(Part 2) Top products from r/unRAID

Story Time

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Initially, I started with this case ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00Q2Z11QE ) as I was thinking of throwing something together like what you're talking about. Then my "project" began to grow.

That's when I ended up ordering this case instead ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005KQ66ZC ). That said, my server consists of a Threadripper 2990WX with an AIO water cooler. Well...this case wasn't made for that. So my father in law machined a hole in the top to mount the radiator on the top of the case like a blower on a car. This worked VERY well for a couple of weeks, but I just wasn't happy with it.

Finally, I ordered this case ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0091IZ1ZG ), to which I was able to fit everything inside of with a few extra bolts that still need to be trimmed. Here's a pic of the inside of mine and the temp 32 cores runs at ( https://imgur.com/tek9ID0 - https://imgur.com/vEPFLv5 ), do excuse the dust.

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As far as SSD's go, just do something like this ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00GMGZBP0 ). Saves space and doesn't hurt them as they only take a single HDD slot. Taping them to the side of the case doesn't hurt either if you don't care about the looks. Also, I want to boast about these fans for a min ( https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KFCRF1A ). Move a lot of air and aren't as loud as you'd think. The 120mm variant is a good bit louder, but still well worth it.

I use a flashed LSi 9211-8i. Works like a charm just plug and play.

The card just stock is RAID only however flashing to IT mode makes it JBOD (just a bunch of disks)

I bought this one here http://www.ebay.com/itm/291641245650 it is pre flashed in IT mode. I actually am helping a co worker with unRaid and referred him to this card and works beautifully.

You will need SFF-8087 adapters which are about 13 or so on Amazon

I bought these https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FBYS2U/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_4Zpyzb7G3Y8Z1

Not sure what the UK link for this is, but I’ve had my eye on this one for a bit. Don’t have any first hand experience with it, but for the money it looks like a good deal.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KTCSWPP/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_orVSDbPCVY9TQ

Okay sir, I'm home!

1x https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-X9DRi-LN4F-Dual-LGA2011-1-20-Support-E5-2600-v2-24x-Slot-DDR3-I-O/112742607987?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 for $275

2x https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-X9DRi-LN4F-Dual-LGA2011-1-20-Support-E5-2600-v2-24x-Slot-DDR3-I-O/112742607987?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 $70 apiece

2x https://www.ebay.com/itm/Samsung-32GB-kit-4x8gb-2Rx4-PC3L-10600R-DDR3-1333-ECC-Server-RAM/202255434298?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 $89 apiece - you could do 1x easily

1x https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-24-Bay-Chassis-SAS846TQ-SATA-Server-Intel-2x-2-4GHz-32GB-X8DTi-9650SE/152964486268?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 $219 + $89 shipping.

3x https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PERC-H310-Adapter-8-Port-6Gb-s-SAS-RAID-Controller/183112116482?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 $27.50 apiece

3x https://www.ebay.com/itm/2x-Mini-12Gbps-SAS-SFF-8087-36Pin-to-4-SATA-7Pin-HDD-Hard-Drive-Splitter-Cable/401051944262?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 $12.90 apiece

1x https://www.ebay.com/itm/Supermicro-Power-Supply-PWS-920P-SQ-920W-1U-80-Platinum-Redundant-Server-Power/162967803163?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 $99 (what came with it was LOUD!)

2x https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06WRPFFJN/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 $20 apiece (they went up, shop around)

1x https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NTUJG62/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 $20.68 (stock was loud as hell!)

1x https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00353EKR8/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 $6.27 - screws for drive trays.

Total $1318 for a 16CPU core/32 core hyperthreaded server with 64gig of ECC ram capable of supporting 24 drives in bays and a few more inside if I was crazy. It "should" be quiet, I'll know when the new PSU shows up and can update but I've been informed by others.. Right now it's about 58db all from the PSU <ahem>.

If you were to just buy the chassis I did, the SAS cards, the fans, the heatsinks, the cables, and the PSU, you would be able to do this for about half what I did. It would be fewer cores and perhaps slower by some margin but for an unRAID box it would be damn nice with lots of room for drives. If you shop around you might even be able to do it cheaper than I did! I almost bought ten core CPU btw, they would've been another $140 together lol

Hope that helps, fire away with questions if you've got them. This is basically a /u/JDM_WAAAT system and I got plenty of advice from the Discord channel on it and from his Youtube videos.

My buddy and I each built unraid servers in the past month. He went higher specs with a Xeon e3-1250v3 and a higher end consumer motherboard. Hes going to get an AMD rx480 video card for it so he has a second gaming computer for anyone that comes over. 16 gigs of ecc RAM. I went more power efficient and bought a supermicro board with an Intel Avalon C2750 CPU. It's essentially a server Atom CPU. It uses 20watts and has eight cores and 16 gigs of ecc RAM too. The motherboard has the right features I wanted. ipmi built in, four nics and some other stuff. I was worried the CPU would be under powered by it packs plenty of power for my docker containers. Sonarr for auto TV downloading, couch potato, nextcloud server, web server, MySQL server, modded Minecraft server, crash plan backup server, and others. I barely eat up 30% CPU when everything is running and actually doing something. Idle is below 5%. I don't have Plex on it because my Nvidia shield does that. It's surprised me a lot how much power it has. If you want gaming, it's not for you but it is more than enough as a file server and the applications its running and plenty more.

Motherboard/CPU

16GB RAM

SATA Controller Card (needed more sata ports than motherboard had)

Power Supply

[2x SSD for Cache/Pool set up]
(https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01FJ4UN76/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1)

5x WD Red 3TB

Better fans for case

Case (LOVE the case)

The question about PCI-E SATA cards is how much you are willing to spend and what available PCI-E slots do you have on your motherboard.

The cheapest I've tried (with slowest throughput) when you only have PCI-E 1x slots free is to use four port SATA cards like this Marvell 88SE9215 chipset based card for $33 on Amazon:
(http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00AZ9T3OU)

If you got at least a PCI-E 4x slot you can something faster for $100 - $160 such as (note these are 8 port cards):

1. HighPoint RocketRAID 2720SGL 8-Port
   
2. Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8
   
   On eBay used:
   
3. Dell HV52W PERC H310
   
   A number of the above solutions are not as fast as you can go since they use PCI-E 4x slots. But 8x slot cards can cost a lot more. Personally I don't notice the slow down as much since I'm really using these drives to stream and don't notice that parity checks and moving data from cache to permanent drives take longer.

I just finished my build with this case. Antec p280

I would highly recommend this case. Has room for a 5 bay hot swap tray and many drives inside. PLus it has tons of cable management and it allows you to make everything nice and clean looking.

I just upgraded my unraid server to a Z420 (E5-2650) I got off ebay. I currently have 4 HDD and 2 SSDs installed with room for 2 more HDD. I grabbed one of these to turn the 2 x 5.25 bays to 3 x 3.5 HDD, https://www.amazon.com/EverCool-Dual-Drive-Triple-Cooling/dp/B0032UUGF4. I removed the fan from that adapter (to give me a little more room) and it is still plenty cool. I only have one drive (WD4000FYYZ) in the bracket right now that runs at about 90F and i've only seen it hit 99F at its highest. I'm sure with 3 drives installed in the bracket they would run a bit warmer.

Which 4U rosewill case only supports MATX? As far as I know, they should all support EATX. This line will fit a giant supermicro EEATX board & SFX PSU with some compromises in the standoff department.

That USB PCIE card is pretty amazing !
https://www.amazon.com/Sonnet-Allegro-Pro-PCIe-card/dp/B00XPUHO10?th=1

Not cheap but a cool find !

But I can't see myself drop $2000 on a cpu..

Buy a computer power supply tester. I have a Thermaltake brand.

https://www.amazon.com/Thermaltake-Automated-Supply-Oversized-Supplies/dp/B005F778JO

You don't need to spend that much, there are cheaper ones out there. I got it on sale, years ago. It eliminates the "shotgun method" of troubleshooting where you are testing with known good parts.

>M1015 IBM card

So something more like this: https://www.amazon.com/SAS9211-8I-8PORT-Int-Sata-Pcie/dp/B002RL8I7M

Generally when people are discussing USB passthrough they're passing through the controller, so that it is transparent to the guest OS (guest os is responsible for drivers, etc, and has direct hardware access). For hot plug to work the controller would need to be passed through.

Any HUB/Extender that connects to a USB port that you choose to pass through would be passed through in its entirety to a single guest OS.

There is this card that has a separate controller for each port, which means you could have 4 VMs each with their own host controller:

https://www.amazon.com/Sonnet-Allegro-Pro-PCIe-card/dp/B00XPUHO10?th=1

Then you could add a hub to each of the ports if you want more devices connected.

Usually people will buy a seperate SATA pci-e card like this: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005B0A6ZS/

Sorry

GLOTRENDS M.2 NVME Adapter Card with Heatsink PCIE 3.0 x 4 Bandwith (PA09-HS) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FN3YZ8P/

Should be the link.

Really any ~$15 m.2 to pcie adapter with a heatsink (optional) should work just fine.

Two options: assuming your linksys is the full router and you want to spend a minimal amount, you can add a separate 1gig switch such as D-Link 5-Port Gigabit Desktop Switch (DGS-1005G) https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B003X7TRWE/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_Cn7XBb8NGA9BQ

Plug both your gaming pc and unRAID server into the new switch, and then run another Ethernet connection from the switch into your existing router. That will give you a full 1 gig connection between your tell systems, but you will still be limited to 100mb talking to anything not plugged directly into the new switch.

Other option would be to replace the whole thing with a new router that runs at 1 gig, but it's hard to recommend anything without knowing the rest of your networking setup (ie internet connection type, existing modem and router, etc...)

Case first then moved to rack mount

Rosewill 4U Server Chassis/Server... https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B00N9CXGSO?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

12 bays hot swappable. Running 80TB right now with dual parity and 1TB of mirrored SSD cache. Intel Core i3 and 24GB of RAM. Very comfy.

I have been eyeing this tower that features 8 hot swap bays, so they are available.

SilverStone Technology SST-CS380B-USA DIY ATX NAS/Server Storage Computer Case with 8 Front Hot Swap Cases CS380B-USA Cases https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07KTCSWPP/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ml3ZDbNA84D67

Here, try this

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B002RL8I7M/ref=ppx_yo_mob_b_track_package_o1_img?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Is that the same as this? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0025ZQ16K/

Check out the UnRaid forum. I'm looking at these:

-Supermicro PCI Express x4 Low Profile SAS RAID Controller (AOC-SASLP-MV8) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002KGLDXU/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_UPmFxb8KHH59P

• I'm on mobile and not at home so I can't find the other.

So far 6 drives, 3 shucked 10 TB easystores and 3 shucked drives of my previously owned externals.


Also, 1 1TB SSD mounted inside the chassis to avoid using up a drive bay. I used one of these:


https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004I8YFYC

I believe this is the one I bought.

Noctua NH-D14, Premium CPU Cooler with Dual NF-P14 and NF-P12 Fans (Brown) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002VKVZ1A/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_ZPVCCbDTAEH3X

IIRC, it was $85 or $90 about when I purchased it.

Here is a YouTube video of the objective comparison I was talking about.
https://youtu.be/hr0qLLv3dKc


At the end of the day, if you're comfortable putting an AIO in your server, go for it. I just sleep a little better at night knowing that my server has a few less points of failure and (even if the risk is small with AIOs) has no risk of liquid leakage.

Edit: forgot to answer that noctuas fans are notorious for being the quietest on the market. Even if you buy an AIO, I'd recommend you mount noctua fans on the radiator if you want as quiet as possible.

Link broken ???? Was this it?


GLOTRENDS M.2 NVME Adapter Card with Heatsink PCIE 3.0 x 4 Bandwith (PA09-HS) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07FN3YZ8P/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_1NnPDbYCTCA5X

"This device cannot start. (Code 10)" is a hardware error that most commonly means that you have a bad, missing, or incompatible device driver.

I'd recommend you try a different driver, or reinstall the amd driver, or pass through a different sound device. I have [this usb device] (https://www.amazon.com/external-Adapter-Windows-Microphone-SD-CM-UAUD/dp/B001MSS6CS) installed for when my intel hdaudio device fails.