10TB mITX Server - Little Stash

[Smitty2k1]

Purpose: Small, elegant, quiet, low heat/power consumption. Media storage, photo storage.

 

Components:

Motherboard/CPU: SuperMicro X7SPE-HF-D525-O

- integrated Intel ATOM CPU. Heatsink is passive

- IPMI v2.0

- Gigabit Intel NIC

- Internal full sized USB port for thumbdrive

- 6 SATA ports

Case: Fractal Node 304

- 6 3.5" HDD bays

- Attractive front, subtle power and HDD LEDs

- Two expansion slots, required for the 'over sized' mITX SuperMicro board

- Quiet case fans on a 3 position controller. The controller requires one Molex 4-pin power cable. My SuperMicro motherboard has a 4-pin Molex on board that is able to power the fans on low power. Medium is hit or miss and high power causes the motherboard to beep angrily

HDDS:

- 4TB parity

- 5x2TB storage

Cache: Mercury AccelsiorM mSATA PCIe Controller w/ 64GB Plextor M5M mSATA SSD

- I tried two cheaper PCIe cards from NewEgg, a SYBA and a Koutech. Both were based on the same Marvel controller with 'hyperduo' SSD caching technology. I couldn't get either card to work in my unRaid server or my general Windows desktop (computers would not POST). I finally found this Accelsior card from Other World Computing based off of ASMedia 106x controller.

PSU: SeaSonic M12II 620 Bronze 620W

- Modular cables

- Two 6-pin power cables are permanently attached and not necessary for my build

- Only two SATA power cables are needed besides the permanently connected cables

RAM: 4GB DDR3-1333

USB Drive: Lexar FireFly 2GB

unRAID: Plus license. Using all available disks, cache, and flash. Motherboard is completely full on SATA ports and case is completely full of 3.5" drives. Perfect.

Additional information:

The motherboard and initial hard drives started off in a much larger rackmount case that could accommodate 14 HDDs. I had plans of buying the SuperMicro 8port PCIe card but I found that after a few years I still had not filled up my initial 1 and 2TB hard drives. I moved out of my house in the country into a small apartment in the city where the rackmount/server case was taking up too much space. I then bought a 4TB parity and the Fractal case. They way I look at it HDDs will be increasing in capacity faster than I can fill them up!

 

This is a very low performance server but so far I have had no troubles serving media to my WMC and XBMC HTPC. I only recently upgraded from unRAID 4.7 to the 5.0 RC's and everything is running smoothly. Transferring files to the sever used to run around 20MB/sec but with the new cache drive they are up to 50MB/sec. I think the SSD should be running faster so I am looking into that.

 

The future:

The next step is to get a UPS/battery backup. Once unRAID 5.0 final is released I will upgrade and begin installing plugins. Right now I am looking at SimpleFeatures, unMENU, and torrents. I have a powerful gaming/photo editing computer that runs torrents 24/7. Now that it is summertime, it is making my apartment noticeably warmer. If possible I would like my low power server to do all of the torent duties.

 

Photos!

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Chris Pollard]

Nice build.

[StevenD]

Very nice!

[MTA99]

Love that case - great build 

[garycase]

"... My SuperMicro motherboard has a 4-pin Molex on board that is able to power the fans on low power. Medium is hit or miss and high power causes the motherboard to beep angrily ..."  ==>  The auxiliary molex connector on the SuperMicro X7SPA and X7SPE boards is NOT designed to power fans ... it's got both 5v and 12v lines designed to provide power for a CD drive or a hard drive.

 

"... Two expansion slots, required for the 'over sized' mITX SuperMicro board ..."  ==>  The board is NOT an "over-sized mITX board" ... the X7SPA is the mITX board;  the X7SPE is a proprietary SuperMicro board that is indeed slightly larger than mITX, and can often fit in a case designed for mITX.    But with a mITX case, you would have had a more perfect fit by simply using the X7SPA series board.

 

[Smitty2k1]

"... My SuperMicro motherboard has a 4-pin Molex on board that is able to power the fans on low power. Medium is hit or miss and high power causes the motherboard to beep angrily ..."  ==>  The auxiliary molex connector on the SuperMicro X7SPA and X7SPE boards is NOT designed to power fans ... it's got both 5v and 12v lines designed to provide power for a CD drive or a hard drive.

 

"... Two expansion slots, required for the 'over sized' mITX SuperMicro board ..."  ==>  The board is NOT an "over-sized mITX board" ... the X7SPA is the mITX board;  the X7SPE is a proprietary SuperMicro board that is indeed slightly larger than mITX, and can often fit in a case designed for mITX.    But with a mITX case, you would have had a more perfect fit by simply using the X7SPA series board.

 

RE: Fans - good to know! I don't want to change it, however, because I would need to add a whole molex string to my modular PSU! I could always make a custom cable...

 

RE: Board size - yes I have the X7SPE which I'm still going to call the oversized "mitx version." It was the only one available when they first came out several years ago. It is exactly one expansion slot larger than the standard mITX version. Good thing the Fractal has two expansion slots built in! I've had unRaid up and running on this board now for several years, but only recently made all the HDD/SDD/Case changes.

[Beer40oz]

Very nice...  I loved that case since it came out. There are finger prints all over it.  :'(  Cheers....

[kwiksilver]

 

RE: Board size - yes I have the X7SPE which I'm still going to call the oversized "mitx version." It was the only one available when they first came out several years ago. It is exactly one expansion slot larger than the standard mITX version. Good thing the Fractal has two expansion slots built in! I've had unRaid up and running on this board now for several years, but only recently made all the HDD/SDD/Case changes.

 

This board size is called DTX - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTX_(form_factor)

 

It is basically mITX + one slot.

[garycase]

RE: Fans - good to know! I don't want to change it, however, because I would need to add a whole molex string to my modular PSU! I could always make a custom cable...

 

You could actually make things much neater (get rid of all those unnecessary power cables) AND have a molex connection for your fans by simply switching to an SFX power supply.    It would also give you better airflow in the case -- not sure what your temps are running now (an hour into a parity check is a good point to note them) ... but they'd almost certainly be better with an SFX PSU.

 

Here's an example of how much more airflow space there is on a similar build with an SFX unit (using a Lian-Li PC-Q25B case):

 

[Smitty2k1]

 

RE: Board size - yes I have the X7SPE which I'm still going to call the oversized "mitx version." It was the only one available when they first came out several years ago. It is exactly one expansion slot larger than the standard mITX version. Good thing the Fractal has two expansion slots built in! I've had unRaid up and running on this board now for several years, but only recently made all the HDD/SDD/Case changes.

 

This board size is called DTX - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTX_(form_factor)

 

It is basically mITX + one slot.

 

Its not strictly dtx - one expansion slot only but close enough

[Smitty2k1]

RE: Fans - good to know! I don't want to change it, however, because I would need to add a whole molex string to my modular PSU! I could always make a custom cable...

 

You could actually make things much neater (get rid of all those unnecessary power cables) AND have a molex connection for your fans by simply switching to an SFX power supply.    It would also give you better airflow in the case -- not sure what your temps are running now (an hour into a parity check is a good point to note them) ... but they'd almost certainly be better with an SFX PSU.

 

Here's an example of how much more airflow space there is on a similar build with an SFX unit (using a Lian-Li PC-Q25B case):

I'm using the modular Silverstone SFX for an upcoming gamini build in the crowd sourced NCASE M1 mitx tower.

 

Very happy with my current setup and won't change it

[garycase]

Very happy with my current setup and won't change it

 

No reason to ... at least not just for airflow.    The main reason I noted that alternative was to have a "safer" fan connection ... your experience with the fans ("... medium is hit or miss and high power causes the motherboard to beep ...") clearly indicates that you're exceeding the designed output from the motherboard for that connection (which, as I noted, is not designed for powering fans).    It'll probably work just fine as long as you leave the fans on low ... but if they ever failed and drew excess power; or you forgot and switched them to a higher speed; you could easily destroy your motherboard.  The SFX unit is just a way to both eliminate the potential while simultaneously getting rid of the massive stash of cables you've got tied up and provide a lot of extra room for internal airflow.    But as long as it's working and the temps are okay, it clearly doesn't matter -- the cosmetic issue are hidden by the case anyway 

[spencers]

Sweet build!

 

Man that case is a fingerprint magnet!