This is how I did it: http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038997028&postcount=893
Nice idea but I don't have the expansion slots free for doing it that way. My next one will probably be able to do it though. Looks good btw.
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This is how I did it: http://hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1038997028&postcount=893
Doesn't change what I said,.....
got a couple of questions.
Best location to mount an internal SSD for the OS?
How loud is the fan wall fans with the case closed up? I'm switching to the 120mm fan wall but am thinking of getting some very high volume fans to make sure there is plenty of air flow through the hotswap bays.
Specifically looking at something like these.
http://www.frozencpu.com/products/1...25mm_2000RPM_High_Speed_Fan.html?tl=g36c15s60
I'm thinking I could remove the 80MM fans from the back, plug those fans straight into the MB to let it control the fan speed, and change out the expansion "plugs" with vented ones.
Thanks in advance.
The Norco appeard first as the ultimate homeserver case for a reasonable price, but all these problems about quality worry me.
You could get one of these for the OS drive. http://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-2-5-Inch-Removable-Expansion-S25SLOTR/dp/B002MWDRD6
Uses a single expansion slot and is hotswappable
About that, Does 4*80mm fans are really louder than 3*120mm ?
Because i'' ve got a dilemma:
-Norco RPC-4224:
pro= 3*120mm, cheaper
con= terrible quality control
-Chenbro RM41824:
pro=quality should be alot better
con=4*80mm fans, more expensive
What do you think ?
The Norco appeard first as the ultimate homeserver case for a reasonable price, but all these problems about quality worry me.
Now with that said. I removed the back 2 fans to test out the cooling of the case as I do plan on switching over to 3 120MM fans that have some insane static pressure stats and I wanted to see how cool the system would run with only the fan wall going. I haven't looked back and can say that I am eager to get the new fan wall and new fans.
chenbro does make a lot of good cases. Right now I think they are the only ones who make a 50 bay case that treadstone used to create his 100TB home server. They also make the cases I am looking at buying to use for my gaming systems.
In other news they let me know they're still trying to get an 8-bay mini-ITX case out before EOY.
We fold on our S2011 CPU in a 4224 with 18 green drives in front and 3 Corsair SP120 fans with the quieting adapter in place. It keeps the system board/CPU/drives plenty cool (drives above 30, not above 37 or so, CPU around 55C) with no rear fans... definitely the way to go There may be a better choice of fan but they were what we had and do the job well enough!
In other news they let me know they're still trying to get an 8-bay mini-ITX case out before EOY.
What problems about quality? Somebody ranted about getting a bad backplane and therefore all Norco's have bad backpanes? Their customer service has always been excellent and no-questions-asked ... If you end up with a bad backplane or develop one later, they'll generally send a replacement out free. Sure, cases like Supermicro and Chenbro are built to tighter tolerances and if that makes a diff to your home media server then by all means spend the extra cash, but the tech support of those two companies if/when an issue arises is pulling teeth at best, I've dealt with all of them and in the case of SM its sometimes days until receiving a response.
The only time I ever had a Norco backplane go bad was when I fried it by my own stupidity, using a Corsair modular PSU power cable on an Antec modular PSU where the pinouts turned out to be different. Sent Mike at Norco an email, next day I had a free replacement and they didn't care about me returning the bad one.
I wouldn't say bad quality control. Mine is fine. Granted some of the screw holes appeared to be off but that was my own doing and not Norco's. As my first and second server cases I have to say that I am pleased with them. Also the 4224 comes with 6 80MM fans but you can remove the back two without having heat issues arrive. I've been folding on that server non-stop for about 2 weeks now and I even have a 560 video card in it that is folding. Only spot it gets warm is where the video card is. Rest of the case is cool to the touch.
Now with that said. I removed the back 2 fans to test out the cooling of the case as I do plan on switching over to 3 120MM fans that have some insane static pressure stats and I wanted to see how cool the system would run with only the fan wall going. I haven't looked back and can say that I am eager to get the new fan wall and new fans.
chenbro does make a lot of good cases. Right now I think they are the only ones who make a 50 bay case that treadstone used to create his 100TB home server. They also make the cases I am looking at buying to use for my gaming systems.
supermicro is generally considered king but that is only because they tend to come with a lot of things that the others don't.
Oh one thing. And not sure if it was my fault or not. But I did notice a drive drop out of my array. I pulled it and pushed it back in to reconnect it and haven't had a problem since. So that could be called a quality issue as the drive was securely locked into place and seemed to have a connection error. When I reconnected it it did cause the drive on the opposite side to "fail" but reconnecting it fixed it as well. I would say that the outside bays may need a better "brace" for the backplane to prevent that from happening. Mind you no data was lost and the array picked up the drives right away with no issues. So ok I could say 1 quality control issue but it is a minor one that just takes reconnecting to fix it.
Odditory:
could you talk to Norco about that? Just need to brace the ends somehow to prevent it from happening in the future. Probably not a common problem so not sure if they will worry about it but I would appreciate it if you could bring the issue up to your contacts. Thanks!
Lul my man do you know how many people have 3TB and 4TB drives in Norco cases worldwide.
we bought good servers and host adapters, but skimped on the easiest part: the case. If a computer runs fine splayed out on the test bench, it should work fine in any metal box, right?
I believe we had a 500 or 600W Antec PSU in there; the 3U cases are roomy enough to fit a standard ATX supply, so we picked a good consumer-level brand. None of the drives seemed to have issues when they were plugged into the power supply directly (except for the ones that were already dead).
This was tested to exhaustion: by plugging in one of our new 3TB drives into any case, we could cause that port to die. We killed at least 8 ports on different backplanes by plugging in a single drive.
If i understand this correctly they successfully tried the hardware before putting it into the norco case, so the PSU was able to handle all the drives booting without problem.
They even tried to plug only one drive and managed to kill the port each time, so that' s definitely not a PSU overload.
First, how many M1015's? Which firmware on the M1015's - IT or IR? Which motherboard? Which model Norco?
Also, have you tested each backplane one by one connecting it to the same M1015 card?
Odditory, I don't know man. I'm having a very similar issue with my Norco Chassis. I cannot get it to address more than 8 hard drives. If I boot with 20 hard drives connected, it only addresses 8 and ignores the rest. If I leave everything but 8 plugged in, then boot. I see 8 hard drives, then if I start to then plug in hard drives one by one, they either are not detected at all, or they are detected and cause one some the first 8 drives to fall off.
It cannot be the power supply, I have a Seasonic X-750 and I have swapped it for a older PSU that I had laying around, same affect.
It's not the M1015's that I have, those 8 hard drives work regardless of which SAS card it is connected to
It's not the hard drives, if I bypass everything and connect them straight to the motherboards SATA ports, they work fine.
The only thing it can be is the backplanes, and I know that one of mine are blown entirely because the power slot for of the SATA connectors is physically warped and any hard drive I slot into that particular slot causes the power connector to get bent and destroyed (Thank the heavens I found that out with a cheap 80GB hard drive and not one of my 2TBs)
The one and only thing I haven't tried to to bypass the backplanes and to connect the hard drives directly to the SAS cards with some forward breakout cables, but I do not want to spend any more money at this point. This is maddening, I spent about $1300 for this system and I can't even get more than 8 hard drives slotted.
It cannot be the PSU, Seasonic is top quality and 750W is well above what I need. Considering I can't even get 8 hard drives working, it can't be the wattage.750W supply seems a little on the low side to for a 24 drive system.
What about going straight from the motherboard into one of the problematic backplane connections? Might it be that the backplane is OK but just doesn't want to play nice with the cards (as configured)? I'm guessing you'd have to pick up a reverse SAS-SATA breakout cable for the purpose.
I'm leaning toward it being a card-related issue.
It cannot be the PSU, Seasonic is top quality and 750W is well above what I need. Considering I can't even get 8 hard drives working, it can't be the wattage.
I honestly hope it is, but I'd have to but additional cables and I don't really feel that I should do that. Additionally, I only have 6 SATA ports on the motherboard, 4 of which are free, so I don't see how that proves anything since my problem is that I cannot get 8 hard drives working.
While I will not stand by Norco backplanes and it probably is the backplane. You can not say it is not the PSU.
Yes Seasonic makes great supplies but they are a consumer psu maker. As such they put more into providing power to the video card than anything else.
750W is most likely not going to be enough for 24 drives, particularly if you are not staggering the spinup. While it should be enough for 8, it would not surprise me if its 12V rail can not keep up. Again I do not know how much current they alot for the 12V rail. Also you do not mention the rest of the hardware, do you have a massive video card? Which CPU, etc.
Regardless I think you will need more than 750W when you go to fill that case with 24 drives. Check out chassis makers that have 24 drives and include a PSU, they all start with 900+ W supplies, many pushing 1200W redundant supplies.
Considering my fan literrally has never kicked on for the PSU, it's not load, at start-up or any other time.
The rest of my specs:
Operating System: Windows Home Server 2011
Storage Platform: StableBit Drive Pool BETA (1.2.0.6989)
CPU: Intel Core i3-2100T Sandy Bridge 2.5GHz LGA 1155 35W Dual-Core Desktop Processor
Motherboard: Supermicro X9SCM-F
Chassis: Norco RPC-4224
Drives: 4x WDC WD5000AAKS 500GB, 4x WDC WD10EACS 1TB, 4x WDC WD20EADS 2TB, 2x WDC WD20EARS 2TB, 2x WDC WD20EARX 2TB
RAM: 2x Kingston ValueRAM 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered Server Memory
Add-in Cards: 3x IBM M1015 running in IT mode (P14)
Power Supply: SeaSonic X750 750W 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
Other Bits: 6x Monoprice 1m 30AWG Internal Mini-SAS 36pin cables (SFF-8087), 3x Scythe SY1225SL12M 120mm "Slipstream" (Firewall), 2x MASSCOOL FD08025S1M4 80mm Case Fan (Exhaust)
I'm not sure why your first suspect is not the M1015 driver and/or firmware. The 8 drives is highly suspicious, since it is the number of drives that could be handled by a single M1015.
That would be the first thing I would investigate. First, I'd make sure I had the most recent drivers and firmware available (from LSI, they seem to often be ahead of IBM). Then, to simplify a bit, I'd shift down to two M1015 cards, and try connecting 5 drives to one and 4 drives to the other (and vice versa with which gets 5 and 4). If you still only get 8 drives, is the drive that gets left off the same serial number in both cases (5/4 and 4/5)? Is it on the same quad-backplane board?
By the way, I'd ignore the person suggesting that the X750 does not have enough power (assuming it is not defective). Here is what it is specified to supply:
+3.3V@25A, +5V@25A, +12V@62A, -12V@1A, +5VSB@3A
Considering my fan literrally has never kicked on for the PSU, it's not load, at start-up or any other time.
The rest of my specs:
Operating System: Windows Home Server 2011
Storage Platform: StableBit Drive Pool BETA (1.2.0.6989)
CPU: Intel Core i3-2100T Sandy Bridge 2.5GHz LGA 1155 35W Dual-Core Desktop Processor
Motherboard: Supermicro X9SCM-F
Chassis: Norco RPC-4224
Drives: 4x WDC WD5000AAKS 500GB, 4x WDC WD10EACS 1TB, 4x WDC WD20EADS 2TB, 2x WDC WD20EARS 2TB, 2x WDC WD20EARX 2TB
RAM: 2x Kingston ValueRAM 4GB 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM ECC Unbuffered Server Memory
Add-in Cards: 3x IBM M1015 running in IT mode (P14)
Power Supply: SeaSonic X750 750W 80 PLUS GOLD Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply
Other Bits: 6x Monoprice 1m 30AWG Internal Mini-SAS 36pin cables (SFF-8087), 3x Scythe SY1225SL12M 120mm "Slipstream" (Firewall), 2x MASSCOOL FD08025S1M4 80mm Case Fan (Exhaust)
I'm not sure why your first suspect is not the M1015 driver and/or firmware. The 8 drives is highly suspicious, since it is the number of drives that could be handled by a single M1015.
That would be the first thing I would investigate. First, I'd make sure I had the most recent drivers and firmware available (from LSI, they seem to often be ahead of IBM). Then, to simplify a bit, I'd shift down to two M1015 cards, and try connecting 5 drives to one and 4 drives to the other (and vice versa with which gets 5 and 4). If you still only get 8 drives, is the drive that gets left off the same serial number in both cases (5/4 and 4/5)? Is it on the same quad-backplane board?
There are a few posts on the net regarding this combination - haven't had time to digest but worth a look? (there are more than this, these were just the first few links that looked vaguely matching.
http://forums.servethehome.com/show...ed-with-M1015-in-3rd-or-4th-slot-on-X9SCM-IIF
http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=22057.0
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1039229554 - could ask this person how he got on
In the first post, it seems like a BIOS upgrade on the mobo was required - I know you have done this already but maybe need to ask for something "beta"?
Btw, where do you live? If its in the UK I can lend you an expander if you wanted to test that option out.