Started my first build yesterday after much reading on the boards. Thanks to all the helpful posters!
I wanted a virtually silent server with some expansion room now and the hardware to push all the way to 20 drives when I need to. Didn't want to shell out for the raid cards now but will in the future. I plan on running add-ons and probably doing some transcoding which is the reason for the extra horsepower. Running Beta 5v6 mostly for AFP support - the data will be mostly media and backups that, while important, are not mission critical if I did lose them.
Sorry for the crap pics - I will post nicer ones when the build is done.
Case: Fractal Design R3
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352002
PSU: Corsair CMPSU-650TX
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005
Motherboard: Supermicro X9SCM-F-O
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182253
CPU: Intel i3-2100T 2.5GHz 35W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116394&cm_re=intel_i3-_-19-116-394-_-Product
Ram: Kingston 8GB 1333 MHz ECC
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139262&cm_re=kingston_8gb_ecc-_-20-139-262-_-Product
Boot Drive: Lexar Firefly 8GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820191282&cm_re=lexar_firefly-_-20-191-282-_-Product
Cache: WD Caviar Black 500GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136795
Parity/Data: Samsung Spinpoint F4 2TB x2
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152245
I managed to get all the way to the command line, but I did run into a couple of problems along the way. First off, Memtest would not read my ram. I did some digging on the web and found that perhaps memtest doesn't like ECC memory, especially in Supermico boards. Anyone here experience this? I know people are using this board and I was curious if they could successfully run memtest.
Next problem was with the ethernet controller - I could not pull an IP even though my router saw Tower and assigned it an IP. Ifconfig wouldn't show the IP and I could not get to it from either my Mac or PC. Again, read on the net that this chip is probably too new and plan to buy a PCI card. Bummer is that I probably wont be able to use IPMI until uraid supports the chipset. Got this working - it is independent of the NIC. It gets it's own IP on the network and you can view it from the browser at that IP (.4 instead of .8 in my case). Once logged in (ADMIN,ADMIN is default) choose 'Console Redirect' and you will get a Java applet with passthrough. It's pretty great and the major selling point of this board.
EDIT 5/30/2011: Friend found a workaround for the NIC issue as well. Router had assigned an IP but NIC wouldn't take it. To fix we changed to static IP and set that to the IP the router had assigned it. Works fine but must run static.
And finally my PSU fan constantly clicks. I am going to RMA it to Newegg. I could probably take it apart and fix it but to be honest I want a clean interior and I want a modular one after putting this together. This case is not big enough to hide the extra cables nicely behind the mobo.
So far:
Advice for folks looking to use this kind of setup:
-IPMI works great!
- Ram might not play nice with memtest
-Case is very nicely designed but if you go overkill on the PSU it might get a little ugly with cables.
-NIC not supported in Beta 5v6 (I think) DHCP not supported - static does
-Fans in the case (I got two) are 3 pin while Included CPU fan is 4 pin PWM. You cannot mix these. I got around this by using the very basic fan controller included with the case but it is a bad solution because it is not dynamic. You manually set the speed and that's it. I plan on replacing all case fans with 4 pin.
-There is an internal USB header - very nice for Unraid builds.
-Initially tried to use straight locking SATA cables from Monoprice - don't bother. Really need 90 deg on the drive end and locking was a bit more hassle than it seems worth. Board came with 6 normal straight-straight cables that fit better.
I welcome any advice/criticism/corrections!