August 28, 201015 yr Author Well, it comes with one of each, you can either use them or get higher powered ones, but I don't see the need. You DO want to get some thermal Paste which you will put between the CPU and the heatsink/fan. It might come with that too, but my experience says no. Thanks, I didn't know if they did or not. Just seemed like something was missing from the list.
August 28, 201015 yr Hot swap cage benefits: -Easy to upgrade/replace a drive. -Fit 5 drives in 3 bays. -Good drive cooling. Hot swap cage disadvantage: -Cost ~$23/drive Cooler Master 4 in 3 advantages: -Fit 4 drives in 3 bays. -Good drive cooling -Cost ~$5/drive Cooler Master 4 in 3 disadvantages: -Hard to upgrade/replace a drive. Norco 4220 advantages: -Easy to upgrade/replace a drive. -Good drive cooling -Fit 20 drives -Cost ~$15/drive Norco 4220 disadvantages: -Noise If I was starting from scratch I would do one of the following: Small server - 12 drives - $110 (1) Cooler Master 590 (2) Cooler Master 4 in 3 Large server - 20 drives - $300 (1) Norco 4220 Since the max drive size is going to be stuck at 2T for some time, I do not think the cost of a hot swap cages is worth the cost. I imagine a failure will occur less than once per year for a small server. It is a large cost to save ten minutes a year. On the other hand is it best to have two small servers or one large server? I can see advantages to each.
August 28, 201015 yr Well, it comes with one of each, you can either use them or get higher powered ones, but I don't see the need. You DO want to get some thermal Paste which you will put between the CPU and the heatsink/fan. It might come with that too, but my experience says no. Thanks, I didn't know if they did or not. Just seemed like something was missing from the list. My AMD CPU shipped with a fan and heatsink. It also had the thermal paste already applied to it.
August 28, 201015 yr Question: Are the Hot Swap cages really need in the UnRaid setup? Is it more of a WOW factor or for a practical purpose? Just wondering since the Non Swap cages are so much cheaper. I opted for the cheaper drive cages with my first unRAID build but the others are right about getting hot-swappable drive capability if your budget allows for it. The hot-swap drive trays are much more convenient to work with. I'm very satisfied with the 4-in-3 cages but it's definitely more work when you need to add or replace a hard drive. The next unRAID system I build will most likely have hot-swappable drives.
August 28, 201015 yr Well, it comes with one of each, you can either use them or get higher powered ones, but I don't see the need. You DO want to get some thermal Paste which you will put between the CPU and the heatsink/fan. It might come with that too, but my experience says no. Thanks, I didn't know if they did or not. Just seemed like something was missing from the list. My AMD CPU shipped with a fan and heatsink. It also had the thermal paste already applied to it. I've bought at least 3 Sempron 140s over the past few months, and they have all come with the fan, heatsink, and pre-applied thermal paste. No need to buy any of that separately. Good summary, ohlwiler. My only change would be to change the Norco 4220's drive cooling to 'decent'. It does tend to run a bit hot (high 30s and low 40s for me), especially as you pack more and more drives in there, and even after upgrading to 120 mm fans. Also, while the 4220 is definitely a better deal if the goal is a 20 drive server, it is far more bulky and heavy than a standard desktop packed with 5-in-3's. You can place it on it's side, though, which helps save a lot of space.
August 30, 201015 yr Author I see that Lime-Tech uses 2 of the Supermicro Add-on Card AOC-SASLP-MV8 to hook up the drives. Will I need 2 of these if I am going to do a 12 drive system? Or just the breakout cables? The info on the card says it will support 8, and the motherboard BIOSTAR A760G M2+, pictures show that it has 6 SATA plug ins.
August 30, 201015 yr Author All of my parts are on order for my very first going with UnRaid. I omitted getting some of the cables, those I can get locally if needed, and I wanted to wait and see what length I would need.
September 16, 201015 yr Author Well my build is all done and up and running. I now preparing to start copying my data over to the drives that I have mounted. I did all the components to the budget build, except that the Psu is the Corsair 750 watt instead of the 430 watt listed. I am running the 3) Cooler Master 4 in 3's non hot swaps, with 10 hard drives installed at the moment. Pretty excited that when I turned it on, it actually worked! My son and I did it together and the only real build trouble was the install of the CPU, had to have my him do it for me, I just couldn't see those little bitty prongs, they were a total blur for me! Maybe if I would have had a magnifying glass, stinks to start getting old! I do appreciate all of the help given for this build! Thank you
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.