Finally got my Supermicro chassis today, 24 drive slots in the front, 12 in the back, came with a pair of older socket 1366 Xeon E5620 quad core CPU's, 52GB of ECC RAM and an Adaptec 5805ZQ controller card which appears to support JBOD, the chassis also has dual power supplies. I got all of this for about $825 Canadian including shipping from Montreal ( I live just west of Toronto.)

 

Man I forgot how loud these things are though, jeez. I wonder if the fans can be replaced and if they get louder as they get older?

 

The thing is a tank, but I knew that, I've always liked the Supermicro chassis, they are built very well, much better than the cheaper Norco alternatives, the trade off is they are more expensive than the Norco's but I think I did pretty well.

 

I am debating whether to get a pair of cheap hex core CPU's on Ebay, or replace this motherboard with a dual socket 2011 Asrock board and a pair of 8 core CPU's.

 

Anyway, just thought I would share.

do you mind to shared from what store or online site do you got the case from, im locking for a case too, i live on Oshawa so will be nice dont have pay for us duty , that supermicro backplane support SAS2?

 

thanks in advanced

Here is a link to their Ebay store, very nice guys. Yes it supports SAS2.

 

http://stores.ebay.ca/technobargain2010/

What size fans?

 

If 120mm fans, AND you have 4-pan fan headers, you can't beat Delta AFB1212SHE-PWM.

 

80x80x30, seven hot plug fans. They are loud as hell, I am going to buy some replacements on Ebay, hopefully it will lessen the noise.

One thing I have to figure out hot to do is get to the backplane header for the rear backplane. Because this case has 12 drive bays on the rear I need to connect a cable from that backplane to my HBA. There is a cable in there already and I was able to feed it up to to the motherboard, but its like two inches too short and I can't plug it into the existing RAID controller, so I am going to have to get a longer cable.

 

EDIT: Once again an email to Supermicro tech support answered this question, the chassis actually has a cool feature where the entire motherboard tray slides away from the bottom of the chassis exposing the area underneath it and access to the rear backplane.

Here is a link to their Ebay store, very nice guys. Yes it supports SAS2.

 

http://stores.ebay.ca/technobargain2010/

 

Thanks i dont see tha case listing there, did he just build it for you

 

Thanks

No it was the only one they had, they may get another one, they may not, just my luck I guess.

Congrats that thing is a beast!  I never would have any need for 36 bays but i'm going to be ordering one of these soon.

 

https://acmemicro.com/Product/11475/Supermicro-SC846BE16-R1K28B-4U-Rackmount-Chassis-24x3-5-in-SAS-Hot-Swap-1xSAS2exp-R1280W-80PLUS-CSE-846BE16-R1K28B-Black?c_id=53

 

Actually trying to decide between that and a 16 bay SAS3 case.  16 bays would probably do me OK as long as they were all 8TB drives..

https://acmemicro.com/Product/15073/Supermicro-SC836BE1C-R1K03B-3U-Chassis-16x3-5-in-SAS3-Hot-Swap-eATX-R1000W-CSE-836BE1C-R1K03B?c_id=55

Yeah it sure is a beast wow, I just need to get quieter fans, jeez, this thing is so loud in my office lol.

 

See that's the thing, you get a 16 bay and you can run out of them, start with a 24 and you can build up to them, at least that's the way I look at it. Mind you, you can always replace smaller drives with larger ones too, so I guess it doesn't really matter. I had to go with a 36bay chassis because I already have 30 drives!

Yeah it sure is a beast wow, I just need to get quieter fans, jeez, this thing is so loud in my office lol.

 

See that's the thing, you get a 16 bay and you can run out of them, start with a 24 and you can build up to them, at least that's the way I look at it. Mind you, you can always replace smaller drives with larger ones too, so I guess it doesn't really matter. I had to go with a 36bay chassis because I already have 30 drives!

 

Yeah, it's a hard decision.  Probably end up going with 24 bay just to be safe.  I'm starting from scratch though so whatever I get will be full of 8TB drives.

In the SM chassis I have worked with, their hot-swap fans are not PWM controlled... they run at full voltage.  That is unacceptable to me, so I don't connect the fans to the fan plate wiring, but instead connect them to 4-ping mobo fan headers (if they are 4-pin PWM fans.... if not, I replace the fans).

 

The Asus Fan Extension Card is a good tool for this... it lets you connect to just one fan header on the mobo, that then will control 3 fans.  If you do some surgery, you can even leave the RPM sensors connected to the fan plate for the alarm functionality.

 

These are the fans that are in my chassis, they look like regular 4 pin connectors, how would I connect one to a single MB fan header and have it control four fans? There are seven of these in my chassis.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Swiftech-8W-PWM-SPL-ST-8-Way-PWM-Splitter-Sata-/172455147851?hash=item282720b94b:g:bhkAAOSw6DtYW8LD

Thanks, I guess now its just a question of logistics, how do I keep the fans in their hot swap positions and make sure the cables from the fans are long enough to plug into this splitter, and then where to put the splitter ;-)

Thanks, I guess now its just a question of logistics, how do I keep the fans in their hot swap positions and make sure the cables from the fans are long enough to plug into this splitter, and then where to put the splitter ;-)

 

Maybe something like this instead.  It will give you longer leads.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Evercool-EC-DF001-4-pin-Molex-to-5-x-4-pin-PWM-Fan-Splitter-Cable-Adapter-17-72-/400712293079?hash=item5d4c505ad7:g:1cUAAOxyZzlTeaDo

Yup that might work too, thanks!

One thing I don't like is how I can't see drive temps, but I guess that's just a bi product of plugging into a backplane and an HBA.

One thing I don't like is how I can't see drive temps, but I guess that's just a bi product of plugging into a backplane and an HBA.

 

hmm, You should still be seeing disk temps.  Somethings not right.

At the moment, I am testing some drives and using an Adaptec maxCache™ 5805ZQ RAID controller, the drives are configured on the card as JBOD and the card is connected to the backplane. So not sure if its the Adaptec card that is not passing through the temps or what?

At the moment, I am testing some drives and using an Adaptec maxCache™ 5805ZQ RAID controller, the drives are configured on the card as JBOD and the card is connected to the backplane. So not sure if its the Adaptec card that is not passing through the temps or what?

 

Yeah it's either your raid controller or your new case/backplane.  I use IBM M1015 cards with norco 4224 backplanes and can see drive temps no problem so somethings not right with your setup.