SOLVED Do you see any glaring issues with this used Supermicro 4U for $455?

[CarlB]

X8DTN+ Motherboard with SAS846EL1 Backplane
2x Xeon X5670 2.93hz Hex Core (12mb Smart Cache / 6.4 GT/s QPI) CPUs
18x 4gb PC3-10600R Memory
24x 3.5" Trays with Screws
9210-8i or 9211-8i JBOD Controller
2x 1200w Power Supplies

$454.99

I'm on a Dell PowerEdge T610, but it only has 8 hdd bays all of which are full. This would get me a larger chassis and also comes with all the hardware. Seems like I'll be able to swap my 8 drives over and bootup freenas. Plenty of room for expansion. I'll probably install quieter fans and if the PSU's are too loud I will convert this to use a regular ATX PSU.

Does anyone see any problems here?

 

[HoneyBadger]

Does anyone see any problems here?

A couple, unfortunately; the backplane is only SAS1, those ones weren't as robust as the SAS2 models and might give you grief with SATA devices.
It's also full of low-density DIMMs - 18x4GB is 72GB, but leaves you no room for further expansion and will consume more power than 9x8GB.

I'd call it a pass unless you can find a BPN-SAS2 on the cheap.

 

[Chris Moore]

Does anyone see any problems here?

Problems already pointed out by @HoneyBadger and the processors in the X8 generation board will draw more power and generate more heat.
Here is what I would suggest instead:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro...i-F-2x-6-Core-E5-2620-2Ghz-Sleds/192816211745
This server ticks all the blocks for FreeNAS except it has a hardware RAID controller. Just pull that out and replace it with this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-H220-6G...9205-8i-P20-IT-Mode-From-US-Ship/192639052923
and pickup some RAM like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Server-RAM...1600-1Rx4-1-35v-RDIMM-Memory-LOT/292949312714

I'll probably install quieter fans and if the PSU's are too loud I will convert this to use a regular ATX PSU.

Don't change out the fans, you can slow them down with a fan controller and you CAN NOT beat the quality. Also, the power supplies are not that loud. There is a little bit of high pitched wine from them but you can easily muffle that with some sound absorbent material. The redundant power supplies that come with this are better and it is totally not worth the hassle of taking them out.

You can build something like this quick and easy:

ghetto acoustic by @jgreco

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...-mb-cpu-hds-recommendations.24453/post-255614

 

[Chris Moore]

PS. I have three of the Supermicro chassis in my office at home. They are great.

 

[CarlB]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. This does seem like better future proofing. Hopefully those 1200W PSU's are quieter than the one on my Poweredge. They scream like jets.

 

[Chris Moore]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. This does seem like better future proofing. Hopefully those 1200W PSU's are quieter than the one on my Poweredge. They scream like jets.

I was pretty happy with mine, but I do point the back, where most of the sound comes from, at a sound deadening panel. Considering that I have three servers running in my home office, it isn't bad. I tolerate it pretty well.
I made this video in my office at home. See if you can hear the servers running in the background:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb9H236V-l0

 

[Chris Moore]

PS. The high pitched part of the sound that is most annoying is very directional and easily blocked or absorbed.

 

[jgreco]

I'll probably install quieter fans and if the PSU's are too loud I will convert this to use a regular ATX PSU.

Realistically you probably shouldn't/won't be doing either of these.

These 24 drives in 4U chassis leave an incredibly tight space between drives for airflow. The design relies on static pressure differential to force the air to flow. As tempting as it might seem to "quiet" the fans, what you're actually talking about is a recipe to "cook" the drives. There's a lot of energy spent creating the air pressure differential, that comes out as noise. So when you replace them with weaker fans, which are nice and quiet, the fans don't have the oomph to draw heat away from the drives. So the drives run warmer. And then because you're overstressing the fans, they die in a year or two, so then you have no airflow and you don't even get to enjoy the smell of burning motors, stressed silicon, and overheated fan plastic, because the air isn't moving out of the chassis.

You aren't the first person who thought to try that and we've seen some sad faces.

The Supermicro rack chassis are also custom-designed and won't take a regular ATX PSU. If you have mad skillz with the Sawzall and Dremel you can probably cut through enough chassis parts so that one might at least fit within the chassis, but then you have a problem of how to fasten it. You can always go for the 920SQ PSU's (they're not really "super quiet" but they're really pretty good).

Don't change out the fans, you can slow them down with a fan controller and you CAN NOT beat the quality.

I disagree with using a fan controller. This hobbles the ability of the mainboard to ramp up fan speeds if there's a problem and things start getting warm. That said, the Supermicro fans will absolutely be champs no matter what. You CAN beat the quality but only at a price that would give your average hobbyist a heart attack. We're definitely not talking your $20-$30 gamer PC fans.

 

[CarlB]

Some cutting and custom fastening of an ATX PSU doesn't really frighten me, but would be a last resort.

 

[Chris Moore]

I disagree with using a fan controller. This hobbles the ability of the mainboard to ramp up fan speeds

I only did it on a couple chassis where the fans were connected to the drive backplane and ran at 5000 RPM all the time. I backed them off to about 3000 RPM and it let me keep my drives at 28 to 32 C without as much sound pressure. That is kind of specific to the chassis I was using. If the fans are being speed controlled like they are in the newer chassis I have, it is not a needed modification.

 

[jgreco]

Some cutting and custom fastening of an ATX PSU doesn't really frighten me, but would be a last resort.

The most viable option is probably to fasten it to the side up by the cover near the mid-chassis fan bulkhead. It won't fit in back, at least not unless you flatten the ATX PSU first.

See that long flat pack along the right-hand side? That's the PSU. That space is 4U tall but only about an inch and a half wide. You won't be fastening an ATX supply there.

But near the middle of the chassis, if you rip out the existing PSU, there's actually some space to work with. Of course you'll have to pull CPU2 off the board and throw it away, that gives you some space to come out more than the ~two-three inches that would otherwise be available there (normally used for internal drives). You can't place a PSU on the chassis floor because there's a mainboard there.

How you'd get AC to it is another question, and you'd probably compromise the chassis airflow integrity as well. Though I suppose you can do miracles with duck tape. I do this stuff professionally so that'd not be viable for me.

Anyways at a certain point it might be worth saying "not the right solution for me" and then you can go get a Norco, which will certainly let you put in an ATX PSU and whatever fans you want, while simultaneously not caring that it's cooking your drives. The build quality is nowhere near the Supermicro's, but once you start talking about the things you want to do, the Supermicro's build quality will suffer too.

 

[jgreco]

I only did it on a couple chassis where the fans were connected to the drive backplane and ran at 5000 RPM all the time. I backed them off to about 3000 RPM and it let me keep my drives at 28 to 32 C without as much sound pressure. That is kind of specific to the chassis I was using. If the fans are being speed controlled like they are in the newer chassis I have, it is not a needed modification.

Oh. Well in that context, it makes sense. You couldn't thread the fans through to the mainboard though? Unfortunate if not.

 

[Chris Moore]

Oh. Well in that context, it makes sense. You couldn't thread the fans through to the mainboard though? Unfortunate if not.

That was my first thing to try. Two problems.
One was easy to solve. The drive backplane had an alarm for fan failure and it was very loud. I found the jumper to silence that.
The other problem was that the x9scm-f boards I was using didn't give me the amount of fan control I wanted, so I quit pouring time into it and just went with a hardware fan controller and let the system board just manage an active CPU cooler because with the slower fan speed the passive cooler wouldn't do the job any more.
It ended up being more about the time investment.

 

[jgreco]

It ended up being more about the time investment.

"Sounds like a fancy way of saying 'lazy'" ;-)

 

[CarlB]

Problems already pointed out by @HoneyBadger and the processors in the X8 generation board will draw more power and generate more heat.
Here is what I would suggest instead:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro...i-F-2x-6-Core-E5-2620-2Ghz-Sleds/192816211745
This server ticks all the blocks for FreeNAS except it has a hardware RAID controller. Just pull that out and replace it with this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-H220-6G...9205-8i-P20-IT-Mode-From-US-Ship/192639052923
and pickup some RAM like this:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Server-RAM...1600-1Rx4-1-35v-RDIMM-Memory-LOT/292949312714


Don't change out the fans, you can slow them down with a fan controller and you CAN NOT beat the quality. Also, the power supplies are not that loud. There is a little bit of high pitched wine from them but you can easily muffle that with some sound absorbent material. The redundant power supplies that come with this are better and it is totally not worth the hassle of taking them out.

You can build something like this quick and easy:

ghetto acoustic by @jgreco

https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...-mb-cpu-hds-recommendations.24453/post-255614

I've got this server, HBA and a pile of RAM ordered and on the way. The chassis seems perfect for future builds if I decide to upgrade the mobo/ram/cpu down the road.

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. My $200 poweredge has served me well for nearly 2 years, but time to move on.

 

[Chris Moore]

As a suggestion, you might want to buy one of these brackets if your server doesn't come with one:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816101828
Here is what it looks like:

It mounts in the side of the chassis next to the system board like this:

I have that in a couple of my servers and use it to mount my boot drives.

 

[Chris Moore]

There is space to mount two of those brackets:

 

[CarlB]

Very cool. I actually use a PCI SSD and a tumbdrive for boot right now.

 

[Chris Moore]

As an alternative, there is this slot on the back of the chassis:

between the hot-swap power supplies and the system board, you can put a pair of hot swap 2.5 in drive bays there with an adapter like this:

You have to really want it though, because it is costly for what you get:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/292952642487

 

[Chris Moore]

Very cool. I actually use a PCI SSD and a tumbdrive for boot right now.

I use mirrored laptop style hard drives because it gives me better health monitoring of the drive. I have had too many of the USB drives fail without warning but my current solution has been stable for years now.