I finally have most of my hardware pieces in to start rebuilding my home server. I have a networking rack in the top of my office closet so that has forced me to compromise in other areas because of the available depth. Currently the motherboard sits above the optical drives forcing a compromise in cooler and airflow. The current 4u case was based on:
-depth
-the Aspeed 2500 wasn’t completely functional until a few years ago so I needed to be able to access the I/O.
-at least one optical drive to put the kid’s movies on plex
New build will be: RackChoice 3u Short Depth rackmount Server Chassis
HP DL380e G8 disk shelf (basically)
AsRock Rack x570d4u-2l2t or whatever it is called
R5 3600 - until my 5900x is available
Seagate SGX-500
LSI 9201-16e
2x m.2 NVME drives
4 or 5 4tb N300
The new case will not store any 3.5" drives internally to it. I need to mockup the mobo, psu, and drives and then cut the case down. It is about 1/2" too long currently to fit plus I need room to hook up things in the back. I think I can cut at least 3." inches out of it. My plan is to remove the face and cut it straight across, then put the face back on like I am John Travolta/Nick Cage. I am also going to look at relocating the front power and usb over by the 3.5" drive bay. The center has a 120mm fan but only an 80mm over the front panel control.
HP disk shelf is pretty straight forward. The HBA will run 3 8088 to 8087 cables. I plan to run power to it using a second CPU power cable (thankfully I have two of these modular SeaSonic PSUs) and a splitter repinned as shown on the STH forum.
I plan to get an 8088 to sata cable as well to connect to the two optical drives.
Things still to buy:
8088 to 8087 cables
8088 to sata cable
NVIDIA GPU for transcoding (thanks plex), preferably bus powered. I was looking at P2000 or P2200 but it would only be running at x8.
Yes it does. That was one reason I was looking at 3u and 4u cases over the 2u options. I need to add to the list, purchasing a new CPU cooler. The current setup is running a stock AMD cooler which is fine but is loud.
2U is really nice, but PSU, low-profile card requirements and case fan options…3U solves a lot of problems.
e.g. Noctua D9L is advertised as 3U compatible and that’s an entire different ballpark than 2U cooling options.
And having an ATX PSU comes with many benefits too.
I’d probably go with storage server case with 24 bays and 4U, but I think going external connection + disk shelf works just as well and is more flexible later.
My biggest thing is only having about 15" of depth. This was way easier at the old house with a mostly finished basement. I had a full size rack, KVM, monitor and keyboard etc. We moved to a new state where they don’t have basements, so I lost my 100+ square foot of rack space and random electronics storage.
So I did some measuring and I can remove about 3" from the case. My original plan was to take this from the front as the standoffs are attached to the bottom metal of the case. However, this presents its own difficulties because the front edge of the case has a lip to ensure all the pieces go back on. Cutting the back off is simpler except fort having to fix all the standoffs. Assuming I would drill new holes and and tap them to install the standoffs.
Ideas or opinions? I am probably going to make a video or two on this once I figure out my plan and get a decent mic.
I don’t need the drive cages. I would just need to move the 5.25 cage back. I am just a little worried about getting everything to fit back together right because there is a nice lip all the way around to fit under the faceplate. I did consider leaving the faceplate off too to maximize airflow.
Amongst the other features, like having a ton of ports, it allows you to use sata devices.
A feature that I am not sure was added at 6gbps or 12gbps is allowing multiple drives to use one channel simultaneously. So you effectively get more bandwidth between your drives and your controller if you want to add more drives in the future.
With your 16e card you can even get to and stuff 48 drives in your case
btw sas expanders can cascade for up to 3 levels of expanders.
Apparently I didn’t take any pictures drilling holes with the drill press but you get the idea. Used a much larger bit to create a bevel so the screws would sit flat.
Currently sitting on the desk:
So probably should have left an extra 1/2 inch or so in the case. I had to wiggle some stuff around and figure out how to connect the optical drives. I could only find one 90° sata cable in my pile and a custom length cable would help. My Telsa P4 should be here Monday. Also need a couple more SAS cables for the rest of the disk shelf. Cable managing this is going to be a bear.
Also check the power cable with a multimeter and have an old drive which you don’t care about. My wiring was fine but the guy I got the disk shelf from wasn’t as lucky.
So the HDD were getting surprisingly hot. I am going to order 4 additional 80mm (unfortunately because I have a couple of boxes of 120mm) PWM fans and some thin abs. Cut and fold the abs into a box to pull air through the drives.
