SilverStone CS380 w/ 6xHDD + 6xSSD

[knobbytires]

I had a bunch of HDD's, SSD'ss and RAM sitting around from server project I never built. My immediate use case is a higher end Plex server as my Synology is close to capacity.

 

I did some research and settled on the following:

 

• SilverStone Technology CS380 NAS Tower
• Coraisr RM850x
• Super Micro X8DTL-iF
• 2 x Xeon E5620
• LSI 9211-8i
• 2 x Arctic Freezer 12 CO
• Icy Dock ExpressCage 6 x 2.5
• 6 x Sata III Cables
• 2 x Mini SAS to 4 SATA
• StarTech 50x10mm
• AYA 7" 8-Pin to Dual 8-Pin EPS
• Arctic Alumina Thermal Adhesive
• Alex Tech 1/2 inch Wire Loom

 

Existing:

 

• 6 x Samsung 8GB 2RX4 PC3L-10600R
• 8 x Seagate 4TB
• 6 x Samsung 850 EVO 1TB

 

Total cost for new parts was ~$650. Equivalent Synology to support drives/ssd + ram upgrade would have been $2k+ and would still have less cores and memory.

 

Overall I'm pleased with build. Plex streams 4k w/ no issue and only slightly louder than my Synology. I’m also starting to use Unraid as spill over for larger dev VM’s that don’t fit on my laptop.

 

Notes:

 

• Many posts state the Arctic Freezer 12's work on X8DTL boards with supplied adapters which was untrue in my case. The screws are about 1/8" too long so I used a few washers as spacers. Worth noting, I tried four different coolers and theses were by far the best.
• Originally I had both cpu cooler/fans facing toward rear but the front CPU ran a few degrees hotter as the fan blew directly into back of rear cpu cooler/fan. I rotated 90 degrees and they now run at same temp.
• I originally purchased the Mediasonic 6 x 2.5 but it had intermittent issues with ssd's so swapped it for the Icy Dock.
• I glued the StarTech fan directly to the chipset heatsink with thermal glue. It's more permanent than I'd like but cleanest solution I could find.

 

Planned additions:

 

• I have an old 980 Ti which I hoped to use for transcoding but it is about 20mm too long. I may add a 1060 at some point for GPU pass through to VM’s + transcoding.
• I have a 3TB FusionIO card I may try to get running for VM's if I don’t add a GPU.

 

 

Edited May 19, 2020 by knobbytires

[reboot47]

very nice set up, the silverstone cs380 seems to be one of the more popular solutions for nas, its available and well priced at least.

 

I think your 980 ti may not do hw transcoding of hevc content maybe check here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/906qud/980_ti_vs_gtx_960_for_transcoding/

 

I remember having to ditch my geforce 970 since even newer $40-50 gpus were performing better with 4K playback.