At a crossroads - Value your input

[thedudezor]

I've been running Unraid as my primary desktop / server for over a year now and I really enjoy many aspects of it, however recently I upgraded and added a additional spinning rust to my lian li o11 dynamic enclosure and the drive temps are just not coming down even after adding all the fans that I could. Yeah, I know this is a horrible case for spinning rust drives, but when I started the build I never intended to even put mechanical drives in it at all, just nvme's and a few SSD's. I wanted it to be a modern desktop PC. lol...

 

So at this point I have migrated the "array" part of my unraid build to a old build I had laying around (Corsair 500r, 8+ year old C2D CPU etc..). While the case is actually almost perfect for a Unraid build compared to my o11 dynamic and I even had a 5.25" to 3x 3.5" hot swap backplane that keeps the drives cool already. At the end of the day, the hardware is junk for trying to run VM's and dockers, a part of unraid I enjoy the most.

 

As for the "desktop", I had this VM's nvme drive passed through, I was able to just pull the Unraid USB drive out and select the nvme drive as the new boot drive and it just booted right up with out any issues at all. Seriously gotta love that.

 

As a result, I am now at a crossroads as to what to do and hence the reason I am posting here to see what you all think.

 

Option 1: Upgrade the old build to a 5700x allowing me to now run VM's and dockers on the unraid server, but keeps my "desktop" as a traditional bare metal machine. But I feel kinda bad about this considering the desktop is WAY overkill in terms of CPU / other I/O (3950x, 32GB Ram, 2x Nvme's, 3x SSD's).

 

Option 2: Don't upgrade the old machine, keep it as a spinning rust file server considering the hardware is find for that, but then unraid my other "desktop" machine. In this configuration however I would have no interest in the array part at all, but can you even start VM's and docker with out any disks in the array? I know you can add SSD's to a drive cache pool, but don't you still need disks populating the array? Its almost like I want a high speed nvme / ssd only version of unraid that focused on the virtualization part. Not sure unraid is even still the right fit anymore for that.

 

Option 3: Thinking of picking up a Rosewill RSV-L4412U 4u case, then migrate everything back into a single machine. The only challenge here is that I have a 360mm watercooled AIO for the CPU that might be interesting trying to fit / fabricate a bracket for, but if successful would give me the spinning rust storage with proper cooling and the ability to run it on my newer hardware for VM / dockers.

[JonathanM]

6 hours ago, thedudezor said:

the drive temps are just not coming down even after adding all the fans that I could.

Adding fans can be counter productive if they aren't working together to move air over the drives. As a general rule, all fans not directly in front of the drives should be removing air, so the only intake air MUST flow over the drives, and you may need to cut up some cardboard to seal off any escape paths that allow air to get through without touching the drives.

 

Also any vents without fans that aren't directly adjacent to drives should be sealed, unless they are providing airflow for HBA's or video cards.

[tjb_altf4]

7 hours ago, thedudezor said:

Option 3: Thinking of picking up a Rosewill RSV-L4412U 4u case, then migrate everything back into a single machine. The only challenge here is that I have a 360mm watercooled AIO for the CPU that might be interesting trying to fit / fabricate a bracket for, but if successful would give me the spinning rust storage with proper cooling and the ability to run it on my newer hardware for VM / dockers.

Radiator should be fine, I've got an EK PE360 in my Rosewill 4U

[thedudezor]

12 hours ago, tjb_altf4 said:

Radiator should be fine, I've got an EK PE360 in my Rosewill 4U

 

The Rosewill 4u I am looking at only has a support bracket in the center, no fan wall behind the HDD bay. Is this the same as what you have and if so, how did you mount the rad in the case? I'm sure it will have plenty of space since I'm only running a ATX sized mobo so that wouldn't be a issue. The AMD 5700XT I think sticks out another 2 or 3 inches path the mobo, but even then I should have more then enough space to place the rad into the case before it hits the back of the HDD backplane / fans.

 

[tjb_altf4]

I designed and printed a 3d bracket for each end to hold it, it was easy for that rad as it was fairly square, some detail here: https://forums.unraid.net/topic/111775-carbon-unraid-x570-workstation-gaming-build/

You could also be a bit lazy and pad out some thick double sided tape to each end and position it where you like along the case, just make it snug.

 

There is also a fan wall that comes on other models, that could also be used with some slight mods, see in this video around 9:20 mark for that fan wall looks like

 

[thedudezor]

Thanks for the added inspiration @tjb_altf4

 

Yes I'm pretty sure I viewed that video already but as with the case you have in your build, its a slightly different. I wanted to go with the version that has the 3x 5.25" bays populated with the hot swap trays already vs going with the model you have (and is in the video you posted) that would require me to buy the hotswap backplane and swap them out (probably another $400 in added cost too). But.... that version has the fan wall I could install my rad onto. Ugh.. I wish they would include the fan wall on the other version also.. Anyway.

 

Not that I need that many drives, the sick drive cage you made almost makes me want to rethink going with the other version in case you decided to release the CAD files It's a pretty close replica of the 45drives enclosure that I was looking at after finding out that is what LTT was using for their Unraid servers.... Until I got the quote from them at ~$1,500 just for the bare case.