Looking at eBay Supermicro - need recommendations please.

[CorneliousJD]

My original goal is to have a 24-bay, dual Xeon E5 v2 build, with SAS2 backplane for up to 8TB drive support, as I already have 3x 8TB drives.

 

Mind you, I'm 100% new to unRAID and this will be my first build, but I'm looking at this currently. 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-4U-X9DRI-F-2x-Xeon-E5-2650-v2-2-6ghz-8-Core-128gb-24-Bay-JBOD-/232596563713?hash=item3627d5e701

 

It has the following specs

Supermicro 4U Server
CSE-846A-R1200B Chassis

X9DRI-F Motherboard (Supports V2 CPUs / 16 Memory Slots)
2x E5-2650 v2 2.6ghz 8-Core 8.0 GT/s / 20mb Smart Cache CPUs
16x 8gb PC3-10600R Server Memory
24x 3.5" Trays (2 screws each)
SAS2-846EL1 Backplane
LSI 9210-8i JBOD Controller
2x 1200w PSU

30 Day Warranty

 

At first glance here everything looks great, price is a little higher than what I wanted to spend but I realize I'm getting a 24-bay unit, E5 v2 chips, and 128GB of RAM so I can't really complain about that.

 

I want to make sure this looks good for you guys too,  that I wouldn't have any issues off the bat with this that jumps out at everyone?

 

The one concern I have and the only reason I haven't pushed to order it just yet is that I hear these things can be decently loud, to absolutely insane depending on who I talk to. 

I work from home and spend 8-9+ hours in my office, where about 8 feet behind me is a server rack wit ha plexiglass front door where this would be housed. Some people have also mentioned the PSUs may be the loudest part while others have said otherwise? So I'm seeing conflicting reports and there's no real good way for me to go and test any of this out of course. So I'm hoping someone with experience here can chime in and help me out or direct me in a better direction? 

 

The $1000 mark is ideally where I want to be slightly over is okay, but I don't want to go insane here.

[CorneliousJD]

A quick extra note on this, I expect some noise. I also have a 3D printer in this room running a lot of the time, and there's a 7-8 year old server in here now, along with rackmount switches with active cooling, etc. so some noise is fine, it doesn't need to be SILENT, but I don't want it to drive me bonkers at the same time that's all.

[ashman70]

That looks similar to the 36 bay supermicro I have. The power supplies are screamers  but at the distance you describe they shouldn’t be too bad. There are quieter models you can buy if need be. Everything else looks ok I’d just confirm with the seller that you can use larger than 3TB hard drives as the price is crazy cheap if that is the case. 

[CorneliousJD]

10 hours ago, ashman70 said:

That looks similar to the 36 bay supermicro I have. The power supplies are screamers  but at the distance you describe they shouldn’t be too bad. There are quieter models you can buy if need be. Everything else looks ok I’d just confirm with the seller that you can use larger than 3TB hard drives as the price is crazy cheap if that is the case. 

 

Just reached out and he confirmed indeed SAS2 and my 3TB to 8TB disks should work just fine.

 

Another seller is willing to do a custom build with similar specs at $1600, so this seems like a much better deal. 

 

I've also heard of people modding out the dual PSUs on these for a single desktop PSU for much quieter performance but I'm not sure how easy that is.

[StevenD]

Garland Computer/DFW Computer is local to me, so I have bought quite a bit from them.  You may want to ask if they have any of the SQ power supplies that they could substitute.

[ashman70]

Yes the SQ PS are much quieter, I bought one off eBay and used it to replaced the two standard ones that came with my server, made a big difference. 

[CorneliousJD]

Thanks guys, I messaged them on eBay to ask if they have any that I could pay the difference. This would be better than paying full price for then later. I can't imagine SQ 1200W PSUs are cheap...

[StevenD]

You likely don't need 1200w power supplies.  At full tilt, my 3U dual Xeon SuperMicro X9 w/ 16 drives has maxed out at 373 watts.  

 

A pair of  PWS-920P-SQ should be sufficient.  They are on eBay right now for $100/each.

Edited December 16, 2017 by StevenD

[CorneliousJD]

46 minutes ago, StevenD said:

You likely don't need 1200w power supplies.  At full tilt, my 3U dual Xeon SuperMicro X9 w/ 16 drives has maxed out at 373 watts.  

 

A pair of  PWS-920P-SQ should be sufficient.  They are on eBay right now for $100/each.

 

Thanks Steven, I appreciate all the help here. I know 1200W is WAY overkill on this for sure, but that's what it comes with.

 

The seller said he "doesn't know" if they're SQs or not, and he just has what he has in them, so I'm assuming they're not. I couldn't even find 1200W SQs at all anywhere I looked.

 

Are the SuperMicro PSUs all the same form factor? I can just buy those 920 SQs and slap them in?

Lastly, if I run just one PSU will it be even quieter? Maybe I could run on just one of the 1200W PSUs until I get around to finding a good deal and buying SQ ones?

 

Thanks everyone! Since this seller has 5 of those builds ready for buy it now pricing, and one on auction, I'm going to sit and see how the auction one does and see if I can get it for under $1k shipped which would be my sweet spot!

[ashman70]

Yes running one PS is much quieter, I am running just one SQ PS and it makes a ton of difference to me, I sit right next to my rack so I notice.

 

 

[StevenD]

The power supplies in that chassis now (PWS-1K21P-1R) have the "narrow" part that plugs into the PDU. So, yes, the 920SQ should work just fine.

 

[CorneliousJD]

Awesome, you guys have been a huge help! I think i'm going to go for it, just going to see what that auction one does over the next 2 days and if that doesn't get it for me cheaper I'll buy the one they have available for buy it now. 

 

If anyone else stumbles across this thread and has any other tips/warnings/etc I'll be happy to take them to heart, thank you all!

[CorneliousJD]

Well I got another seller to price-match and give me a few nice upgrades... Got 24 RAM slots instead of 16, and 8x 16GB sticks instead of 16x8GB sticks, better mobo has quad gigabit NICs as well, and they threw in the rail kit and 1280W SQ power supplies as well. I'm pretty stoked for this, such a good deal. Thank you everyone for the input as well!

 

EDIT: For anyone wondering, it's from UNIXSurplus on eBay, formerly known as Mr. Rackables

https://www.ebay.com/usr/unixsurpluscom 

 

Supermicro 4U 24x 3.5" Drive Bays 1 Nodes
Server Chassis/ Case: CSE-846E16-R1200B
Motherboard: X9DRi-LN4F+
Backplane: BPN-SAS2-846EL1 24-port 4U SAS2 6Gbps single-expander backplane
PCI-Expansions slots: Full Height 4 x16 PCI-E 3.0, 1 x8 PCI-E 3.0, 1 x4 PCI-E 3.0 (in x8)
Integrated Quad Intel 1000BASE-T Ports
Integrated IPMI 2.0 Management

 

2x Intel Xeon E5-2650 V2 Octo (8) Core 
128GB DDR3
8 x 16GB - DDR3 - REG 8500R
1x LSI 9211-8i HBA
24x 3.5" Supermicro caddy
2x 1280W-SQ Watt Power Supply 

Rail Kit 4U
Standard 30 Day Warranty

Edited December 18, 2017 by CorneliousJD

[ashman70]

Nice! Is the RAM ECC?

[CorneliousJD]

Ashman70, it says registered, but I've messaged to verify it's ECC registered to be sure, but I believe we're looking at ECC RAM.

 

EDIT: Yep, they just verified ECC REG

Edited December 18, 2017 by CorneliousJD

[ashman70]

Nice!

[btrcp2000]

I have a very similar setup that is my first UNRAID (and Linux) project of any kind, also purchased from MrRackables (except for the chassis which was from garlandhomecenter's ebay store). Overall pretty happy, despite some issues that I can only blame on the risk of buying used stuff.  One of my 4 ECC RAM sticks was bad out of the box, and the board wouldn't boot with it.  Rackables replaced very quickly.  I now suspect another is going, as I am experiencing hard freezes and lots of parity checks, and I just now found an entry in the SuperMicro log related to RAM.  Hoping thats the issue.  Might be worth running memtests on them befroe you even start building

 

If your experience is like mine, the fans will be ridiculously loud on boot as apparently the default BIOS setting is Full and these SM fans don't ^%$# around. I found it easiest to download an android app on my phone called IPMIView to adjust to Standard (can of course do it from any browser, but a PITA from a phone ). I also replaced the fans with some CoolerMaster Blade Master 80mm for $10 apiece.  Temps hover a bit higher but seem to be okay, and on Standard speed its almost silent.  I don't have a lot of drives though, and will only be adding one or two more over time.  1280 watt SQ power supplies it came with are dead quiet to me. I took one out as even one is ridiculously overpowered for what I need, and I can live with the risk of a PSU. That's what crashpro is for.

[FrozenGamer]

Did you end up getting this? is it working ok?  I am shopping around for something similar to upgrade my server.