Future build inspection.


Tronic

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Any problems with this future build?

 

Cooler Master 590

Supermicro X7SPA HF

Corsair 2GB DDR2 - 667

Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8

Corsair HX450W or HX650W, depending on what you think is needed. There also is the VX550W, but I would like to stick with modular cabling.

Cooler Master 4 in 3 drive cages

one Seagate 1.5TB 7200 for parity + four 1.5TB WD Green 5400's for data to start off with. I plan to add an additional 9 drives as needed.

 

As far as the power supply at initial boot at max HDD capacity.

MB = 65w

Sata card = 10w

14 HDDs @ 28w = 392

 

total = 467

 

at idle:

MB = 40w

Sata card = 10w

14 HDD's @ 1w = 14w

 

total = 64w

 

5 drives spun up:

MB = 42w

Sata card = 10w

5 HDD's @ 7w = 35w

9 HDD's @ 1w = 9w

 

total = 96w

 

So would the 450w be a mistake?

 

Thanks

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It's polite to provide links to the hardware, so that we don't have to go searching for it ourselves.  I'm having trouble finding your motherboard.

 

Your case, RAM, PSU (yes, 450 W should be fine), drive cages, and hard drives all look fine.

 

I would recommend continuing to get 'green' or low power (lp) drives for your 9 additionals.

 

Also, not a problem really, but just so you know - your 7200 rpm parity drive will not give you any performance increase since the rest of your drives are all slower.  This won't cause any problems, its just sort of a waste of a faster drive.  If you already own the Seagate 7200 rpm, just use it and don't worry about it.  However, if you are planning on buying this hardware new, then I would recommend getting a 5th WD Green or other low power drive (see reasoning below) to act as your parity drive since it will be cheaper, consume less power, and the performance will be identical.

 

On Staggering Hard Drive Purchases...

Also keep in mind that it is best to stagger your hard drive purchases if at all possible.  Buying a bunch of the same hard drives in one go increases your chances of seeing a multiple drive failure if you are unlucky enough to have gotten drives all from the same bad batch.  Whenever possible, you will want to buy just enough hard drives to give you the space you need.  If you need multiple TBs right off the bat, you can spread out your purchases over multiple brands (get one Seagate LP, one WD Green, and one Samsung EcoGreen, for example).  This reduces your chances of a multiple drive failure from which unRAID cannot recover.  Then you can buy a new drive of your favorite type (WD Greens, for me) once every month or two until you are at your desired capacity.  This method also allows you to wait for sales and thereby save a bit of money.

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Thank you for your response. The motherboard is the newly releases atom serverboard talked about in this thread. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5133.0

 

and as far as the hdd's I wasn't completely sure about the 7200 drive. Since you say it will make no difference, I'll just stick with the 5400s. I plan on starting out with just 3 drives and buy one at a time after that.

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Also, not a problem really, but just so you know - your 7200 rpm parity drive will not give you any performance increase since the rest of your drives are all slower.  This won't cause any problems, its just sort of a waste of a faster drive.  If you already own the Seagate 7200 rpm, just use it and don't worry about it.  However, if you are planning on buying this hardware new, then I would recommend getting a 5th WD Green or other low power drive (see reasoning below) to act as your parity drive since it will be cheaper, consume less power, and the performance will be identical.

 

This is only the case where only one stream of data is being written at a time or you are using a cache drive.

If there is any chance of having multiple users access/write to different disks at the same time, the faster parity drive helps.

If there is any chance of installing 3rd party server type applications which write to any of the drives, the faster parity drive helps.

 

The faster parity drive will not yield a large noticable speed in parity generation/update unless there are multiple simultaneous writes. In that case the latency of the write completing is diminished. It's not faster but there is less wait time.

In the case of torrents or small files this can be a big help.

 

 

I also would recommend staggering the purchase of drives until you need them.

Purchasing large lots of drives from the same manufacture from the same place at the same time can lead to a situation where drives fail very close to one another.

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Thank you for your response. The motherboard is the newly releases atom serverboard talked about in this thread. http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=5133.0

 

and as far as the hdd's I wasn't completely sure about the 7200 drive. Since you say it will make no difference, I'll just stick with the 5400s. I plan on starting out with just 3 drives and buy one at a time after that.

 

It will make a difference if there are multiple simultaneous writes.

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Also, not a problem really, but just so you know - your 7200 rpm parity drive will not give you any performance increase since the rest of your drives are all slower.  This won't cause any problems, its just sort of a waste of a faster drive.  If you already own the Seagate 7200 rpm, just use it and don't worry about it.  However, if you are planning on buying this hardware new, then I would recommend getting a 5th WD Green or other low power drive (see reasoning below) to act as your parity drive since it will be cheaper, consume less power, and the performance will be identical.

 

This is only the case where only one stream of data is being written at a time or you are using a cache drive.

If there is any chance of having multiple users access/write to different disks at the same time, the faster parity drive helps.

If there is any chance of installing 3rd party server type applications which write to any of the drives, the faster parity drive helps.

 

The faster parity drive will not yield a large noticable speed in parity generation/update unless there are multiple simultaneous writes. In that case the latency of the write completing is diminished. It's not faster but there is less wait time.

In the case of torrents or small files this can be a big help.

 

Interesting, I wasn't aware of that.  Thanks for the clarification.

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You can fit 3 drive cages in there that hold 4 drives each = 12 drives total. If you want 14 drives total you're going to have to mount the last 2 yourself some way.

 

With that many drives you'll need the 650W supply. Assume 2A @ 12V per drive for start-up = 28A for drive start-up plus the current the motherboard needs. You're looking at over 30A required, so I'd find a supply with a 40A @ 12V power rail.

 

Peter

 

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You can fit 3 drive cages in there that hold 4 drives each = 12 drives total. If you want 14 drives total you're going to have to mount the last 2 yourself some way.

 

With that many drives you'll need the 650W supply. Assume 2A @ 12V per drive for start-up = 28A for drive start-up plus the current the motherboard needs. You're looking at over 30A required, so I'd find a supply with a 40A @ 12V power rail.

 

Peter

 

 

we if I did get up to 14 drives I may switch to 5 in 3 vertical cages.

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Also, not a problem really, but just so you know - your 7200 rpm parity drive will not give you any performance increase since the rest of your drives are all slower.  This won't cause any problems, its just sort of a waste of a faster drive.  If you already own the Seagate 7200 rpm, just use it and don't worry about it.  However, if you are planning on buying this hardware new, then I would recommend getting a 5th WD Green or other low power drive (see reasoning below) to act as your parity drive since it will be cheaper, consume less power, and the performance will be identical.

 

This is only the case where only one stream of data is being written at a time or you are using a cache drive.

If there is any chance of having multiple users access/write to different disks at the same time, the faster parity drive helps.

If there is any chance of installing 3rd party server type applications which write to any of the drives, the faster parity drive helps.

 

 

It also helps when in the future you add a few faster data drives. (very likely)

 

 

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Im trying to keep the watts and temps to a minimum, hence my choice of "green" drives. I was also under the impression that in the case of reading from the server, the difference between 5400 and 7200 was basically negligible and I would only be affected by the slightly slower writes.

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I was also under the impression that in the case of reading from the server, the difference between 5400 and 7200 was basically negligible and I would only be affected by the slightly slower writes.

This is correct.  When reading from the server, the network is the bottleneck, not the drive's rotational speed.  As long as all your disks are healthy and you are not emulating a disk, you will not get faster reads by having a faster parity drive.

 

As others have previously said, you will only see a difference in write speeds in particular scenarios.  In my situation (running unRAID stock, with a cache drive, and only one user reading or writing to the server at any given time) the difference would be unobservable.  Based on what you said previously...

 

There will be one user writing, me, and up to a max of 3 users reading at any one time. There will be 6 users with access but I don't envision everyone using it at the same time. 

 

....I don't see a faster parity drive helping you in any way.

 

If your situation ever changes, you can always buy a new faster drive to put in your parity slot and move your current green drive into a data slot.

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Okay thanks for clearing that up for me. Ill just stick with WD green drives. Now another question. It seems like lots of people are using the WD20EADS drives here, but is there any benefit to using the WD20EVDS? From what I can decipher from other forums, the benefit EVDS has over EADS is "SilkStream which Optimizes for smooth continuous digital video playback of up to 12 Simultaneous Video Streams."

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136494

 

vs

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136344

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Just go with the cheaper one.  unRAID doesn't care.  Again, the network is the bottleneck, not the hard drive.  Even a 5400 rpm SATA I drive operating at 1.5 Gb/s (half the speed of both the drives you linked) is fast enough to stream 1080p video.

 

Okay lol, unRaid is so easy and unpicky!

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Their new one is even better:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136514

(64MB Cache, and 4KB sectors. And that, at a lower price currently.)

 

 

 

Ive heard that the 4kb sectors are causing problems in the microsoft world, as opposed to their other drives that are still using 512. Has anyone tried one out with unRaid?

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  • 2 weeks later...

i'm surprised nobody has mentioned this... but...

 

the 8 port Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 is pci-x .. so needs an old school pci slot or pci-x slot

 

the Supermicro X7SPA mobo that you want has a lone pci-e slot.. so you will need to choose a pci-e card .. like the 4 port Adaptec AAR-1430SA

 

just though i'd let ya know

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