$199 24 bay, dual Xenon server

I don't know how this received no interest here, but this is indeed the steal of the year.

Motherboard is a SuperMicro X7DBE-X. Runs about ~$400 itself. Dual LGA771, comes with a single Xeon E5120 (or E5130 if you get the 2GHz version, doesn't seem worth it to me with much more power had cheaply). I'll probably throw in a pair of E5450's (Quad core 3GHz 12MB cache)- seem to be able to find a pair for about $100-120 a lot of places. Up to 32GB of ECC, and it supports IPMI which would be interesting to play with.

3 x Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 Raid Cards for 24-port SATA. These run about ~$100 each new!

Chassis is an AIC RSC-4ED2. If nothing else, this is worth the price by itself. Runs ~$1800 new. Even a cheap chassis like the Norco 4224 is more expensive than this!

Noise is the biggest issue. The pair of 60mm fans in the chassis are real screamers (56dBA each). I ordered a pair of these to knock that down to 16dBA each: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835191005

I'll probably add the Norco fan wall and some quiet 120mm fans. Maybe the back plate and an ATX PSU, but I'll wait to see how loud those things are.
 
I don't know how this received no interest here, but this is indeed the steal of the year.

Motherboard is a SuperMicro X7DBE-X. Runs about ~$400 itself. Dual LGA771, comes with a single Xeon E5120 (or E5130 if you get the 2GHz version, doesn't seem worth it to me with much more power had cheaply). I'll probably throw in a pair of E5450's (Quad core 3GHz 12MB cache)- seem to be able to find a pair for about $100-120 a lot of places. Up to 32GB of ECC, and it supports IPMI which would be interesting to play with.

3 x Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 Raid Cards for 24-port SATA. These run about ~$100 each new!

Chassis is an AIC RSC-4ED2. If nothing else, this is worth the price by itself. Runs ~$1800 new. Even a cheap chassis like the Norco 4224 is more expensive than this!

Noise is the biggest issue. The pair of 60mm fans in the chassis are real screamers (56dBA each). I ordered a pair of these to knock that down to 16dBA each: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835191005

I'll probably add the Norco fan wall and some quiet 120mm fans. Maybe the back plate and an ATX PSU, but I'll wait to see how loud those things are.

the technology is old enough

I prefer current sandy/ivy bridge with the new mobo for 5-7 years of usage and expansion :D.

too many mods to be done..
this is a good start for people that planing to do mods and first storage server or VM

did you calculate $$$ with today prices? those seem not correct for me.


if you need to update CPU, L5410 ~$16, just check on 3bay.
 
Looks very nice. :) I was looking at building a Norco case based data storage, but this is cheaper for the whole shebang!
 
the technology is old enough

I prefer current sandy/ivy bridge with the new mobo for 5-7 years of usage and expansion :D.

too many mods to be done..
this is a good start for people that planing to do mods and first storage server or VM

did you calculate $$$ with today prices? those seem not correct for me.


if you need to update CPU, L5410 ~$16, just check on 3bay.

Those are current selling prices for new components of course.

Even if you wanted to build with sandy/ivy bridge this chassis is worth $200 + shipping. Look at Google prices on that AIC: https://www.google.com/search?q=AIC+RSC-4ED2&tbm=shop

Everything else is bonus. 3TB x 24 is plenty of future usage and expansion for most people I know. :D

A Norco 4224 will run you $400 and you haven't even started looking at motherboard, CPU, ram, PSU, SATA/SAS cards, etc...
 
Looks very nice. :) I was looking at building a Norco case based data storage, but this is cheaper for the whole shebang!

on my side:
if you have much time on modding and do some upgrade(Motherboard/cpu/memory/HBA card/RAID card) in the future. You are good to go for this deal.

I usually set a life cycle, my today build would last for 7 years without any major upgrade since running 24/7, and build a new machine after 7 years elapsed.
this will give me some saving, down time, and less wasted time on a long run.
 
This is a good deal. :eek: I have had a TST 16-Bay Chassis for years that I have been using for my server. Currently I have a bunch of 2TB drives in there and have 2 slots left. Hmm might have to consider this one! :D
 
Well, I have a small domain controller right now with 6 TB of data. I'm wanting to expand that. So, the thing would only be used for file storage. All other VM's, etc. would be on the main server (i5 3.4, 16 GB RAM, Server 2008R2). Right now, I'm doing ok, I'm just out of space for new HDD's. It's only for a small home network with glorified nerd network equipment. It's mostly for fun and movie/music/document storage and backup.

I can mod it with quieter fans, etc.. I don't plan on going with a different backplane for a long while (SAS, or whatever in the future). For the price, it could last me 5 years and I'd be happy. I would be upgrading the RAM and CPU immediately, though. Throw in a few 2 TB drives in RAID 5 to start and move up from there. The price is a lot less than what I was going to spend on just a case. I don't need much at all. I'd be very happy with this purchase! :D Waiting until paycheck on Monday, then I'm going for it.
 
Those are current selling prices for new components of course.

Even if you wanted to build with sandy/ivy bridge this chassis is worth $200 + shipping. Look at Google prices on that AIC: https://www.google.com/search?q=AIC+RSC-4ED2&tbm=shop

Everything else is bonus. 3TB x 24 is plenty of future usage and expansion for most people I know. :D

A Norco 4224 will run you $400 and you haven't even started looking at motherboard, CPU, ram, PSU, SATA/SAS cards, etc...

not talk on AIC only, since they have a newer model, I check on theirsite.


if you start with an old technology, sometime incoming year... you would do major upgrade:D.
I prefers spend $$$ in the beginning and enjoy my build for 5-7 years. just rinse and repeat with a new build in the future. this will save my $$$ in a long run.

I prefer SAS/SATA card, the gave me better performance and fast processor, LSI 924X and 926X

the current technology, give you less power usage, better performance, features..

just my opinion... anyone has his/her own too .
 
not talk on AIC only, since they have a newer model, I check on theirsite.


if you start with an old technology, sometime incoming year... you would do major upgrade:D.
I prefers spend $$$ in the beginning and enjoy my build for 5-7 years. just rinse and repeat with a new build in the future. this will save my $$$ in a long run.

I prefer SAS/SATA card, the gave me better performance and fast processor, LSI 924X and 926X

the current technology, give you less power usage, better performance, features..

just my opinion... anyone has his/her own too .

Not arguing you can't find better performance, but there's no better value to be found that I know of.

I can't even start a build with a chassis for what this cost. Performance wise this thing is already overkill for a media file server as I'd use it: http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/aoc-sat2-mv8.cfm, "Up to 3.0 Gigabits/sec per port".

Add a pair of E5450's and I'll have ~10-15% more processing horsepower than my i5-2500K @ 4GHz in my workstation for dirt cheap. Fileserving and even transcoding will be a breeze.
 
Not arguing you can't find better performance, but there's no better value to be found that I know of.

I can't even start a build with a chassis for what this cost. Performance wise this thing is already overkill for a media file server as I'd use it: http://www.supermicro.com/products/accessories/addon/aoc-sat2-mv8.cfm, "Up to 3.0 Gigabits/sec per port".

Add a pair of E5450's and I'll have ~10-15% more processing horsepower than my i5-2500K @ 4GHz in my workstation for dirt cheap. Fileserving and even transcoding will be a breeze.

if you need to upgrade CPU:
L5410 should more than enough, and less power usage than E5450 :)
just upgrade to 16G or 32G, assuming you are planning to us software raid (zfs, mdadm or others)...

good luck and enjoy!!!
 
are the Backplane rated for sata2 only? I have a 9211-8i with a Chenbro CK23601. I would obviously like to keep the 6Gb/s connection if possible. :) But this looks promising.
 
Dang. He does not ship internationally. If somebody can buy one for me, and ship it to me, for a fee, then please PM me.
 
Grrrrrrrrr... I hate you guys for not posting this earlier last week. *kicks the OP in the shin*
 
I just ordered one. Shame the AMD ones went fast but this is a deal just for the case and trays.
 
I picked one of these up a few months ago. The case alone is worth double the cost of this server. I'm not sure about the backplane being SATA 3 compatible, but for a storage server, you're not going to exceed the bandwidth of SATA 2 from a single drive anyway. I'm probably going to be swapping out the motherboard and power supplies for an Ivy Bridge Xeon setup in the next few weeks, as I'm looking to consolidate and virtualize some systems at home and need more memory than is practical with DDR2. That said, for storage and a VM or two, it's been utterly fantastic.
 
I picked one of these up a few months ago. The case alone is worth double the cost of this server. I'm not sure about the backplane being SATA 3 compatible, but for a storage server, you're not going to exceed the bandwidth of SATA 2 from a single drive anyway. I'm probably going to be swapping out the motherboard and power supplies for an Ivy Bridge Xeon setup in the next few weeks, as I'm looking to consolidate and virtualize some systems at home and need more memory than is practical with DDR2. That said, for storage and a VM or two, it's been utterly fantastic.

I just snagged one of these as well after mulling over it for a few days. I was actually planning on upgrading my main system to Ivy Bridge and using my old system (Q6600 with 8GB ram on an Intel "Badaxe 2") for a WHS 2011 machine, but this was too good to pass up. Aside from upgrading to higher quality hardware, I had settled for an eight bay (with the option to expand to 12 bays) Rosewill case that seems nice enough, but wasn't what I really wanted. I had been looking at the popular Norco 24 bay case about a year ago, but decided against it when I started adding up the cost of the case (400+ shipping) and the HBAs (another 300-ish) and so forth, it was just getting too expensive. Looks like that worked out for the better, as I suspect this case is of significantly higher quality than the Norco and I get a complete system including the HBAs for less than the price of the 4224! Even on sale I don't think the Norco is this cheap.

Anyway, I'd like to stick in a pair of low power quads (either L5410 or L5420) and beef up the RAM to 16 gig and do some light virtualization. Since the chipset is too old to support VT-d, looks like I'll be limited to Hyper-V if I want decent performance on the storage since AFAIK Hyper-V is the only one that supports disk pass through with out VT-d. This is my first time goofing around with VMs, so I'm not sure what I'm getting into.

I'll probably still end up sticking my Q6600 into this Rosewill case, and perhaps putting it on craigslist. I'm sure it'll make a nice WHS 2011 server for somebody.
 
DANG. If someone is going to buy one, maybe you can order two, and ship one to me for a fee?
 
I'm been an AMD builder for most of my life, so pardon the seeming newbish question: can you replace the Xeon with a newer Core2 processor? If so, can a Core2 processor work if you double it on a dually board?
 
I'm been an AMD builder for most of my life, so pardon the seeming newbish question: can you replace the Xeon with a newer Core2 processor? If so, can a Core2 processor work if you double it on a dually board?

Don't confuse the s775 core2's with the s771 xeon's, or s775 xeons for that matter. 771 was the higher end platform that could do multi socket.
 
I picked one of these up a few months ago. The case alone is worth double the cost of this server. I'm not sure about the backplane being SATA 3 compatible, but for a storage server, you're not going to exceed the bandwidth of SATA 2 from a single drive anyway. I'm probably going to be swapping out the motherboard and power supplies for an Ivy Bridge Xeon setup in the next few weeks, as I'm looking to consolidate and virtualize some systems at home and need more memory than is practical with DDR2. That said, for storage and a VM or two, it's been utterly fantastic.

what Motherboard model and ivy bridge xeon do you plan to use?
 
I'm been an AMD builder for most of my life, so pardon the seeming newbish question: can you replace the Xeon with a newer Core2 processor? If so, can a Core2 processor work if you double it on a dually board?

I believe these are Core 2 Xeons. Different socket, so you can't just slap a s775 core 2 in there, but it the 771 Xeons on eBay tend to be cheap enough if you wanted to upgrade to something faster or power efficient (or both).
 
what Motherboard model and ivy bridge xeon do you plan to use?

Planning on going with the Supermicro MBD-X9SCM-F-O and E3-1230 V2. Going to run an IBM M1015 w/ an Intel SAS Expander (since that can run off a molex connection, it leaves three PCIe slots open still) to take care of the storage side. I'd prefer something with more expansion options for NICs, tuners, etc, but I really need IPMI--if anyone has suggestions for a sub-$250 1155 board, I'm all ears.
 
I believe these are Core 2 Xeons. Different socket, so you can't just slap a s775 core 2 in there, but it the 771 Xeons on eBay tend to be cheap enough if you wanted to upgrade to something faster or power efficient (or both).

This is correct - I picked up a second Xeon 5060 for mine for about $15. The heatsink to go with it actually cost more than the CPU!
 
I Bought it on the last minute when there were 4 available.

here is my final improvement to accomodate 2U server PSU and ATX/Extended ATX.
tERwF.jpg


I just need thecase server only where will transplant my dual E5410 with Intel 5400 chipset(with vt-d, the only LGA771 chipset that support vt-d) for my VM machines.


the build quality is a way better than norco 20/24 bay server case :D

total price: ~290 for 24 bay server case+ $10 norco fan plate/wall= ~$300 including with my spending time to work on the server case.
 
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