The Adventures of Napper and Iduna

[Napper198]

Warning: Long post. Will most definitely contain swearing

 

 

So, I ran out of HDD space and since I always wanted a more efficient way to have my storage centralized, easily accessible and some more server shenanigans I decided to finally build one. Meet Iduna:

(yes, that's the most boring case I could find. More on that later)

 

Partlist:

Spoiler

 

PCPartPicker part list: http://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/jYg6XH
Price breakdown by merchant: http://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/jYg6XH/by_merchant/

 

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V5 3.4GHz Quad-Core Processor  (€263.23 @ Mindfactory) 
RAM: Crucial CT16G4WFD8213 DDR4-2133 ECC (€81.56)
Motherboard: Supermicro X11SSL-CF (€295.85)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212X 82.9 CFM CPU Cooler  (€30.83) 

Storage: Sandisk Solid State Drive 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (Purchased For €0.00) 
Storage: Sandisk Solid State Drive 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (Purchased For €0.00) 
Storage: Samsung 830 Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Drive  (Purchased For €0.00) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 8TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive  (€327.08 @ Mindfactory) 

Storage: 10TB worth of random disks (Purchased For €0.00)

Case: Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 ATX Mid Tower Case  (€82.82) 
Power Supply: SeaSonic 360W 80+ Gold Certified ATX Power Supply  (€66.52 @ Amazon Deutschland) 
Case Fan: Noctua NF-F12 PWM 55.0 CFM  120mm Fan  (€19.79 @ Aquatuning) 
UPS: APC BR900GI UPS  (€144.00 @ Amazon Deutschland) 

OS: unRAID (€117.49)
Other: 2x SAS to SATA cable (€43.80)
Other: 16 GB SanDisk Cruzer Ultra (€5.99)

Total: €1478.96

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-07-04 03:09 CEST+0200

 

 

I pulled my remaining hair while coming up with a suitable solution. On the one hand it was supposed to be cheap but on the other hand I didn't want to buy twice. So the initial 1000€ build blew up to almost 1500€ very quickly which delayed it's deployment even further.

 

Parts reasoning:

Spoiler

CPU needed some power as I want to run OBS Studio on it. I also wanted ECC memory and virtualization so it had to be a Xeon. In hindsight the 1240L V5 would've been be a better choice. Skylake beecause it was overall just 50€ more expensive.

RAM: The biggest stick of ECC which is compatible with the motherboard.

Motherboard: Server grade with a shit ton of SATA ports and IPMI. Expensive but still a lot cheaper than mobo and a HBA card.

Cooler: cheap but reliable and silent.

Storage: mostly recycled, only the 8TB WD Red was purchased as main parity drive to allow further expansion

PSU: enough wattage for all the drives while being cheap, reliable and efficient

UPS: since I don't use a redundant PSU I opted to go with a UPS right from the beginning. This one is a bit large for my purpouses but at least it can run almost 2h on it's own, while providing power to my entire network equipment an telephone.

Case: Holds a lot of HDDs and has a reasonable price while offering some nice extras (see below)

 

Now, all parts have arrived and I was happy as a kid on Christmas and I started building right away (large pictures ahead)

Spoiler

And here we have the mobo assembly:

 

As you might already have figured out, I replaced the stock CM fan with a trusty Noctua NF-F12 to create a what I call poor mans Noctua cooler.

 

So, before putting it in the case It might be a good idea to post it first right?

Sure, lets just plug in the PSU real quick and check the connections a- ... the breaker tripped. What the hell? The PSU wasn't even turned on yet.

Next try, maybe it was just some random static or something. The breaker tripped again before I could even reach my desk 

OK, maybe it's the UPS it's plugged into. Nope, still tripping. Motherf...

Well seems like the PSU is DOA so I pulled out an old 750W Antec. It lasted 10s before tripping again. *swearing intensifies*

Fuck this shit I'm trying a different circuit. Lo and Behold after 5 minutes that bitch is still going but giving me beeps. Eyebrow raised.

I continued with testing with an extension cable from the other circuit to see what's going on.

(It turns out later that the socket I was using was broken.)

 

Looking at the video output did not make me any happier as the fucker didn't post at all. Well, a BIOS update might be a good idea, maybe that fixes it. A quick Google search later told me that it didn't detect any RAM (I was using a different RAM back then, more on that later). Well, maybe a BIOS update fixes it but after some more swearing about how fucked up BIOS updates are on server boards are I was still not posting. Plugging it in every available slot didn't help as well, which didn't make me any happier because the mobo or RAM might have been damaged by a surge from earlier. At least it's a good thing that I decided to payed the premium to go with Skylake and DDR4 so I could rip out one of the Corsair Dominator modules from my gaming rig.

 You don't get to see that every day.

And... It does post. Ffffff....

Just to make sure that I grilled the ram module I plugged it into my gaming rig aaand that fucker booted as well. What the hell?!

While trying to figure out what was going on I remembered the google search from earlier where the guy was complaining about his RAM with a way older model and even @Wauthar told me on Discord something about Supermicro boards being picky about RAM so I dug a little further into it. Tuned out the RAM I originally had ordered had a 2Rx4 configuration which is not supported by all motherboards, including mine. Of course I had to realize that Friday evening so I had to wait until Thursday even if I ordered a new stick with the right configuration at that time + it was 10€ more expensive that the old one. I told myself fuck it ordered the new one and just rolled with the Dominator for the weekend.

 

The installation into the case was a pleasant experience for a change. The RAM was still very accessible thanks to good clearance above the the mobo and they even provided a short 8-pin extension sou you don't struggle with big air coolers. Not necessary for me since the CPU is located at the front. There were only 3 small things that didn't go as expected. The 24-pin was barely long enough to go behind the motherboard tray, the overall cable menagement space is very limited and how the fuck did WD manage to mess that up?!

  Top notch screw hole alignment WD. Well done. *slow clap*

 

The final assembly. For now without the SSDs as at that time I was still using them in my gaming rig and just recently replaced them with 2x 480GB Sandisk to gain more space for games.

 

Here you can see one of the reasons I went with this case. It can hold 12 3.5" HDDs out of the box (1 5.25" to 3.5" adapter is included) and with some parts It can grow up to 21 drives. Also, noise dampening foam, 3 very silent fans and a 2 channel DC-fan controller is a nice touch. Tool-less HDD cages and the power button an the front would've made it perfect but you can't get everything.

 

The unRAID installation was so boring and without hiccups that I will only bother you with a picture of it's current state:

Spoiler

 

There were some shenanigans with the mobo not supporting low RPM fans which needed to be fixed with an external tool and the tool from Supermicro can only be downloaded if you have your own active directory and mail server, but that got sorted out far easier than expected or I had lowered my expectations regarding the work with the server.

 

Overall I'm happy now. Things work as expected and I have a crap ton of space and power to let it grow as I go on.

 

Things to do:

• Mess more with the VM
• Waiting for Crashplan sync
• install last HDD (which holds the 2nd copy of data right now)
• Install cloud server, probably Nextcloud
• ?
• Profit

 

Bonus internet points if you can spot the cat 

[m0k]

wow that took me a while to figure out it wasnt a modded Fractal case

[Silencer]

How are those nanoxia fans behaving? A couple months ago my nanoxia front fans wouldn't spin on startup so I either had to take off the front panel and manually spin them or change the speed from bios. Haven't had any issues with them since then, the issue magically resolved itself and other than that some really fantastic fans

[airdeano]

the cat's location is behind the top front stack of HDDs.

[Napper198]

2 minutes ago, Silencer said:

How are those nanoxia fans behaving? A couple months ago my nanoxia front fans wouldn't spin on startup so I either had to take off the front panel and manually spin them or change the speed from bios. Haven't had any issues with them since then, the issue magically resolved itself and other than that some really fantastic fans

I'm only running them for about 3 weeks now and since it's a 24/7 server and I have them plugged into the case fan controller they run 24/7 as well

[Knaj]

Cat behind the pc in the last picture