Silverstone DS380 / ASRock C2550D4I Build


Recommended Posts

Make sure you update the bios and turn off Aggressive Link Power Management on all the controllers in the bios and maybe hot swap too. Or you WILL get red balls/data corruption.  Also that board seems more sensitive to emi on sata cables. I replaced all mine with better shielded cables. Just trying to save you from a few days of fun ????.

 

I have Aggressive Link Power Management and Hot Swap enabled, so far with no issues. I'm obviously watching everything like a hawk, but so far so good. What errors were they giving you?

Link to comment
  • Replies 122
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

What happens if you plug 2 drives into the Marvell 9172's ??  (and NO drives anywhere else)

 

It sounds like ANY drives in the Marvell 9230's can result in issues, although you didn't have any issue with just one drive in a 9230 port and all of the Intel ports used.

 

Based on your current results -- assuming there are no issues with 2 drives in the 9172 ports -- it seems like this is a very nice 8-port board [6 Intel plus 2 9172's].    That's actually good news, as it's likely that the Marvell 9230 issues will "go away" with a BIOS update "one of these days" -- and meanwhile you have an excellent board for UnRAID "Plus" systems.

 

The key thing is there don't appear to be any fundamental issues with the board.

 

Link to comment

What happens if you plug 2 drives into the Marvell 9172's ??  (and NO drives anywhere else)

 

It sounds like ANY drives in the Marvell 9230's can result in issues, although you didn't have any issue with just one drive in a 9230 port and all of the Intel ports used.

 

Based on your current results -- assuming there are no issues with 2 drives in the 9172 ports -- it seems like this is a very nice 8-port board [6 Intel plus 2 9172's].    That's actually good news, as it's likely that the Marvell 9230 issues will "go away" with a BIOS update "one of these days" -- and meanwhile you have an excellent board for UnRAID "Plus" systems.

 

The key thing is there don't appear to be any fundamental issues with the board.

 

The ASRock tech seems to think its a Marvell Linux driver issue, so I don't think it's being escalated. I wouldn't hold out for a BIOS update.. I'm not 100% sure though..

 

I'm pretty tired from all the cable swapping, so I didn't try just 2 drives in 9230 or 1 in 2550 and 3 in 9230, etc. I'm optimistic that all 12 sata ports will work fine, it's just using the 9230 ports exclusively that seems to bring out the issues.

 

The plan is putting 6 drives on the 2550 and 2 on the 9230 as I transfer data over and put the other 4 currently full drives in the array over the next weeks.

 

I'm putting in 3 quieter fans and finishing the cabling this weekend. I'm tired of messing with it and I'm ready to use  it!  :)

 

 

Link to comment

The problem I had was with the WD EADS 2TB sata2 dropped off the array and red balled twice I believe. It was always plugged into a port on the Intel sata2. Currently I couldn't get it to work without frozen errors until I switched it to the last port on the 9230.  Also had a different drive drop off and red ball. Another guy was having similar problems. But this was all with a different case, power supply and cables. Most searches said to turn those off and I haven't had it happen in a month. Been thinking about turning hot swap back on and then look at ALPM and green drives.

 

Currently I have 1 drive on Intel6, 2 on Intel3, 2 on Marvell 9172 and 3 on 9230

 

Edit Thanks for all the testing and hope they figure it out and release a bios update.

Did you still have smartctl removed?

 

Edit2 is it me or are these fans not controllable through the smart function.  Previous case the fans would noticeably slow down after POST.  But these always run at 1200 rpms. Even when selecting 30%

 

Link to comment

The problem I had was with the WD EADS 2TB sata2 dropped off the array and red balled twice I believe. It was always plugged into a port on the Intel sata2. Currently I couldn't get it to work without frozen errors until I switched it to the last port on the 9230.  Also had a different drive drop off and red ball. Another guy was having similar problems. But this was all with a different case, power supply and cables. Most searches said to turn those off and I haven't had it happen in a month. Been thinking about turning hot swap back on and then look at ALPM and green drives.

 

Currently I have 1 drive on Intel6, 2 on Intel3, 2 on Marvell 9172 and 3 on 9230

 

Edit Thanks for all the testing and hope they figure it out and release a bios update.

Did you still have smartctl removed?

 

Edit2 is it me or are these fans not controllable through the smart function.  Previous case the fans would noticeably slow down after POST.  But these always run at 1200 rpms. Even when selecting 30%

 

I do have smartctl enabled now!

 

The case fans are 3 pin, so only voltage controllable, which the board doesn't do. I ordered some 4 pin PWM fans that will be controllable through the board's BIOS.

Link to comment

I can think of two things that would be VERY interesting to see ...

 

(1)  A parity check after your initial sync completes -- both to see the speed and to confirm there are no errors.  (This is obviously easy to do and I presume something you're already planning to do)

 

and

 

(2)  For any of you who have this board, it'd be very interesting to see the results of attaching a drive or two to each set of ports (perhaps 1 to Intel 3, 1 to Intel 6, and 1 to each of the Marvel ports) ... and then do a Windows 7 [or 8] install  [7's easier, since you can install without bothering with a key] => and then do a bunch of read/writes to all the drives [Perhaps rip a DVD to one drive, then just copy it around a lot to see (a) speeds and (b) if it's consistently error free.    If the issues have all indeed been Linux Marvell drivers, this should work perfectly ... and would certainly provide a nice vote of confidence in the board.  [simple fact is that drivers will get fixed at some point ... so if that's all the issue is, everything's good  :) ]

 

Link to comment

I can think of two things that would be VERY interesting to see ...

 

(1)  A parity check after your initial sync completes -- both to see the speed and to confirm there are no errors.  (This is obviously easy to do and I presume something you're already planning to do)

 

and

 

(2)  For any of you who have this board, it'd be very interesting to see the results of attaching a drive or two to each set of ports (perhaps 1 to Intel 3, 1 to Intel 6, and 1 to each of the Marvel ports) ... and then do a Windows 7 [or 8] install  [7's easier, since you can install without bothering with a key] => and then do a bunch of read/writes to all the drives [Perhaps rip a DVD to one drive, then just copy it around a lot to see (a) speeds and (b) if it's consistently error free.    If the issues have all indeed been Linux Marvell drivers, this should work perfectly ... and would certainly provide a nice vote of confidence in the board.  [simple fact is that drivers will get fixed at some point ... so if that's all the issue is, everything's good  :) ]

 

A parity check will be run, absolutely! I'm really putting it though some torture testing before I put data on it. After data starts going on it, like I said, MD5 checks will be made.

 

In terms of number 2, the ASRock tech ran a windows test with my exact hard drive and on the problematic Marvell 9230, hammering the drive with I/O and then ran SMART tests with no problem. Just another datapoint..

 

I think many of us realize that this could be one of the best NAS boards to come around in some time! We're in the early days with it, so some growing pains seem acceptable. That being said, I think my issues were pretty isolated and specific.

 

Link to comment

Something you might consider is I've read in several places that the Marvell sata3 controllers don't get above  450 Mb/s where the intel get  over 500 Mb/s. I put my parity drive on the 1st Intel port and will move my SSD cache to the 2nd. The SSD would definitely benefit. Or maybe both SSD's on the Intel sata3.

Link to comment

I am following this thread, but I am mostly interested in the case and how well it cools the drives. Be sure to include that information. Thanks.

 

It's just ok at cooling drives ~35-45C when parity checking. I'm trying new fans this weekend, I'll let you know if it makes any difference.

Link to comment

Level 1 tested.

 

Apr 10 01:26:10 Tower kernel: md: sync done. time=30916sec

Apr 10 01:26:10 Tower kernel: md: recovery thread sync completion status: 0

Apr 10 03:37:12 Tower kernel: mdcmd (44): check CORRECT

Apr 10 03:37:12 Tower kernel: md: recovery thread woken up ...

Apr 10 03:37:12 Tower kernel: md: recovery thread checking parity...

Apr 10 03:37:12 Tower kernel: md: using 1536k window, over a total of 3907018532 blocks.

Apr 10 12:26:45 Tower kernel: md: sync done. time=31773sec

Apr 10 12:26:45 Tower kernel: md: recovery thread sync completion status: 0

syslog.txt

Link to comment

So I've got my C2750 with the Silverstone DS380 assembled, but I can't get the system to boot.

 

IPMI works fine, but remote view says the "Host is powered OFF or is in Sleep Mode." I also attempted to connect with an external monitor via the onboard VGA, but I get no output there either.

 

There are two LEDS on the motherboard constantly lit up, but I can't figure out if these are error LEDs or even related to the problem at all because the manually is awfully sparse in this area.

 

Some newegg reviews suggest that it may be a memory problem, and that the system won't post with "incompatible" ram. I am running ECC memory, but it's not officially listed in Asrock's supported memory. Most of the memory that is listed is unavailable in the US.

 

This is the ram I'm attempting to use: KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G

 

I don't have any spare ddr3 on hand, but I think I'm just gonna grab some non-ecc memory and see if that works.

 

Edit: I messed around some more, decided to take the hard drive cage back out and reseat the memory, and now it works. I'm guessing that the memory wasn't seated in properly, somehow. Never had that problem in the dozens of computers I've built before. I got cocky and fully assembled the thing without testing functionality.  ;D

Link to comment

Jomp what fans are you getting.  I started to get some sata errors during a parity sync. The drives were on the 9230.  Also temp on lower 2 bays got to 50 and 46. The 46 was on old parity drive now even in use. After sync I took everything apart put in 2 pwm fans I had and put SSDs on Intel3, 4 on Intel2 , 2 on 9172 and only 1 on 9230. No sata errors during parity check but temps were still high.  The fans I used have a higher cfm, rpm and lower db. I may Swiss cheese the cage. The temps did come down when I removed the magnetic filter each time.

Link to comment

So I've got my C2750 with the Silverstone DS380 assembled, but I can't get the system to boot.

 

IPMI works fine, but remote view says the "Host is powered OFF or is in Sleep Mode." I also attempted to connect with an external monitor via the onboard VGA, but I get no output there either.

 

There are two LEDS on the motherboard constantly lit up, but I can't figure out if these are error LEDs or even related to the problem at all because the manually is awfully sparse in this area.

 

Some newegg reviews suggest that it may be a memory problem, and that the system won't post with "incompatible" ram. I am running ECC memory, but it's not officially listed in Asrock's supported memory. Most of the memory that is listed is unavailable in the US.

 

This is the ram I'm attempting to use: KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G

 

I don't have any spare ddr3 on hand, but I think I'm just gonna grab some non-ecc memory and see if that works.

 

Edit: I messed around some more, decided to take the hard drive cage back out and reseat the memory, and now it works. I'm guessing that the memory wasn't seated in properly, somehow. Never had that problem in the dozens of computers I've built before. I got cocky and fully assembled the thing without testing functionality.  ;D

 

Welcome to the deep end  ;D

 

Jomp what fans are you getting.  I started to get some sata errors during a parity sync. The drives were on the 9230.  Also temp on lower 2 bays got to 50 and 46. The 46 was on old parity drive now even in use. After sync I took everything apart put in 2 pwm fans I had and put SSDs on Intel3, 4 on Intel2 , 2 on 9172 and only 1 on 9230. No sata errors during parity check but temps were still high.  The fans I used have a higher cfm, rpm and lower db. I may Swiss cheese the cage. The temps did come down when I removed the magnetic filter each time.

 

I've now transferred ~4TB over and everything is MD5 hashing right and no SATA errors. Also as a FYI, I have hot swap and ALPM enabled..

 

I'd say that 50C is certainly too high.

 

I'm using Noctua NF-S12A fans, but I think the "high impedance" NF-P12 fans might be a better fit for this case because the fan filter and especially the drive cage add a ton of impedance. I'm just running mine without the filter.

 

Please remember that I'm going for the lowest noise possible, so keep that in mind.

 

With the magnetic fan filter removed and at full speed ~1300RPM, the drives run in the low 30's during a parity check. It's pretty quiet, but I'm going for as close to silent as possible.

 

With the fan filter removed and at 40% speed ~700RPM, the drives run in the low 40's during a parity check. During normal reading and writing of a few drives, it's in the mid 30's. Individual drives vary a lot depending on where the drives are in the cage. Not a great design, cooling wise. I'm happy with this fan speed compromise due to the very low noise and I'm running it at this level. I'm putting another drive in today and after transferring more data over, another one this weekend. I'll keep an eye on the temperatures with the additional drives in and let everyone know.

 

I started to get some sata errors during a parity sync. The drives were on the 9230.

 

What were the exact errors?

Link to comment

So I've got my C2750 with the Silverstone DS380 assembled, but I can't get the system to boot.

 

IPMI works fine, but remote view says the "Host is powered OFF or is in Sleep Mode." I also attempted to connect with an external monitor via the onboard VGA, but I get no output there either.

 

There are two LEDS on the motherboard constantly lit up, but I can't figure out if these are error LEDs or even related to the problem at all because the manually is awfully sparse in this area.

 

Some newegg reviews suggest that it may be a memory problem, and that the system won't post with "incompatible" ram. I am running ECC memory, but it's not officially listed in Asrock's supported memory. Most of the memory that is listed is unavailable in the US.

 

This is the ram I'm attempting to use: KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G

 

I don't have any spare ddr3 on hand, but I think I'm just gonna grab some non-ecc memory and see if that works.

 

Edit: I messed around some more, decided to take the hard drive cage back out and reseat the memory, and now it works. I'm guessing that the memory wasn't seated in properly, somehow. Never had that problem in the dozens of computers I've built before. I got cocky and fully assembled the thing without testing functionality.  ;D

 

Welcome to the deep end  ;D

 

You're not kidding. It's been a week, and I still don't have a stable system. But I'm just trying to narrow down my issues. I ordered 3x 4tb WD Reds, and one drive was DOA off the bat. 1 drive (my parity) seems to work perfectly, and another, disk 1, had read errors during parity sync. I'm not sure if I have to RMA that drive too yet, I'm still working things out. Unraid in general seems to be buggy for me right now. This is my second unraid system, and my first was butter smooth. This one, not so much. The web server frequently crashes, and even trying to restart the process for the webserver sometimes spits out an error (can't recall what it was off the top of my head).

 

I've even tried unmounting all my drives and start preclearing them... because why not. Everytime I've tried, the system locked up after, I dunno, 20% in to the preclear. It never happens when I'm actually watching the system. I have a feeling it's the sata cables. I'm using those Coboc cables mentioned earlier, only because they were cheap. But they're bulky enough that the rear fan kind of interferes with the cables when plugged into the intel sata controller. so I have a feeling that there might not be a great connection. For what it's worth, I ordered a few of those silverstone slim sata cables, and will see how those work (mighty expensive though at $10 a cable, they should've been included with the DS380, or at least discounted).

 

I haven't ruled out the possibilty of a bad unraid install yet, I just haven't gotten around to redoing it. I'm currently just stress testing the cpu and memory in ubuntu, because I needed something with a GUI, and it gave me an opportunity to use a virtual disk drive over ipmi.

 

Also, I should just try the 64 bit version of unraid, since I am using 16gb of memory.

Link to comment

Here's my log.  There's some fun stuff in there. I think I will pick up a couple Noctua NF-P12 if they are the PWM version or the NF-F12 PWM at Microcenter. I'm not going for silent but don't see a reason to have a fan blasting 24/7 if its not needed.  Another problem is that the fans are controlled  based on system or cpu temps which for me have been good. I would like to use one of the fan control scripts to control the side fans based on hard drive temp but not sure if the script would work. Sensors shows Fan speeds are 0 after modprobe.

 

All errors are gone since moving all the drives except one off the Marvell 9230.  Thanks for the tip on hot swap and ALPM. I'll try them since all is stable now.  Just need to address the hard drive temps under stress. The lower couple bays have the worst temps.  I would like to use the filter. My Lian Li Q8 had just one 140mm front fan with a similar filter blowing across 6 drives and they never were above 40. Granted the cage had better air flow and no hot swap trays.

 

Just to note that everyday normal use hd temps are around 29 - 32 C

syslog-20140412-065645.txt

Link to comment

You're not kidding. It's been a week, and I still don't have a stable system. But I'm just trying to narrow down my issues. I ordered 3x 4tb WD Reds, and one drive was DOA off the bat. 1 drive (my parity) seems to work perfectly, and another, disk 1, had read errors during parity sync. I'm not sure if I have to RMA that drive too yet, I'm still working things out. Unraid in general seems to be buggy for me right now. This is my second unraid system, and my first was butter smooth. This one, not so much. The web server frequently crashes, and even trying to restart the process for the webserver sometimes spits out an error (can't recall what it was off the top of my head).

 

I've even tried unmounting all my drives and start preclearing them... because why not. Everytime I've tried, the system locked up after, I dunno, 20% in to the preclear. It never happens when I'm actually watching the system. I have a feeling it's the sata cables. I'm using those Coboc cables mentioned earlier, only because they were cheap. But they're bulky enough that the rear fan kind of interferes with the cables when plugged into the intel sata controller. so I have a feeling that there might not be a great connection. For what it's worth, I ordered a few of those silverstone slim sata cables, and will see how those work (mighty expensive though at $10 a cable, they should've been included with the DS380, or at least discounted).

 

I haven't ruled out the possibilty of a bad unraid install yet, I just haven't gotten around to redoing it. I'm currently just stress testing the cpu and memory in ubuntu, because I needed something with a GUI, and it gave me an opportunity to use a virtual disk drive over ipmi.

 

Also, I should just try the 64 bit version of unraid, since I am using 16gb of memory.

 

Ewww. Double ewww. All I can add is I'm currently running with the Coboc cables in 5 of the intel ports next to the fan without problems. My first build went without a hitch as well, this one has been a patience tester to say the least.

 

Since you're testing the CPU and ram, and barring they are fine, I do know that Unraid can get pretty fussy with bad drives, so I'd start there, which it seems like you're doing.

 

I hope you get it all sorted out, let me know if I can help!

 

Here's my log.  There's some fun stuff in there. I think I will pick up a couple Noctua NF-P12 if they are the PWM version or the NF-F12 PWM at Microcenter. I'm not going for silent but don't see a reason to have a fan blasting 24/7 if its not needed.  Another problem is that the fans are controlled  based on system or cpu temps which for me have been good. I would like to use one of the fan control scripts to control the side fans based on hard drive temp but not sure if the script would work. Sensors shows Fan speeds are 0 after modprobe.

 

All errors are gone since moving all the drives except one off the Marvell 9230.  Thanks for the tip on hot swap and ALPM. I'll try them since all is stable now.  Just need to address the hard drive temps under stress. The lower couple bays have the worst temps.  I would like to use the filter. My Lian Li Q8 had just one 140mm front fan with a similar filter blowing across 6 drives and they never were above 40. Granted the cage had better air flow and no hot swap trays.

 

Just to note that everyday normal use hd temps are around 29 - 32 C

 

I see one SMART error like I was getting, but the WRITE FPDMA QUEUED isn't one I saw. Have you run a SMART test on ata9? I sure hope that two drives on the 9230 isn't the problem, but at this point, nothing would surprise me, and I'll know in a week when all 8 drives are in  :-\

 

*Edit: Similar errors to yours, bad disk: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1183411

 

*Edit 2: Looks like ata11 gave you some of that too, it's looking more likely to be a 9230 problem if that drive was on it too.

 

I guess you can still get to 8 drives with 1 on 9230 and 1 on 9172 or 9 drives if the 9172 can have two drives on it. This is getting confusing  ::)

 

I'll let everyone know how it goes when I try 6 on intel and 2 on the 9230..

 

Link to comment

I have 9 drives right now.  Ata9 & ata11 are a 120SSD cache drive and a 60SSD domain drive. I put both on the Intel sata3. Smart test is fine. Backing up and moving vm's back and forth between the two along with my apps vm downloading to cache. Not a single error. Same during parity check.

 

I have a 4T parity, 5 2T drives, 1 SSD cache,1 SSD domain and 1 500GB 2.5" (for mythbackend tv cache and recordings).  Only one old 2T drive is on the 9230 which doesn't like the Intel controller. It will give frozen errors but on Marvell works fine.

 

Link to comment

Dumb question, but: Can I get a complete cable shopping list for this build?  Mostly on the power side, I'm unsure how many molex-to-SATA cables are needed, cable(s?) for the power supply to be connected to the hotswap "backplane", etc.  Thank you!

 

It's just two molex cables to power the backplane and thus all 8 drives. Since your power supply will have those, no additional cables are needed.

Link to comment

Still following this thread with interest, as I squirrel money into the "mamma don't know" account for a couple new builds!

 

One thing I have gleamed from this discussion, is that stock fans suck, and stock temps suck.  So add a few new fans to the price of the case.  Oh well.

 

Looking at the aforementioned Noctuas as $20/ea on the egg.  What other fans have you fellas used with success  Quiet is good, cooler drive temps is better.

 

Thanks.

Link to comment

Still following this thread with interest, as I squirrel money into the "mamma don't know" account for a couple new builds!

 

One thing I have gleamed from this discussion, is that stock fans suck, and stock temps suck.  So add a few new fans to the price of the case.  Oh well.

 

Looking at the aforementioned Noctuas as $20/ea on the egg.  What other fans have you fellas used with success  Quiet is good, cooler drive temps is better.

 

Thanks.

 

If you want to save money, I'd just take the fan filter off.  ;D

 

That thing just kills the airflow..

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Restore formatting

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.