First build question

[jensiq]

Hello,

I am looking at building my first Unraid server (and first computer I've ever built). What I am looking to build is a small, energy efficient server, starting with 3-4 drives (7 max?), that will be used to serve video to my apple tv, pc's, iPad, etc. The only add-ons I plan on using will be Plex and/or Air Video. I am thinking I will need something with a little more power than the small builds in Raj's prototype thread. The case I like is a mini itx form factor and I am thinking the cpu I want to use would be an i3 of some sort (2100 or 2100t). The problem I am having is finding a motherboard that fits this specification with more than 4 SATA ports that does not use the Realtek 8111E chipset. My build so far includes the following:

 

Case - Lian Li PC-Q25 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112339

CPU - Core i3-2100t http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116394

Motherboard - BIOSTAR TH61ITX+RCH http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138335 (cheaper but has Realtek 8111dl is this ok) or

                  - Intel BOXDQ67EPB3 LGA 1155 Intel Q67 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121513 (more expensive with Intel 82579LM LAN chipset)

                  - Any other suggestions...

RAM - 4 gb based on motherboard selection

PSU - Corsair Builder Series CX430 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026

Hard Drives - Western Digital green 2-3 tb drives

 

Does this look ok? Would it make more sense to try and modify one of Raj's prototype builds to get what I want? If so any suggestions as far as CPU, etc.? Or would the HP micro servers work?

Any suggestions/changes would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

[Johnm]

The 8111d is fine. It is just the "e" that is not playing nice. The latest beta (12a) has improved it supposedly.

 

The intel 52879 chipset works with 5b4 or newer.

 

If you are planning to go with ver 4.7, then The biostar is the best choice. If you are planning to run beta, either one should work.

 

I had looked at that very intel board for a CHENBRO ES34169 build. I ended using a SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SPE-HF-D525-O. I'm not sure if the x7spe will be enough for plex as I never used plex before.

 

[jensiq]

Thanks for the reply Johnm.

 

For now i think I'll stick with 4.7. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself yet... Plus I'll save a few bucks too.

 

As far as the supermicro goes your guess is better than mine  I'll probably stick with what I have for now unless someone else has a better suggestion.

 

The other question I forgot to ask was, is the psu I chose ok? I just used the one in Rajs build but I have no idea if it will work for this.

 

Thanks again for your help.

[Rajahal]

The Biostar board is a good choice.  The PSU is more than enough power for 7 or fewer drives, but the case you've chosen has very limited space inside.  For this reason, you might want to spend a bit extra on a modular power supply to make sure there's enough free space for airflow inside the case.  Here are some options:

 

COOLER MASTER Silent Pro M600 RS-600-AMBA-D3 600W ATX12V V2.3 SLI Certified CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Bronze Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply

 

CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX550M 550W ATX12V v2.31 / EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Modular High Performance Power Supply (currently on sale, 10% off)

 

These are both overpowered, but they are some of the cheapest modular PSUs available.

[jensiq]

Thanks for the input on the board and the modular psu, that was something I hadn't thought of. I knew this case was small but I really like the way it looks. When I get it finished I'll post again with the final build.

 

Also wanted to say thanks to everyone who continually helps out all us first timers so we avoid a lot of problems (and headaches) it is very appreciated.

[zzsprade]

A fellow unraid Lian-Li Q25 builder - I am really glad to see!

 

I am coming from a prior build in an 810 Stacker, so I am looking forward to the small form factor.

 

I am very much looking forward to following your build. Right now I am trying to figure out whether it would be best to orientate the PSU with the fan towards the CPU or away.

 

-Alex

[Rajahal]

Right now I am trying to figure out whether it would be best to orientate the PSU with the fan towards the CPU or away.

 

I would suggest facing the PSU fan towards the CPU so that it can pull hot air from the inside of the case and vent it out the back.

[jensiq]

Alex-

Excellent to hear from someone else interested in the q25. I am in the process of buying parts but it may take a while as money and time are a little tight right now (a 3 week old will do that) but I will update as I can.

 

I ended up going with the cooler master silent pro m600 that raj recommended as it was on sale and had a $30 mail in rebate.

 

Have you found the silver version of the q25 for sale anywhere? I've seen the black version on newegg(out of stock now)and a few other sites but not the silver?

 

As far as the psu orientation i will let you know once I build it. (What Raj said makes sense to me, though)

 

Good luck on your build, would love to hear about it.

 

-Jens

[zzsprade]

Congratulations on the newborn.

 

I have not seen a silver version, but it certainly was available through the stockist I purchased through. However this was in Australia, so a bit of a distance problem for you.

 

I promise to keep you posted on the build. Right now I have just ordered 2x Highpoint 2300 cards to allow me to use the 7 spaces available for 3.5" HDDs.

 

-A

[zzsprade]

Rajahal I am sure that you would have the answer for this, but is BIOS-W-8M the latest Bios for this board (GF6100-e-e)? Zotac appears quite lacks in providing what the latest bios version would be.

 

-A

[Rajahal]

I don't know what the most recent BIOS is, but I appear to be using Mediashield ROM BIOS 9.87.  It is the stock BIOS that came with my mobo, I never upgraded it.

[zzsprade]

Rajahal,

 

I am struggling to find a positive answer (or maybe I am just hoping too much for the best), but is it possible to unlock the 2nd core on a Sempron 140 with this board (GF6100-E-E)? Is the setting available in the bios?

 

-Alex

[Rajahal]

Sorry, I don't have time to test that right now, check in with me in a week or so if you still haven't found the answer.  As general advice, I highly recommend against unlocking cores in a server as you will be adding extra unreliability that you really don't want.  If you need the extra processor power, just buy a dual core CPU.

[jensiq]

Just an update and a few more questions.

 

I have a functioning Unraid server now!

 

I went with the core i3 2100 cpu as it was on sale and according to what i've read not much different in terms of power usage than the 2100t.

 

I went with the Biostar board in my original post and 4gb of kingston value ram but had a hard time getting an automatic ip address and could not set a manual one in 4.7 (i am sure i was making some noob mistake) so I loaded unraid beta 5 v14 and everything went smoothly. Plus I needed beta 5 for plex anyway.

 

Due to the fact that I haven't won the lottery I was only able to add two 2 tb drives at this time. One hitachi and one seagate that I found on sale. Will add more after I have sold off the house, the cars and my first born (should get at least a 3 tb drive for that )

 

I also went with the coolermaster power supply that Raj mentioned here. Thanks again on the heads up about the power supply! It just barely fit and I had a fun night trying to install that. Here is a picture of the inside.

 

On to my questions:

1. I have a few old ide hard drives taking up space in a drawer, would they be worth installing in my unraid? If so...

2. Would an ide drive make a decent cache drive for now or should I just wait and get something else (small ssd?)

3. If these ide drives will work can you recommend a decent ide to sata converter? Would this work?

4. Do you still recommend this pcie card for sata expansion? Would this work? I have a few external 1 tb esata drives I might want to use (if that's possible???).

 

Thanks again!

Jens

[Johnm]

1. if they are of a decent size and stable. you could try running a few preclears and check the smart logs.

normally i would say don't bother, but i know drives are a bit expensive right now.

 

2. probably not. The point of a cache drive is for performance. usually IDE is pretty slow.

also, you want your cache drive to be reliable. When you use a cache drive, all of your data goes across it. You want to have a pristine drive. One that has been bouncing around a desk drawer for a few years would be suspect to me.

 

3. I cant help you there..

 

4. I do not know about the adaptec card.

I do know that rosewill card is a bad choice. while It might work in unraid. it passes all of the data  from the 3rd&4th ports through jumpers. that can lead to possible dirty data.

horrid idea for a data server.. but people are buying them.

 

EDIT: fixed punctuation

[Rajahal]

Keep in mind that IDE drives also run VERY hot compared to SATA drives.  Since you will only have a few drives that probably won't be an issue, but I would plan on replacing the IDE drive ASAP.

[zzsprade]

jensiq,

 

Your timing is impeccable! I just finished 'squeezing' all my components in only a few days ago. Talk about a tight fit.

 

I am also running a Coolermaster PSU - a modular 520W. However, I orientated the PSU fan towards the CPU as recommended by Rajahal.

 

With the full 7 drives installed my trickiest observation was the installation of the bottom two HDDs. I made the mistake early on of thinking that the could only be orientated with the ports facing the back of the case and not towards the front. That and pushing cables away from the slides of the HDD cage.

 

Congratulations on getting everything up and running in such a small case! Well done mate!

 

-Alex

[Hoopster]

I ordered the same Lian Li PC-Q25 case and components from Newegg.  Should be here Tue/Wed of next week.  However, I went with the Corsair CX430 PSU which is shorter than the Cooler Masters at 140mm (5.5").  It is not modular, although at only $18 right now with $20 rebate and newegg promo 15% code, I thought it was a good gamble and I'll see if there is anywhere to put the extra cables.

 

I'll post pics of mine when done.

[zzsprade]

Good luck Hoopster - great little case. I was looking for something truly portable if I ever need to shift etc. I hope your build goes smoothly.

 

My one issue that I have found is that I find the case kind of noisy with so many HDDs inside. I have placed it upon the desk where I am working and it is certainly quite audible. Albeit I did originally have my desktop in the same spot and that was like a small aircraft taking off.

 

As such I am considering experimenting with some foam blocks or insulation to see whether it can dissipate or absorb the noise as heat without 'cooking' everything.

[jensiq]

Raj and JohnM- Thanks for the info, I kind of figured the IDE drives would not work but thought I would check before tossing them out.

 

Alex- Congrats on the finished build! As I was taking pictures I realized I had installed the psu backwards but it was 330am and I didn't want to do anymore work on it. I know Ill be taking it apart again at some point to install another sata cable and a pci express card so i just left it. Seems to be ok for now. Let me know if you get any noise reduction with your foam block experiment as mine is also a little loud and thanks for the tip on the bottom drives, I'll get up to 7 drives someday...

 

Hoopster- Good luck! As I mentioned before I had a little trouble getting unraid 4.7 to work with my build but beta 5 v14 seems to work pretty well. Occasionally it won't show up in my shared devices on my mac but usually once i telnet in it shows up.

[Hoopster]

Could it be the NIC that is causing the probems? - although the Newegg product description says the NIC is a Realtek 8111DL, both the Biostar product page and the MB manual state it is the problematic 8111E.

 

The PCIe slot will obviously be occupied by a SATA controller, but, if there are NIC problems, a USB NIC could work nicely in one of USB 2.0/3.0 ports.  You'd only get 60 MB/s out of USB 2.0 at the most (which never seems to be achieved) and it appears 3.0 USB NICs are not yet available, but, when they are the theoretical limit would be 600 MB/s.

[Rajahal]

Since you are using a Mac, you may also need to edit your hosts file to make 'Tower' show up consistently.  More info here: wiki link

[zzsprade]

Rajahal,

 

Talking about editing Hosts files I was just looking at doing this.

 

This may seem little a very silly question, and it is bizarre what you find when searching, but I many years ago made the mistake of naming my Unraid server name with two words (and thus including a space). Talk about bad practice that comes back to bite you. Is there a way of being able to enter the address with the server name and not with the IP given this space in the server name?

 

If there is I was going to add it to all my Hosts files on every machine.

 

-Alex

[dinggus]

I'm interested in building myself a nice budget box. I'm tried of having random external HD's and have about 6TB of data already. How many TB's can the OP's case hold?

 

I have an iMac, and plan on just hooking it up to my network so I can use my AppleTV 2 in the living room. How is this working out? I've never built a computer before, I'm coming home for R&R and would like to build one.

[jensiq]

Raj - I did edit the host file but not sure if it did much. When I initially started I only had smb turned on but then I enabled afp and now two shares show up for tower, one that's just labeld tower and the other is labeled tower smb. The smb share shows up regularly now and the other one less frequently.

 

Hoopster- I suspect it is the 8111e on this board but nothing that came with the board says what NIC it is...

 

Dinggus- The case has a drive bay that holds 5 3.5" drives and you can add two more 3.5" drives or 3 2.5" drives to the bottom. The number of TB depends on your drives (7x3tb = 18tb + parity). I am using it for pretty much the same thing you are planning on and it works fine so far. Hope that helps.