Hardware recommendations

[ThomasReid]

I just recently was gifted a NORCO RPC-4220 chassis, but it does not come with any of the controllers for the HDDS. It has the sleds but nothing for the HDDS to plug-in to. I plan on buying a Supermicro  x8dti-f with two intel xeon e5504 processors, and adding 64GB of DDR3 RAM to it. Outside of that I have 0 clue where to begin looking for either Raid controller replacements or modding to get something to work. I'd like to keep it hot swap-able and I plan on using it for a plex server (maybe not plex specifically), a central place for Steam games and somewhere to dump my family pictures.

[Needfuldoer]

16 minutes ago, ThomasReid said:

I plan on buying a Supermicro  x8dti-f with two intel xeon e5504 processors, and adding 64GB of DDR3 RAM to it.

Try to go for a newer platform, at least Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge. Nehalem on LGA1366 is an old, slow, power hog these days. Even buying new desktop parts would eventually pay for itself in power savings.

 

Does your chassis have a backplane? You should just need a SAS controller with enough ports to support all those drives.

[ThomasReid]

So I live in a relatively tech sparse area of the US. I managed to find the mobo/cpus combo for $50, and the RAM for $15 so I'm trying to keep things dirt cheap just to get my hands dirty and start into the home lab space. The chassis does not have the backplane (thank you that's the technical term that I was missing from my post)

 

The backplane is specifically what I'm looking to get replaced or mod one in....which may be difficult based on the mobo choice.

[OddOod]

1 hour ago, ThomasReid said:

It has the sleds but nothing for the HDDS to plug-in to

Wait, is it missing the backplanes? Or just the HBA that the backplanes plug into?

 

EDIT: 

42 minutes ago, ThomasReid said:

The chassis does not have the backplane

Okay, it's missing the backplanes. That's BONKERS. You're kinda hooped. Looks like they weren't that great to begin with. 
Replacement backplanes are HARD to come by. Unless you're in a MASS market server you're unlikely to find just the backplanes for any reasonable price. I'd probably recommend just sacrificing airflow and go with SAS to SATA expansion cables. It makes the sleds a LOT less hot swapable, but it allows you to actually use the case

[OddOod]

As for the HBA, I'd recommend an LSI Megaraid XXXX-16i which will only get you 16 of the 20 bays covered, but you can then grab a 4i/8i to handle the rest, though if you're shucking and jiving this hard for parts, you might just stick to 16 drives to start with.
LSI HBA model numbers are four digits then a dash then the number of drives it handles, then an I or an E to indicate if the connectors are inside or outside the case respectively
 

[ThomasReid]

I think I found a pretty decent price on an LSI MegaRAID 9260-16i ($60) as far as the missing backplanes I don't know what to say, I was gifted it so I'm not exactly going to look a gift horse in the mouth here. Also, they had bought Noctua fans to replace the og server fans so I'm not complaining. My wife might when I tell her I have a new project but that's my issue to deal with

 

So I guess all I really need at this point is a PSU to power it all and I'm thinking about an M.2 PCIe card to keep the OS on, that way the drives are *just* storage.

[LIGISTX]

HBA:

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133485835643?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=OwHu05S9RzG&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=B1xTkXm_Qfe&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

 

It comes with SAS to SATA adapters, and it’ll do 8 drives out of the box. If you ever need more, you can just buy a SAS expander. How many drives are you planning on needing?

[Needfuldoer]

2 hours ago, ThomasReid said:

So I guess all I really need at this point is a PSU to power it all and I'm thinking about an M.2 PCIe card to keep the OS on, that way the drives are *just* storage.

Good idea, but you're going to need at least Haswell/Broadwell (Xeon v3 or Intel 4xxx) to boot off M.2. Anything older would need to chain-boot off a USB flash drive.

 

4 hours ago, ThomasReid said:

The backplane is specifically what I'm looking to get replaced or mod one in....which may be difficult based on the mobo choice.

The backplanes are motherboard-agnostic, and honestly the Norco ones aren't all that great in the first place.

 

You don't have to use backplanes. There's nothing stopping you from slotting all your drives in and then plugging SATA/SAS and power cables into them. You just won't be able to hot swap as easily.

 

[Jarsky]

As said, you'd find it very hard to get a replacement backplane. Norco has been dead a while now; and while it does use a conventional form factor (theyre largely a clone of Supermicro servers) that maybe something 3rd party will fit; most of the 3rd party are 12, 16 or 24 port backplanes not 20 port.

 

Theyre also quite expensive; so probably outside of the budget for this build. So you're probably best as the others have suggested plugging the drives direct to the HBA's with SATA breakout cables. 

 

Something like this (12Gbps SAS): https://www.ebay.com/itm/364563172676

 

More budget friendly options would be to get a 16 port (6Gbps SAS) and connect the rest of the drives to onboard: https://www.ebay.com/itm/38687600505 

Or get a 8 port (6Gbps SAS) + SAS Expander: https://www.ebay.com/itm/162958581156 + https://www.ebay.com/itm/353986556364