Lian Li PC-Q26 and ASRock E3C224D4I-14S

[Glorious1]

Just in case anyone else considers this combination:

When I was planning my build I settled on the above Lian Li case ( a decision I'm very happy with) and considered the above motherboard. It is a bit longer than mini-ITX; they call it extended mini-ITX. The advantage of it over most mini-ITX boards is the on-board LSI 2308 chip, so the board can support 12 drives. Since the case holds 11 (one 2.5"), that's just about perfect.

I wasn't sure the longer board would fit. Lian Li told me it would. I also asked ASRock. Turns out they actually got a case from Lian Li and installed it to verify. A bit late, but that is some customer service. Here's the letter they sent:

Since we have one PC-Q26 sample from Lian-Li, we have tried to assemble with E3C224D4I-14S yesterday and would like to give you some update.

It seems that on mechanical perspective, they are compatible – as you can see the photos below.

Thank you for introducing this chassis combination to us and we hope you enjoy using our E3C224D4I-14S! J

Best Regards,
Jenn Chienwen Yeh
Account Manager / +886-2555-38728 / www.asrockrack.com

 

[Ericloewe]

Now that is customer support. I'm anxious to see their future line-up, I get the feeling it'll be head to head with Supermicro's.

 

[cyberjock]

I tried to get a Q26 from Lian-Li. In particular I wanted to see what the cooling of the drives would be like... they never replied. :(

 

[marbus90]

I wonder if Lian-Li would now provide 4port Backplanes with SFF-8087 inputs instead of the 2/3port ones with SATA connectors.

 

[sremick]

Wow, wish I had known this. I might have gone this route for my first build.

 

[Darren Myers]

Well that IS a nice case, fitting 12 hdds thats a pretty decent setup, put 2 of them together one with a motherboard another with just drives and you got 20 hdds and plenty of space

 

[Ericloewe]

The only problem with that case (assuming cooling is OK - and besides the cost) is that the backplanes they're pushing aren't appropriate for hot plugging. They're cost-downed versions of the backplane they use in their two-bay hot-swap chassis.

 

[j_r0dd]

This is the set-up I am planning on going with as well for my first FreeNAS build. I contacted ASRock support inquiring about the mounting hole locations on that board because I want to use that same case. They sent me those same pictures and answered all my other questions. I have been debating between Supermicro and ASRock for months, but I am definitely leaning towards ASRock for this mini-itx build. The only thing that board is missing for me is a sata dom power connector, but not a deal breaker though.


***Can not find that case anywhere. Just ordered all the parts but now have nothing to put it all in when it all arrives

 

[j_r0dd]

The case is finally in stock at Newegg again. Turned out pretty good. Cable management wasn't too bad. The second LSI mini-sas port, which is horizontal for some odd reason, needed to have sff-8087 connected before the power supply was installed. Other than that a perfect fit. As far as cooling goes, I did replace the Lian-Li fans with Cougar. I'm using 7200rpm Western Digital SE drives and they run a little warm. With smart fan enabled in the bios I had one or 2 hit 46 degrees. The spec sheet for my drives state the max operating temp is 55 degrees although I didn't feel that comfortable leaving it like that. I set the 3 fans facing the drives at full blast which dropped the drive temps down between 33-36 degrees. I will fine tune the fans a later point.

 

[Glorious1]

Wow you really filled that baby up. I also replaced all 4 fans since the stock ones are not PWM, with Noctua NF-S12A PWM fans. What kind of fan settings do you have in IPMI? My SuperMicro has Standard, High I/O, and Full. I only have 7x 5400 rpm drives in there. Standard usually runs the fans at about 600, which is fine at idle. But when doing long tests or scrub, it doesn't ramp up steeply enough and things warm up a bit more than I would like. So just to be safe I leave it on High I/O, where at idle they run about 1000 rpm. I'm not sure it ever gets warm enough to bump up the speed from there. Full fan speed would cool a small nuclear reactor, but then the sound is noticeable. And keep in mind, there are vents and mounting spots for two more exhaust fans in that case, for a total of 6!

I'm curious about the photo of the back side. Looks like you have all the drives running from SFF-8087 cables, but there could only be 8 right? The SATA cables must look similar at that end.

Re the backplanes, they do offer 2-bay and 3-bay backplanes separately. Since they both require two power connections, the 2-bay is better in my opinion. So I got four of them, which with the one included, handles all the drives. As Eric says, you probably wouldn't want to do a real hot swap though. Just a bit more convenient.

 

[Tywin]

The only problem with that case (assuming cooling is OK - and besides the cost) is that the backplanes they're pushing aren't appropriate for hot plugging. They're cost-downed versions of the backplane they use in their two-bay hot-swap chassis.

For a passive backplane, is not the only concern whether the SATA connectors have the correct staggered contacts?

 

[j_r0dd]

Wow you really filled that baby up. I also replaced all 4 fans since the stock ones are not PWM, with Noctua NF-S12A PWM fans. What kind of fan settings do you have in IPMI? My SuperMicro has Standard, High I/O, and Full. I only have 7x 5400 rpm drives in there. Standard usually runs the fans at about 600, which is fine at idle. But when doing long tests or scrub, it doesn't ramp up steeply enough and things warm up a bit more than I would like. So just to be safe I leave it on High I/O, where at idle they run about 1000 rpm. I'm not sure it ever gets warm enough to bump up the speed from there. Full fan speed would cool a small nuclear reactor, but then the sound is noticeable. And keep in mind, there are vents and mounting spots for two more exhaust fans in that case, for a total of 6!

I'm curious about the photo of the back side. Looks like you have all the drives running from SFF-8087 cables, but there could only be 8 right? The SATA cables must look similar at that end.

Re the backplanes, they do offer 2-bay and 3-bay backplanes separately. Since they both require two power connections, the 2-bay is better in my opinion. So I got four of them, which with the one included, handles all the drives. As Eric says, you probably wouldn't want to do a real hot swap though. Just a bit more convenient.
View attachment 7191 View attachment 7192

Unfortunately in IPMI I can not change the fan speed, or I'm just not finding it in the menus. In the BIOS I have Smart Fan(PWM), Levels 1-9 and Full On. Then there are 11 global steps for the Smart Fan setting which can be fine tuned to set the fan speed to different percentages based on certain temperature thresholds. I just bumped up each fan percentage to the next level and everything is much more quiet and I'm using PWM again. Maximum temp so far is 40 transferring a bunch of large files. Will see what they rise to during a scrub. I'm not gonna lose any sleep if 1 or 2 of the drives occasionally hit 40 under some load.

The board has 3 min-sas connectors. 2 for the LSI 2308 and 1 for the Intel 6Gbps SATA.

Where did you find the BP2SATA backplanes? I have been looking and the only place in the US I found so far is frozencpu.com and has in stock, but they aren't taking any orders currently due to replacing his staff.

 

[Glorious1]

Yes it was frozencpu, several months ago. I actually asked Lian Li and that's who they sent me to.

Sounds like a lot more fine control of fan speeds, even if you have to do it in the BIOS. In my IPMI it's in the Configuration menu, a submenu near the bottom called Fan Mode.

 

[Ericloewe]

For a passive backplane, is not the only concern whether the SATA connectors have the correct staggered contacts?

It's a good question. All I know is the following:

• Backplanes without the recessed connections and without inrush limiters do not work when hot swapping.
• Backplanes with both work fine.
• No backplane I've seen has the inrush limiter but not the recessed contacts.

From what I can tell from their pictures, their backplanes have neither. Of course, if any PC-Q26 owners would care to grab a flashlight and check out the backplanes from the drive side to confirm, I'd appreciate the information.

 

[Glorious1]

Don't know what an inrush limiter looks like, but it doesn't look recessed.

 

[Tywin]

It's a good question. All I know is the following:

• Backplanes without the recessed connections and without inrush limiters do not work when hot swapping.
• Backplanes with both work fine.
• No backplane I've seen has the inrush limiter but not the recessed contacts.

From what I can tell from their pictures, their backplanes have neither. Of course, if any PC-Q26 owners would care to grab a flashlight and check out the backplanes from the drive side to confirm, I'd appreciate the information.

I haven't dug into the actual specification, but the Wikipedia summary indicates that the power side of hot-swapping is on the drives themselves, while the data side requires a SATA controller with hot-swap support. This correlates with my prior understanding. That's not to say a backplane can't also have soft-start or inrush-limiting functionality, I just don't read it as being necessary.

All that said, in a home environment or even most workplace environments, take the few minutes of down-time and turn the machine off =P

 

[Ericloewe]

Don't know what an inrush limiter looks like, but it doesn't look recessed.
View attachment 7193

See the silkscreened spots for capacitors on the host side of the backplane? That's it, more or less. Or rather, that's what it would be.

I haven't dug into the actual specification, but the Wikipedia summary indicates that the power side of hot-swapping is on the drives themselves, while the data side requires a SATA controller with hot-swap support. This correlates with my prior understanding. That's not to say a backplane can't also have soft-start or inrush-limiting functionality, I just don't read it as being necessary.

All that said, in a home environment or even most workplace environments, take the few minutes of down-time and turn the machine off =P

Turns out it is necessary in practice - or at least the recessed pins are. A couple of people have tried to do hot swapping with bare cables (which don't have recessed contacts, naturally) - things did not go well, as the other drives shut down and restarted, potentially wreaking havoc in ZFS.

 

[Sir.Robin]

Yeh.. you get a voltage drop when hot connecting a drive... and since you most likely are doing several drives per cable and there are no caps to help... the other drives on the same cable/power line will/can restart.

I tried myself couple of years ago... hot swapped a failed drive on my 6 drive raidz2 array... two other drives then reset... causing freenas to offline them and crash.

Luckily my array was still intact after reboot and i could resilver and replace the failed drive.

 

[intelligence]

@j_r0dd: What sort of setup did you opt for with the backplanes? Figuring 2xBP3 and 2xBP2. Not that it won't matter that much, just curious!

 

[Glorious1]

@j_r0dd: What sort of setup did you opt for with the backplanes? Figuring 2xBP3 and 2xBP2. Not that it won't matter that much, just curious!

It does make a bit of a difference, because BP2 uses one power line for 2 drives, and BP3 uses two power lines for 3 drives. You do the math :p I used 5 x BP2, using one fewer power line.