Alecthar

I thought the same for PSU construction that a standard spec is used to build and should just "work" and Seasonic is supposed to be the undisputed "best". I would be inclined to think it was the MB if I had not tried a corsair from buddies willing to help trouble shoot and they worked as expected. I still have one in my rig as my friend is waiting for a replacement video card. Seasonic has contacted me and stated they are sending me an X760 today as a replacement. Hopefully that will be the end of it. Calling Seasonic the undisputed best would be overselling it, probably vastly so, but they do make a lot of very nice supplies. What kind of Corsair unit did you test? Many Corsair units are internally identical to certain Seasonic counterparts, so it's more than a little likely that you used a Seasonic-built supply to troubleshoot. Given that both of your Seasonic supplies exhibited different undesirable behaviors, it's certainly possible you got a pair of bum supplies.

I've honestly never heard of an "incompatible PSU". All PSUs use standardized sets of pins and cabling. The internals may differ, but one quality PSU should behave much the same as any other, as far as startup procedure goes. The motherboard actually handles the signaling of the PSU to send power. If the system is actually booting up rather than just fans spinning up and the like, with no system activity occuring, then the likely culprit is your motherboard. Sending power to the motherboard wouldn't cause the system to start up, even if the PSU were "sticking" on and still sending power, the most it would do is power components that don't rely on information from the motherboard to startup (fans, water cooling equipment or the like). My assumption is that there's a power-related function on the SuperMicro boards that's designed to signal server PSUs, but for some reason is triggering something unique in the X series PSUs that causes the issues, maybe the PWM circuitry that manages the fan (it's different from most other PSUs). Seasonic is a sterling PSU maker, though. You shouldn't let this issue dissuade you from purchasing their supplies in the future. This is literally the only time I've ever heard of something like this.

Assuming you're running all green drives, that's probably more power than you need, but there's nothing wrong with it.

I would say the Xeon is probably overkill. The board looks like it claims compatibility with the consumer-class i3 processors, and the i3-2100 has plenty of horsepower, more than the i3-540, which I understand was a favorite for more CPU-intensive unRAID addon implementations.

I live in Germany, and I'll gladly pick it up and pay 30 Euros for it. As far as I know, basically every case on the market has the 5.25' guide tabs that you're trying to avoid. The good news from your perspective is that you don't have to grind, cut or file the tabs if you can get access to a nice deep C-clamp. My understanding is that it's Raj's preferred method of tab control, and it has the advantage of not involving power tools or blades of any kind. As the son of an avid carpentry hobbyist, I can tell you that the worst damage you can do to yourself by accident with a C-clamp is dropping it on your foot.

Yes, yes I am. It's been at least a few months since I roadtripped over to the Low Countries, I can pick it up in person. I also really like the PC-50, Rembro, it's a shame it's so expensive. Honestly, I'd prefer a Lian Li 9-5.25' bay case without the plastic bezels, though. Just gimme some of that brushed black aluminum on the outside, naked and shiny on the inside and call it a day. I'd probably spend some money on that, just to have an unRAID server with style. Also, has anyone seen this one on Newegg before? It's really cheap, and it shows, but given that I often see unRAID builds with cable routing best described as "what's cable routing?" it's not likely people will miss it. My worry would probably be the available space horizontally for the 5-3 modules. You definitely cannot accuse it of being spacious internally. If it didn't cost me the price of the case to ship it to an APO, I'd pick one up just to test it out.

How much did the CM590 cost? I mean, I assume the price in Euros is after VAT, which in Germany at least is 19%. So the price of the case, minus 19%, converted to USD is around 90 bucks, give or take a few bucks based on the current Euro rate. And that ignores that the cost of items (once again, at least in Germany) is usually priced fairly closely to what those items cost in USD. Just because it only takes .65 Euros to buy a Dollar doesn't mean you'll spend .65 Euros to buy something in a German store that would cost a buck in an American one, so I'd bet stateside pricing would probably be closer to $75 than $90.

Holy crap, Rembro, you're not kidding, that is a clone. I mean, the bones are at least.

Maybe one of you guys would know, does Norco allow you to purchase spare parts for these at all? Looking at it now, one of the backplane PCBs on mine looks pretty shoddy, maybe a refurb of some kind, and it would be awesome if I could get another back piece to mod, just to see if my changes would work out as well as I think they would.

Either would work. The Antec 900 and Azza Helios 910 are also popular choices. If you can find one, the Centurion 590 is an older favorite. If you can get them, Sharkoon (a German manufacturer with a limited US presence) makes the Rebel 9 in a variety of flavors (I like the Rebel 9 Pro Economy) or the T9. Aside from the Sharkoon cases, the Azza and the Xigmatek Utgard have the best cable routing options, if that matters to you.

I will definitely post my completed build, and will include temps. The plan right now is to start with 3 Hitachi 5K3000 drives. And as long as horizontal case space allows, and you're okay with a less "clean" look, the fans can easily be mounted on the outside of the backplane, the 4 holes on the right and left sides are large enough to thread even a sleeved fan cable through, so you could definitely mount the fan that way if you chose. That option does have the benefit of avoiding potential fitment issues, too.

I'd recommend this Antec 520W PSU over that Corsair unit. The Antec is based on a very solid Seasonic platform, will be roughly as efficient as the Corsair, and has 6A more on the 12V rail than the Corsair CX500. Plus, it's cheaper before rebate (I almost never actually count on receiving the rebate when I budget, but your mileage may vary).

So I recently purchased 3 Norco SS-500 5-3 Cages as the first step in an unRAID build I'm planning (15-drive budget box in a Sharkoon T9) and I was pretty unimpressed with the stock 80mm fans. I'm not an avid case modder (at least not yet) but this seemed like the perfect opportunity to try my hand at it, so I modified the back piece of the 5-3 module to accept 92mm fans. It came out fairly well. In hindsight, it could have worked better (I'll talk about that later) but overall it's really a great mod. To start with I broke them down: Unfortunately I don't have any process shots, but basically I marked out the larger blowholes for the 92mm along with the screw holes, then drilled the screw holes on a drill press, cut out the original fan grill with some basic metal cutting shears, roughed out the blowhole with a file, then used a spindle sander to finish. After that did a little deburring (I didn't worry too hard about scuffing the metal, it won't see much daylight when all is said and done). You can see the finished product below: The fans are Gelid Silent 9 92x25mm fans. Very solid. I'm really pleased with how it all came out. However, if you undertake this mod, I'd recommend that you retain the bottom-right screw hole for the 80mm fan and use that as the bottom-right screw hole for your 92mm fan. This will place the fan off center, but I doubt it will affect cooling performance significantly. It's possible that there isn't enough room on the back piece with the 92mm fan's bottom-right corner placed there, but just eye-balling it, things look okay. Basically, the center positioning, as I have it, causes part of the fan housing to very nearly rest on (I believe) a battery on the PCB. I'm assuming this isn't an issue, but by positioning the edge of the fan where the edge of the 80mm fan is relative to that battery, you avoid potential fitment issues and get to remove the other 80mm fan holes while you're at it. That is, rather than the circular blowhole I'm using, I'd use a shape more like a square with the corners cut off, better airflow and it'll enable you to remove the rest of the screw holes and grill. Once again, that recommendation is theoretical, but I think it'd work.

Your math is incorrect. You don't figure out total +12V wattage on a multi-rail PSU by taking the rail amperages, multiplying them by the voltage in question and adding them together. The PSU label will have information for the total combined wattage. Basically the reason for this is that a multi-rail PSU is really just a single rail PSU with the current split up for OCP, so just like a single rail PSU it can only pull so much wattage. Each rail can go up to a certain maximum current before tripping OCP, but the supply as a whole cannot sustain all of the rails running at their maximum OCP rating. And PeterB is absolutely correct, after ATX 2.3, there is no absolute over current limit. I do wish someone would make a more server friendly consumer PSU. Having molex/hard drive power spread out over multiple rails would be nice. I mean, sure single rail makes things easy in the sense that you know there's no chance of tripping the OCP without just plain overloading the supply, but if you get a short and you're running a, say, 750W PSU, something is going to fry, and I wouldn't put my money on "not the drives".

Also, given that external USB drives are generally just standard internal drives shoved into a chassis with a PCB to handle power and USB connectivity, I see no reason (aside from warranty issues, naturally) why you couldn't pop them open and use the drives themselves. But the rest of the machine I'd sell. As others mentioned, it'll be power hungry for 24/7 use (though one of my desktops is very similar in specs, and I often run it 24/7...thank god my rent includes utilities), and it's still a solid enough rig that it'll fetch some cash for you, which you can then use to build a more reasonable purpose-built unRAID build.

Just wanted to mention the upcoming NZXT Source 210. It's supposed to be very affordable (~$40) and with 3 5.25'' bays and 8 3.5'' internal bays you can run a single 5 in 3 cage and hit 13 drives for significantly less than the cost of running a 15-bay tower build. It's also very slick in terms of aesthetics.

Both of the supplies you reference are from Corsair's TX line, the difference is that the first one is an older version of the unit, it's less efficient and performs worse. It's still a very solid supply, but the TX750 V2 (the second one you linked) is a much better buy overall. My feeling is that any price premium on the older unit is likely due to declining supply.

I differ somewhat on the idea of the PSU being an "upgrade." In any system, a good PSU is a necessity, and that's even more true for server (even home server) applications, where the system is likely to go for significant periods of time without a power down. I agree that it's likely that the generic PSU that came with the case will likely suffice for a time, but it's far more likely than a good quality supply would be to negatively affect the short and long term health of the system. My opinion is that it's worth delaying being up and running to ensure that, when you are, clean and consistent power is being delivered to your components. Betting on the unknown (but likely poor) quality of a generic PSU, even in the short term, can backfire, sometimes spectacularly.

Running the same amount of memory in dual channel vs. single is better, performance-wise. Rajahal is right that you lose some potential expandability (or at least you lose the chance to expand without replacing your previous RAM completely) but, by the same token, if you ever do go to 4GB, you're going to want to buy the same model DIMM as you already own. Depending on how long you go before upgrading, that may or may not be an issue. Also, at around 10 bucks less than a dual channel 4GB kit, that dual channel 2GB kit is a pretty poor value. If you were willing to spend that, I'd say spend $11 more and get a 4GB kit. It might be more than you need, but maybe it saves you time/money in the long run. I would avoid using the PSU that came with that case. Judging from Newegg's pictures, the PSU has a switch to go between input voltages, which is a clear indication that the internals are based on outdated tech, and that's very likely just the beginning. I realize it's a significant additional expense, but I would recommend replacing the PSU. My recommendation would be the Antec Neo Eco 400W. It's based on a solid Seasonic platform, so it's reliable, even if it's not the most efficient PSU out there. Another option is the Corsair CX430. It's cheaper, especially after rebate, and will (by my rudimentary calculations) more than suffice for the maximum number of green drives you can cram in that thing (11 by my count, assuming a 5 in 3 module and that the external 3.5' bays will take drives no problem). I don't like the new CX series, they're overrated (that is, the supplies wattage ratings are inaccurate) and not up to Corsair's previous standards. Given the actual wattage of the supply (the CX430 is really a 380W supply) it's not necessarily a bad unit, or a bad price, but you should understand what you're getting.

I just wanted to toss in here that the Antec High Current Gamer PSUs in the 400W-620W range are based on the very solid Seasonic S12 Bronze platform. These are a slight efficiency upgrade over the standard S12 (also Antec Neo Eco from 400W-620W). Internally they are unchanged, and often come at a significant discount vs. their Seasonic branded counterparts. For example, the Seasonic 520W S12 Bronze is currently $80, whereas the Antec HCG 520W is $60.

If you don't mind my asking, what rackmount chassis are you using for your "desktop"?

Well, the Antec Neo Eco's are less efficient than more recent PSUs, one of the reasons Seasonic doesn't actually retail those standard S12s anymore (you can get S12 Bronze supplies, though), but they're relatively inexpensive and very reliable. The TX's, new or old, are both very solid supplies, and good values. If you consider the rebate (I don't usually, but that's just me) the older TX line is probably a better value, but if you don't count on getting that money back, the TX V2s are better units all around, and really nice values, as are the virtually identical XFX Core Edition 650W units.

You'd be incorrect. The old TX series were a mix of Seasonic and CWT based units, while the TX V2s are based on the same Seasonic platform as some of the XFX Core Edition units. Also, if I recall correctly the Antec Neo Eco units are based on Seasonic S12 platform.