New 24 Bay Rackmount Build


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Take a look at the videos on the xcase website and they will explain but from what I can see they have better caddy retaining springs and airflow. I was having problems with the mini sas cables blocking the noctua fans so backed it and went for the 424 pro model with hot swop quiet fans. It's so well built, I think it's based on a chenbro case where as the one I had before is a modified Norco case.

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  • 1 month later...

I really can't tell you as I don't have a Kill O Watt meter and as I need it then for me knowing this information really wouldn't make much difference. Yes Im sure I could have saved a few watt here or there but this unit is not overkill and the spin down on the drives and the fact they are WD 3TB red's makes a difference.

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  • 10 months later...

The RM 420 Pro case is excellent, I went down to the 20 bay unit as Im never going to need 24 drives. I'm running 10 x 3TB WD Reds at the moment with two used for parity, I changed to an Adaptec 7 series 16 port HBA due to its low power usage as well. At the moment Im using WHS 2011 and Transparent RAID as I wanted to use the My Movies WHS automatic ripping feature but Im in the process of building a smaller system with 6 x 4TB WD Reds to use with Unraid as a simple NAS. The case with all 10 drives and a slimline Blu-ray drive in use is consuming 83 watts so its very power efficient. I went for a rack mount case for future expansion but Im starting to wonder if its overkill for a simple media storage unit although its very quiet and keeps the drives all at about 31 degrees with the internal fans running at 975 RPM and the CPU fan at 900 RPM. To be honest the stock intel Xeon cooler and fan make more noise than the internal fans. I have a rack mount cyberpower PR1000 UPS connected as well which again is overkill and gives me 2 hours running time when I have a power cut.

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The RM 420 Pro case is excellent, I went down to the 20 bay unit as Im never going to need 24 drives.

 

That is exactly why I'm thinking of buying the twelve bay case, as hard drive manufactures are increasing the available space so fast; 2TB, 3TB, 4TB etc

 

I'm running 10 x 3TB WD Reds at the moment with two used for parity, I changed to an Adaptec 7 series 16 port HBA due to its low power usage as well.

 

Lots of room :) does that card work with UnRAID? I'm in the same boat as you, low power is king  :D

 

At the moment Im using WHS 2011 and Transparent RAID as I wanted to use the My Movies WHS automatic ripping feature but Im in the process of building a smaller system with 6 x 4TB WD Reds to use with Unraid as a simple NAS.

 

Did you not look at using ESXi or Hyper-V?  Two or more systems within one

 

The case with all 10 drives and a slimline Blu-ray drive in use is consuming 83 watts so its very power efficient. I went for a rack mount case for future expansion but Im starting to wonder if its overkill for a simple media storage unit although its very quiet and keeps the drives all at about 31 degrees with the internal fans running at 975 RPM and the CPU fan at 900 RPM. To be honest the stock intel Xeon cooler and fan make more noise than the internal fans. I have a rackmount cyberpower PR1000 UPS connected as well which again is overkill and gives me 2 hours running time when I have a power cut.

 

83W is good.  This is another reason I was thinking of getting a twelve or twenty bay instead of a 24.  I think with the ever increasing hard drive size huge systems are unnecessary.

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No I have read up about virtual etc but really all I need is a NAS for my movie collection and a secure backup. As I have an off site backup as such of everything I could look at just one parity and run Unraid but I have been worried about another drive failure during a rebuild and thats another reason I went the Transparent Raid way. But Im changing everything now. Im running Openelec Beta 2 on my NUC's with Ace skin and loving it, Im in the long process of using Make MKV for mac to remove all the extra's on my blu-rays ISO's except all English Subtitles and just the highest English Audio stream.

Its long and tiresome but its so nice to have a film start in 4 seconds without all the java rubbish on Blu-rays. I have read loads of posts from Garycase and will look at a Lian PC-Q25 case with Asus motherboard and i3 or i5 T model Haswell CPU, I think the i3 maybe better due to lower TDP, with the Silverstone SFX PSU Garycase recommends, a 250GB SSD for cache and 7 x 4TB WD Reds in the end or the 4TB Seagate NAS one's Gary talks about, the extra spin speed of 5900rpm over 5400rpm should also make a difference. I love this forum so much, the guys have helped me so much over the years and Unraid has such a large fan base I really want to use it. I don't want loads of Operating systems just one and I have done so much to move away from Windows due to all the problems, hell my WHS even had to have a reboot today due to a Network loss, I Just don't need it. I want Openelec and Unraid and be able to relax and watch more of my movie collection rather than always messing because of windows issue's with mac etc. But I will need the system to be as quiet as possible so will need to replace the standard fans with Noctua, I just hope the Silverstone SFX PSU fan is quiet enough. Im going to put my Slimline blu-ray drive in an external case and every time I buy a film back it up through my Macbook Pro using Make MKV and then wireless send it to the Unraid box. Im just going to run one of my i5 NUC's for now and worry about my SQL later on. Im just trying to see if I can run the Unraid box headless using my Macbook Pro. If 5TB drive come out soon I may look at them. I will also need to contact the users to find out about a 2 port SATA 6 card for the Asus motherboard. As I start building I will start selling off my other rack mount system. Its in mint condition with all the parts being only a few months old so I should get a fair price for the parts and the 10 x 3TB WD Red drives as they still have over 2 years warranty left on them. Here are a few photo's of my current unit.

IMG_4972.jpg.ecba05948b124373da25a51919e6946a.jpg

IMG_4975.jpg.5d8c2142771f869440a29f5fae1ad683.jpg

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Yes that is exactly what Im doing. I have a friend staying with me long term and the NAS is in his Bedroom (my only spare room) and he needs the space. I will sell it as is or strip it down and sell the parts and build a smaller unit that I can put in my bedroom hence the need for the new one to be quieter, he sleeps through the 20 Bay unit in his room though so you can imagine its very quiet as well but I just don't have the space for a sever cabinet in my bedroom and I don't want it in the lounge. I could put it and the UPS in the garage but as the 20 Bay unit and UPS are high spec high end and cost a lot to build I don't want it in a damp garage.

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  • 2 weeks later...

If I sold my server as is to build a more compact unit would anyone in the UK be interested in buying it. It cost me £1700 without the hard drives and everything is still under warranty being only 5 months old maximum and I have all the receipts. I also have the Cyberpower 2U PR1000 Vertical mounted on the included stands or Rackmount UPS for sale with 2 1/2 years warranty remaining. It is silent in use. Let me know if anyone is interested, Im prepared to lose money but Im not going to give the server or UPS away for silly money.

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To be honest I love the system so much, it uses such little power and is very quiet for a rack mount but I just don't have the space in my small bungalow.

The current specs are as follows, I will keep the BD drive as Im going to use it anyhow but will leave all the cable and connectors in case anyone wants to use one. I will just replace the original black steel blank where it was.

 

Case: X-Case RM420-Pro, 20 Bay 4U Rackmount, Mini SAS Backplane, 3 x Temp controlled 120mm Hot Swop Fans.

PSU: Corsair AX760 Platinum

Motherboard: Supermicro X9SCM-IF

CPU: Intel XEON E3-1240V2

Memory: Kingston PC3-12800 ECC DDR3 1600, 2x8GB (16GB Total)

HBA: Adaptec 71605H, 16 Port 6Gb/s PCIe 3.0

SAS Cables: LSI LSI00400 60cm SAS Cable - SFF8643 (HD) to SFF8087 x 5

SSD: Corsair CSSD-F60GBLS LS

SATA Connectors: Bitfenix & Silverstone Black Sleeved

Blu-ray Drive: Pioneer BDR-TD05RT, 6 x BDRW

3 x spare hot swop 120mm fans, 1 x spare hot swop fan backplane, 4 x spare hard drive caddies.

 

 

 

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