20 Bay XCase (NORCO) build in progress....


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This is my 2nd unRAID build, my first (current box) is a basic Cooler Master Centurion case with icy dock drive caddies (2x 4 bay) - Adaptec 1430, Gigabyte MA785GT UD3H.

I am now building a new, bigger box. I plan to copy the (about 9Tb) files from the current server to this build when I am happy that it is fully stable.

 

OS at time of building: unRAID 4.7 final release - also running unMenu and cache_dirs script.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 2.93GHz Socket 775 1066FSB 3MB L2

Motherboard: ASUS P5Q3 -taken from a retired Windows Home Server system

USB Drive for OS: Lexar JumpDrive FireFly USB Flash Drive  2GB

RAM: 2GB (2x1GB) DDR3 1333MHz HyperX Blu Memory Kit CL9 1.5V Non-ECC Unbuffered

Case: XCase RM420[/b]  http://www.xcase.co.uk/X-Case-RM-420-Hotswap-4u-p/case-rm420.htm

- 20 bay 4U rack mount (also known as NORCO in U.S) with replacement fan bracket to house 3x 120mm fans  

Drive Cage(s): N/A - Built-in 20 Hot Swap caddies

Power Supply: Corsair 850W HX Modular PSU - 80plus Silver Certified Efficiency

SATA Expansion Card(s): 1x Adaptec SATA/300 AAR-1430SA (4port) -1x Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 (8 port) see note below.[/b]

Cables: 2x SAS/SATA Internal Cable Multilane 30cm SFF8087 (miniSAS-36) to SFF8087 (miniSAS-36) for SASLP-MV8 - 3x SAS/SATA Internal Cable Multilane Reverse 50cm 4x SATA Controller to SFF8087 (miniSAS-36) Device

Fans: 3x  Xilence Red Wing 120mm Quiet Fan - 3&4pin connection  - 2x Sharkoon Silent Eagle 2000 80mm Case Fan - 3pin and 4pin Connector

Parity Drive: Hitachi Deskstar 2TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - OEM

Data Drives: 8x Hitachi Deskstar 2TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache - OEM

Cache Drive : not using one...!

Total Drive Capacity: 16Tb Will add 2Tb drives as needed to full capacity of 38Tb

 

Primary Use: DVD and BluRay movie file storage. About 550 DVD's stored in Video_ts folders and 130 BD's in .iso format. Serving 5/6 viewing zones with HTPCs running windows media centre and MyMovies with full control from iPads

 

Note: The ASUS mobo has 8 sata ports - 6 driven by the Intel ICH10R Southbridge chipset and the other 2 by JMicron® JMB322. I have seen reports from others using this chip-set(JMB322). They seem to have problems with SMART monitoring (temp.) info from these ports and it seems they will not spin down either. So I am going to try it and see - if this is indeed a problem on my setup then I shall add a 3rd sata card PCIe x1 with 2 sata ports. Currently I would look at either the Adaptec 12xx or a generic Silicon Image based card.

 

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Looks pretty decent. Wondering why you chose 7200rpm drives over green drives?

 

Note: The ASUS mobo has 8 sata ports - 6 driven by the Intel ICH10R Southbridge chipset and the other 2 by JMicron® JMB322. I have seen reports from others using this chip-set(JMB322). They seem to have problems with SMART monitoring (temp.) info from these ports and it seems they will not spin down either. So I am going to try it and see - if this is indeed a problem on my setup then I shall add a 3rd sata card PCIe x1 with 2 sata ports. Currently I would look at either the Adaptec 12xx or a generic Silicon Image based card.

 

Did you have the 4 port card already, or did you buy it? It seems kind of a waste if you bought it over getting another AOC-SASLP-MV8.

 

The PSU is some major overkill, well maybe not I guess if you are using 20 7200rpm hard drives.

 

Looking forward to your build.

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Looks pretty decent. Wondering why you chose 7200rpm drives over green drives?

Did you have the 4 port card already, or did you buy it? It seems kind of a waste if you bought it over getting another AOC-SASLP-MV8.

The PSU is some major overkill, well maybe not I guess if you are using 20 7200rpm hard drives.

Looking forward to your build.

I got the 4port because I have read several posts which indicate that having 2x AOC-SALP-MV8 has caused issues with several mobo's. If I had a supermicro mobo, I might risk it. But I figured better safe than sorry! As far as green drives are concerned (I know of only the seagate and WD EARS - Samsung F4 is out of the running..)- I have seen a lot of issues with AF, MBR alignment, etc. and I am thinking best to stick with the tried & tested - I also noted that the Hitachi's are Joe L's drive of choice - he is the drive guru here!!. I may install some green drives later if I am happy with stability issues. For now I am building as though I will have all 7200rpm - hence the high powered PSU...

P.S. the case & fan mount arrived today! Will post photos soon...

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Nice setup. I prefer the Hitachi 7200's too. I just finished setting up a different unraid server for a friend that contains 8 x WD green drives, 2 x Hitachi 5900rpm drives, 2 x 1.5tb Seagate 7200rpm drives, and 1 Hitachi 7200rpm parity drive. This mixed setup gets write speeds anywhere from 35MB/s to 8MB/s depending on which drive is being written to and where on that drive the data is being written.

 

My system is all 7200rpm drives (hitachi and seagate) and I get a sustained write from 42MB/s to 27MB/s. I haven't done any real scientific tests, but I was surprised at just how slow the green drives can be. They run super cool though. I'm going to stick to 7200rpm drives. Electrons are cheap.

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I quickly looked around and couldn't find any reports of people having trouble with more than one AOC-SASLP-MV8. Can you post a link to that discussion?

There is no dedicated thread on more than one SASLP-MV8 just a few posts in the motherboard section. I think here in one of Raj's builds he complains that on a Gigabyte MB he looses the video output when puts a 2nd MV8 on the board. On the same topic/thread, another user highlights all the inconsistant results he gets with the MV8...

I just did want to risk it on MB and price difference is not huge. I have 2 MV8's (planning another build for a friend if this goes well...) so I can try and see how/if the ASUS board likes  2 cards installed.

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Correct.

My bad.. Sorry :-[ I thought I saw some posts re issues when using 2x MV8s in non-supermicro motherboards. Particularly when they are used on high bandwidth 16x PCIe slots generally used for graphics card.

Again, I apologise if I caused any confusion. I am running preclear on 4x Hitachi 2Tb drives right now.. But I shall test 2 cards on the ASUS board as soon as I can.

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These are photos of the finished system. I have connected everything and replaced the 120mm fans with 2000rpm cooler master fans.

The disks are running much cooler with the cooler master fans than with Xilence Red Wing 120mm Quiet Fan (1400rpm) - the noise is up slightly, but still no louder than a big modern desktop with a couple of high end graphics cards.

I also installed a 2port PCIe x1 host card (JMB363) as the J Micron JMB322 ports on the motherboard did not work porperly. Although I have seen no error messages in the syslog, I not certain if all the ports actually work.

Short of installing a disk drive on each port, is there a way to tell if all the sata ports are recognised by unRAID and functioning as they should be??

I know the cable positioning / routing is not up to the standard of the other posts here, but I just don't have the skill or patience.. :(

Any comments or critisims would be welcome... :)

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I've used 2 AOC-SASLP-MV8 cards on an Asus P5Q-E board without any problem.

Did you preclear any of the drives attatched to these ports? Another user and I are having an issue where preclear does not work when used on drives attatched to this card:http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=11357.msg109545#new

 

I presume given that you have 2 cards, the blue (graphics / 16x) slot has one of the cards installed?

 

Thanks

 

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  • 2 months later...

I know the cable positioning / routing is not up to the standard of the other posts here, but I just don't have the skill or patience.. :(

 

It works, doesn't it?  Beauty can come later if you feel so inclined.  The key thing is that the bundled cables do not impede the airflow as much as if you'd left them loose. 

 

Anyhow, it looks pretty good to me. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah, the cabling looks great.  Can you buy those clips that stick onto the case? My Thermaltake only came with one, and I'd like to route my cables off to the side a bit, instead of having them all in the middle.

 

Thanks

 

Most DIY places should sell sticky cable tie anchors :-

 

http://www.screwfix.com/p/2-way-adhesive-base-natural-19mm-x-19mm-pack-of-100/37931

 

Cheap as chips :)

 

 

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Stick on clips tend to lose stickiness, if you must use them, spot of hot glue is recommended.

 

The only potential thing I can see is the USB cable to the front panel looks too tight and might pull off the header. Could just be the camera angle but it looks a bit like "a bow string".

 

CPU fan needs rotating 90 degress so cable comes out toward PSU and needs braiding black, sorry OCD kicking in... ;D

 

Otherwise nice job.  

 

I think it was Asus P5B-VM someone was having issues with, MV8 wouldnt work in x4 slot only in the x16 slot. Different chipset than your board.

 

Loop back from eSATA port for an emergency sata port. Like you say pcie 2 port is much cheaper than second mv8...its cheaper than the cables for an mv8 thinking about it.

 

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