stick out anywhere near as far as the Supermicros.

Looks a bit of a mutt but with bigger hard drives it has currently replaced 3 smaller builds (Fractal Design Array R2 mini, Node 304 and Arc Mini R2) and will also replace a Fractal Designs R3 backups build soon.

After years of fiddly drive swaps in cramped cases I'm in front loading heaven.

[SuperMicro CSE-M35T 5in3 Hotswap Cages]

On 4/4/2019 at 1:55 PM, ramblinreck47 said:

I’m seriously thinking about doing exactly what you did later this year. It looks like the most space efficient and mass density setup I have found that’s not in a rack. I’m probably going to buy two of the 2.5” adapter trays (MCP-220-00080-0B) which will give me 2 x 2.5” drives and 13 x 3.5” drives where all are hotswappable. I have a couple of points/questions though.

 

1. The link you provided is old and that seller is no longer selling them. I did find a new seller though: https://www.ebay.com/itm/SUPERMICRO-CSE-M35T-1B-5-x-3-5-Hot-Swap-SAS-SATA-Drive-Enclosure-with-Screws/391459095707?epid=867385290&hash=item5b24c7c49b:g:jRAAAOSwxehXOgXt

 

2. What size motherboard did you use in your setup? Looking at the dimensions for a standard ATX motherboard, the Antec 900, and the CSE-M35T-1B, it looks like there will be some overlap with the motherboard and the fan of the hard drive cage. Did the fan interfere with your 24 pin connector or ram since they are placed on the right side of the motherboard? If interference is a possible problem, I might have go with a mATX board with the ram on top of the motherboard.

 

3. How is cable management for the Antec 900 behind the motherboard? Is there enough space for the SATA cables and molecules power connectors?

 

4. I’m planning on buying a 550W or 650W Seasonic Prime Ultra Gold PSU which comes with 4 possible SATA/Molex power cable ports. Should I just use 3 of the ports to give three independent Molex connections to the hard drive cages? I hope that makes sense.

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated! 

I made the mistake of getting a standard ATX board to use a couple of these cages in a Sharkoon T9 case. As you say, there is an overlap of the cage fans over the end of the motherboard. Made sure I got a much narrower one but it had to be mATX which is no problem (MSI A32M-A PRO Max). It fits and that was all that I was concerned about.

Looking for a third one now. They work great and are super quiet with replacement Nanoxia fans. Never tried them with the original ones.