Okay, this is going in a slightly different direction to the "Pimp your rig'' thread, and no disrespect intended or meant to those wonderful builds they have on there, but I thought I'd start a thread for builds that...well lets just say, more unusual, ugly, built at little or no cost, sort of evolved with the..''I'll fix her up later'' philosophy,  but for some reason you never got around to it.

 

The thing is, my machine has been uber reliable for well over year, uptime has been fantastic and basically I hardly ever touch it, I am very please with my 'Runt rig"

 

My unRAID machine is in a cheapo/budget case, COOLER MASTER Elite RC-330-KKR1 Black, it gets worse, I originally purchased this case while I was living in the UK and got it shipped to the USA, where I now live, it didn't arrive there in good shape even though it was well packed. The case was slightly crushed, the side panels bulge out and the back I/O plate is bowed, imagine your case getting squeezed by a great big vice (bottom/top in the jaws), hopefully you get the picture.

 

At the time, I didn't have much money, but really wanted to build a media server, so my battered case and unRAID would have to do. I bashed thing out as best I could using a hammer, pliers etc.

 

The components I chose had to be inexpensive whilst being as low energy as I could reasonably afford, most of them were on ‘’special’’ at Newegg. I also modded a few things, I had a variable fan speed controller kicking around a long with a few case fans which I incorporated into the unRAID server to make it cool and quiet as I could, I also slowed down the PSU fan by fitting a couple of zener diodes in-line with the fan 12V supply, the AMD sips electricity, unRaid hardly stresses it at all, consequently the stock CPU fan is just ticking over at low RPM so runs quiet, the 2 additional case fans (one in front of the hard drives, the other at the rear) have been slowed down using the speed controller. The upshot of all of this is the thing is whisper quiet, not silent, but very unobtrusive and barely audible.

 

Once I had unRAID Plus installed and configured I ran it headless, no KVM, according to my Kill-A-Watt power meter is uses ~57 watts when in use (at least one disk spinning), not bad at all, and low energy usage was one of my goals seeing as it was going to be on 24/7, it is quite amazing how a  typical 400watt PC electricity usage adds up once you factor in 24/7/365 usage. Try using this tool and just up the number hours and days used and it is eye opener - http://www.super-grow.biz/Electricity.jsp

 

I do run a monthly parity check (via unMenu add-on), the disk temps float around the 35C, even with a higher than normal ambient temperature in the hot Oklahoma summers,  SMART reports clean, all  of this information relayed to me in reassuring emails.

 

It’s used for several hours a day in my household, mainly streaming TV shows and movies, been running fine for well over a year now with barely a hiccup,  once I had finalized by configuration and finished tinkering. It has been rebooted approximately 4  times since I’ve had it, to install new disks, when I moved house, fitted new batteries to the UPS, and for troubleshooting a DNS issue, pretty impressive I think, and just goes to show what can be achieved at bargain basement,  entry level these days.

 

Am I embarrassed by my “Runt”unRAID rig? Absolutely not! She may look a little rough around the edges (okay...my a bit more than a little) but she punches above here weight and has been very loyal and reliable. I have, however, just purchased a new case, nothing to grand, just enough to give a bit of a face-lift - http://www.amazon.com/GAMMA-Classic-Interior-Chassis-Black/dp/B002UDK9U6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1307992523&sr=8-1.

 

The case is of pretty good quality considering price and better than my current case, plenty of fan mounting options, I have no need for hot swap backplanes, even though I do have a one, (iStarUSA SATA2.0 Hot-Swap Backplane Raid Cage), I don't trust the cheap electronics on it and after doing a bit of research, read horror stories of components on the cage burning out and taking out all of the drives, so I like to keep it KISS. Also drive replacement is real easy with this case, slide in and out on rails, much like the Dell Optiplex range. I could put 9 drives in this chassis if I so desired, but I probably never will as my data growth rate is not than high and I figure I will be rolling/replacing drives before up then - see my note at the end for my reasoning behind this, all in all, in suits my needs, but YMMV.

 

BoM (Bill of Materials)

Case -  Cooler Master Elite http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119118   - because it was what I had

 

Mainboard - Open Box: BIOSTAR A760G M2+ AM2+/AM2 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - it  was inexpensive and had low energy ratings...it also came with no I/O panel, didn’t bother me as it would not fit in my twisted and distorted space for it! I cut out a piece of foam and stuck in the space.

 

Drives - 2 x Western Digital Caviar Green WD6400AACS 640GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive  - it was inexpensive, had low energy ratings, performance more than adequate for my planned unRaid usage

2 x Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 2.0TB SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

Memory - 1 x Kingston 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model KVR800D2N6/1G  - inexpensive, performance more than enough

 

CPU - AMD Sempron 140 Sargas 2.7GHz Socket AM3 45W Single-Core Processor SDX140HBGQBOX - it was inexpensive, had low energy ratings, performance more than adequate for my usage

 

PSU - Rosewill Stallion Series RD400-2-SB 400W ATX V2.2 Power Supply  - modified to slow fan down

 

UnRaidPlus  4.5.6 + unMenu - downloaded, installed onto a Kingston USB thumb drive I had around, didn’t need the features of the ‘Pro’ version,  6 drives will be enough for me, and as capacities increase over the years I will just keeping swapping out  higher capacity models, instead of more disks overall, this way you are ‘refreshing’ the RAID every few years or so. Of course, if capacity is your goal, then nothing beats having 21 disks as an option!

Post some pics, and this thread could be a lot of fun.

I'll do that, hopefully this weekend, my new case should be here by then so it will be a good time to take some pics.

 

I'm also considering trying to get unRAID to work with beagleboard ( http://beagleboard.org/hardware-xM ), big step though and many technical issues to resolve, hardware and software...not sure if I have all the skills for it...might give it shot though.