Project: Galaxy 3.0

How warm do the drives get in those Supermicro cages? I've thought about getting cages like that before, but I've heard complaints that they don't cool drives very well (save for with extremely high powered and loud 80mm fans). Do the ones you're using have the fan offset (ie: directly behind four drives) from the drives leaving one of the drives not cooled as well as the others? Those trays you have pictures of on page 1 also look mighty tight and limiting on the airflow.

My somewhat similar fileservers (2.0TB each) feature my own 'ghetto' drive cages consisting of a flat slab of metal (such as the bottom half of a gutted CDROM) with holes drilled so I can fit 5 drives vertically. I stick a 120mm fan at 5V (quiet!) in front of 'em and it works wonders - not hot swappable though, and definitely not pretty! Makes for a handy 4 or 5 drives in 3 5.25" bays though.

Anyway, I'm just curious as to how much cooling you get on those drive cages. Your system looks great!
 
gattebury said:
How warm do the drives get in those Supermicro cages? I've thought about getting cages like that before, but I've heard complaints that they don't cool drives very well (save for with extremely high powered and loud 80mm fans). Do the ones you're using have the fan offset (ie: directly behind four drives) from the drives leaving one of the drives not cooled as well as the others? Those trays you have pictures of on page 1 also look mighty tight and limiting on the airflow.

My somewhat similar fileservers (2.0TB each) feature my own 'ghetto' drive cages consisting of a flat slab of metal (such as the bottom half of a gutted CDROM) with holes drilled so I can fit 5 drives vertically. I stick a 120mm fan at 5V (quiet!) in front of 'em and it works wonders - not hot swappable though, and definitely not pretty! Makes for a handy 4 or 5 drives in 3 5.25" bays though.

Anyway, I'm just curious as to how much cooling you get on those drive cages. Your system looks great!
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They are server grade cages and they get a good amount of airflow.. in fact really good. They are not very silent, but I'm not much of a worrier about that. I was actually thinking of leaving out the back 120mm fans because those 4 80's will push more than enough air through that system alone.
 
draconius said:
The next one should just be all solid state storage :D
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That would be a lot of ram if you used a solutions similar to the idrive.

However, I'd rather settle for this and a Enzo if you were to compare costs ;) IF you got 1gig sticks for 60 each, you'd need 10k of them to match this machine... thats 600,000 dollars... I can't even imagine the power required for that.


It would make a great silent space heater though :cool:
 
Fans installed :cool: I know some of you will not like the fan grills or the UV reactive fans, however, I'm not done yet ;) I'm contemplating making the entire server UV reactive inclduing all the SATA cables (that way I can get shorter cables too) :eek:

Also, I used the fan grils instead of that stacker guas for the reason of more airflow and a more unique look that sets it apart of the other stackers... plus if it was to glow, it would look sick.

Let me know what you guys think:








Oh and just a picture in here for fun :cool:

 
Dude, Im missing word for this.. Awsome!

You must be working your ass of to afford all this stuff? :confused:

And another question.. What is you absolute dreamsetup of a fileserver? What would be in it? :D
 
thats a really neat sever you are building. what is neptune exactly? what are the specs on it and did you buy the backplanes/hotswap drive enclosures seperately for neptune as well??? your set up looks great more pics please! :)
 
Really coming together nice there. I'm usually not a fan of green fans and UV stuff (I like blue) but it really fits the build imo. Probably becasue thats Opterons color theme :D

By chance do you have a thread on your FX60 build and if so may I have a link?
 
ooooo man o man!!! I AM :eek:
wow speachelss!!!!

I talked my dad into letting me build a central server for our house along with 3x HTPC's and my small 2tb server is looking sad. My have to bump it up to 4tb just becuase of you :D
 
I can't wait til I get job... :(

Going to save up about 10k (NZ dollars) buy a nice big 35-40 LCD HDTV (mebbe a DLP...see when the time comes) and a nice new computer...though that would only hold 1.574TB right off the bat (just using the motherboard SATA ports (1x74GB raptor for OS and apps, 5x 300GB Seagate drives for storage)

Along with the other componets that takes up 5.5k ;) Oh how i hate NZ sometimes. XD

-daydreams-

Keep up the good work. ^_^
 
Kaleim said:
Dude, Im missing word for this.. Awsome!

You must be working your ass of to afford all this stuff? :confused:

And another question.. What is you absolute dreamsetup of a fileserver? What would be in it? :D
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I work just like everyone else but I have diffrent priorities :)


My dream server, well it is this with a twist... if I had the money I would have gone quad 880s (8 way processing) just for the hell of it :)
 
cornfield said:
thats a really neat sever you are building. what is neptune exactly? what are the specs on it and did you buy the backplanes/hotswap drive enclosures seperately for neptune as well??? your set up looks great more pics please!
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This is neptune, yes she has a hotswap backplane on her too but it came built in with the case :)



Here are the specs clipped from my notepad :) :

MSI K8NGM2-FID 6150 | AMD64 3200+ | 512MB GSkill Memory | Seagate 120GB | Norco DS-610 | 3 X WD 320GB | 2 X WD2500KS 250GB | AMD HSF | Antec TRUEPower 400W | Syba 4 SATA Controller | Sony DVDRW 16X DL

I added some more drives in there recently so the storage capacity is higher


Majin said:
W0W
That is looking really nice!

What are you putting the FX-60 in?
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See sig :) She's already in and working great... it's so awesome.

DFI LanParty SLI-DR Expert | AMD FX-60 | 2GB Dual DDR Mushkin Redline DDR-500 memory | 2 x XFX 7800GT SLI | Raptor 150 | SilverStone TJ-06 | OCZ PowerStream 600w | Plextor Slot Load DL DVDRW | Zalman CNPS9500 | 2405FPW | Happy Hacking Keyboard lite | G5 Mouse
 
Cpt Twitchy said:
Really coming together nice there. I'm usually not a fan of green fans and UV stuff (I like blue) but it really fits the build imo. Probably becasue thats Opterons color theme :D

By chance do you have a thread on your FX60 build and if so may I have a link?
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Nope sorry I don't have anything on the FX60 other than a benchmark screenshot ;)
 
Ockie said:
Nope sorry I don't have anything on the FX60 other than a benchmark screenshot ;)
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Thats okay. I'm sure you can atleast tell us how far you've pushed her though :D

Tim
 
codegrinder said:
captin money bags, will you adopt me? :D
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Sure... how well do you clean kitchens? :p


Haha.



As for the PSU, I'm really grinding my teeth on this because I do not feel good spending 550 on a power supply, I understand that this is the best, but I know that when enermax comes out with theirs, their prices will defnitley a ton cheaper and a bit more reasonable.

So as of right now I'm going to see if it's possible to push this system on a 650W SilverStone Zeus, if it doesn't, I'm going to hold off till they come out with the Enermax Galaxy or the SilverStone 1KW and then I'll just take this 650 and retire it in another machine. It's probably a worth while more valuable experience than just tossing in the top of the line machine.

Another user managed to get his dual xeon to run fine on a thermaltake 680 (enthusiast psu, so not much raw power) with 14 drives total. He claimed it's a bit weak on him but I have a feeling it's because of his thirsty controllers and other things he had attached (LCD) and a varieity of other things. So I think I can make it.


If it works, I save $400, if it doesn't work, then I'll still get a cheaper psu from enermax and those other companies. So win win :)

I think I regret going with this model of the stacker again, I could have gotten away with two psu's for not only a fraction of the cost, but I would have gotten very nice psu's that would give ample power to this setup. So overall I'd say I do like the 810 stacker improvements, it's defnitley a ton better, but the dual PSU's was just so so much cooler.


Chime in what you guys think?
 
Ockie said:
Sure... how well do you clean kitchens? :p


Haha.



As for the PSU, I'm really grinding my teeth on this because I do not feel good spending 550 on a power supply, I understand that this is the best, but I know that when enermax comes out with theirs, their prices will defnitley a ton cheaper and a bit more reasonable.

So as of right now I'm going to see if it's possible to push this system on a 650W SilverStone Zeus, if it doesn't, I'm going to hold off till they come out with the Enermax Galaxy or the SilverStone 1KW and then I'll just take this 650 and retire it in another machine. It's probably a worth while more valuable experience than just tossing in the top of the line machine.

Another user managed to get his dual xeon to run fine on a thermaltake 680 (enthusiast psu, so not much raw power) with 14 drives total. He claimed it's a bit weak on him but I have a feeling it's because of his thirsty controllers and other things he had attached (LCD) and a varieity of other things. So I think I can make it.


If it works, I save $400, if it doesn't work, then I'll still get a cheaper psu from enermax and those other companies. So win win :)


Chime in what you guys think?
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everything you said makes sense from a practical point of view, but I was really wanting to see the PCP&C 1KW in action :(
especially in a machine like this that is the best of the best and not only has the room to hold it, but enough hardware to actually put it to work
 
I was on the shopping cart today for the 1KW psu and then it got me thinking... can I get away with it? ;) I hate buyers remorse... especially if I'm in the process of buying it :p

So as in return on investment, going the smaller PSU first route yeilds to be much more effective and also it gives me a better selection on PSU's when more companies hit the 1kw mark. It's expected that there will be a crap load of 1kw's coming this year, they are so close and the milestone is so big. So it may just be to my interest to hold off and see whats cooking first. I would hate making the same mistake as I did before (bought antecs for $110 each and then having nice PSU's come out for much cheaper afterwards)

Even if this was a true server power supply or a true redundant psu, I would have greater justification on buying it. In no time these desktop enthusiast psu's will hit general pricing and would absolutley kill the value of this unit.

I'll do my homework and see what I can come up with, space doesn't allow me much to mod the case for a dual psu solution.. :eek:


On the other hand, what the hell... lol :eek:
 
This is all based on what I know and I'm no PSU genius.

I know that Zippy/Emacs build some of the best PSU's out there and considering that you do not want to spend $500 on a PSU which I do not balme you for this may be an option http://www.zippy.com.tw/P_product_d...S2/PS2+ single&pcpw_rfnbr=5&pp_code=PSL-6700P
I'm not sure where It can be purchased but since HDD's power off the 5v rail this thing has 50amps to feed and 45 on the 3.3v rail and 32amps on the 12v rail. In the past I when I have seen it in such places as newegg it was selling for ~$280. Maybe this Psu will suit the job?

Tim
 
Cpt Twitchy said:
This is all based on what I know and I'm no PSU genius.

I know that Zippy/Emacs build some of the best PSU's out there and considering that you do not want to spend $500 on a PSU which I do not balme you for this may be an option http://www.zippy.com.tw/P_product_d...S2/PS2+ single&pcpw_rfnbr=5&pp_code=PSL-6700P
I'm not sure where It can be purchased but since HDD's power off the 5v rail this thing has 50amps to feed and 45 on the 3.3v rail and 32amps on the 12v rail. In the past I when I have seen it in such places as newegg it was selling for ~$280. Maybe this Psu will suit the job?

Tim
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I was actually looking and wondeirng about it earlier today :)

http://www.servercase.com/miva/miva...roduct_Code=PSL-6701P&Category_Code=4U_Server
 
I also just noticed looking around servercase.com that they have the 6600P which is spec'd amp wise the same as the 6700P. I alwyas thought amps were more important than watts but this is just confusing me. :confused: I hope I'm more help than confusion.

Tim
 
Drives draw mostly on the 12v line, actually. Look at StorageReview's tests; on one of the later pages they show power draw. The Hitachi comes in with about an amp and a half on the 12v line, and less than one on the 5v. So for 20 drives, 30A continuous (and possibly 60 at startup! :eek: ) on the 12v and 20A on the 5v is enough.

 
unhappy_mage said:
Drives draw mostly on the 12v line, actually. Look at StorageReview's tests; on one of the later pages they show power draw. The Hitachi comes in with about an amp and a half on the 12v line, and less than one on the 5v. So for 20 drives, 30A continuous (and possibly 60 at startup! :eek: ) on the 12v and 20A on the 5v is enough.
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Thank you very much for that little bit of info. I learned something new woohoo :D In that case I take it the PSL-6701P is the one you want. Cheaper then the 1kw and very powerful. I know Centvalny has one and he sure seems to like it alot.

Tim
 
Ockie said:
<snip>

Another user managed to get his dual xeon to run fine on a thermaltake 680 (enthusiast psu, so not much raw power) with 14 drives total. He claimed it's a bit weak on him but I have a feeling it's because of his thirsty controllers and other things he had attached (LCD) and a varieity of other things. So I think I can make it.

<snip>

Chime in what you guys think?
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I could not get my machine to run with 680W - only managed to get it to boot maybe 4 or 5 times total. It now has the 1kW.

Killer machine, BTW. Are you just running the drives as seperate or are you going to span them together?
 
PS-RagE said:
I could not get my machine to run with 680W - only managed to get it to boot maybe 4 or 5 times total. It now has the 1kW.

Killer machine, BTW. Are you just running the drives as seperate or are you going to span them together?
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You must have had a bad psu or they must have a crappy model. Do you think it may have been that you were modding the wires wrong or that something is wrong with the psu itself?


Seperate... RAID overhead or any kinda spanning will kill me.
 
Ockie said:
Seperate... RAID overhead or any kinda spanning will kill me.
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Not even dynamic disk spanning long enough for a screenshot? Everyone would think it was a photoshop :p

 
unhappy_mage said:
Not even dynamic disk spanning long enough for a screenshot? Everyone would think it was a photoshop :p

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True. But everyone will yell photoshop when they see 21 drives listed under my computer ;)
 
I finally bit the bullet and grabbed a PC&P 1KW psu :eek: That was the most I've ever spent on a damn PSU.


Now it's the waiting game for this overweight and oversized and not to mention overpriced psu to come in :p
 
Ockie said:
You must have had a bad psu or they must have a crappy model. Do you think it may have been that you were modding the wires wrong or that something is wrong with the psu itself?
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Neither. The PSU powered up the single P4 system with 6 drives for months and when I installed the big 1kW PSU I reused the power harness. My guess is that 680W rating is peak power - if the load were to be slowly applied - at zero degrees - with a strong wind blowing ;)
 
PS-RagE said:
Neither. The PSU powered up the single P4 system with 6 drives for months and when I installed the big 1kW PSU I reused the power harness. My guess is that 680W rating is peak power - if the load were to be slowly applied - at zero degrees - with a strong wind blowing ;)
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Thats why I hate enthusiast psus, their actual output is so damn low. I'm expecting this 1KW to give me nothing less than 1KW of output. Its interesting because when you deal with server grade PSUs they don't talk about peak power, peak power is just like a perk or something :D

That 680 of yours did have some great numbers too... but I guess it's just like riced out cars... all the stickers, all the show... no go :p
 
Ockie said:
Thats why I hate enthusiast psus, their actual output is so damn low. I'm expecting this 1KW to give me nothing less than 1KW of output. Its interesting because when you deal with server grade PSUs they don't talk about peak power, peak power is just like a perk or something :D

That 680 of yours did have some great numbers too... but I guess it's just like riced out cars... all the stickers, all the show... no go :p
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The 1kW is its continuous-duty rating. Peak is 1200
 
PS-RagE said:
The 1kW is its continuous-duty rating. Peak is 1200
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Thats the only reason why I bought it... it was the final straw. If that load was peak, I'd have waited for a better psu.

But anyways, its being shipped out today from NY so should be here in 2 days flat. YAY Paaarrrtaaay
 
Ockie said:
Thats the only reason why I bought it... it was the final straw. If that load was peak, I'd have waited for a better psu.

But anyways, its being shipped out today from NY so should be here in 2 days flat. YAY Paaarrrtaaay
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