Hello fellow forum weirdos,
I watched Wendell’s excellent ‘Their Server Died. The Supply Chain Said “Good Luck.”’ video when it dropped and was excited that he was building a server that nearly aligned with a project I’d been researching, and collecting parts for, for my homelab for a months.
Specifically, a new NAS build that would support 11 spinning rust disks, and a radiator to minimize the noise. This NAS will also eventually connect to a JBOD DAS so it is going to have a lot of PCIe components. Wendell’s build was going under a desk, but mine is going in the primary bedroom closet, and so the noise level needs to pass the spouse test.
I’ve assembled everything but I’m a little concerned about my PCIe and memory thermals. In the video Wendell mentioned that he might 3D print a cover or something to direct the air over the RAM, so I figured I’d hop on the forums and ask:
Did anyone else build something similar, and if so, did you 3D print a cover to direct the air better over the memory and PCIe slots?
If you’re still with me and answered yes to the above, can you/will you share the STLs for printing?
I’ve repasted the heatsinks on HBAs and Mellanox ConnectX with some extra Honeywell PMT 7950 that I had from previous builds but I want to try to maximize what airflow I can over the components.
NAS Head — Hardware Configuration
| Component | Detail |
|---|---|
| Chassis | SilverStone WS380-E, 8× hot-swap 3.5" bays |
| Bay expansion | SilverStone FS303 (5.25" → 3× 3.5") — 11 internal bays total |
| Motherboard | ASRock Rack SPC621D8-2L2T (Intel C621A, SSI-EEB, LGA4189) |
| CPU | Intel Xeon Silver 4309Y — Ice Lake-SP, 8C/16T, 2.8 GHz base / 3.6 GHz turbo, 105 W |
| CPU cooler | SilverStone XE360-PD 360 mm AIO |
| RAM | 128 GB DDR4 ECC RDIMM — 4× 32 GB, 4 of 8 slots populated |
| RAM part | Samsung M393A4K40CB2-CTD7Y (2Rx4, PC4-2666V, CL19, 1.2 V, IDT RCD) |
| RAM relabel | Lenovo TruDDR4 — option 46W0833 / FRU 46W0835 / spare 00NV205 |
| PSU | be quiet! Dark Power 13, 750 W, 80+ Titanium |
| Case fans | Noctua NF-F12 iPPC intake w/ shroud; spot fans over both HBAs |
| Onboard NICs | 2× 10GbE (Intel X710) + 2× 1GbE + dedicated IPMI — all PCH-attached |
| HDDs | 11× WD/HGST HC550 18 TB SAS3 — dual RAIDZ3, ~144 TB usable |
| NVMe | 6× Intel Optane P4801X 100 GB (M.2 22110) — 4-way special mirror + 2-way SLOG |
| OS | Proxmox VE + ZFS native; all NVMe and HBAs CPU-direct |
| Power draw | ~220 W idle / ~300 W typical / ~400 W peak (estimated at the wall) |
PCIe Slot Occupancy — 56 of 64 CPU lanes used
| Slot | Width | Card | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| SLOT1 | x16 | Mellanox ConnectX-5 MCX555A 100GbE QSFP28 | ~18 W with optics, passive heatsink |
| SLOT2 | x8 | Dual M.2 carrier → 2× Optane P4801X (SLOG) | Bifurcated x4x4 |
| SLOT3 | x8 | empty | Robbed to x8 by SLOT2 |
| SLOT4 | x8 | Broadcom 9400-16e HBA (external JBOD) | Phase 2 |
| SLOT5 | x8 | LSI 9400-16i HBA (internal HC550s) | ~10 W, runs hot |
| SLOT6 | — | empty — must stay empty | Keeps SLOT7 at full x16 |
| SLOT7 | x16 | Quad M.2 carrier → 4× Optane P4801X (special vdev) |
Bifurcated x4x4x4x4 |
Any help is appreciated and thank you!