[USED] Ultimate File Server - 24 Bay SuperMicro Opteron Servers w/24 Port RAID $299+

I really like this. How do you have those 120 fans stable?

They're actually 3 140mm fans, not 120mm. It may be a little hard to see but they are actually very secure in place and won't budge. The 3 fans themselves are zip tied together tight on the front and back of the fan grills so that it's one big piece (you can't see the side of the fans towards the drives in the picture but they are zip tied together too). Some of the corners of the fans where you would normally screw them into place are zipped together too. Then on the bottom of the picture, if you look to the right of the fans you can see there is a small section of metal in the case that protrudes out for the open case indicator. The fans are wedged up against it. I then have a zip tie going from one of the fan grills to a section of the drive cage pulled taught, so the fans are completely secure - wedged up and secured against that metal case open indicator protrusion with the zip tie.

On the top of the picture, there isn't any thing to wedge the fans against. So I used zip ties in both directions pulled tight to fix that side in one place.

The fan unit is solid and won't move at all, I'd have to cut the zip ties to get any of them to budge. Here's a link the fans and the fan grills I used (the fan grills project the 24 sata cables and give a place to tie the zipties onto):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186081

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811998078

I know some other people have bought a 3-120mm Norco fan wall and done some work to install the metal fan wall piece, but with 3-140mm fitting in so perfectly that seemed like a better option. No drilling required, just removing the existing fan wall hardware with a screwdriver and some zip ties.

EDIT: Here are two more angles:

20130605_221054_zps63809df3.jpg

20130605_220959_zps82001cdd.jpg
 
What server software would you run with this? Free NAS? I currently have a synology DS1812+ I'm tempted by something like this..
 
Oh sweet lord. I've been looking for a deal like this and instantly bought one.

Thanks OP!
 
We use a ton of SM's @ work; but they're all Intel based. Not sure what BIOS/ME/SDR profiles they'll ship with, but often times a newer FW package will get the fan noise under control. Have seen this on various servers, so worth looking into.

I have something with a little more oomph (dual Xeon 3Ghz 54xx or 55xx, 16GB, Adaptec 6805, 12 H/S bays but not nearly enough storage), however it had a RAID failure (why oh WHY did I use 5EE?! WTF was I thinking?!) so has been sitting idle due to lack of time and a serious hate of the fan noise. That said, some of the pics here have given me ideas on how to get that under control - thanks! :)
 
I wonder if I could mount a ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA 2011 SSI EEB mother board in there. Maybe 2 closed loop water coolers as well? You guys who have modded this is it easy to mount the standoffs and the like?
 
I wonder if I could mount a ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA 2011 SSI EEB mother board in there. Maybe 2 closed loop water coolers as well? You guys who have modded this is it easy to mount the standoffs and the like?

My conclusion from this thread : http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=280799 , would be no .. though if you are the modder type, I'm sure you could find a way to make it work.
 
I wonder if I could mount a ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS Dual LGA 2011 SSI EEB mother board in there. Maybe 2 closed loop water coolers as well? You guys who have modded this is it easy to mount the standoffs and the like?

You would probably just have to mod it a bit and depending on where the standoffs holes are you might have to thread some new holes to mount the SSI EEB board. I imagine the backplane would not initially line up, so you would probably have to try something like a norco 4224 backplane (doesn't fit perfectly, but it does fit).

I can't imagine the modding would be too difficult. The hardest part would be ensuring that the motherboard standoffs lined up correctly so that the mobo would also lineup with the backplane.
 
Cool I was reading the AVS forums stuff and the noroco back plane looks like it should be pretty simple to get in there. Hopefully they get some dc ones in to make it a little less expensive. Thanks for the info :)
 
FUCK....I really need one of these..would save me the trouble of building a home server for backup.

Lucky me...broke till friday
 
FUCK....I really need one of these..would save me the trouble of building a home server for backup.

Lucky me...broke till friday

From what I understand they have a fair amount of inventory, I'm sure they'll still have stock.
 
Just got one of these-what a beast!! Wondering were everyone is buying tapered hard drive screws?
 
Just got one of these-what a beast!! Wondering were everyone is buying tapered hard drive screws?

Before I ordered mine I asked them specifically if it included screws for all the hard drive bays, they said yes, and a baggie full of them was taped to the server when I got it.
 
Is any one having a problem installing a OS- i sure take quite a long time to install windows home server 2011. How do you get the hard drive power activity LED's to work on the hard drive caddies?
 
My current home server is:
1x AMD Phenom II X6 1070T AM3
MSI 880GM-E43 (MS-7596)
12GB DDR3
4U Case (12 bays) 8TB Total
WHS2011

Should I buy and sell complete old server? (use the money i get for more drive and ram!)
 
What's the power consumption? (server board, raid cards...)

important being that it will be on all the time.
 
These are nice but I'm curious, are none of you concerned about putting all your data on 5-year old hardware? How much time are you expecting to get out of these?
 
OK, I ordered one of the quad core models. Powered it on with the default 900W redundant PSU's and everything seemed to spin up just fine. I did not hook it up to a monitor, just powered it on to make sure it worked. Popped in a new PSU today (corsair 750W) and the PSU powers on, lights are on in the server, but none of the fans spin up (the rear 80mm ones and the CPU fan don't spin up). When I hold down the power switch for 5 secs everything goes off and all the fans twitch for a bit. Then when I power it back on the only fan that spins up is the PSU fan. The lights on the RAID cards come on and blink, the front HD LED's are all red and the IPMI card also has lights on.

Do I need to pop the redundant PSU's back in and work through BIOS or something??? I am a bit concerned that this thing is not working correctly.
 
These are nice but I'm curious, are none of you concerned about putting all your data on 5-year old hardware? How much time are you expecting to get out of these?

Nope.

I'm guessing most people will be gutting the board and adding in e5 or e3 xeons. I know of the two I bought only one will stay with the AMD board. The other will house another e3 xeon.
 
These are nice but I'm curious, are none of you concerned about putting all your data on 5-year old hardware? How much time are you expecting to get out of these?

The case sells for about 1K on it's own, so I don't think people are too concerned about hardware. Equally for those who will be making use of the hardware, it's not as though we are putting the data on 5yr old hard drives. Enterprise grade hardware is built to a higher quality standard (typically) than consumer stuff, I don't expect any of the components to kick off too soon. If they do, oh well, I'll replace it.
 
Personally speaking, i have no problem putting my data on this old of "hardware". (Even if it does die, it's not going to affect my brand new drives)
 
I'm having a rough time installing windows home server 2011- taking over 8 hours and then it locks up. This motherboard it real picky on some setting have to load fail safe setting just to boot to install disk. Tried several times and can not get a clean install.
 
These are nice but I'm curious, are none of you concerned about putting all your data on 5-year old hardware? How much time are you expecting to get out of these?

Honestly I would just buy this only for the chassis. Sell the rest (mobo cpu and raid cards) and put new parts in it. The chassis alone is like what $800?
 
Honestly I would just buy this only for the chassis. Sell the rest (mobo cpu and raid cards) and put new parts in it. The chassis alone is like what $800?

I recently built one and it cost near 4k. The chassis alone was a bit over 1k. That's in Canada though, everything is more expensive here. I don't feel as bad now, as I noticed those wont ship to Canada anyway so even if I did see this deal I would not be able to partake in it if I wanted to.
 
What kind of motherboard can go in here?

I would slap in a low power Haswell setup.
 
I had my finger right on the order button. Shipping killed it, lol. $430 or so shipped.

1.) dont really need it
2.) may be moving soon
3.) 24 drives is too much, prefer a 8 drive server for effiency (use of intel integrated SATA)
4.) included mobo and raid cards are way too old, power hungry, so in the end this system would not be cheap considering that a system would be left on 24 hr a day. prob uses 140 watt at idle so that would be $160+ per year in electricity and cooling.
 
I had my finger right on the order button. Shipping killed it, lol. $430 or so shipped.

1.) dont really need it
2.) may be moving soon
3.) 24 drives is too much, prefer a 8 drive server for effiency (use of intel integrated SATA)
4.) included mobo and raid cards are way too old, power hungry, so in the end this system would not be cheap considering that a system would be left on 24 hr a day. prob uses 140 watt at idle so that would be $160+ per year in electricity and cooling.

??? I thought the CPU was rated 55W TDP which is super low.
 
24 drives @ 8w a piece, power supply, additional cards. 140w is probably a good estimate.
 
Honestly I would just buy this only for the chassis. Sell the rest (mobo cpu and raid cards) and put new parts in it. The chassis alone is like what $800?

You're dreaming if you think you'll get anywhere near $800 reselling the case. You'll be lucky to get $200, especially while this source is keeping prices down.

This is the old model of the case from about 2008. The newest models are different.
 
I recently bought that case and it was well over a grand. Of course this was in Canada, so it probably is under a grand in the states.

As for wattage, with 4 drives I clocked mine at under 100w! Quite surprised, considering my workstation uses 300w lol. Probably that high because of the video card and cpu (core i7). Was using a clamp on meter I paid about 100 bucks for though, so not really sure how accurate that measurement was as it may not be true RMS.
 
Just checked and I'm pulling 200w from the wall with 1 "ONE" drive in it
 
The fact that there is no way to get rail for it really bothers me...sucks cuz it really is a good deal
 
The fact that there is no way to get rail for it really bothers me...sucks cuz it really is a good deal

The case is nice, but overpriced. Its a bunch of cheap bent galvenized sheet metal and injection molded plastic. Just because they charged $1000 for it doesn't mean it has that kind of value.

The power hungry components will ensure that it's not "cheap" in the long run, unless you replace the board and compoents with haswell, and slap in a low power platinum power supply.

You have to look at lifecycle costs, not capital costs. There is a reason they are dumping these systems - it's going to SAVE them money to replace them.

Probably costs $80 to manufacture.

at $440 for the case only, with unknown missing components (shroud?)
I doubt you would be able to sell the mobo and cards for much. They are PCIX.
 
The case is nice, but overpriced. Its a bunch of cheap bent galvenized sheet metal and injection molded plastic. Just because they charged $1000 for it doesn't mean it has that kind of value.

The power hungry components will ensure that it's not "cheap" in the long run, unless you replace the board and compoents with haswell, and slap in a low power platinum power supply.

You have to look at lifecycle costs, not capital costs. There is a reason they are dumping these systems - it's going to SAVE them money to replace them.

Probably costs $80 to manufacture.

at $440 for the case only, with unknown missing components (shroud?)
I doubt you would be able to sell the mobo and cards for much. They are PCIX.

I bet, just bet, they are actually replacing the components because it is old hardware. Granted the case is quality. More quality than the Norco 4220/4224. It is funny to hear comments like this from people who obviously have no clue. It is a server and a cheap server at that. Are the components old, yes and they are cheap. I will not be running the normal PSU's in this thing and the case along is worth the cost.

It is even more amusing that you sit there and say it cost probably $80 to manufacture, that might be true, but what is the price of just the Norco 4220/4224 case???

Do a bit of research before you poo poo on this deal. People who understand servers will know that this is a good deal. Not great, but good. Silly [H] forum members that are not informed just make me laugh.
 
One could equally say Intel CPU's cost $1-2 to 'Manufacture', yet people still spend hundreds of dollars on those ;)
 
Back
Top