Well, my Antec 900 is happilly purring away (see post Here)... Deciding to go bigger this time. Couple reasons... with the Antec 900, an ATX motherboard and a 5x3 cage, you start to quickly run out of room inside the case. Especially as I am looking to add more 5x3 units. So... in typical OCD style I have been scouring the deals and the posts... Going to build out a new Antec 1200 system, move all the data from the 900 to the 1200 and rebuild the 900 as my test system... Did I mention I am sick and tired of screwing and unscrewing hard drives yet??

 

 

OS at time of building: 5b7 Pro

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 255 CPU

Motherboard: Biostar T-Series TA870U3+

RAM: 4GB (2 x 2GB) of Nanya PC3-10600

Case: Antec 1200 V3

Drive Cage(s): One SuperMicro 5x3, one Norco 5x3, one Icy Dock 5x3 and one iStarUSA 5x3

Power Supply: Corsair AX750 Modular

SATA Expansion Card(s): Two HighPoint RocketRaid 2300 cards, one Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Cables: Two 3Ware Forward Breakout cables, various standard Sata cables

Fans: 1 x 200mm top exhaust, 2 x 120mm rear exhaust, 92mm intake on the SM cage, 3 x 80mm intakes on the remaining cages

 

Parity Drive: 2TB Hitachi

Data Drives: 1 x 2TB, 2 x 1.5TB, 4 x 1TB, 6 x 500GB

Cache Drive: No

Total Drive Capacity: 12TB approx. - all my drives are 7200 RPM

 

Primary Use: Contains all digital media for the household, contains all my precious data  , backups of all the systems in the house

Likes: Easy to use, works just like it should, awesome support via the forum, performance is great

Dislikes: Single parity drive, slow writes

Add Ons Used: unMenu, APC monitoring script, email and unraid notify, SNAP

Future Plans: Backup this unit to an offsite

 

Boot (peak): TBD

Idle (avg): TBD

Active (avg): TBD

Light use (avg): TBD

 

Starting the build over the next few days. Will post some pics and updates. As per this discussion on 5x3 cages, I have pondered putting in all the more popular 5x3 cages, to be able to really compare them for everyone. One of each.  Nice eye sore most likely. Probably will as I upgrade the CM units I have...

BTW, for those of you maybe wondering, I know is was, the 200mm "Big Boy" Antec includes, can move 167.6CFM at only 35ish dBA. Wow! At 23ish dBA, it still moves 82CFM and that is 400rpm...

 

If anyone has any questions, fire away...

 

Update - April 6th - OK, need to buy a better C Clamp. No way I going to try and do ALL those tabs with plyers...  Also, ordered the Norco SS 5x3... should be here early next week.

Update - April 7th - Wee hours... checked with Newegg Canada... yipee the iStarUSA 5x3 is on sale... pull the trigger on that puppy... and lo and behold, the Icy Dock 5x3 back in stock? Well, had to get that as well.  Should have all three new cages in next week.

 

Update - April 8th - Motherboard, CPU, RAM, cooler and video card. Why yes it is, an old S3 video card.

 

Update - April 11th - the Norco, Icy Dock and iStarUSA cages all showed up today.   So in the next day or two I hope to have pictures available that will show differences between the four common models as well as some requested shots.

After this, I will get them all installed and start working on the review of all four units.

 

Update - April 17th - System done and running. Please see pics below. Also, to read my review on the four 5x3 cages, go here. The PCI video card worked out great, have 20 drive support with two free SATA ports, one on each RocketRaid card and still have one free PCI-E slot free.

 

Update June 25th - After many failed test upgrades to version 5 Betas and getting the MBR: Unkown error, I upgraded to 5b7 and everything is working great.

 

Cheers,

Shawn

 

 

 

 

 

Curious, and that I am, this should not be interpreted in anyway as a knock or any sort of belligerence what-so-ever... If you went with two SASLP's, the two port controller and the 4224, it would cost $90 less and would have a 40TB capability... so I suppose, comes the easily misinterpreted part, what made you decide on the build you're going with?

 

Even if just cosmetics or what-not, because right now I'm thinking maybe I'm missing something technical or something.

 

^ That's a valid point.  I've found some people just prefer the tower style, perhaps for aesthetics, but also perhaps for space savings.  The towers are generally larger in volume than the Norco 4224, but they have a much smaller footprint.

 

I'm curious why you are using two of the expensive HighPoint RocketRaid cards instead of a second SASLP card.

 

I also question your choice of motherboard as it has no onboard video.  If you have a PCI video card ready to go, then that should work.  Otherwise, you'll have to sacrifice a precious PCIe x16 slot for a video card (which will also waste power).  Perhaps that's why you are opting for the RocketRaid cards.

 

I suggest instead finding a motherboard with onboard video and that can take two SASLP cards, such as the new Jetway that was just released (note - that board has not yet been tested as it is so new, but it's predecessor passed Level 1).

 

Finally, I also question the off-brand RAM, though that's less of a concern.

 

If you plan to fill this with 20 7200rpm drives, then you may want to upgrade to the Corsair 850W PSU instead, as the 750W might be struggling once you fill the server up.  If you plan on using a mix of 7200rpm and green drives then the 750W should be fine.

 

It will definitely be fun to see all those different 5-in-3 cages next to each other, and I'm looking forward to your review of each.

Thanks for the comments guys.

 

Tower versus rack - honestly, I work with rack systems all day long in my regular job, so playing with a tower at night is a nice change. But more then that, this system goes in a nice cool spot in my crawl space that fits the tower profile perfectly. And one other thing... wife comes down to basement, sees a couple of towers, ok. Doesn't take much notice. I always have a few hanging around. See the big Norco unit plopped down there, freak out ensues. I did go back and forth a lot on the Norco versus the tower as it would save me cash, but in the end, the ease of where the final resting spot will be more then make up for the bit of extra cash. But no real technical issue of one versus the other...

 

In response to the motherboard - this was a combo deal I got from newegg on the cheap last week, with 6 sata ports and four PCI-E I couldn't pass it up. And yes, I do have a few old PCI video cards I always keep around just in case. Will be able to finally use that Maxtrox again.

 

The RocketRaid cards I have already hence save me buying the second SASLP card. Again, I got these on sale which is why I bought them versus the SASPL card at the time. And they are PCI-E x1 versus x4 for the SASPL card. My current mobo only has a single x4/x8/x16 slots, so this was the only way to go...

 

The ram is acutally from a Dell system I raided previously. Nanya actually OEM for a bunch of big makers including Dell, HP and Lenovo... so I am confortable with it. Plus, it was free...

 

The only reason I have all 7200 RPM drives up till now was they were previously used for gaming systems I worked on and ran, where 7200 versus 5400/5900 could make a difference... well maybe only a frame or two per second.   Any new drive will most likely be Green drives... The 62A rail should handle that I think.

 

I am hoping to get the Norco SS unit in next week. The iStar maybe week after. Only problem seems to be getting the Icy Dock 5x3 up here in Canada. Will have to keep my eye out for it... I did read your review on your website and really enjoyed it. I think people being able to see pics of all four in the same system and how they compare will help. As the system is my own baby and sits in a crawl space most of the time, the asthetics to me are not a big issue.

 

Cheers,

Shawn