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One more thing, I went with a cache drive and a spare already mounted in the server. Just in case.

 

Damn! I keep remembering stuff to add. He also asked me about fans as he was thinking of putting other fans in

the case to keep it quiet but I told him since I planned to have it in another room, this was not an issue and to

go for more cooling but the server is very quiet!

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Nice!  That is one monstrous case...looks like you could get close to 20 drives if you went for all 5-in-3's.  You would probably need a bigger PSU at that point, though.

 

 

Ehem, my case is bigger (not the one you built but the one I have my current puter in).

 

10x5.25 external drive bays and room for another 18 drives inside the case...

 

http://www.1stchoicemonroe.com/images/New-Computer-Configuration-Jeff-3.jpg

 

Come to think of it, it will be up for sale in a couple of weeks...I'm getting things rebuilt next week    ;D

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guiri and Rajahal, it came out great. That was the exact setup I was planning to build. (Which is why I had the 2 red 5in3's to begin with).

 

Since I already have a high powered Supermicro workstation and planned on going with Supermicro X7SBE for the newer machine, I switched gears and went with the Supermicro 5in3's. 

 

The only thing I might suggest is adding two low speed 120MM fans with the Vantec rubber dampening kit on top. I love those trayless 5in3's, my only concern is if there would be enough airflow with heavy usage.

 

Looks slamming.

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THanks, I like it a lot.

 

gfjardim, right now, I'm doing a search on the server so they're running between 29 and 47 degrees celcius.

I think it is very quiet and don't even notice it with my other computer sitting with the side covers off.

 

Does anyone want to see which drives are running hotter and where they're located?

 

 

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47 Degrees!!!!!!!!!

 

That is the "magic" temp that killed my old server- I killed all my drives over the course of a year. Heck that is the temp that got me to throw away my old case, and switch to a Antec+Unraid solution for the RMAed drives I got back after that.

 

You need some more ventilation or something. Personally now anytime I go above 36 degrees on one of my drives my heart kinda stops....

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Alright, here's a plug for Rajahal and his services.

 

A year or so ago, I was looking into unRaid. Someone in a different forum pointed me this way as I was tired of my Infrant ReadyNAS NV+

 

--

 

Oh, and if there was any doubt, let me clarify, I AM VERY HAPPY WITH MY CUSTOM SERVER!   :)

 

Highly recommended.

 

By the way, despite him being in Europe (prolly smoking weed in Amsterdam and getting it on with foreign hookers...JUST KIDDING!) he still had time to reply to a few questions when I ran into problems.

Problems that I caused mind you    ;D

 

George

 

What hardware is used? I love the case and drive cages...

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Here's a thought, the drive that's running hotter IS a WD Enterprise drive and spins at 7200 I believe and it's only in there temporarily anyway. (The other ones are green drives.) It is coming back out as soon as I get my computer rebuilt. The computer will have raid inside and this drive will be a back up drive for the other four that'll be inside in raid 5.

 

Does that make a difference/sense/explain things?

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Here's a thought, the drive that's running hotter IS a WD Enterprise drive and spins at 7200 I believe and it's only in there temporarily anyway. (The other ones are green drives.) It is coming back out as soon as I get my computer rebuilt. The computer will have raid inside and this drive will be a back up drive for the other four that'll be inside in raid 5.

 

Does that make a difference/sense/explain things?

 

Is it really 7200RPM, It's listed as intellipower.

In any case, it's a bit hot to run at that temp long term. That was the complaint about those trayless units.  Adding extra exhaust fans should help. If you move the hotter drive to another machine and stick with the 5400/5900 variants you should be OK.

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so, third configuration of my rig, a tweak on the second.

 

changes:

* replace all three SYBA SY-PEX40015 sata cards with a single Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 card.

* to free the single pcie 16x slot for the supermicro card, replace the asus passive 4350 graphics card with

  a powercolor passive 4350 with a pcie 1x connector.  surprise, with similar specs, this card is

  nonetheless bigger.  the heatsink is *huge* compared to what the asus has!

* finally put the reset switch inside the case, by re-purposing a startech.com "plate6f" slot cover

 

all other physical specs are the same, save for the random lock-ups that are no longer part of the package.

well, almost: i did loose the front usb ports because the new graphics card is blocking access to the

motherboard leads.  and two of the six  sata connectors on the motherboards are blocked by that graphics card.

did i mention it is big?

 

...for some reason, knoppix now refuses to boot with this new configuration.  something i will have to

look into when i get the time.  but as long as unraid 4.5.6 boots, i'm happy.

 

some pictures:

 

** reset switch, outside:

6olglg.jpg

 

** reset switch, inside (along with the new sata + graphics interfaces):

24quzdj.jpg

 

** the new sata/sas controller plus the re-layed out cabling:

2v29zcg.jpg

 

** another view of the cabling:

110c6ms.jpg

 

voilà!

 

 

 

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Time for a few pictures of my second unRAID server.

 

I started with this bargain case: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=ET-RM5101-WH&cat=CAS

ET-RM5101-WH-box.jpg

It was $27.99, with free shipping since I ordered some other things at the same time.

 

I took my Dremil tool to the front of it, and completely cut away the center support.  I then used aluminum angle to make a pair of drive mounting rails.  the holes are spaced so there is about 1/8th of an inch between the drives if I fully populate the case.  (it has room on the mounting rail for 14 drives)

 

 

The rails were spaced so the whole front of the enclosure would become an air plenum for cooling.  The drives can very easily be added or removed by opening the front door and unscrewing the two screws.

 

The new drive mounting rails look like this:

14xssi.jpg

 

The power and data connectors are across the top of the server, also very easy to access.  Here is a view from the inside, with a few old drives installed to verify spacing.

20tqx5l.jpg

 

For now I've only have 6 drives connected and configured.  The one on the far left is still one of the old scrap drives.  

I have 3 120mm fans attached to the front door.  When it is closed they force air into the cabinet and past the disk drives.

zogu2w.jpg

 

I must have gone through about 20 of the small cutting disks with my Dremil tool, but I managed to cut three very nice holes in the front door of the enclosure.  It is made of fairly thick steel.  (The web-site said 1.2mm steel.  That is roughly 18 Gauge)   It took a few hours.  (And I wore a full face shield, as the thin cutting disks have a tendency to fly apart if you catch them in the steel)

 

I still need to add a holder for an air filter in front of the fans and build a pwm controller adapter to control their speed from the MB connectors. (They are three wire fans, the C2SEE MB I'm using has 4-pin PWM connectors)  then, I can make the wiring inside a lot neater by making a custom power harness.

 

The front now looks like this:

2yos9xy.jpg

 

I still need to get longer SATA cables for the disks, because the case is so deep, the normal 15" ones don't make for a neat cabling job.  The same for the power connectors.  Even though the power supply has very long cable harnesses, they are not long enough for the SATA connectors closest to the supply to reach the front of the case.   I'll probably eventually add a second set of drive support rails for additional drives behind the first.  I've easily got the depth in the case.   Those first connectors can reach them.  That will then let me easily mount another 10 or so drives if I wish.  (It will then be my very own budget 24 drive case)

 

Not too bad for a $27.99 case, shipping included.

 

It has been online for about a week now.  I've got 3 2TB Hitachi 7200 RPM drives, and 3 1.5TB Seagate 7200 RPM drives installed.  The  first few days were spend exercising the disks with my preclear_disk script.  Then multiple parity calc/parity check runs followed before I added any data.

 

I used "rsync" to copy my entire original unRAID server's data to the new server.  The copy with parity enabled, to /mnt/user averaged between 30 and 33 MB/s on larger files. (the copy duplicated my user-shares)  right now, it is tower2.  Soon, I'll switch their names and my older original server will get a rebuild with the bargain PCI-X based motherboard I picked up recently from geeks.com for $57.  (It came with 1Gig of Error-Correcting RAM, Dual Intel Xeon CPUs, heat-sinks, and hardware)

 

I love a bargain. ;D

 

Joe L.

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Joe L,

 

That new machine looks pretty cool. I like it and a bargin to boot. I think the only thing I would do is put one of those wire grills over those fans unless you don't have kids like I do that see something spinning and have to shove their finger or whatever they can grab to see if they can in fact stop the spinning blades. ;)

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Joe L,

 

That new machine looks pretty cool. I like it and a bargain to boot. I think the only thing I would do is put one of those wire grills over those fans unless you don't have kids like I do that see something spinning and have to shove their finger or whatever they can grab to see if they can in fact stop the spinning blades. ;)

I plan on putting a full sized air-filter in front of the fans.  I've just not yet built the holder for it.   (and even though I have no kids to stop the blades with the toys, fingers,  etc... I have managed to get my own fingers in there once or twice  :()

 

I plan on using the same style filter as used in my home air-conditioning ducts.  the cleaner the air I can force over the disk drives the better.

 

The disks are running very cool.  Just sitting there spinning, but not being accessed they are at about 27C, and when being read or written to they get up to 30C.  Ambient room air temp is about 25C.  When they spin down, their temperatures drop to 25C, same as ambient room air.

 

Joe L.

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For those wondering, here's the parts list for the 15 bay server I built for guiri.

 

my-unraid-server-004.JPG

 

my-unraid-server-007.JPG

 

  • CPU: AMD Sempron 140
  • Mobo: Biostar A760G M2+
  • RAM: 1 GB Kingston DDR2 800
  • Case: Cooler Master Centurion 590
  • PSU: Corsair CMPSU-400CX
  • Hot Swap 5-in-3's: 5 in 3 BP-SATA350 (red) (x 3)
  • Flash Drive: SanDisk Cruzer Micro 2GB Flash Drive (USB2.0 Portable) Model SDCZ6-2048-A11
  • unRAID license: Pro
  • SATA expansion card 1: SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8
  • SATA expansion card 2: 2 Port SATA Serial ATA PCI RAID Controller Card - Silicon Image (only one port used)
  • SAS Cables: 3ware Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Internal Cable - 1 x SFF-8087 - 4 x SATA - 1.6ft (x 2)
  • Misc: SATA cables, HDD jumpers

 

Notice the similarity to the recommended budget build  ;D

 

I also shipped the server with 6 pre-installed and pre-cleared hard drives.  I used the cache disk slot to reserve one of the drives as a warm spare (but disabled the cache disk function on all user shares).  The server was completely configured, all guiri had to do was plug in the flash drive and power and network cables.  I also provide very thorough documentation, getting started instructions, pictures, animations, etc with every server I sell.

 

As for the temperature of that one enterprise drive (47 C), I agree that it is a bit too hot.  However, I believe that once guiri replaces it with a low power green drive, that the problem will be solved.  I have advised him to use only green drives in this server, as the 400 W PSU and heating limitations of the server design won't support hot, fast drives like the 2 TB enterprise drive he is currently using when the server is maxed out at 15 drives.  If simply replacing the drive doesn't solve the problem, then I agree with the others that an extra fan or two in the top slots should take care of it.

 

I am back from Europe.  If anyone else is interested in a custom server, PM or email me.  I would especially like to start making some small 3-6 drive servers designed for the unRAID Plus license so that I'm not directly competing with LimeTech (since LimeTech also makes and sells 12-15 drive servers) (see here for an example).  These servers will of course be much cheaper than this 15 bay server.

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Thanks for posting the part list Rajahal.

 

In the near future i want to replace my testing box running unRAID 4.5.6. I want to build a system with very low power usage in idle state. 25-30 watts would be nice. I hope this is feasible. I do not now if drives are powered down draw any power. If so i think it is difficult with +10 drives to get 30 watts power usages when idle and drives spin down.

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Its one of the Recommended Budget builds. I'm really happy with it as of now.

 

Cooler Master 590 Case

AMD 2.7ghz

BioStar Mobo

2gig ram

Corsair 400watt PSU

2TB WD Parity green

1.5TB WD green

1.5TB WD green

500GB WD green

500GB WD green

 

I went with some locking Sata cables from Monoprice.com I decided to use all black for data, blue for cache and red for parity. Not shown in this photo is I removed the Cache drive and went with just all data.

 

IMGP2126.jpg

 

IMGP2124.jpg

 

IMGP2123.jpg

 

I tried to tuck everything and keep it as simple and clean as possible. I used the 3.5 drive mount at the top and brought it down low. I noticed that the temp went from 40degrees to around 30 just by moving it. I'm guessing its feeling the cooler air down low since Im not running additional fans other than what came with the unit. I plan on swaping out the 500's with a single 1.5TB or 2TB

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