completed water-cooled, 1U SSD mining server!

[RollinLower]

This build is now officially caled the Plot device!

 

Welp, here i am again, starting another build while only last week i finished the previous one. This may be getting out of hand.

 

Anyway, here's the situation: I wanna mine Chia coin. Chia is a crypto you don't mine in your regular sense, but you 'mine' it using storage, on a proof of time and proof of space basis.

So that's where this server comes in. It's a 1U Supermicro box rocking a Xeon E5 2620V3 And 64GB of RAM.

 

This ofcourse, won't do. So here's the specs i want to put into this box:

 

Xeon E5 2680 V4 14-core

128GB ECC DDR4

20TB (10x 2TB drives) SATA SSD's

watercooling!

 

Alphacool 1U DDC pump mount

Alphacool 1Ux 6 radiator

Alphacool 1U CPU block

Alphacool soft tubing/fittings.

 

i'm still waiting on parts, so this is where she now stands. But i've got a little sneak-peek of things to come.

 

[Haraikomono]

whats the coin value of 1 chia ? I cant seem to find any info regarding that

[SorryBella]

Cant wait for the doomer post to this thread, Nice build!

[RollinLower]

3 minutes ago, Haraikomono said:

whats the coin value of 1 chia ? I cant seem to find any info regarding that

I don't think it has a value yet. Transactions with chia are planned to be enabled may 3rd.

[Lobstar]

Nice rig!  I take it this is just for bulk plotting then offloading the plots to some other box?

[RollinLower]

2 hours ago, Lobstar said:

Nice rig!  I take it this is just for bulk plotting then offloading the plots to some other box?

yep, i'm still debating what box i want that to be, but i'm leaning towards getting another 4U box and just crammin it full with HDD's

[RollinLower]

welp, i've got the loop together... almost. i'll explain in more detail below.

 

first things first, i've got the CPU block and the pump/res in!

alphacool calls it a pump/res anyway, imo it;s more of a pump mount. not much res area to speak of here.

 

i first had it mounted straight with a fitting into the rad, but that wouldn;t work. This would mean i had everything mounted on the outlets of the pump, nothing going in. welp.

i instead settled for mounting it a bit further back and using another piece of tube with some fittings. now the loop could actually work!

 

I also had a bit of an clearance issue with the CPU block sadly. This means i cannot use one of the RAM channels because that's where the fittings live. i'm still debating if it would be worth it to swap out some 16GB sticks for 32Gb sticks just to get the 128GB's, but i think 96GB's would get me far enough as well.

 

Other things i added include a PCIe to M.2 crad with space for 2 M.2's. right now it's populated by one 512Gb drive, but i plan on upgrading this to 2 1TB drives in RAID 0 for ultra-fast plotting.

 

and one final issue: the pump i got secondhand came with an aftermarket pumphousing with cooling ribs. Those sadly mean that the pump won;t fit. i already ordered a new housing that would solve this issue, but it still. The loop could be filled if it wasn't for that pump housing.

 

anyway, more pics as the build comes together.

[RollinLower]

Cleaned up the cables a bit.

 

[2FA]

My wallet can't handle the fomo here... Nice build though

[RollinLower]

Welp, this reply is well overdue.

 

Currently, the server is running and plotting away. Its definitely not completed yet though! I still need to get the new pump housing and fix some other things like a minor leak in a set of fittings.

Anyway, the fans arrived!

 

Gotta love the way-too-bulky packaging Noctua provides with their teeny-tiny 40mm fans.

In my previous config i managed to fit 5 fans on the radiator. Mostly because there was no way for me re arrange the fittings without interfering even more with things like RAM clearance.

 

But with some puzzling, and some more fittings in there i managed to squeeze a 6th fan in there!

 

The cables are definitely a problem. I'll try to manage them a bit better somehow, but i'm afraid i might have to cut, splice and solder them together for a cleaner look.

Also, this set of new fittings leaks. Its probably the tiniest leak i've ever had in a waterloop, but a leak nontheless. it loses about a drop of water every few hours.

 

Anyway, this is how she now stands. It's plotting 14 plots simultaneously on all drives, and it runs quite literally circles around the old Dell R510 i was previously using for CHIA plotting.

 

Things to do in the next update:

- fix the leak

- mount new pump housing, so i can actually fit the cover on the server

- manage fan cables

- swap PSU fans for silent models

- attach long-term CHIA storage in the form of a JBOD!

 

Speaking of JBOD, i got a nice deal on this lovely specimen:

 

15 drives ought to do it for now, but these babies can be daisy chained!

Too bad it sounds like a jet fighter taking off. This thing is definitely going to need silencing aswell.

 

 

[Hill160881]

Love the project.  Ya those server systems are noisy. I am about to water cool my nas. All the parts are here except the gpu waterblock. It’s got about 40tb and it’s plotting now. About 4tb plotted as right now. Its taking a while but I am down to 1 month estimated return with only 4tb plotted so good as far as I can tell. 

[RollinLower]

26 minutes ago, Hill160881 said:

Love the project.  Ya those server systems are noisy. I am about to water cool my nas. All the parts are here except the gpu waterblock. It’s got about 40tb and it’s plotting now. About 4tb plotted as right now. Its taking a while but I am down to 1 month estimated return with only 4tb plotted so good as far as I can tell. 

what are you plotting on? SSDs, HDDs? i get about 18 simultaneous plots on this machine, got about 5TB plotted now. it definitely takes a while but so far the future trades available for CHIA are looking quite promising. it might just become valuable!

[Hill160881]

1 hour ago, RollinLower said:

what are you plotting on? SSDs, HDDs? i get about 18 simultaneous plots on this machine, got about 5TB plotted now. it definitely takes a while but so far the future trades available for CHIA are looking quite promising. it might just become valuable!

I am plotting on 8 wd red 4tb platter drives striped, about 30tb. I also have a 10tb in a hot swap bay. So really slow but moving along nice at only 1/2 system memory allocation.  It has 64gb ram so I am allowing 32 for the plotting. The system will still game at 4K 120 with it plotting. 

[RollinLower]

Welp, over tot some good news and some bad news. 

 

Let's start with the good news first. I finally got the new pump housing in!

This means the pump now sits a lot lower, and I can finally close the lid on this box.

 

It looks a lot worse and it's just plastic instead of aluminum like the other one, bit this photo should really drive home the point why this one's better fit for this build:

 

Now the bad news. I tried silencing one of the PWS-706P-1R powersupplies. 

I got new 40mm fans that spin at a max of about 4k rpm. The fans in the psu don't use a normal header, but the signal is actually normal PWM. So all I had to do was cut the wires and splice them together.

 

Old fan on the left, new fan on the right.

 

Sadly, it seems the server doesn't accept this. I guess the PWM threshold is set for a value higher than the RPM this fan will provide, and it shuts the PSU down as faulty. 

Sigh.. guess I'll have to figure something out. Maybe a arduino or something to spoof the PWM signal?

 

Anyway, she's back in the rack again happily plotting away for now. Even though a bit noisy for my tastes.

[RollinLower]

update time!

 

after a few hours of carefull consideration i got to the conclusion that modding the existing PSU's just wasn;t gonna be worth it. too much hassle, too little reward.

instead, i opted to just replace the power delivery entirely!

 

the stock SuperMicro PSU's could deliver up to 1400 Watts when running in tandem. all the while this system only draws about 200 watts from the wall with every SSD populated and the CPU running at 100%. absolute overkill. meaning i could get away with just a little 300 to 400 watt flex ATX PSU!

 

the model i chose is a Silverstone SST-FX350-G

 

mostly because it was the only model above 300 wats readily available, and also because it had same-day shipping.

this thing is just as high as a normal 1U PSU, but it's a bit shorter and wider. meaning the old PSU cage and power breakout board had to go. 

 

You can see here that the old PSU cage is riveted into the main chassis, bit it actually isn't part of the structure. so removing it really wont impct the structure of the case.

underneath the little plastic cover above the PSU cage sits the power breakout board, which converts the finger-style connector of the hotswap PSU's into regular old ATX, SATA and Molex connections. this also has to go, and i'll start here.

 

 

lucky for me this little board is only held in with 4 screws, and pops out easily enough.

that still leaves the PSU cage.

 

 

it took some drilling, but it also came out easily enough! a lot easier than i expected actually.

the only hurdle i got a little stuck on was a screw hidden behind the rack rails, keeping the cage in even after drilling out all rivets. once i figured that out it popped out and i got a whole lot of nothing where the old power delivery used to sit.

 

 

one nice thing i found out is that the little plastic cover for the old breakout board still mounts into the chassis just fine, it's only held in with 3 clips which didn't come out with the PSU cage. free cable management space!

 

anyways, in goes the new PSU.

 

like a glove!.. somewhat like a glove anyway.

i just stuck some double sided tape under it and it sits firmly in place. maybe someday i want to 3D print something to fully close off the chassis again, but i guess leaving it open around the PSU won't hurt airflow either.

 

just a little time for cable management, and there you go! a whisper quiet server system!  

 

the last hurdle for this project turned out to be the molex power for the front SSD backplane.

SuperMicro used right angle molex connectors, while this PSU came with the normal straight type. so with these molex connectors, my radiator wouldn't fit.

 

i ended up just cutting the new PSU's cable, and splicing it together with the old molex cable from the power breakout board. i had to solder the wires together again, and in the absence of proper heatshrink i instead just used some elctrical tape to isolate each wire. i still would like to use some heatshrink to atleast cover the tape, but its fine for now. 

 

welp, that's about it! it's happily plotting away, and all the while it's nearly silent. i'd call that mission accomplished.

 

things maybe to change in the future:

- get a manual fan controller for pump speed. the motherboard keeps ramping/slowing the pump, which doesn't seem to get fixed with on board fan control. not a huge deal tough, the pump is pretty quiet.

-  3D print a mount for the PSU so it sits a bit nicer. (like, atleast not mounted with tape)

 

here's some final shots with a better camera, and i'll also inlcude a shot of the setup so you can understand why i want it to be quiet!

[Hill160881]

Very nice. I want to build a server rack at some point but I just don’t have the space, or I would rather use the space for other things lol. 

[RollinLower]

Welp, since my last post my server rack and this build changed a bit again.

 

i got rid of the dell R510, and got a 4U supermicro JBOD enclosure with 24 bays, which i hooked up with external SAS and a LSI HBA to the 1U server.

 

In total i got 7 14TB drives, 10 2TB SSD's and a lot of free space for growth! 

[Hill160881]

I discussed a server rack build with my family and they want to stick to smaller systems. I was hoping to convince them to let me build something like this but no. I did convince them to build a thread ripper system so compromise. 

[DailyProcrastinator]

Hey A fellow Chia Farmer! I've gone heavy on this as well!

 

Net space is insane though but a fun project, hopefully you got some coin early on!