First unraid build, feel the UCD coming on!

[Influencer]

Alright, there have been a few posts in my hardware thread, so I thought I'd post here with the finished build. Here is the part list:

Case: Rosewill GEAR X3  : Cost: $39.99 after $15 instant and $25 Promo Code (Regular $79.99)

Motherboard: ECS 880GM-M7   :  Cost: $49.99 after $20 Instant and $39.99 after $10 Mail-In-Rebate

PSU: Corsair CX430V2  :  Cost: $28.74 after $5 instant, $6.75 promo, and $10 Mail-In-Rebate

RAM: Crucial DDR3-1600 2x4GB  :  Cost: $37.99 after $7 instant

CPU: AMD Sempron 145(From Recommended build) $39.99 after nothing, couldn't find any sale or promos on this, but its dirt cheap as it is so who cares.

 

Total Cost: $208.19 (including the whole $1.99 Shipping)

 

After Mail-In-Rebates(if they ever come): $188.19

 

Now for the Harddrives, I've had all these except one and one listed is currently in process of RMA.

 

Seagate 2TB ST2000DL003

Seagate 1.5TB ST31500341AS

Seagate 1.5TB ST1500DL001

Western Digital 1TB WD10000LSRTL (currently on RMA)

Seagate 750GB ST3750528AS

 

No, I'm not really a diehard Seagate fan, but I've found their drives to be reliable and cheap. Still will probably slowly replace them with WD caviar greens at 3tb when prices come down on them.

 

Obviously, 2TB will be parity, and I'm going to pick up a small drive for cache. That leaves me with 4.25GB of usable storage. Not as much as many of you, but its a start.

 

Now for the pictures!

 

 

 

 

THE MESSY SIDE!

 

I'm happy with it, the case is a little on the flimsy side, but really my only complaint as that the 5.25 bay covers pop out really easy, they pop back in of course, but its still a pain. Doesn't really bother me a lot as the plan is 2 3x2 hotswap bays in the future.

 

I don't have power consumption but it should be pretty low, using the sempron and low voltage ram. I'll probably resize the pictures tomorrow so they are easier to view.

 

The build started off as Raj's microserver build but rapidly changed into this 12 drive(13 if you count the additional 2.5"/SSD mount on the bottom of the case). I did keep the sempron 145 though, 

[ProfQ]

Nice build!

 

I'd encourage you to place the USB flash drive somewhere less accessible, inside the case or behind, for example.

Welcome to the UCD version of life.

[Influencer]

Yeah, the USB drive is definitely going somewhere else, everything is VERY temporary right now, drive was there for me to test everything. I have two kids and three dogs, its in severe danger where its at. Just gotta decide where to put it now, .

[Johnm]

you cannot argue with that price...

 

you have a bit of room to grow before you need any more big bits for this box.

[Influencer]

Yeah, I'm at 5 drives now, the case can hold six without any modification or additions, and the MB supports 6 without add-ons. I do have a 2 port sata card that would get me by if/when I grow to 8 drives, plus the case came with a 5.25 to 3.5 adapter, making it hold up to 7 Harddrives without additions.

 

I was pleasantly surprised with the prices I got. Goes to show searching for the best deal does pay off, 

 

When I first added everything to the shopping cart I believe I was close to $300 if not a little over, and for instance the MB, I got one that better suits my needs and supports DDR3 instead of DDR2 for a little cheaper.  Granted it did take a lot of time looking at different models, cross-referencing compatibility, then seeing if the other components would cost me more/less, lol.

 

Just excited to get this thing up and running. Since we mainly use laptops the house isn't wired with Cat-5, my sons desktop has a wireless N card in it, and the htpc is right next to the router, so Im having to order 100' Cat-5 to run to the server in its chosen home. I also ordered 6 6.0gbps sata cables with 90 degree connectors on one side to relieve some stress on the sata connector and cable. Meant to order them when I ordered the rest of the parts but forgot. I'm also digging out an old internal USB connector to connect the flash drive to.

[ProfQ]

You might be better served (and future proofed) if you ordered Cat6, or Cat5e cable to wire your house-Gigabit speeds.

 

[Influencer]

Typo on the previous post, I actually did order Cat-5e. I won't be wiring this house as its a rental, looking to buy next year when my job stabilizes some more. Its a lot better than it was a year ago, but still not as solid as I'd like, 

 

Once I'm in more a more permanent living situation, I'm planning on wiring the whole house with Cat-6.

[Johnm]

for future reference, check out monoprice.com for the cables. you didnt say where you ordered from. so i thought to mention it.

[Influencer]

Ordered from Monoprice, 6 sata cables and the 50' Cat-5e(sorry,thought I ordered the 100' but didn't) for $16. Beats the pants off big box stores, thats for sure.

 

Quick question, if I restart the server, do I have to login as root on the server to have telnet access?

[Rajahal]

Yes, you have to log in as 'root' to have telnet access.  You should only need to do this for maintenance reasons.  For day-to-day use, you can reboot without logging in and access your shares as per normal.

 

Congrats on finally getting it all together!  Your build looks good!

[Influencer]

Thanks, I was surprised at how well the cable management turned out (tooting my own horn here), I just wish that the rear case fan would have had a long enough wire to do something with it. I might take it out and splice the wires to lengthen it. I'm just being a little OCD with the cable management as I know that wire won't affect airflow, but with everything else so tidy it just looks out of place.

 

I will say one thing though, the case is quiet. You can hear it from 2-3 feet away but even then its just a whisper. And keeps everything pretty cool, spun up running around 30-34C, the disk I'm currently transferring to is at 37C and I've been writing to it for the better part of the day. Haven't seen a single drive go above 40.

 

Currently investigating how to get CPU sensors working, I'm know my way around some commands in linux but still have been spoon-fed this stuff by complete distros, 

[Rajahal]

You could just power the rear fan off the PSU if you want to hide the cable.  You would of course loose the PWM function, though (which allows the motherboard to control the speed of the fan).  For the rear fan I don't think PWM is all that important anyway, but that's your call.

[Influencer]

Very true, didn't even think about that.

 

For Add-ons, I've currently got the Koutech USB Header pin to Dual Type A adapter ordered http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815201028

 

If it works good I might buy another for my HTPC to safely hide the dongles in the case. Then again, I'll probably just find a old case that has usb ports on the front and cut the cord off and make one, 

 

Once i get all my data moved over, it will be time to play with Sab/Sickbeard/Couchpotato, as well as getting other scripts working. I've got a lot of questions that I can't find answers for, but that will be a thread for another day!

 

EDIT: Actually, didn't even need to order that part so I guess it will be going in the HTPC. Just remembered/found an old IMon 3.5" IR receiver I had laying around. It has a 5 pin adapter with a 6" cable, will be perfect for what I want!

[kizer]

If the rear fan wire is long enough you could flip the fan so it routes the wire straight up and then pull the wire behind the mother board and then backup and connect. Thats how I have mine done. LOL

 

http://i.imgur.com/4fIE4.jpg

 

Of course the pick up above doesn't show the wire coming up right behind the motherboard its it comes from the back of the motherboard tray. I later fixed it, but didn't reshoot it.

[Influencer]

Thats what I plan on doing when I extend the wire, but for now its no where near long enough, it barely reaches halfway across the MB tray. Why on earth they give such short leads on it I don't know, but the front and top fans I could plug into a computer 3 feet away(ok, a little exaggeration, but not by much).

 

If you notice on the picture of the back of the MB tray in my first post, the 4 pin Molex almost dead center of the MB tray is the connector for the front fan. Long enough? I think so

 

Although I've looked at their prices before, this is the first time I've ever bought anything from monoprice. Ordered the USB adapter from newegg(shipping from Memphis TN) and the cat5e and 6 sata cables from Monoprice(shipped from California).I live in North Carolina(obviously closer to TN) and the cables from monoprice arrived first, but the adapter from newegg shipped almost a day sooner.

 

Score 1 for monoprice! But I can't really blame newegg, the adapter has been sitting about 3 hours away from here for 2 days now, 

[kizer]

Thats why I said rotate the fan so the fan wire is higher up. Gave me several inches more in length to play with. LOL

[Influencer]

Well little bit of an update...it seems that 5b14 doesn't completely fix issues with the Realtek 8111E NIC. Atleast thats what I'm leaning towards now. Server comes up, runs for ~10 minutes, and then no network. ifconfig shows I have an IP, just can't ping anything an can't access it from anywhere. Other than that everything seems to run fine.

 

Going to troubleshoot now as well as start a topic to append the logs.

 

EDIT: Sorry, not the 8111E, still getting the board I was looking at and the one I got mixed up, its an Atheros chipset.

Put my extra gigabit NIC in my sons computer for better reliability over the wireless adapter, so I'm ordering another with the RTL8169S-32 chipset, hopefully this will solve my issues.

[Influencer]

Another little update, the network issue doesn't seem to be ongoing or consistent. After I posted I nosed around a bit and found rc.inet1 and so I tried rc.inet1 restart, and the network would come back up and work fine. It went back out when trying to download again, so again I went to the console and restarted inet1, and it hasn't done it since.

 

Not sure what the issue was, but she's been up for 3 days now without me having to restart the network.

 

I'm also getting my old MB fixed, which I might turn into a small backup server and leave the one I just built purely for media. The MB is older and only has 2 sata ports, so I might stick my 2 sata non-raid card in it and build a small form factor box. Its nothing I'm in a hurry to do as the current server can serve as both for now, but I'm keeping my eyes open for a small case to put it in.

[Influencer]

Another update... Haven't had a chance to get another NIC to put in to see if thats whats causing the network issues, right now I crafted a little workaround.

 

I setup a cron to run every 5 minutes pinging google.com, if the ping fails to receive any packets within 10 seconds write a message in syslog saying the network was down and then run rc.inet1 restart. This way I can keep track of the issue. This is working for now to keep things moving but is far from a proper solution.

 

Since I haven't investigated WOL with this board(it doesn't seem to support it but the wake functions it does support are oddly named, I suspect one might be WOL under a different name), I haven't setup S3 sleep yet so I don't mind running this. Not sure if the cron would keep the server out of S3 but think it probably would. Once I get the time to mess with it more and see if WOL works or not, this may or may not become more of a nuisance.