P35-DS3L (rev2)

Wanted to report success with my P35-DS3L build. Honestly this is an odd mobo to use for Unraid as it only has 4 onboard sata ports, but I had it left over from a previous Hackintosh build so I wanted to not waste it.

Unraid 4.5.4

P35-DS3L

Intel Pentium e2140

2 x 1GB DDR2 667 memory (Kingston)

Antec Three Hundred

Antec Earthwatts 380 (older non-green model that is a single rail Seasonic)

3x Sil 3132 cards

Nvidia Fanless 7300 GS GPU

Scythe Mini Ninja Fanless CPU heatsink

Cooler Master 4 in 3

San Disk Cruser 2GB USB Drive

CyberPower CP685AVR UPS

9 x 1.5TB 7200.11 Seagate drives (yes THOSE drives)

1 x 1TB Western Digital Black

I am using the second to most recent bios (F8) to avoid HPA problems. I am using the six internal 3.5inch bays, plus a Cooler Master 4 in 3 in the top bays for a total of ten drives. All the drives in the server will be the infamous 1.5TB 7200RPM Seagate drives, except for one that is a 1TB WD Black (that I basically got for free so why not use it?). I am using the WD black as a heat buffer between my parity drive and the rest of my array. Average temps are 27-30, but it gets up to a top of 35 when copying over data. This is much better than the temps of the same drives in my old server (43+) so I am very happy.

My favorite part about this build is that because I am using a fanless CPU HSF and GPU, it is pretty quiet. Everything is Antec where possible (I am kinda nutty loyal to them), but because the built in drive trays lacked any sort of vibration management I used rubber washers to secure the drives. I will post pictures in the next week or two on the pimp your rig thread.

I currently have four drives in the server currently (plus one parity drive). The rest of the drives are getting RMAed (they were almost killed by my previous server), and I will add them as soon as Seagate ships them to me (probably next week). Parity is valid from day 1 about a week ago. So far I have a lot of confidence in the build.

To expand the 4 internal sata to handle ten total drives, I am using three of these cards plugged in the three available PCIe 1x ports:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816132008&cm_re=roswell_sata-_-16-132-008-_-Product

I had to flash the cards to the non-sata bioses for them to work (came with sata bios), but afterwards they worked like a charm. Kinda of a pain (had to use a USB floppy to flash), but now I got it down for my next build. I really wanted to avoid normal PCI initially if at all possible so these cards really helped. I currently have two of my non-parity drives hooked to one of these cards (the rest hooked to onboard), and my Parity Checks average around 60. My long term plan is to add a cache drive using a normal PCI card, maybe even using a 7200 RPM 2.5 inch drive as the case has a mount for that on its bottom.

The whole purpose of this build was to quickly move the data and drives from my old dying media server to something new, cheap and cool (as in temps). As I have been getting the RMAed drives I have been adding them and pulling the data off the old server one drive at a time so my Unraid box mostly lives at like 90% full. I am already building a second Unraid box based on the EP35-DS3R and a Antec 1200 to hold 16 drives for future capacity, so this P35-DS3L box might be in a "finished" state in less than a month. Tom basically dares you to build a second box with his pricing, and I never back down from a dare like that!

I would go ahead and push this board through the "certification" process or whatever, but since it is such an illogical Unraid board I will leave this post behind as the major record of my success. I am much more interested on certifying my EP35-DS3R build because it IS logical for Unraid and it kinda has a bad rap around here. Thanks to Hackintoshing I am a huge gigabyte loyalist, and when possible I only use their mobos- I wouldn't really consider purchasing anything else.

With all that said if it works well for me in my current configuration for a while (and I get another Antec 1200 deal like the one I posted in the good deal forum the other day-Jeez), one day I might add a Supermicro PCIe sata card to turn this machine into a 16 drive build. But for now I will shoot for ten drives, and I will update this post when I am successful (or not).