Frankunraid gets new life! (AMD ITX SFF Build)


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UPDATED 2/26/19:

 

Current Build:

Unraid: 6.6.7 (Plus Key)

CPU: AMD A10-6700

Motherboard: ASRock FM2A85X-ITX FM2 AMD A85X (Hudson D4)

RAM: 2 x 8GB Patriot Memory Signature (DDR3 CL11 PC3-12800 (1600MHz))

Case: LIAN LI PC-Q25B

Power Supply: CORSAIR CX430M

Parity Drive: 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000 (5,900RPM)

Data Drives: 2 x 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000 (5,900RPM), 2 x 4TB HGST 0S03359 (5,400RPM), 2 x 4TB Seagate ST4000NC001(5,5900RPM)

Cache Drive: 480GB SSD (Inland Professional)

Total Drive Capacity: 8 (All Used!)

 

Currently running:

Let's Encrypt

Home Assistant

Zoneminder (with 5 cameras, expanding to 8 soon)

Sonarr

Radarr

Plex

SABnbzd

Deluge

OMBI

Tautulli

 

I just upgraded the hardware and I am getting back into using the server more so I'm reconsidering the docker's running and looking if I want to add or remove anything.

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

So a few months back I wanted to find out what all this talk about unRAID was over on the XBMC forums. I didn't really want to spend money if this wasn't going to work for me so I pulled out all my boxes of computer stuff and cobbled together Frankunraid. That build looked like this:

 

OS at time of building: unRAID 5.0-rc8 Free License

CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Venice 2.0GHz Socket 939 Single-Core Processor

Motherboard: MSI K8N Neo4/SLI 939 NVIDIA nForce4 SLI ATX AMD Motherboard

RAM: 3GB 184-Pin DDR 400 (PC 3200)

Case: ATRIX CSCI-L8005-C43 Black/Silver Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case

Power Supply: Antec earthwatts EA430 430W

 

Parity Drive: 4TB Seagate 5900RPM (ST4000DM000)

Data Drives: 2 x 4TB Seagate 5900RPM (ST4000DM000)

Total Drive Capacity: 8TB

 

Primary Use: Home media center storage for XBMC and RaspBMC clients.

Likes: Love that it was built all from spare parts (except drives)!

Dislikes: That the system is likely nearing 50,000 hours (power on time) on most of the parts and has difficulty booting and could fail at any moment. Further, it has a dedicated graphics card which is wasting energy.

Add Ons Used: SimpleFeatures, unMenu.

Future Plans: Put it out of it's misery. Replace it!

 

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It's absolutely amazing to me that unRAID runs, without any problems, on parts that I've had since 2005. However, the time has come to upgrade so I can expand the server uses (Sab/SB/CP) and avoid the inevitable failure that I'm afraid could happen any moment.

 


 

That brings me to upgrading to a small form factor box inspired by dirtysanchez's Landfill and spencer's SFF Unraid. The parts are ordered and I'm just waiting to put it all together now:

 

OS at time of building: unRAID 5.0 RC-16c Plus License $69.00

CPU: AMD A4-5300 $39.99

Motherboard: ASRock FM2A85X-ITX FM2 AMD A85X (Hudson D4) $99.99

RAM: 2 x 4GB Crucial Ballistix Sport 240-Pin DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) $50.99

Case: LIAN LI PC-Q25B $95.99

Power Supply: CORSAIR CX430M $29.99

 

Parity Drive: 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000 (5,900RPM)

Data Drives: 2 x 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000 (5,900RPM), 2 x 4TB HGST 0S03359 (5,400RPM)

Cache Drive: 250GB Western Digital Blue WD2500AAKX (7,200 RPM)

Total Drive Capacity: 16TB

 

Total cost without drives: $428.72

 

I got each of the drives for $150, except for the WD Blue which was an old spare.

 

Add Ons Used: SimpleFeatures, unMenu, SAB/SB/CP, uTorrent, Plex

 

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Edited by MattHirschfelt
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The memory that I ordered was bad (failed Memtest at the 19% mark every time) so I ended up pulling 8GB out of my Desktop computer to get this new box up and running.

 

A few quirks that I ran into with this motherboard that I'll need to tweak further once I establish stability.

 

First, by default all fans connected to the motherboard are set to 'full on' in the BIOS. I plan to adjust this to allow the fan to spin down when such high speeds aren't needed. My plan is to set the target temp at 50 for the CPU (45 is the lowest setting on the board), even though I haven't seen it break 40 yet (not did my old tower). However, since I'm pre-clearing two new 4TB drives, I'll let the fans run full tilt to break them in.

 

Second, AHCI is enabled by default, but a second setting still caused some of the drives to run under IDE emulation. I can't remember the exact BIOS setting right now, but it had a pretty obvious name.

 

Finally, the last change I've made, though not a quirk, is setting the memory allocated to video down to 32MB instead of Auto (which was using 512MB).

 

I'm going to start adding plugins this weekend once I've had the box up and running successfully a few days.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

I noticed in the first few days of running this server I would frequently get errors in the log indicating poor connections to one or more of the drives even after double checking all the connections. Part of the problem is that the parity drive being at the bottom of the case doesn't have enough room to securely plug the power and SATA cables in. So I popped a SATA 22 Pin Male to 22 Pin Female Right Angle Adapter on the back of the drive and replaced all the cables with new (non-latching) cables.

 

I've now got this server running full steam ahead with SABnzbd, uTorrent, Couch Potato, Sickbeard, MySQL, and Plex. The Seagate drivers are usually running at 30 to 31 degrees and the Hitachi drives run at 33 to 34 degrees when they're spinning. The CPU/MB fluctuates from 35 to 45 degrees depending on the load.

 

Unfortunately, after RMAing the RAM I received now I'm in the process of RMAing the cache drive which is showing bad sectors after being in use (even though it passed multiple preclears).

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  • 5 years later...

I got pinged that one of my followed posts (DirtySanchez's Landfill build) had a new post and I thought I'd come back and update my build.

 

Since building this back in 2013, it received almost no upgrades (just changes in cache drive as I swapped in drives with less hours) until this month.

 

Current Build (bolded the updates):

Unraid: 6.6.7 (Plus Key)

CPU: AMD A10-6700

Motherboard: ASRock FM2A85X-ITX FM2 AMD A85X (Hudson D4)

RAM: 2 x 8GB Patriot Memory Signature (DDR3 CL11 PC3-12800 (1600MHz))

Case: LIAN LI PC-Q25B

Power Supply: CORSAIR CX430M

Parity Drive: 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000 (5,900RPM)

Data Drives: 2 x 4TB Seagate ST4000DM000 (5,900RPM), 2 x 4TB HGST 0S03359 (5,400RPM), 2 x 4TB Seagate ST4000NC001(5,5900RPM)

Cache Drive: 480GB SSD (Inland Professional)

Total Drive Capacity: 8 (All Used!)

 

Currently running:

Let's Encrypt

Home Assistant

Zoneminder (with 5 cameras, expanding to 8 soon)

Sonarr

Radarr

Plex

SABnbzd

Deluge

OMBI

Tautulli

 

I just upgraded the hardware and I am getting back into using the server more so I'm reconsidering the docker's running and looking if I want to add or remove anything.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by MattHirschfelt
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