Do I need to buy another CPU cooler or is the one that comes with it OK for this?

 

The stock Intel cooler is fine.  Runs quiet, and does a very good job.  The Haswell chips are very power-efficient, so there's not a lot of heat to be concerned about anyway 

 

Excellent. Thanks again man. Ordering soon!

 

 

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And it's ordered! Split the drives with Amazon. Should be interesting to build this! Thanks again.

 

 

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Have fun building it 

 

One thing to note:  The R4 is a very nice case, but there's one neat feature that requires a bit of pre-planning to take advantage of.  There's a space to mount 2 SSDs "behind" the motherboard (on the back side of the tray) ... but you have to mount those BEFORE you install the motherboard, as they are designed to mount with screws on the bottom of the SSD that you have to install from the motherboard side.  You'll probably want to mount your cache drive there -- so be sure you mount it before you install the motherboard.

 

Have fun building it 

 

One thing to note:  The R4 is a very nice case, but there's one neat feature that requires a bit of pre-planning to take advantage of.  There's a space to mount 2 SSDs "behind" the motherboard (on the back side of the tray) ... but you have to mount those BEFORE you install the motherboard, as they are designed to mount with screws on the bottom of the SSD that you have to install from the motherboard side.  You'll probably want to mount your cache drive there -- so be sure you mount it before you install the motherboard.

 

Thanks for the reminder.  I had read that tidbit in one of the reviews on the case, but I would have likely forgotten (and may still)!

You won't be alone -- I KNEW about it and still forgot to mount the SSD until I had the motherboard in place.  Fortunately I thought about it before I did all the cabling, etc. ... so it was just a 5 minute job to pop the motherboard out; mount the SSD; and remount the motherboard.

 

But it's easy to forget !!

 

It figures...  all my parts EXCEPT the case will be here Friday.  The case won't be here till Monday cause it was shipped from California.  Dang it!!  I was looking forward to getting this thing up and running this weekend! 

I finally got all my parts in and started putting this thing together and I keep running into snags all over the place.

 

First problem - I bought a USB A Female to USB Motherboard 4 Pin Header F/F, but the MSI has a 9 pin USB 2.0 connector.  Am I correct in assuming that I can plug into either side of the connecter (usb0/usb1) as long as the pins match up to the cable labels?  If not, where the heck do I get the proper cable, cause I can't find one.

 

Second problem - On the Fractal case, I mounted the SSD on the backside of the motherboard area - luckily before I mounted the motherboard.  That's all fine and good. 

[*]First issue with this is I can't use the 90 degree SATA power cable(s) I have so I had to order a straight one.  One problem solved there.

[*]When I went to hook up the PSU, all the SATA cables have the power connector facing the wrong way and there's no way to get it facing the proper way with the SSD mounted where it is.  How the heck to do get a straight SATA connector for the Corsair HX750??  Or is there something else I can do that doesn't involve removing the motherboard and putting the SSD elsewhere?

First problem - I bought a USB A Female to USB Motherboard 4 Pin Header F/F, but the MSI has a 9 pin USB 2.0 connector.  Am I correct in assuming that I can plug into either side of the connecter (usb0/usb1) as long as the pins match up to the cable labels?  If not, where the heck do I get the proper cable, cause I can't find one.

Yes, most mobo headers are set up for two USB ports so plugging into one side will work so long as the pins line up. I think there's a "standard" color code for USB cables. At least, the packaging for the adapters will have the cable pin-outs and you check that against the mobo docs.

When I went to hook up the PSU, all the SATA cables have the power connector facing the wrong way and there's no way to get it facing the proper way with the SSD mounted where it is.  How the heck to do get a straight SATA connector for the Corsair HX750??  Or is there something else I can do that doesn't involve removing the motherboard and putting the SSD elsewhere?

You might think this is dorky, but you can mount the drives "upside down." This exposes it's printed circuit underbelly...but even Dell has done this. I read somewhere most HD heat comes from that side; and as you know hot air tends to rise. 

The other option is to purchase some SATA power connectors with IDC's so you can rewire it in the right direction with drives mounted traditionally.

r.e. USB =>  Yes, just plug the cable into either side of the USB header ... just be sure you have the proper pin orientation.

 

r.e. the SATA cable for your SSD:  Buy a left-hand cable and you'll be fine.  They can be hard to find, but they're available here:  http://www.cpustuff.com/left-angle-to-straight-sata-cable/

Just realized you were talking about the power cable -- not the data cable.

 

To resolve that, just use a SATA to Molex adapter -- you can get these in 6", 8", or 12" versions here:  http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10226&cs_id=1022604&p_id=1253&seq=1&format=2

 

 

... or buy one of these if you want to connect it to a SATA power output from the PSU:

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10226&cs_id=1022604&p_id=5184&seq=1&format=2

 

 

 

Just realized you were talking about the power cable -- not the data cable.

 

To resolve that, just use a SATA to Molex adapter -- you can get these in 6", 8", or 12" versions here:  http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10226&cs_id=1022604&p_id=1253&seq=1&format=2

 

 

... or buy one of these if you want to connect it to a SATA power output from the PSU:

http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10226&cs_id=1022604&p_id=5184&seq=1&format=2

 

Yep. That's what I was talking about and I had already started to look down that road. I'll have a look at these. Thanks for the quick reply!

 

 

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First problem - I bought a USB A Female to USB Motherboard 4 Pin Header F/F, but the MSI has a 9 pin USB 2.0 connector.  Am I correct in assuming that I can plug into either side of the connecter (usb0/usb1) as long as the pins match up to the cable labels?  If not, where the heck do I get the proper cable, cause I can't find one.

Yes, most mobo headers are set up for two USB ports so plugging into one side will work so long as the pins line up. I think there's a "standard" color code for USB cables. At least, the packaging for the adapters will have the cable pin-outs and you check that against the mobo docs.

When I went to hook up the PSU, all the SATA cables have the power connector facing the wrong way and there's no way to get it facing the proper way with the SSD mounted where it is.  How the heck to do get a straight SATA connector for the Corsair HX750??  Or is there something else I can do that doesn't involve removing the motherboard and putting the SSD elsewhere?

You might think this is dorky, but you can mount the drives "upside down." This exposes it's printed circuit underbelly...but even Dell has done this. I read somewhere most HD heat comes from that side; and as you know hot air tends to rise. 

The other option is to purchase some SATA power connectors with IDC's so you can rewire it in the right direction with drives mounted traditionally.

 

I would mount it upside down except the drive I bought only has mounting holes on the side, which I can't use, and holes on the bottom, which I have to use.

 

Looks like I can get an adapter though which is fine. Just wish I knew ahead of time is all.

 

 

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It's alive!  Build went well after I got all the pieces. Pre-clearing the drives now and then I'll start dumping data onto this thing. Need to get the APC daemon rung too.

 

The case is really roomy and the fans are whisper quiet. I'm adding another just to give the drive area more air flow.

 

 

 

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Very nice build.  The Define R4 is a very nice case as well ... I've been very impressed with how well made the Fractal cases are for such a moderate cost.

 

Thanks. I'm pretty impressed with the case as well. It was a bit larger than I expected, but considering I haven't built a PC/server in over a decade it's probably just me! About the only thing that might it better is are hot swap bays, but that wasn't on my list of must haves. However there is an option in the BIOS to enable this, but I have no idea what it actually does. Hell, I haven't had to deal with a BIOS in over a decade either so there's a lot in there I'm not privy to!

 

Speaking of the BIOS, MSI's is pretty nice. Especially like that it can be mouse or keyboard driven and that most things made complete sense.

 

And speaking of keyboard and mouse... I'm assuming I can run this headless once 100% setup! but I haven't tried booting it up that way yet.

 

 

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Yes, it will run headless with no problem.

 

... one thought r.e. headless operation => depending on where your server is relative to your other PC's, if it's convent to do so, you may want to run a long VGA cable to a VGA switch [e.g. http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=101&cp_id=10106&cs_id=1010601&p_id=54&seq=1&format=2 ]  so you can easily view any console messages by simply flipping the switch between the server and your PC.

 

Since the system uses a USB keyboard and mouse (which are hot-pluggable, unlike PS/2 devices), you can easily plug in a keyboard, flip the switch, and do anything you might want to from the console, while running headless at all other times.

 

Thanks Gary. I thought of a KVM switch as well.  Only problem is I'm using an Apple Thunderbolt Display and I'm not entirely sure if that's gonna work. I'll make it work regardless though.

 

 

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Nice display ... but unfortunately there's no support for connecting anything but a Thunderbolt connection to that monitor.  There are some adapters sold that allow the Thunderbolt OUTPUT on the Mac to drive other displays; but none that I can find that allow non-Thunderbolt outputs to drive that display.

 

Another alternative -- if you have a TV that you can run a cable to -- would be to run an HDMI cable from the server to a TV.    Then you'd simply need to change the input on the TV to the appropriate HDMI input to view the server's display at any time.    As I noted before, you could then plug in a USB keyboard to take any actions you might want on the server.

 

Nice display ... but unfortunately there's no support for connecting anything but a Thunderbolt connection to that monitor.  There are some adapters sold that allow the Thunderbolt OUTPUT on the Mac to drive other displays; but none that I can find that allow non-Thunderbolt outputs to drive that display.

 

Another alternative -- if you have a TV that you can run a cable to -- would be to run an HDMI cable from the server to a TV.    Then you'd simply need to change the input on the TV to the appropriate HDMI input to view the server's display at any time.    As I noted before, you could then plug in a USB keyboard to take any actions you might want on the server.

 

 

Any DisplayPort output should be able to drive a Thunderbolt Display. The Thunderbolt cable is just a DisplayPort video signal and data on the same cable. But a DisplayPort to mini DidplayPort adapter should have no issue driving video to that monitor.

 

On a side note, is a shame that more companies didn't adopt the Mini DisplayPort port size as the standard DisplayPort port. Apple developed the mini connector but they released the specs and licensing completely royalty free. Being able to have your video output port be smaller than a USB port is really nice.

Any DisplayPort output should be able to drive a Thunderbolt Display.

 

Problem is this system doesn't have a DisplayPort output 

 

And all the DisplayPort to HDMI adapters I can find are designed to let a DisplayPort output drive an HDMI display.    To go from HDMI to a DisplayPort input you need an active converter -- something like this:  http://ca.startech.com/AV/Converters/Video/Active-HDMI-or-DVI-to-DisplayPort-Converter~HDMI2DP

 

... and for that price, you may as well just use a small extra monitor 

http://www.amazon.com/shark-shk840-Desktop-Monitor-Screen/dp/B000Y50O2A/ref=pd_sim_sbs_pc_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=0S0XP2T2ERKY7Z1JE2J1