Bishop Crane

If they instructed you to take the CPU out for them to look at then in the modern world it really is on them, if you hadn't removed it it wouldn't have caused damage, blah, blah and all that.

It should be totally fine.

On the most part there isn't anything complicated going on here, its just an extension cable.
the quality of the cable would limit your overall maximum distance you can use, but your extra 200mm should be totally fine even if it was half as much.

What CPU do you have, and which slots are the devices in?
As is changes slightly how things work.

The key thing is that the PCIe x16 at the edge of the motherboard only runs at 4x maximum plus it shares bandwidth with the M.2

Also the PCIe x16_2 (the one next to the thunderbolt header) shares bandwidth with with one of the x1 slots as well as the USB3_E65 connector
The key thing from the info is that PCIe x16_2 by default runs at x1 for resource optimization
Hope that helps!

Fairly certain in the BIOS, under Advanced, I think its onboard devices.
There should be the option to set the bandwidth on the PCIe x16_2 slot to x4 mode, this will then disable both the USB3_E65 and the PCIe x1_1 slot

That's specifically designed for supermicro's own blade system, you cab basically squeeze 2 or 4 servers into the space of a single server.

Bad news is that not only will you have difficulty with a case for it, but its a proprietary power connector also.

For systems that need more than 550W ?

Seriously though, there are plenty of workstation class machines that have dual CPU's each of which have a TDP in excess of 200W and they're running workloads which use ALL of the machine.  You add a decent GPU to that and you're easily past the 550 mark.

Or you add a second GPU to your existing machine, and easily pass the 550W also.

It really depends on if you want performance or not
USB drives are the slower option, but near infinitely expandable.
Just remember if you want it for games and the drive is permanently attached then disable the Quick Removal so you get the slightly better performance.

If you want something faster then you have two choices
If you have space to put drives in the case but no free ports on your motherboard then you can simply buy a SATA controller PCI card, a half decent 6GB/s one will set you back about £40 (50 USD)

If you don't have space in the case either, you can get an eSATA enclosure, these vary greatly in price depending on features, bays among other things, but you will also need either eSATA on your motherboard, or a PCI card to go with it.

 

Its tremendously hard to damage a hard drive physically.
You have to remember that the disk platter spins in excess of 5000 RPM, so it has to be tremendously rigid or it would simply pull itself apart.
The head itself also must move back and forth very quickly, so itself is also extremely rigid.

Now onto the video, a datacentre is a unique place, there are thousands or sources of vibration, all within meters of each other.  Hard drives, fans, tape drives, all moving at different speeds.  You add something "weird" because someone shouting at their disk array isn't that weird, but the way he did it was.  And that weird thing can cause a brief problem.

You also have to remember that video is from 2008, things have moved on slightly.

But to the unique issue of a subwoofer, it "might" cause a problem, but you would have to listen to it at significant (complaint inducing) volume for it to cause sizeable vibrations.

But as to actual damage, unlikely, you'll should just force the disk head to re-align itself unless your drive is old, or has a normally unseen manufacturing fault you should be ok.  That being said, maybe consider some kind of isolation pad, so that the only vibrations transferred to it are the air waves, and not vibrations through the floor.  It will limit the potential for damage.

It really depends on what you're protecting yourself against.

For power surges, you want to check two things on a surge protector, the Maximum Joules and the Response time.
Most power surges that are made by the power companies are under 1000 joules, and as such most modern surge protectors are fine.
For protection against the big stuff, lightning strikes and the like, the bigger the better, but being honest if your withing a certain distance of a direct lightning strike, there is nothing a surge protector will do.  A billion or so Joules, is after all pretty large.

Now adding a UPS to that can help, it will almost act like a sacrificial lamb, it goes pop, but your PC is ok.  However that being said you need to make sure that it is not a pass-through UPS, meaning that the "dirty" and "clean" sides of the unit are not connected when AC is ok.
Also remember if you use a wired connection to the internet, that is more likely to be the source of any damage than the power itself.  A modern PSU will kill itself first to restrict the overcurrent, whereas a network card (likely attached to the motherboard)  has almost no overcurrent protection whatsoever.

The main factor in the lifespan comes down to the technology used in the actual storage itself, it will be referred to as SLC, MLC or TLC normally
Them being Single, Multi, and Tripple level cell, Multi means anything more than 1, but can also be triple, good old standardisation!

SLC is expected to last about 100k write operations per cell
MLC depending on bits per cell, but is around 10k writes per cell
TLC is about 5k writes per cell

These are estimates, as it really does depend on usage patterns and temperatures as well as a few other concerns.
Additionally there are enterprise level version of SLC and MLC (not sure of TLC) which can have endurances between 3x and 10x that of a standard drive.

 
It then comes down to the drive size, as to how long it will last.  a 1Tb drive will last for twice as many writes as a 512Gb drive, purely because it has twice as many cells.

The drive endurance is often expressed as DWPD (drive writes per day) this can give you an estimation of how long your drive will last if you compare it to the DWPD
Intel actually has a fairly useful tool for estimating the lifespan of their drives based on usage
https://estimator.intel.com/ssdendurance/

Hope that is of some help to you!

I have done the same to jury rig a fan controller for a laptop stand before.
I've even used that fan controller!

You want whatever your local equivalent is of this;
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000MGG6SC/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_image?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Basically powers from mains socket to a single Molex

Do you know the actual power draw of your server?
Most servers have a huge power supply to deal with them running at 100%, but actually they run at a Wattage much lower than that.
 
So for example if your server is mostly idle, then you can expect maybe a 100Watt draw.
The Normal usage in Watts will determine the size of your USP.

That being said Eaton do a nice calculator to give you an idea of what you should be looking at;
http://upsselector.eaton.com/Load

It is however designed around the enterprise market but you can figure out what you should be looking at.

A 4hour USP for even 200Watts is not going to be cheap though.

As @kirashi says, as a precaution back up your data, as its possible there is a problem.

That being said, if there are no SMART warnings and it passes health checks it may be fine, some older drives get noisy over time, I have several old 1TB drives that grind like anything while seeking, but there is nothing wrong with them, that's just the way they are.
The noise comes form the Actuator and arm, some of them over time get noisy under rapid movement, so as it moves back and forth over the platter is sounds like its grinding.

However if it starts ticking/grinding all the time, rather than just when being used, that indicates a major problem.

I have a similar thing, when I power on my speaker without powering on audio interface the speakers buzz.
 
This is because the amplifier in the speakers are basically amplifying random electron movement in the wires, which presents itself as a buzzing.
 
What it sounds like is happening is that during startup the analogue output (3.5 jack) is being reset at some point.
Its nothing to worry about unless you find it annoying, but the only real thing you can do about it is to switch to a digital output (HDMI to the monitor like you tried) or Digital Optical if your sound card supports it.

Your biggest issue will be that many UPS's will refuse to power on if they have no mains power, despite the battery being full.
UPS's are primarily designed to deal with handling that short period between the power going off and it coming back on again.

If its for your car you may be better off with an AC Inverter, the idea is that it powers itself from the vehicles 12V supply and then converts that to an AC outlet.  The issue here is that you need to size it properly to your cars engine and for it to be effective your engine needs to be on.
 
You may be better off with a portable generator, just making sure you match your wattage requirements to the generator size.

My ageing Dual E5-2690 setup all at stock speeds obviously, both under H115i Pro's so they can run at max turbo 24/7.
Very happy with the performance of a 6 year old stock speed workstation.

Having done similar to this a few times, definitely don't use the ML350 motherboard
The first two (of many) issues you'll run into are;
First the size of it, it doesn't fit into any case except custom designed ones.
Second, the power, it has what I believe is a standard connector, plus an additional custom 16pin.

Newer server boards from manufacturers like HP, Dell, IBM, are even worse on the power front, as the connector is more like a slot connector.
If you really want to use a Xeon your best best for compatibility are Supermicro or Tyan motherboards.  But that will run you about £100 at a minimum.

For a single socket board you might get lucky with something like this at £45
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/X58-Lga-1366-Motherboard-Support-For-REG-ECC-Server-Memory-And-Xeon-Processo-2C7/303144539826?epid=16031669352&hash=item4694d296b2:g:330AAOSwkhtcztbY
But honestly, I have no idea what that is.  There are no markings and I don't recognise it in any way.  So it might be total garbage.

Also be aware any server motherboard is going to potentially be on the large size, especially if its dual socket.  Many are not ATX format!  So will not fit in the majority of cases.  Many of them will be custom or state an EEB format, which in on the most part is a custom format.

I'm assuming the SAS card is the Array controller?  Or are you just using it as an adaptor for software raid or JBOD up the chain?
Either way the LSI's do have some decent diagnostics built in.
At boot you can normally press Ctrl+C to bring up the adaptor diagnostics (Crtl+A on some cards)
Most of them will have disk and controller diagnostics, worth running some of the basic ones, don't do the drive diagnostics unless you're desperate, they take forever!!
Some of the cards also have a log built in for array errors, worth looking at.

Couple things to check also, does it have a backup battery?  Is it in good/bad health, you can sometimes be better off without the battery if its unhealthy.

Are both drives on the same Port on the card?  If so it could be the port or the Cable, the splitters don't often go, but do sometimes.

Also you say you have 10 drives in your other post, but the SAS card is only an 8 port card or are you using a SAS Expander?  At which point, are both drives connected to the expander?

Last thing, are all the drives from the same batch?  If so you could just be unlucky and it could be a bad batch of drives.