Upgrade for VM fun with pictures! 4 more drives, more RAM, and a shiny new XEON.

March 4, 201610 yr

If you're interested, here's my original build thread: ClickityClick

Two very fortunate deals landed in my lap lately, both having to do with my unRaid machine.

1. A coworker sold me his Synology DS1511+, loaded up with 5 HGST 2TB drives. He practically gave it to me, and I was more than happy to oblige. I took out the 2TB drives, loaded it with 5TB Toshiba drives. I took 4 of the 5 2TB drives and added them to my unRaid Tower. I'm using the Synology mostly for backup purposes. So now I have a 24TB unRaid system with a 20TB Synology for backup. Overkill? Probably, but that's half the fun for a nerd like me.

2. I've been interested in running a virtual machine for a while now, but knew I couldn't, due to my Core i3's lack of VT-d support. Well, I happened to be perusing the BYOPC section at Microcenter yesterday, and saw a deal on a XEON that I just couldn't pass up. 1 day later, I'm up and running with virtualization-ready hardware. I threw in more RAM as well since they had a 16GB kit on sale for cheap.

Thanks to @garycase for the suggestion on that CaseLabs fan-base chassis for the 4 new drives. With the new drives, I also had to pick up another SATA card. I'll probably need to consolidate those two cards into 1 to free up a pci-e slot for a video card if/when I get into virtualization more, but for now, it was cheap and easy to get going with that little 4-port SYBA card.

One more note before the pictures: I can't say enough about the airflow of my Fractal R4 case. I have 13 2TB drives spinning, 4 of which are getting beaten with a preclear, 4 sticks of RAM, a XEON processor, and my warmest drive is sitting at 39*C. Pretty impressive, given the circumstances.