UNRAID Micro Server 225 x 87 x 281 mm

[UFBC]

Complete noob to UNRAID (all of 4 days)

 

Thought I would share my first attempt and building a TINI UNRAID box for my home.

It is in an Inwin BQ656  mini ITX case measuring just 225 x 87 x 281 mm or 3.3 litres

12Tb raw 8Tb protected

3*4Tb Seagate ST4000LM024 2.5" drives

2*120Gb SSD 2.5" drives for cache pool in raid1 for redundant cache

Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. H97N-WIFI

Intel® Core™ i5-4460 CPU @ 3.20GHz

8 GiB DDR3

Dual 1GigE and 2*2 mimi 11AC WiFi

 

I know people will cringe at my drive installation with minimal cooling but the objective was compact over everything else.

Only using it for backup of home PCs/laptops and drives sit at 35c most times and spun down more often than active.

System consumes <50 watts of power most of the time.

 

[testdasi]

That is one tight case. Watch your HDD temp or they may not last very long.

 

What's the material of the side panel on the HDD side? If it's metal then you may improve the HDD temp by flipping the HDD over over and have the metal side contact the side panel (maybe add some thermal pads) to create a kind of heat spreader.

 

Otherwise, I would run it with the HDD side naked and plug a USB fan (one with flexible arm) to direct some airflow over the HDD.

[UFBC]

6 hours ago, testdasi said:

That is one tight case. Watch your HDD temp or they may not last very long.

 

What's the material of the side panel on the HDD side? If it's metal then you may improve the HDD temp by flipping the HDD over over and have the metal side contact the side panel (maybe add some thermal pads) to create a kind of heat spreader.

 

Otherwise, I would run it with the HDD side naked and plug a USB fan (one with flexible arm) to direct some airflow over the HDD.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

You got me thinking... Yes the case side is flat metal on HDD side with some holes but it slides on so thermal transfer from drives to case may be tricky.

This said I had a spare case the same that has the mesh on CPU side and I have swapped this with the flat panel so now plenty of fresh air from both sides.

Old side panel left and replacement on right.

 

I also have a cooler heat sink/fan unit from a low profile GPU that I may mount in the HDD side with a temperature controller inline.