Proposed unRAID build: Draft 1.5

I've put together a proposed parts list, and, like everyone else, thought I'd run it by the forum for red flags before I started spending money.  If anyone sees anything that will not work or can be improved on, please reply (or even if everything looks okay and you just want to say so).

Various other posts I made have discussed components of this build, but here's putting it all together.

Build priorities (in approximate order of importance) and notes:

1. I wanted the build to have an eventual 20-drive or higher capacity (for now, I'll probably just buy 3-4 1.5 TB drives per server)

2. I wanted the limiting factor on writes, reads, and parity checks to be the hard drives, and not the access bandwith (i.e. no 50-in-1 PCI SATA cards, I tried to limit it to PCI-Express cards only)

3. I tried to keep it as cheap as possible while using components that will be stable and last a long time.

note: A Q6600 processor is used because I have an extra one lying around.  I probably would have used a cheaper one otherwise.

note2: I'll probably make 2 of these and use RSync to keep them identical.  Please post below if you can think of any component substitutions that will lower the cost without sacrificing #1-3.  I'll probably buy most of this off of Newegg or Amazon.

Things that immediately concern me about this build: Will using the on-board LAN on this motherboard be okay?  Can I use both ports at once?  Will I be okay with a PCI video card with both x16 slots filled with SATA cards?

Case:

Antec Twelve Hundred

Fan Controller (for side fan and cage fans)

APEVIA FC-01 Multi Fan Speed Controller (If I can find one for sale)

OR

more likely, I'll spend $50 extra and get one of those fancy bay controllers with a display and put it on top of the case, maybe a Sunbeam RHK-EX-SV or NZXT SEN-001LX Sentry LX

Drive Cages:

SUPERMICRO CSE-M35T-1B (4 of these)

120mm side fan

silverstone FM121-B (seems to have a good air:noise ratio, and most importantly is variable so I can make it softer - I plan on keeping all the fans turned down to the low setting unless temperature becomes a problem)

Misc:

Various fan cable y adapters and SATA to 2xMolex adapters

unRAID pro license

APC

APC BR1500LCD 1500VA 900 Watts (should be usable with the latest version of apcuspd accurding to http://www.apcupsd.org)

motherboard

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard (plenty of PCIe slots, Intel chipset, 8 SATA ports - Everything but onboard video.

CPU

Q6600 (Server 1) + E5200 (Server 2)

ram

any cheap ram will do - The board supports up to 1333 DDR2 - I was thinking of

G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 but if I can find faster RAM also for $30-40ish I'll go for that

PCI-Express SATA(x4, 4 port) - need 2 of em

Adaptec 2240900-R PCI Express 4-lane 2.5 Gb/s SATA 1430SA x 2 - $10 more than the Rosewill cards, and likely much higher quality

PCI-Express SATA (x1, 2 port) - need 2 of em

SYBA SD-SA2PEX-2IR PCI Express SATA II Controller Card (Sil3132 chipset)

This should give me 8 + 8 + 4 = 20 SATA ports for the cages

psu

PC Power & Cooling S75CF 750W - single 12V rail, quality PSU, Newegg has a rebate offer for em.  This should be more than enough power, right?

video

CHAINTECH GSP5200T2 GeForce FX 5200 128MB 64-bit DDR PCI Video Card

Really, i was looking for the cheapest nVidia card with a VGA-out I can use to connect to an old monitor during setup.  After that it'll run headless.

accessories:

I thought about getting an external USB dvd drive for em, but if they can boot off USB, there's really no reason.  I'll rip and transfer video using another computer anyways.

I do want to get a 1 TB external backup drive for ghost image backups of the USB sticks, and my other computers' hard drive, but I have on I think I can use already.

Right now, the total cost of this system comes to be about $1500 + drives.

I was hoping for $1,000 + drives, but the case, cages, and 4-port cards are expensive, and I doubt I'll be able to find anything much cheaper.

Anyways, please comment away!

Zithras

Changes: Processor on build#2 changed to E5200

I have the Apevia - I was not fond of it.

I like this one.

I don't own it yet, but will soon

SILVERSTONE FP33-S Controller, Panel

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999047&Tpk=fan%20controller%20silverstone

In the long run, will the Q6600 vs a lower grade processor or wolfdale cost more in electricity?

FWIW, unraid cannot currently utilize all 20 drives.

Rumored Intel price cuts by end of January. For your second/backup build, I'd go with a Pentium Dual-Core E5200 Wolfdale. I've never had a Q6600 (hot SoCal summer + broken air conditioner = not a good environment for quads) so I don't know what the difference in actual power consumption is between the two. Tried a quick-search and found this comparison. Difference of 27.8W idle between an E8600 and Q6600 or around 20kWh per month. If you go with an E5200, you probably save an extra 1~2 watts at idle. Depending on how much electricity costs in your area, a low-power Wolfdale may or may not be worth its cost in power savings but it'll probably take at least a year or so to recoup the cost. The additional benefit of going with a less power hungry processor is they generate less heat. If you live somewhere warm, a Wolfdale can save you quite a bit in air conditioning costs. If you live somewhere cold, the Kentsfield (Q6600) would make a very nice space heater.

Also, some motherboards don't like running headless. The ATI RageXL 8MB PCI should be fairly low-power and works in unRAID.

I immediately liked your choices, almost responded, then figured there would lots of other replies, and moved on to other things.

That's a very impressive motherboard, highly rated on Newegg (here).  I must note that no one has confirmed that specific board for unRAID yet, so no guarantees with compatibility, but there is a very similar board with the same chipsets on the Hardware Compatibility page, the GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3L.  Yours has 2 more SATA ports.  According to the manufacturer's product page (here), they are supported by a Gigabyte chip, of unspecified origin, but used by other Gigabyte boards.

unRAID does not support teaming, but having an extra LAN chip is a Good Thing, as various unRAID users can attest, when one of them failed.

As far as I can tell, at idle, the quadcore would only use about 9W more, which would cost about $7 a year more (inconsequential)  Basically, the power savings are not an issue, but the cost of the chip may well be.

Of course, in use, it would be more, but this type of system would rarely, if ever, see full usage of a quadcore chip.

That being said, it might be worth getting the Wolfdale to save a quick $100.  On the other hand, I wanted the two systems to be as identical as possible for ease of backup, setup, and maintainance, so if I find a fairly cheap Q6600, I'll probably pick it up anyway.

Thanks for the warning on the Apevia controller - I'll go with a multi controller instead.  I called Apevia and they said you can chain 5 fans on it all to the controller, but this sounds sketchy, as they couldn't give me any maximum power ratings for the controller.

As far as the board goes, I know it's not on the list, but I was hoping it would work since it is so similar to the Gigabyte board that's on the list.  I'll have to make sure and get a 30-day return policy on the boards, just in case.  Does anyone know if the Gigabyte SATA chips have any problem with unRAID?  The board's definitely my major worry on this build, but I needed one with 8 SATA slots, 2 PCIe x8 or above, 2 PCIe x1 or above (or 1 more x8), and a PCI slot - this was the cheapest board that fit, and had great reviews.  None of the boards on the hardware compatibility page can support 20 SATA ports on PCIe without buying an 8+ port card, unfortunately (which are still about $500 each).  (Yes, I know, unRAID only supports 16 right now, but it will be upgraded eventually, and even if not, I like having the extra drive slots for other drives not in the unRAID system)

Thanks for the video card link - it's irrational, I know, but I prefer nVidia cards- do you have a link to a $10 nVidia card perchance?  The cheapest I could find was about $30.  Even though I'll run it headless, I'll definitely need at least a cheap PCI video card in it for initial bios setup, so hopefully the board will be happy.  I know some boards don't like both x16 slots filled with non-video cards and a PCI video card, but I understood this to be a problem with just the older chipsets right?

(I'll change the topic to second draft if I make any major changes)

As far as I can tell, at idle, the quadcore would only use about 9W more, which would cost about $7 a year more (inconsequential)  Basically, the power savings are not an issue, but the cost of the chip may well be.

Out of curiosity, where'd you get this info? I've been trying to find idle power consumption comparisons for processors, but so far, I haven't found one that's all encompassing. One of the benchmarks I did find showed a 28W difference between a Q6600 and E8600. Assuming 80% efficiency, that's still a 22.4W difference. You're lucky electricity is fairly inexpensive in your area. It's $0.20/KWh where I live.

Electricity's about half that here.

As far as wattage calculators, I used http://extreme.outervision.com/index.jsp and http://web.aanet.com.au/SnooP/psucalc.php , using minimum CPU loads to simulate an 'idle' processor, since both sites assume full load power consumption.  It's entirely possible they came out wrong and it should in fact be closer to 22W, - I haven't really messed with power consumption calculators before.  Even at 22W though, that's still less than a $20 per year power cost.

As far as wattage calculators, I used http://extreme.outervision.com/index.jsp and http://web.aanet.com.au/SnooP/psucalc.php , using minimum CPU loads to simulate an 'idle' processor, since both sites assume full load power consumption.  It's entirely possible they came out wrong and it should in fact be closer to 22W, - I haven't really messed with power consumption calculators before.  Even at 22W though, that's still less than a $20 per year power cost.

Oh, okay. I was looking for actual power consumption comparisons. The eXtreme Power Supply Calculator doesn't really help much in that regard. It's good for sizing power supplies and UPS but not for predicting actual power draw. Case in point, assuming you don't change the default values for TDP and CPU voltage/frequency, it'll give you the same wattage for a Core 2 Duo E6600 and a Pentium Dual-Core E5200. If you do measurements with a Kill-A-Watt, you'll find an E5200 PC consumes less power than a similarly specced system with an E6600.

Thanks for the second link. I visited the site and noticed the following values for default wattage for a handful of processors:

Intel Core 2 Duo E4700 TDP 65W (Allendale): 39W - 60% TDP

Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 TDP 65W (Conroe): 50W - 77% TDP

Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 TDP 65W (Wolfdale): 28W - 43% TDP

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9650 TDP 130W (Yorkfield): 85W - 65% TDP

Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 TDP 105W (Kentsfield) G0: 90W - 86% TDP

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 TDP 95W (Yorkfield): 58W - 61% TDP

The data seems to have been culled from actual measurements by various review sites so this should more accurately reflect real-life consumption.

You don't need completely identical hardware on your two unRAID builds. Identical motherboards and SATA controllers would be helpful for troubleshooting purposes, but the rest (video card, RAM, CPU) can be pretty much anything. I wouldn't replace your current Q6600 with an E5200 as it'll take years before the E5200 pays for itself. For your second build, though, I see no reason to buy a Q6600. It costs more, consumes more power and generates more heat than the E5200 and unRAID could care less whatever processor's on there. Heck, for the price of one Q6600, you can get two E5200's and have matching systems.

I'm interested in the GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P too.

One thing that has me confused is that the Gigabyte website specs say 1 ide connector for 2 device pata support. 

http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/Manual_Model.aspx?ProductID=2919

The manual confirms this. http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/Manual_DownloadFile.aspx?FileType=Manual&FileID=18772

However the photos from both the Gigabyte site and newegg appear to show a motherboard with two ide connectors.  Possibly a mistake?  Possibly there's a revision with two ide connectors (seems unlikely)?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128358

Most won't care about this but I have four pata devices that I'd like to run temporarily.  I was planning to buy a pci-e 2 port sata 2 port pata controller since most new boards only have one ide connector but if I don't have to it'll save me a few bucks.

However the photos from both the Gigabyte site and newegg appear to show a motherboard with two ide connectors.

The Newegg photo shows only one IDE port, at the top.  The ports on the right side are the floppy and LPT (printer) ports.  If you Zoom in, it becomes clearer.

I think most add a Promise TX2 or the Rosewill equivalent for extra IDE ports.

In addition to RobJ's comments...

http://china.giga-byte.com/FileList/manual/motherboard_manual_ga-ep45-ud3p_e.pdf - has a schematic with specifics on the various ports.

You might want to reconsider an 8 port card.  I have a LSI SAS3081E-R that I picked up for a good price on ebay.  It's got 8 ports and is pcie x8. http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/host_bus_adapters/sas_hbas/lsisas3081er/index.html.  I'm waiting for 4.5beta2 but it looks like this card is going to work with unraid.  Link to post http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3109.0

I just searched ebay and someone has a sale on an internal/external card SAS3442E-R which uses the 1068E chipset for 79.99.  If you don't mind routing a set of cables back into the case then this would be a steal.  Add about $50 for the 2 sets of cables you'd need.

Also the Supermicro AOC-USAS-L8i is supposedly the same as the sas3081e-r (someone else has one but hasn't tried it yet) and I don't know if it comes with cables but googled its around $140.  Here's one one ebay for 120 with cables http://cgi.ebay.com/Supermicro-AOC-USAS-L8i-8-Port-SAS-RAID-Controller_W0QQitemZ130281539693QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCOMP_EN_Networking_Components?hash=item130281539693&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1205|66%3A2|65%3A12|39%3A1|240%3A1318|301%3A1|293%3A1|294%3A50

link to post talking about the supermicro card http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=2711.0

Just some things to consider.

Erik

Ooh shiiiny...but perhaps not quite there yet

I'd much rather have internal SATA ports than an external one - contained cabling is much nicer than routing it all back into the case

The LSI Card looks ideal, but it's still $300 on Amazon (vs. about $100 ea. for 2 4 port cards), plus, it won't work for a non-beta unRAID build for awhile (and it might have problems no one knows about yet - I'd much rather buy a card known to work, and I worry too much about hardware failure to buy a used expansion card)

If I were putting this together 6 months from now, I'd almost certainly go with the LSI card (assuming it had dropped to $200 new), but I think for now my best option is to go for the 4 port cards and return them and buy the LSI if I run into unexpected problems.

Thanks for the link though - it was exactly what I was looking for - if only it was a bit cheaper and currently worked with unRAID

Edit: just thought of a new question - do the PCIe cards I've chosen need to have their BIOS flashed, or will they work out of the box?

Zithras

Edit: just thought of a new question - do the PCIe cards I've chosen need to have their BIOS flashed, or will they work out of the box?

Well, I had thought that the Silicon Image cards need to be flashed to the latest non-RAID BIOS, but I believe WeeboTech and perhaps others have said that it is not necessary.  You may want to try it and see.  For the Adaptec's, someone has said that the first time you run it, you need to disable the BIOS.  Just check the links here.

By the way, I only saw your edit almost by accident.  This forum software does not flag a post as UNREAD if you edit it, so for all intents, edited posts are essentially invisible to others, unless they specifically check each forum for them.  If you are correcting info for future readers, that's OK, but if you are adding questions or info for 'current consumption', and want it to be seen, you should start a new reply.

Hmm.. it seems that for the Adaptec cards you do need to disable RAID.

Does this mean I need to go to the MB BIOS and switch it from RAID/AHCI to IDE?

Or is this referring to a separate BIOS on the Adaptec?

If so, how do I access that (or does the card come with a manual/software/boot disk that will make it obvious)  I looked at http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=3037.0 - but am not sure what this means - will I get an option on startup to access firmware (to disable) on the Adaptec cards, or it the motherboard RAID mode I need to disable?

Zithras

Edit: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=1547.0 Found this link - I'm guessing this is what I need?  I.e. 'Press <Ctrl+S> or F4 to enter RAID utility' then either disable it or update the firmware (depending on the cards)

Out of the box, the Adaptecs do not have raid enabled.  You have to set it up that way.  I disabled the bios in the setup but did not find it really necessary.  To access the Adaptec cards configuration utility, you just need to hit CTRL+A when the message shows up during boot.  Once in the config utility it is pretty straight forward.

On a different note, I am using an Intel D975XBX2 motherboard that has 8 onboard SATA (4 via ICH7 and 4 via Marvell chipset), 2 PCI-E 8x and 1 PCI-E 4x, and 2 PCI slots.  So using 3 of the Adaptecs along with the onboard ports will also give you 20 ports.  The board works fine with unRAID.

Regards,  Peter

BY the way, when you have more than one Adaptec card installed, you can select the one you want to modify with the config utility access during boot.

Regards,  Peter

Unfortunately, Newegg didn't have this board when I searched for it, and Amazon wanted to charge me over $500 per board (!)

It seems like an ideal board though - congrats on getting unRAID setup and running

(And thanks for the advice on the Adaptec cards - one less thing to worry about)

No comments yet on the power supply. That's the one I've been considering for my build. Maybe no one's used it yet, maybe there just haven't been any problems.

It seems like a good contender (60 amp single rail / 83% efficiency / $90 plus shipping after rebate right now) - specs here: http://www.pcpower.com/downloads/750_Quad_new_5YR_lr_3827.pdf

It caught my eye because of all the drive connectors - 8 SATA plus 9 IDE so you can power quite a few drives without splitters - even more with the right drive cages (might need a few IDE-SATA power adapters depending on drive cages). Plugs are everywhere from 14 inches to 42 inches away from the PS which might help a little with cable management - diagram here http://www.pcpower.com/downloads/S75Q-2-20-08_3827.pdf

Does anyone have unRAID (or other) experience with this power supply?

Questions for Zithras (or anyone else - I'm still learning here):

Why 20 drives? I thought unRAID could only do 16. Are the other 4 for something else?

No comments yet on the power supply. That's the one I've been considering for my build. Maybe no one's used it yet, maybe there just haven't been any problems.

 

It seems like a good contender (60 amp single rail / 83% efficiency / $90 plus shipping after rebate right now) - specs here: http://www.pcpower.com/downloads/750_Quad_new_5YR_lr_3827.pdf

 

It caught my eye because of all the drive connectors - 8 SATA plus 9 IDE so you can power quite a few drives without splitters - even more with the right drive cages (might need a few IDE-SATA power adapters depending on drive cages). Plugs are everywhere from 14 inches to 42 inches away from the PS which might help a little with cable management - diagram here http://www.pcpower.com/downloads/S75Q-2-20-08_3827.pdf

 

Does anyone have unRAID (or other) experience with this power supply?

 

Questions for Zithras (or anyone else - I'm still learning here):

Why 20 drives? I thought unRAID could only do 16. Are the other 4 for something else?

You can get the Corsair 650w single rail supply (52A) for $79.99 after rebate at Newegg http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139005 and it has 8 Sata & 8 Molex connectors as well. Works great for unRAID.

So far, it's a wonderful power supply - plenty of connections, plenty of cables.  PC Power & Cooling always makes quite reliable stuff.  Just make sure you have somewhere to route the cables to, as it is not modular.  I just put together the systems and will post a build log in a few days. 

As far as the 20-drive thing goes.

1) extra drive slots are always useful - I can mount and use them as extra drives

2) sooner or later, unRAID is supposed to support more than 16 drives.  Hopefully sooner, rather than later.

Did you have to do any modifications to the Antect 1200 case to fit the SuperMicro CSE-M35T-1B drive cages?

I havenot had any luck with the Antec power supplies nor the OCZ power supplies made by power and cooling!

I recommend Corsair or Seasonic.