DNA - Home Server [Build Log] 001

[Gecko]

DNA - Home Server [build Log] 001

All my parts are brand new from NCIX Canada

Hi again guys and girls

So this is my 1st build log all parts are from NCIXlinks will be provide in case you want to read up on more info than I will dish out.
I also will tell you I mod my builds/cases to suite my needs and linis said that this case for this build was a bad idea!

ok so to start

• Case - Coolermaster Haf XB
• Motherboard - Gigabyte H77N - Wifi
• Processor - Intel Core i3 3220
• Ram - Corsair XMS3 Dominator Dual Channel 2x4 8Gig
• Main OS Drive - Seagate Momentus XT 500GB
• Power Supply - Corsair AX760i 760 Watt ATX
• Cooler - Corsair H100i - Yes I know over the top but meh
• Fans - 2x Noctua NF-F12 120MM - 2x Noctua NF-R8 80mm - 1 x Noctua NF-A14 FLX 140MM
• Raid Card - LSI MegaRAID 9260-8I 8 Port 6Gbps PCIe X8 512MB
• Backplane - Startech 4 Drive Hot Swap Backplane
• Main Storage - 8x Western Digital Caviar Black 4TB
• OS - Windows Home Server 2011

 

 

Thanks

 

This is the old one take a look @ 2.0 - Press Here

[Guest]

Personally I wouldn't go with 4TB drives, I've heard rumours that the failure rate with the bigger drives is a lot higher.What's the system actually for? If it's mainly for storage might I suggest WD Green's as they use less power.

You also don't need a 760w power supply - 500w will be more than sufficient. For a boot drive, you'd want an SSD for faster loading times. However, as you've gone and purchased these parts already there's little we can do. Personally, that looks more the makings of a moderate gaming system aside from the processor and lack of a GPU.

I'm not even going to start on the H100i aside from the fact that it's a complete waste as you can't OC an i3.

[Gecko]

Personally I wouldn't go with 4TB drives, I've heard rumours that the failure rate with the bigger drives is a lot higher.What's the system actually for? If it's mainly for storage might I suggest WD Green's as they use less power.

You also don't need a 760w power supply - 500w will be more than sufficient. For a boot drive, you'd want an SSD for faster loading times. However, as you've gone and purchased these parts already there's little we can do. Personally, that looks more the makings of a moderate gaming system aside from the processor and lack of a GPU.

I'm not even going to start on the H100i aside from the fact that it's a complete waste as you can't OC an i3.

Dude like I said its just cos I like it look good all my own personal systems are always over the top and really most parts are what I have just sitting around. Here is the 1st picture

[Guest]

Personally I wouldn't go with 4TB drives, I've heard rumours that the failure rate with the bigger drives is a lot higher.What's the system actually for? If it's mainly for storage might I suggest WD Green's as they use less power.

You also don't need a 760w power supply - 500w will be more than sufficient. For a boot drive, you'd want an SSD for faster loading times. However, as you've gone and purchased these parts already there's little we can do. Personally, that looks more the makings of a moderate gaming system aside from the processor and lack of a GPU.

I'm not even going to start on the H100i aside from the fact that it's a complete waste as you can't OC an i3.

You seriously have more money than you know what to do with...

[Gecko]

Personally I wouldn't go with 4TB drives, I've heard rumours that the failure rate with the bigger drives is a lot higher.What's the system actually for? If it's mainly for storage might I suggest WD Green's as they use less power.

You also don't need a 760w power supply - 500w will be more than sufficient. For a boot drive, you'd want an SSD for faster loading times. However, as you've gone and purchased these parts already there's little we can do. Personally, that looks more the makings of a moderate gaming system aside from the processor and lack of a GPU.

I'm not even going to start on the H100i aside from the fact that it's a complete waste as you can't OC an i3.

I guess so!

[Gecko]

Personally I wouldn't go with 4TB drives, I've heard rumours that the failure rate with the bigger drives is a lot higher.What's the system actually for? If it's mainly for storage might I suggest WD Green's as they use less power.

You also don't need a 760w power supply - 500w will be more than sufficient. For a boot drive, you'd want an SSD for faster loading times. However, as you've gone and purchased these parts already there's little we can do. Personally, that looks more the makings of a moderate gaming system aside from the processor and lack of a GPU.

I'm not even going to start on the H100i aside from the fact that it's a complete waste as you can't OC an i3.

I think its just getting to the point where water cooling is going to be just as cheap as air cooling so I know what I would prefer to use!

[Guest]

Personally I wouldn't go with 4TB drives, I've heard rumours that the failure rate with the bigger drives is a lot higher.What's the system actually for? If it's mainly for storage might I suggest WD Green's as they use less power.

You also don't need a 760w power supply - 500w will be more than sufficient. For a boot drive, you'd want an SSD for faster loading times. However, as you've gone and purchased these parts already there's little we can do. Personally, that looks more the makings of a moderate gaming system aside from the processor and lack of a GPU.

I'm not even going to start on the H100i aside from the fact that it's a complete waste as you can't OC an i3.

Those closed loop coolers run around about $90-$150. An i3 processor not only comes with a stock cooler that is very compact and desgined to cool the processor adquately, but also you can not overclock an i3 thus it doesn't need an aftermarket cooler - nor does it generate huge amounts of heat in the first place.

[Gecko]

Personally I wouldn't go with 4TB drives, I've heard rumours that the failure rate with the bigger drives is a lot higher.What's the system actually for? If it's mainly for storage might I suggest WD Green's as they use less power.

You also don't need a 760w power supply - 500w will be more than sufficient. For a boot drive, you'd want an SSD for faster loading times. However, as you've gone and purchased these parts already there's little we can do. Personally, that looks more the makings of a moderate gaming system aside from the processor and lack of a GPU.

I'm not even going to start on the H100i aside from the fact that it's a complete waste as you can't OC an i3.

Meh like I said I just one sitting around so I used it I have loads of parts for builds I do so im good

[Sanguinn]

8x Western Digital Caviar Black 4TB

Yikes, impressive.

Where exactly are you going to put all those drives, though?

[Gecko]

8x Western Digital Caviar Black 4TB

Yikes, impressive.

Where exactly are you going to put all those drives, though?

You shall find out in the next week involves some mods

[Kilmer02]

What do you need 32 TB of storage for, IN your HOME? What RAID will you be using? And I can't wait to see those mods!

[Huskie]

What do you need 32 TB of storage for, IN your HOME? What RAID will you be using? And I can't wait to see those mods!

* Insert joke about porn here *

[deafboy]

What do you need 32 TB of storage for, IN your HOME? What RAID will you be using? And I can't wait to see those mods!

32TB of storage isn't all that much really these days, especially with raid. In all likelihood he'll have 16TB after RAID and that is a very modest amount for a home server.

[Kilmer02]

What do you need 32 TB of storage for, IN your HOME? What RAID will you be using? And I can't wait to see those mods!

My question is how he is going to fill all those. You can't possibly need that much space unless you run your own business and use alot of files. I can't even fill 1tb on my gaming pc.

[Gecko]

What do you need 32 TB of storage for, IN your HOME? What RAID will you be using? And I can't wait to see those mods!

I have lots and lots of movies, tv show and music that I want to have a backup of so if one drive dies it will be on another!

[hunchback]

get WD red drives

[Gecko]

ok guys I need some help with the raid card, The one I was going to get is now out of stock so I am in Toronto and I need a 8 port raid card and plan to get it from here

NCIX - Press The button.

 

What one should I get

I was thinking this one - LSI MegaRAID 9240

Or

This one - LSI MegaRAID 9211

 

Thanks!

[wolfman]

Go with the LSI MegaRAID 9261-8i and add the optional BBU (Battery Backup Unit) to prevent data-loss in case of power outage.

 

As money seems not to be your biggest concern, don't use the WD Blacks! WD Reds are fine, but as far as i know WD only recommends them for up to 5 drives. Go for the 4TB WD Raid Edition drives - or Seagate Constellation or HGST Ultrastar. Those drives are a much better fit for the LSI-Controller. Their firmware ist optimized to run in an Raid-Array. The WD Black is optimized for single use. Keep in mind, that the more drives you use, the more drives can fail. So use Raid6 in spite of Raid5 which leaves you with 24TB usable disk-space. If you go with an 12-port-Controller and add an additonal boot-drive, you could use that in Raid1. Or use the (Fake-)Raid-Option on the Motherboard.

 

I personally would use a different case. But i'm excited to see, what you are going for and how you are modding the case to house all the hard drives. That said, you probably don't have the space to use a bigger board! But i'd much recommend that. Either you want to add a second RAID-Controller, an external Storage-Subsystem for backups or an additional network card (more ports or simply 10GB/s) some day. Therefore i would go with a "real" server-board from Supermicro or Asus. Along with that: ditch the i3 for a small Xeon-CPU! B)

 

 

For a boot drive, you'd want an SSD for faster loading times.

 

Personally i find that unnecessary for a server! You boot your server up along with your daemons and everything sits in the RAM and runs from there. No need for an SSD for a couple of reboots a year. On the other side: you definetly want an SSD if you are planning on using a database-service (with huge tables).

 

I myself would much prefer seeing a Linux-based operating system running this machine! ;)

 

Sorry, a lot of rambling from me, but i often think about how my personal ideal home-server would look like! ^_^

 

 

Edit: typos

Edited May 14, 2013 by wolfman

[Gecko]

I have a ups backup!

[wolfman]

A UPS is only half the security. Usually for better performance you want to have Write Cache enabled on your Raid-Controller. That means, your data gets written into the controller-RAM (512MB on the  9261-8i) and got written on the Hard drives later, when the controller seems fit. If you (or you dog) plugs the power cord between UPS and server, your data is lost and more severe, it is inconsistent. But yeah, more of a theoretical problem. Also i'm not sure if you can enable Write Cache on the LSI-controller with no BBU present. It's definetely possible on the 3ware-controllers.

[cDNA]

I wonder why you are calling it DNA... i have the intention to do a DNA themed build since quite some time and i have many ideas. I really want to see what you will do with that idea!

[GuppyTech]

I am very interested in seeing the position of your drives. =)

[Gecko]

I wonder why you are calling it DNA... i have the intention to do a DNA themed build since quite some time and i have many ideas. I really want to see what you will do with that idea!

Funny but its not for that it is just so I know what ones are mine :)

[Gecko]

I am very interested in seeing the position of your drives. =)

I can show you soon I just need the raid card had to make a hotswap 8 bay setup but I think you will like it

[Gecko]

On 5/14/2013 at 5:59 AM, cDNA said:

I wonder why you are calling it DNA... i have the intention to do a DNA themed build since quite some time and i have many ideas. I really want to see what you will do with that idea!

I did one in the end lol