24 Drives Small-Company Build


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Hi folks,

 

thank you for all the suport so far :)

Finally got my build running today after parts were collected and a lot of beer was consumed.

Want to share with you the details and photo story :)

 

Have a nice day

Chris

 

SPECS:

Case: Inter-Tech 4HU-4424 (new)
Mobo: EP2C602-4L/D16  (new)
Cpu: 2x Xeon-E5-2640 (used)
Ram: Hynix DDR-3 ECC  buffered 10600R 8x8 GB (used) and 8x4 GB (used)
Controller: 3x H310 (used)
Cables: 6x SFF8077 (both sides) (new)
PSU: Seasonic Prime Titanium 1200W (new)
HDDS (own/used):
12x3TB (some WD Reds, Blues and Greens)
4x2TB (WD Greens)
8x2TB (HITACHI 7200RPM)

 

 

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  • Upvote 2
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23 minutes ago, Joseph said:

ohhh, I want one!! :D Did you run into any issues? Also, If you don't mind me asking, about how much $$$ did this set your company back?

 

Hi Joseph.

 

Thank you for beeing interested at mym build :)

 

I did not run into major issues, but let me share the story and some thoughts:

 

1st of all I would comment on the RACK CASE INTER-TECH 4u4424 -> the overall quality of the enclosure isn't that great. Cheapest possible no-name fans inside. The PCB's "backplanes" covers almost all of the vent holes, so I am concerned a little bit about the air flow. One of the six backplanes have slightly different color of the led's, one led does not work at all... pretty sad for something which costs > 400$. On the positive side, thick metal is used for the build, the case is stiff and somehow rigid. Not so shabby at all.

 

A little bit of streess was with flashing the DELL H310 controllers. At some time point i thought i bricked all 3 of them (150$ in total for used parts). Buf fortunatelly Hell Yeah -> they worked :)

 

CPU's (2x50$) and RAM (120$) was bought as used off ebay. No issues there.

 

Seasonic PSU (250$ for the 1200W unit for futher scallability) was a minor disappointment. A good piece of power supply, but comes with mostly sata cables. Gues what - try to buy somwhere original seasonic cabling with molex for this PSU. NO WAY... (mooding sets available only). Lucky me -> had some cabling for XFX Power supply which were compatible.

 

Cooling radiatiors with fans -> of the shelf -> bought cheapest one's i could found on allegro (Polish e-bay) - 2x25$ Each

 

SAS Cables 6pcs - total of 80$

 

The motherboard 300$.

 

So in total it makes around 1400$ WITHOUT THE DRIVES (had already them on the stock).

 

After saying goodbye to the company's money, finally tried for half a Day to start unRaid....  Then swapped the USB strick from 3.0 to 2.0 one, and boooooom .... it works !

 

Now configuring my precious, making parity, etc.... having fun :)

 

 

 

Przechwytywanie.PNG

Edited by art-informa.pl
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1400$ isn't too bad... its the drives that add up quickly.

 

Quote

A little bit of streess was with flashing the DELL H310 controllers. At some time point i thought i bricked all 3 of them (150$ in total for used parts). Buf fortunatelly Hell Yeah -> they worked :)

A few of us in the forums recently had the 'pleasure' of flashing the H310. I thought I bricked mine as well... I'm now in need of another one, so we'll see how it goes.

 

I noticed you have a fan on the H310s and there's one x16 slot still open, Do you think adding a GPU such as the GTX 980TI (for VM gaming but only when the boss is away, lol) would add too much heat?

 

Quote

The PCB's "backplanes" covers almost all of the vent holes, so I am concerned a little bit about the air flow.

That is a bit concerning. I've heard of others using the Norco 4224 Case (back planes look to be horizontal) but there are some owners on the interwebs that say they overheat.

 

Quote

Now configuring my precious, making parity, etc.... having fun :)

Configuring unRAID is has its moments; it took me nearly a year to sort through everything. You may want to run preclear on the drives first, if you haven't done so already. Not real fun, but it gives you peace of mind.

 

\m/

 

  • Upvote 1
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16 minutes ago, Joseph said:

I noticed you have a fan on the H310s and there's one x16 slot still open, Do you think adding a GPU such as the GTX 980TI (for VM gaming but only when the boss is away, lol) would add too much heat?

 

That is a bit concerning. I've heard of others using the Norco 4224 Case (back planes look to be horizontal) but there are some owners on the interwebs that say they overheat.

 

 

Yes, there is still 1x16 free, I added the fan "just in case" Really do not have issues with heat. Now, when the drives get's parity check, the server is storeid temporary in a non-conditioned room with internal temp. of 20*C and the hootest drive has 38*C while inside the case there is 34*C.

 

In fact using this mobo I could use 8 onboard sata and two H310's so you could easly fit two Graphics even !

 

You could easly fit sone nice GPU. There are buckets of space in 4u case, so overheating should not be an issue.

I added the Vent's over 310's "just in case" -> had lying one around :)

 

Norco's was 2x the price shipped to Poland in comparision with Inter-Tech.

Edited by art-informa.pl
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Quote

In fact using this mobo I could use 8 onboard sata and two H310's so you could easly fit two Graphics even !

I gotcha, the only trade off there is most of the onboard sata ports on that particular mobo are 3gb/s. :/

 

Thanks again for sharing your build and thoughts...next step for me is to get buy-in from the Mrs. :D

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5 hours ago, Joseph said:

I gotcha, the only trade off there is most of the onboard sata ports on that particular mobo are 3gb/s. :/

 

 

That's not really an issue at all.  NO modern hard drive comes close to the SATA-II data rate, so it's virtually irrelevant whether the ports are SATA-II or SATA-III for spinners (the number of xfers to/from the disk's buffers are a trivial % of the total data transferred .. and that's the only time the speed difference matters).

 

The only thing you DO want to do when you have mixed ports like that is be certain any SSDs you're using (cache, etc.) are on the SATA-III ports.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Small update on case modding for better cooling

 

The provided fans are really of poor quality in term of air-flow. In non-conditioned room the drives in case get's up quickly to more than 40`C (even 44'C for the Hitachi's 2TB).

 

What I did is the following modification:

 

Replacing 3 internal 120mm fans with used fans: Delta AFB1212SH (each 4$ on Allegro.pl, making 12$ in total)

Replacing 2 back 80mm fans with used fans: Delta FFB0812EHE (each 4$ on Allegro.pl, making 8$ in total)

 

there are holes on both sides where the air get's into the case without cooling the disks, those are now covered by some aluminum sticky tape:

 

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The result:

 


Parity - WDC_WD30EFRX-68EUZN0_WD-WCC4N0TLA4LN (sds) - active 23 C [OK]
Parity2 - WDC_WD30EFRX-68EUZN0_WD-WCC4N0TLATRF (sdt) - active 24 C [OK]
Disk 1 - WDC_WD30EFRX-68EUZN0_WD-WCC4N6THYSUN (sdv) - active 22 C [OK]
Disk 2 - WDC_WD30EFRX-68EUZN0_WD-WCC4N1FDKYXK (sdu) - active 24 C [OK]
Disk 3 - WDC_WD30EZRZ-00WN9B0_WD-WCC4E4FZ5HEH (sdy) - active 26 C [OK]
Disk 4 - WDC_WD30EZRZ-00WN9B0_WD-WCC4E5JV4DH0 (sdw) - active 26 C [OK]
Disk 5 - WDC_WD30EZRZ-00WN9B0_WD-WCC4E1HSRU8K (sdx) - active 26 C [OK]
Disk 6 - WDC_WD30EZRZ-00WN9B0_WD-WCC4E1HSRJ41 (sdz) - active 26 C [OK]
Disk 7 - WDC_WD30EZRZ-00Z5HB0_WD-WCC4N0HZKXPS (sdk) - active 25 C [OK]
Disk 8 - WDC_WD30EZRZ-00Z5HB0_WD-WCC4N7UL623H (sdl) - active 25 C [OK]
Disk 9 - WDC_WD30EZRS-11J99B1_WD-WMAWZ0329521 (sdm) - active 26 C [OK]
Disk 10 - WDC_WD30EZRS-11J99B1_WD-WMAWZ0275664 (sdn) - active 26 C [OK]
Disk 11 - Hitachi_HUA723020ALA641_YFGJLM8A (sdo) - active 29 C [OK]
Disk 12 - Hitachi_HUA723020ALA641_YGHW07MA (sdp) - active 29 C [OK]
Disk 13 - Hitachi_HUA723020ALA641_YFGWAYXA (sdq) - active 28 C [OK]
Disk 14 - Hitachi_HUA723020ALA641_YGG51DJA (sdr) - active 29 C [OK]
Disk 15 - Hitachi_HUA723020ALA641_YFHYNSTA (sdc) - active 28 C [OK]
Disk 16 - Hitachi_HUA723020ALA641_YGGSVSNA (sdd) - active 29 C [OK]
Disk 17 - Hitachi_HUA723020ALA641_YGHX7YZA (sde) - active 29 C [OK]
Disk 18 - Hitachi_HUA723020ALA641_YGJ02KUA (sdf) - active 29 C [OK]
Disk 19 - Hitachi_HUA723020ALA641_YGGP93HA (sdg) - active 27 C [OK]
Disk 20 - Hitachi_HUA723020ALA641_YGJ3TK9A (sdh) - active 27 C [OK]
Disk 21 - Hitachi_HUA723020ALA641_YGG5UEWA (sdj) - active 27 C [OK]
Disk 22 - Hitachi_HUA723020ALA641_YFHY90KA (sdi) - active 28 C [OK]
Cache - Samsung_SSD_850_EVO_250GB_S2R6NX0J168639Y (sdb) - active 26 C [OK]

 

So final conclusion - 20$ spend (30$ including shipping) what is about 5% of the price of the case and the temperatures of the drives has been lowered by 15'C on average. Pretty awesome !!!

 

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  • 1 year later...

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