[Complete] Emerald's Home Server

[EmeraldFlame]

Hey Everyone, I am relatively new to this community, and figured I would share one of my latest builds with you. This is kind of a post-build log as it has been done for a while, but I was happy with how it turned out.

I have wanted a server for my house for quite awhile to use as a back up location for my other computers, along with the ability to host my own teamspeak server, and a few other small things. Having an always on computer opens up a lot of possibilities. As this was supposed to be an always on computer, and it has to be in my room (I just graduated with my bachelors and am still living with my parents until I can find a good stable job) the biggest requirements for me were efficiency and silence. I didn't want something that would suck a lot of power and run up the electric bill, and I wanted something that could be on and not disturb me while I am trying to read, sleep, or whatever. So I settled on the following components.

Case: Fractal Design Node 804

CPU: Intel Core i3-4150

MoBo: Asus H97M-E

RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB 1600 MHz (x2)

Boot Drive: Samsung 840 Evo 120GB

Storage: WD Red 3TB (x4)

Raid Controller: LSI MegaRAID 9266-8i

PSU: Corsair RM 430W

OS: Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter

 

Now the Node 804 caught my eye as it was one of the smallest cases that could hold the most full size 3.5" drives I could find, without going to a rackmount type server, which is why I got it. It also looks clean, elegant, and is easy to hide away. After getting it in, it was also one of the nicest cases I have ever worked in. Every vent except for the 2 rear exhaust ports are filtered, all filters are easily removable and washable without disassembling the case. More cases need to look at what fractal had done here in terms of dust-proofing as this is one of the few cases that doesn't do any have measures, everything is filtered as it should be. The only place this case fails is cable management, which is practically non-existent. There are 4 or 5 cable tie notches along the bottom edge of the motherboard, and that's it. No grommets for cable pass-through. There is also no room between the frame and the top-panel so you can't run wires up there either. So the only cables you can effectively tie down right out of the box are USB headers, audio headers, and case buttons. Everything else you have to kind of figure something out. I ended up going to the hardware store and I picked up cable tie bases with 3m double back tape and made my own cable tie points at a few strategic locations. Other than this issue, it an amazing little case.
 

 

I chose the core i3-4150 mainly for efficiency. It has a low TDP with more than enough performance than I will ever need out of it, and it is relatively cheap. The server acts as primarily a file server, although I do run things like a teamspeak server and a minecraft server on it, this box really doesn't need a ton of horsepower. Fun-fact on this processor too, my current workstation has a first-gen i7-920 in it, and this i3-4150 actually gives that old i7 a run for its money despite having 2 less cores. Highly threaded tasks like transcoding, the i7 still winds, but in nearly everything else, the i3 beats it.

 

 

For the motherboard, I honestly just grabbed one of the cheapest quality boards I could find. I didn't need much at all as far as a feature set. As long as it booted and had 1 sata port and 1 pci-e x4 slot, I was happy. There were a few other boards cheaper than this, but they were all Gigabyte's, and after the last board I got from them (which is in my previously mentioned desktop) I won't go near them with a 10-foot pole. Asus has really won my favor, especially with how great their UEFI is.

 

The G.Skill ram was on sale, that's all there was to that purchase. I considered ECC memory, but that would have meant spending more on a MoBo that supported it, and it isn't something I think will really be needed for as little as this thing will be doing.

 

 

As far as the boot drive went, I don't really expect it to be rebooting often, but when it needs to, I want it to be speedy. I have had great luck with Samsung's SSD's and am really happy with their magician software, so I picked up a 120 GB Evo.

 

 

I picked up the 4, 3TB Red drives at $99 a pop for a total of 12TB of storage. They have great performance for 5400 RPM drives hitting about 150MBps read/write individually.

 

I knew that I wanted to run RAID 5 with this server for the redundancy, as it will be storing a lot of my photography, music, videos, backups of the other computers in the house, and so on. I was also doubted that on-board raid, especially on a budget board like this, could give me the performance I wanted. So I started looking at raid controllers. I was amazed at how expensive they are now, and ended up settling on this 9266-8i model. Nearly a $700 part if you buy one new. I picked mine up, used off ebay for around $250. This gives me the option to run 4 more drives in the future if I really want to (which the case also supports), I don't know if I will ever take advantage of that, but its nice to know I have the option if I ever need even more space.

 

 

I chose the RM 450 as the power supply because, while it is expensive for a 450W unit, it has an 80+ Gold rating, and it is fully modular. Along with that, the RM units are known for their acoustic silence. The fan doesn't kick on until around 40% load, and to be honest, I have had the server on for a few months now, and I don't think the PSU fan has ever kicked on. Everything in the server would have to be running at around 90% capacity before I hit the threshold for the fan to kick in. The silence was worth the price for me.

 

 

Finally I choose the OS as I did because first and foremost I wanted this to be a server, and have all the capabilities of one, and so far it has served me well. Plus, from being a computer science major at university, I had 2 free copies that I had gotten from Microsoft's Dreamspark program with my school. Heck this exact version of Windows server costs $6500 full retail, how could I not use one of the 2 copies I had?

Now in the picture of the raid card above, you probably noticed a very oddly placed noctua fan. That has a little story behind it. After getting the server up and running, then waiting the full 2 days it took for the RAID 5 to initialize, I ran some benchmarks, and attempted to transfer some files. And speeds were crappy. Over my gigabit connection to the machine, I was transferring somewhere around 15-20MBps max. So I knew something was up. Turns out the RAID card was throttling because it was getting too hot. This card really is one of the few truley 'server grade' components in this build, and it was designed to have much higher airflow than what the case was allowing. The heat sink was literally burning hot to the touch. So to solve this, I knew I needed to get a fan right on it. So what I did was take an expansion slot cover, and made a fan mount out of it. The fan is a noctua NF-F12 and it is throttled to a constant 1000 rpm by pwm from the mobo header. The card seems to run stably at around 50°C now, and maxes out performance of my network.

 

[Zhat]

Nice! You didnt make the mistake I did. I tried building a budget Mini-ITX Server and to cut on cost I sued a non-modular power supply . But your build look nice and clean! Good work! 

[Bogica]

Sweet, looks great man, a very nice build!

[EmeraldFlame]

Nice! You didnt make the mistake I did. I tried building a budget Mini-ITX Server and to cut on cost I sued a non-modular power supply . But your build look nice and clean! Good work! 

 

I have been building computers for about 12 years now, and I learned a long time ago that I hate non-modular power supplies. They typically save a ton of money, and I often use them in builds for friends if they don't care, but for all my builds, it is full modular all the time.

 

Sweet, looks great man, a very nice build!

Thanks to both of you for the compliments.

[Bogica]

I have been building computers for about 12 years now, and I learned a long time ago that I hate non-modular power supplies. They typically save a ton of money, and I often use them in builds for friends if they don't car, but for all my builds, it is full modular all the time.

I learned that the hard way, when I noticed that my mid tower has no place to hide the unused cables (which there were plenty of) and they end up blocking the air flow. Never going non modular again.

[flibberdipper]

Nice. For a server-ish build, this is really nice looking.

[kuzimins]

Nice work!

[alpenwasser]

Always excellent to see storage builds.

[Sinakaru]

Love the DIY Noctua-raid card cooler. Lookin' good!

[EmeraldFlame]

Thanks for the compliments everyone.

 

Also, forgot to mention. I am still looking for a name for this computer, specifically something that windows will actually accept. I would also like the name to be something somewhat themed so that I can name the minecraft server and teamspeak server in the same ways. The university I went to used the names of transformers for all their hardware and software servers and I am looking for a similar idea. Just haven't settled on anything yet. If you have any ideas, let me know, I may just actually use it.

[Anthony_95]

Good job man. Pretty awesome build !!