June 12, 201610 yr first off, I kind of have a bit of sticker shock... how did it get so $$$ so quickly? 16 Item(s) in your shopping cart: $1,859.72 1 Intel Xeon E3-1230 v5 SkyLake 3.4 GHz LGA 1151 80W BX80662E31230V5 Server Processor $274.29 1 Supermicro X11SSL-CF Motherboard $259.99 4 Kingston ValueRAM 8GB 260-Pin DDR4 SO-DIMM ECC Unbuffered DDR4 2133 (PC4 17000) Server Premier Memory Model KVR21SE15D8/8HA $179.96 1 NORCO RPC-4220 4U Rackmount Server Chassis w/ 20 Hot-Swappable SATA/SAS 6G Drive Bays (Mini SAS Connector) $329.99 1 Thermaltake TR2 Bronze 700W SLI/CrossFire Ready Continuous Power ATX12V v2.31 / EPS v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified 5 Year $52.99 2 LSI LSI00402 1 meter internal cable SFF8643 to SFF8087 (mini SAS HD to mini SAS)--Avago Technologies $49.98 4 Seagate Desktop HDD ST4000DM000 4TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive $475.96 2 Crucial BX200 2.5" 480GB SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) CT480BX200SSD1 $236.56 so that is my thought for a decent v6 happy server... of course, I will need another unraid key as I would like to keep my existing v5 running as a backup... so that brings the price very close to $2K... that seems like a lot really... any thoughts/suggestions/have I lost my mind/did I miss anything/etc?
June 12, 201610 yr You need to add in the price for a new Unraid license. If cost is an issue then you could always drop a SSD as I assume you're thinking of running a cache pool.
June 13, 201610 yr Drop the Xeon and stick in an i3 instead, you still get ECC support. Drop the C236 board and go for a H170 instead, unless you really want ECC (it's not really required, I have 6 workstations at work running ECC and after 8 years 24/7 each, none have ever logged an ECC event). Drop the 700W PSU, go for a Corsair CS450M, it's a great PSU and usually very cheap on sale.
June 13, 201610 yr Drop the 700W PSU, go for a Corsair CS450M, it's a great PSU and usually very cheap on sale. Trying to save money on the single most important item in the computer is never a wise decision.
June 13, 201610 yr Drop the 700W PSU, go for a Corsair CS450M, it's a great PSU and usually very cheap on sale. Trying to save money on the single most important item in the computer is never a wise decision. I'd rather use a cheaper Corsair PSU than any Thermaltake PSU. Unless things have changed recently, ThermalTake makes me think of impossible to install heatsinks for Socket A Athlons.
June 14, 201610 yr Author so, I ended up changing my build plans a bit... 1st, I decided to really use SAS, as in use a backplane that supports SAS expansion not just break out cables, makes cabling a whole lot easier and nicer... my current Norco/D525 unraid setup is a mess HDD cable wise... I dread opening that chassis... so keeping that in mind, plain old SAS is a no go due to max HDD size issues & speed... SAS3 would be really nice, but too much $$$ currently... SAS2 = 24Gbs, the fact the unRAID only spins up the drive it needs, and my usage should mean that I may get close to 24Gbs but it should be plenty, at least 98% of the time... and a slowdown here and there shouldn't kill me... the <$300 SuperMicro ebay servers I found were all plain old SAS, the couple SAS2 servers were all either more $$$ then I want to spend on the hardware provided or way too many drive bays... I don't need >24 drives... my current unRAID is 6 drives... 1P + 5D... when I run out of room I just replace the Parity and the smallest drive with whatever is the current happy price point/TB drive at the moment... been working out well so far... and it cycles out old drives before they fail...(use old parity drive to replace the next smallest drive also...) now, with unRAID V6 and all its fanciness... looks like I might need more drives... but still 24 should be plenty... so I picked up a SUPERMICRO 846E16-R1200B BAREBONE SERVER CHASSIS WITH 24x TRAYS INCLUDES RAILS, $380 + a real SAS2 backplane seemed like a good deal... until I noticed the $100 shipping... that kind of blows... but I didn't notice that until it was too late to do anything... so I paid more than I wanted for just a chassis + power supplies... but hey, it seems like a nice chassis... and there is a SAS3 backplane available for it if the need arises also, unconfirmed, but some have claimed the 1200W power supplies are quieter then the 900W? not really a huge point for me, as it will reside in the basement/crawlspace, but hey... maybe... so now the plan is to find (any thoughts on these?) : cheapish fairly recent dual xeon/MB/mem combo deals like those used in the >$300 dollar SAS1 servers as that should be plenty for now.... get a cheapish SAS2 board (LSI2008 flashed to IT maybe?) get a couple HDD's to start with, but use an existing SSD(s) for cache (probably mounted inside case/connected to MB SATA port to help with SAS2 24Gbs limit) get new unRAID key
June 17, 201610 yr Author my SM 846E16-R1200B case arrived... wow... makes my Norco look like cheap crap, and I like my Norco, its a great case, but the supermicro is just all around better... the drive trays just feel solider/or something, all the fans have tach + pwm... I think the built in power supply supports PMBUS (need to look that up to be sure...) does unraid support PMBUS? now, I just need to wait impatiently for the rest of my parts to show up as a side note, I just remembered, I have a perfectly fine, new Revodrive 3 x2, 240GB PCIe SSD just sitting here? any reason I couldn't use that as a cache? looking through old posts, apparently it shows up as 4 x 60GB? is that a bad thing? has there been any updates in the last 4 years or so? anyone have any first hand experience? how did it work out?
June 19, 201610 yr Author ok, I am now confused... so, got my server built, only a couple drives at the moment, and my Revo3 x2 setup as 4 cache drives... but, only the first one is showing up as usable, an while it knows it is a 60GB drive, it seems to think it is really 120GB after BTRFS formatting... how that happen? is BTRFS a magical file system that can doubling capacity? Cache OCZ-REVODRIVE3_X2_OCZ-6WGW56YD19KY85DA - 60.0 GB (sdd) 30 C 389 891 0 btrfs 120 GB 11.8 GB 108 GB the other 3 Revo "drives" show up as green/happy, but they have no FS or formatted capacity... I am just using the demo license at the moment, is that part of the issue?
June 19, 201610 yr 240GB revodrive is made internally of 4 x 60GB in RAID 0, unRAID detetects them as 4 separate 60GB devices, if you use it as cache with the default profile it's going to create a RAID1 with them, making it 120GB usable.
June 19, 201610 yr Author oh, that makes perfect sense... although, I was kind of hoping for 4 60gb drives... but hey, this will work too I guess...
June 20, 201610 yr my SM 846E16-R1200B case arrived... wow... makes my Norco look like cheap crap Indeed. Supermicro stuff is in a different league really but then over in the UK they are about 3x the price of Norco equivalents. How is the noise of this case with the default fans? The PSU fans worry me.
June 20, 201610 yr Author noise isn't bad at all... I wouldn't want it in my bedroom or anything, it is a big server after all, but its not that bad... the fans are all PWM controlled, when it rev's them all up (just durring boot time so far...) they do get loud... but not bad at all just running normal... as a side note, any reason I can upgrade my V5 D525 based system to V6.2? true, cant do VM's or dockers or anything, but I quite happen to like what they did with the UI on V6...
June 21, 201610 yr Author just a fwiw, I have already lost one 60gb SSD from my revo... shows up in Unassigned Devices as having 32gb, and needing a format... must be OCZ's undeniable reputation for quality...
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