Kizers Build


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I was then on a website and they kept talking about unRAID. I thought why would anybody name their software unRAID, when you want to raid your stuff for protection. Well I built a little test machine which was actually my regular desktop and I dropped in a few hard drives and attempted to get things up and running. Within 5minutes I was staring at a console and a webpage. That was to easy so I decided to preclear a few drives and the first one was a 6gig, followed by a 10gig then a 120gig. Got everything up and running with a few videos on the 6gig drive. I pulled the IDE cable and tried to watch the video on the share and sure enough it was still there. I was 1/2 sold until I turned off the machine and replugged in the drive and it rebuilt its self. Now I was really excited. I camped on the forum for a few weeks and found the wiki which gave me a piece by piece build out for my machine. I thought there is no way it can be that easy even with links to NewEgg so I could purchase. I decided to ask Rajahal a few stupid questions to see if what I was buying was actually right. He sounded like he knew what he was talking about and I went for it.

 

OS: unRAID 6.4 Pro

CPU: Xeon 1225-v3 Athlon x4 630 2.8GHz AMD was 2.7 GHz AMD Sempron 140

Motherboard: AsRock Extreme 6 was BIOSTAR A760G M2+

RAM: 16GB DDR3 8GB was 4 GB DDR2 800 RAM

Case: Cooler Master 590

Drive Cage: (3) ICY Dock Black Vortex was 2 Stock drive cages + added one COOLER MASTER STB-3T4-E3-GP 4-in-3 Device Module Hard disk Cage from NewEgg

Power Supply: Corsair AX760 was Corsair 400W

Sata Card: SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Cables: Locking Sata Cables, 3ware Serial Attached SCSI CBL-SFF8087OCF-05M, (2) Molex to 4 port Sata power extensionsInternal USB MotherBoard Adapter Cable

Other: Cut the LED leds on the cage fans.

 

Parity Drive: 4TB WD Green  was 2TB WD Green EARS "Jumpered"

Data Drive Few WD Greens

Cache Drive: Sandisk 240GB

Total Capacity: 12 Drives

 

Primary Use: Data Storage and streaming of Video and music across my Gigabit Network

Likes: Super Quiet and appears to run really cool

Dislikes: Swapping Drives is kinda a pain. I'm thinking of modding the Drive Cages some to make drive swapping easier

ToDO: Other than adding additional drives I think I'm good to go. 

 

  WWGFn.jpg%C2%A0

 

I've since added two new drive bays with fans 1 was a stocker from Rajahal and the other was a CoolerMaster cage I bought off NewEgg and took off the front section that had the chrome strip to make it all fit behind the mesh screen and the SuperMicro Card, well I've purchased it, but its in a box and the cables are pre-installed.

 

My internals aren't as pretty as most, but I'm wired up and zip tied up and ready to run 12 drives if/when I need to with a 2TB WD Green precleared and waiting to go online if/when needed.

 

WJuDb.jpg6C3IZ.jpg JBkR1.jpg

 

I've been asked how does it perform. So far I've been able to play/not Transcode (3) 720 Streams, (1) SD stream and do some file copying all at the same time without any noticeable performance hit.

 

Normally with this configuration my CPU normally runs around 19-20C and my current drive line up they normally run from 25-30C. I'm not really sure about Temps during a pairity check since I'm normally asleep when it runs once a month. I've only had one drive failure and I believe it was due to a faulty cable, but I didn't take that chance. I threw in a fresh pre-cleared drive and restored. I've since pre-cleared the drive that I thought had a problem and its shown no indication of any failures. I'm guessing it could of been a loose power cable since I was in the case earlier that day.

 

Yes as you can tell I do keep swaping out Sata Cables with different colors. I guess I like a little color in my box. LOL

 

Big Thanks to Rajahal for pointing me in the right direction the entire time. From The CPU to the cables for the expansion card. If it wasn't for him I would of had to actually think for myself and honestly I'm sure that wouldn't of turned out very well.

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I'm trying to setup my office/computer room so its as quiet as possible and well enjoyable, which soon there will be a complete remodel of a new wrap around desk and some other changes when I actually stop being lazy and get to it. I got a bit annoyed with the Blue Glowing lights so I took care of it.

 

2UBbs.jpg

 

I didn't take any photos of what I did, but more or less I exposed the fans in front and used a sharp knife and cut each wire on the fan extending from the center to the LED in each corner.

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I didn't take any photos of what I did, but more or less I exposed the fans in front and used a sharp knife and cut each wire on the fan extending from the center to the LED in each corner.

 

If you severed both wires going to the leds you did make sure there is no way for those cut wires to cross on the side closest to the center right?  It would be a shame to burn out a power supply or a motherboard from a short  :o

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  • 2 weeks later...

You mentioned that you are ready for 14 drives. How would you fit 14 when you have 3 4-in-3 cages? Aren't you limited to 12?

 

I have the same case and I'm planning for how to fit in more drives and considering going with 2 more 4-in-3 cages from Cooler Master or something else.

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  • 1 month later...

Just recently undervolted my 12volt front fans to 7volts. I just used one extension and daisy changed the 3 front fans off it.

http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/other/137

http://www.overclockers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=372297

 

Why well more or less experimenting to see what it would do and I noticed during a parity check it ran about 5c warmer, but as well realized later I also under volted the rear fan, which I didn't mean to. Other than that its nearly silent in my configuration. Cpu said it was around 22C, which in normally idles around 19-20. I think the hottest fan was around 33 at this current time. Of course I'll have to check when summer hits because it would run a bit warmer in my house and I will adjust.

 

 

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  • 7 months later...

I actually used one of these. I'm sure you can do a search for USB adapter motherboard and find dozens of different ones. I just happened to have this and took it apart and well have it installed in two different computers. ;) I like the cable idea so I can just lay the USB stick on the side opposed to haveing it stand up on the Motherboard. Of course its all about choice so I'm sure anything would work.

 

Clicky HERE

 

I think I'll update my build thread so it points to it so others can use it if they want to know what I'm talking about. LOL

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  • 1 year later...

Its been over a year since I've said anything in this thread.

 

I've swapped out my 1.5TB Green WD Parity drive for a 2TB drive and I as well swapped out one of my data drives for a 2TB Green WD. I had errors creeping up and decided it was best to replace the failing drive with a larger drive.

 

The last 3 months I haven't had one error and the month parity checks are doing their thing pretty smoothly running 5.0-rc8a.

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  • 2 years later...

Added a new Corsair Modular AX760 Power Supply. I was having issues with Disc6 aka the first disc on my Sata Expansion Card. I'm hoping its a power issue not a card issue.

 

Its been a couple of weeks since I've swapped out my PowerSupply. Everything seems to be pretty stable and hasn't thrown one drive or log error.

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  • 1 month later...

I've been throwing in drives 500GB or so as I find them in the house from my older projects and moving files on/off my drives hanging on my AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 card. I'm currently up to 10 of the possible 14 my Motherboard and AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 will support. Mobo-6 AOC-SAS2LP-MV8-8

 

Basically I'm just stress testing it some to insure that my previous issues of motherboard/power suppy are behind me. So far I'm feeling pretty happy. A few more mass data swapping arounds and a couple more parity checks I'll lay this problem to rest.

 

Before in the past when two drives was on the AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 my machine would throw tons of errors or freeze up. So far I have 3 Spinners and one SSD running off it and it "seems" to be doing just fine.

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  • 9 months later...

Since I've swapped out my Old Power Supply the CX400 I've had zero issues.

 

Just picked up:

4TB Blue WD (Parity Drive)- Installed and Parity Check complete

3TB Blue WD (Data Drive) - Letting things settle some before dropping/replacing older drives

3TB Blue WD (Data Drive) - Letting things settle some before dropping/replacing older drives

 

Ordered:

AMD Athlon II X4 630 2.8GHZ Quad Core

Samsung 8GB 2X 4GB DDR2 Ram

 

Need To Order:

CPU Cooler

CPU FAN

 

My thoughts are lets give the old box a little more breathing room with some new Drive Space since drives are a lot cheaper now than they have been in a while. Also I figure lets swap out the smaller RAM and give the box a bit more breathing room with the extra RAM. Eventually since I bought a Used processor I'd toy with swapping that out as well. I've been really happy with the computing power of the Old Sempron 140, but thought why not go a lot bigger with 3 more cores. I may or may not swap out the 140 for the Athlon Quad Core or I might fish around for another lower power Dual Core. Undecided as of yet. The Quad core was only 30Bux shipped, but uses double the power of my current Chip.

 

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... but uses double the power of my current Chip.

 

Actually that's probably not at all true.  Remember the TDP of a chip is the MAX power it will use -- when you're using a lot of CPU "horsepower".    Most systems use a tiny fraction of the CPU's capabilities, and the chip will draw significantly less power under those circumstances.    I suspect there's actually little difference in the power draw you'd see with the quad core chip under most circumstances => and when it WAS drawing more power, it'd be because it was working much faster than your current CPU.

 

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... but uses double the power of my current Chip.

 

Actually that's probably not at all true.  Remember the TDP of a chip is the MAX power it will use -- when you're using a lot of CPU "horsepower".    Most systems use a tiny fraction of the CPU's capabilities, and the chip will draw significantly less power under those circumstances.    I suspect there's actually little difference in the power draw you'd see with the quad core chip under most circumstances => and when it WAS drawing more power, it'd be because it was working much faster than your current CPU.

 

 

Exactly right. I should of said "could" use double the power. Which really isn't an issue honestly. I was looking at coolers. Holly Molly there are some crazy ones out there. I've been spoiled having a small cooler that is nearly silent, now some of these coolers are either HUGE or small and make a lot of noise to which is why I was thinking about the power draw/heat from an Athlon vs my Sempron.

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Agree the cooler could be notably noisier => although most motherboards control the fan speed based on the temps, so even that wouldn't likely be a problem.  But I agree it's tough to part with a nice, QUIET, setup => one of my servers is still using a SuperMicro D525 Atom board that is completely silent (no fan) ... and although I've thought many times about upgrading to a higher powered motherboard, I just never do it.    It's only used as a NAS; it's rock-solid; idles at 18w; and does absolutely everything I want it to.

 

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Looking on e-bay for what Wraith coolers have actually sold for (i.e. "Completed Listings") I found a few for $23.50, $30.00, $26.00, $20.00, $48.00, and $25.00.

 

The $48 is a bit of an outlier => somebody just wanted it and paid the "Buy It Now" price for it.  Several listings expired without selling for $34.95 and $39.00 ... so it seems $25-30 is the range you could actually buy one.

 

Looking at current listings, there's another one for $48.00 "Buy It Now" [ http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-AMD-Wraith-Cooler-3200RPM-40-CFM-CPU-Fan-with-Heatsink-/262737984498?hash=item3d2c677bf2:g:w1gAAOSw8gVX7xCM ];  one listed for auction with a current bid of $20.50 (although this one has a $20 shipping fee !!)  [ http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-WRAITH-COOLER-/282263043936?hash=item41b8303f60:g:pgEAAOSw4GVYJPuW ];  and another one listed for auction with a minimum bid price of $39.95, including shipping [ http://www.ebay.com/itm/AMD-Wraith-Cooler-/222327475504?hash=item33c3c00d30:g:t7cAAOSwHMJYNnQ9 ]

 

So ... if you really want one, they're certainly available (for a price).    I suspect a bit of patience could yield one for ~ $25 if you keep an eye on e-bay ... or for $40 you could probably get the last one I noted above (I doubt you'd be outbid).

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Over the Christmas Break I decided to install a few things along with Building another PC for a buddy as a Christmas Gift for his Kid. He wanted a Gaming machine and well all the talk of gaming and coolers I couldn't help myself so I bought a bigger cooler as well.

 

Installed:

Athlon x4 630 replacing my Sempron 140

8GB of Ram replacing my 4GB of Ram

CRYORIG H7 CPU Cooler

 

2Qek65Fl.jpg 7jaqcaJl.jpg AmYZKqbl.png

 

As of yet since I'm not running much I don't really notice a lot of difference in Horsepower from my new Processor since I went from a 1X [email protected] to a 4X [email protected]. I do notice from the Main menu that between the 4 Processors at Idle its not doing much of anything which is really nice. Lol

 

The Fan I noticed a HUGE change in Temp in the Case. Normally my Processor was around 36C-40C monitoring from unRAID using a plugin, which is odd because looking at my first post I made a comment that it ran a lot cooler. I wonder if the paste dried up and wasn't effective? I'll keep a mental note of that for the future. With this BEAST of a cooler and new processor I'm averaging around 26C-28C practically no matter what my machine is doing. I set the BIOS to Silent/Auto and the fan appears to be spinning around 525RPM, but can ramp up easily to 1600RPM on its own. With the fan spinning so slow I can barely hear it with my head up against the case. I also like the fact you can download/print a small Origami like cut out and make sure its going to fit in your case. Fit perfectly for my needs.

 

 

 

***************No this is not my real CPU/MotherBoard laying on the Carpet.***************

 

I was sitting on the Floor watching some TV when it arrived and I got kinda excited to play with it so I broke out my retired and no longer working Twin to my Mobo/Proc setup and was doing some verification does it clear the RAM test before taking down my Real setup.

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...

***************No this is not my real CPU/MotherBoard laying on the Carpet.***************

 

:)

 

You'd have certainly learned a lesson if it had been !!

 

 

I've learned my lesson many times doing stupid things. Luckily my stupid things didn't get me into to much trouble. ;)

Gary thanks for helping me pick out my Ram and Processor. They work together like a champ. I winged the Cooling a bit, but found a happy medium between what I really wanted and what I thought I needed. lol

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...  found a happy medium between what I really wanted and what I thought I needed ...

 

"Needs" are in the eye of the beholder !!  Clearly I NEED anything that I WANT  :)

 

... the trick is convincing the spouse that this is true  8)

As I've said before, she gets anything she wants, and I get anything she can't talk me out of. ;D
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