For SSD storage: Athena Power BP-15827SAC - 8 Sata SSDs in 1 5.25" slot. Add a cheap 8 port Sata pcie card for about $30 and you are good to go. I love mine.
That is a work of art right there! Nice find. I had not seen this 8-bay adapter until now. Everything you could want, plus it's space efficient and cost effective. That has to be the winner there. It would pair up well with the Intel H240 HBA which has dual SFF-8087 ports that can be converted to 8 Sata/Sas ports with adapter cables. I'll add your suggestion to the video description for others to track.
I am glad you enjoyed the video. It really is astounding how far hardware as come and how quickly we age. I need to find some more productivity hacks to get videos out faster, but I feel like I am making progress.
I love your content, rarely reviewer reviews workstation, workstation is incredible machine, it's long life span, I still use workstation from 2014 and still going strong, on par with high end consumer pc i9 14900K without heat issue and thermal throttling, workstation is amazing. I use HP Z840 with 2X E5 2699 V4 and RTX 4090 for rendering, editing, after effect, everything run smoothly, build quality far far more better than dell 7910 that I have too
Thank you for your words. Yes, it is quite rare to see these more aged machines get reviewed these days. The value proposition of the HP Z840 with dual E5-2699 V4 CPUs is difficult to beat - it literally provides a top end experience that is still competitive with modern hardware. There are other systems that are also quite good - and generally Dell Thinkstations do a great job - it would just cost a bit more generally to get a decent modern system. I would like to think the HP systems have a better build quality than say Lenovo or Dell, but if you have to spend more for that it may not always be the best option. I usually just settle on the highest performing system for the lowest price possible. Right now that has landed me on the HP Z8 G4! Wait - you managed to get a RTX 4090 into your Z840? That's awesome! You should consider to make a post on our Reddit page regarding your experience with the RTX 4090. I initially disregarded the RTX 4090 in the Z840 because of the 4x 8-pin power supply requirement, but I later realized that with a 3x8-pin to 1x 12VHPWR adapter you could very well get the latest hardware into a Z840! In case you haven't seen it - here is my latest video overview of the Z840: th-cam.com/video/2bie4EGJZL0/w-d-xo.html
Good stuff. I for one enjoy watching content about storage solutions. Getting to the point where you can't fit those newest CoD games on SSDs without going for RAID. Bit of a rant: Yesterday I just completed my new 8TB NAS setup with 4xNVMe drives striped and while there's a bottleneck somewhere and its throughput is well below what I expected, I can still max out the 10Gb/s link between my workstation and NAS in large file transfers. Could probably fairly comfortably even play games installed on network drive now. Was only getting 4-5 gigs at first, but later I realized manual tuning of socket buffer size in samba was actually hurting performance in this case. I would say one interesting thing I found out was that it's actually possible to configure samba to make use of smb multi channel even with single NIC as long as the NIC supports a feature called RSS, or Receive Side Scaling. My Mellanox ConnectX-3 did have that feature and I tested it to see that it did actually use multiple connections/threads while transferring files. This could potentially help with CPUs that have lower single thread performance.
Nice. It really is intense how large installers have become - some software systems can use 1TB of storage and then still want more. I think my DaVinci Resolve library is slowly hammering my 8TB RAID 0 pool. Your hardware setup and speeds sound almost exactly like what I obtained on my Z440/ Z840 10GbE network. I did find it strange that I could watch 4K video from the NAS over 10GbE but I could not play back the same video off a HDD mounted in the hose machine. 10GbE does seem to break some logic rules! I am clearing some HDDs for a test. I will test 4x 4TB HDDs with RAID 5 in TrueNAS. I suspect that will give me more than my current limit while writing to a single HDD drive. Tuning smb multi channel sounds like a viable solution for improving data transfer in certain systems. I have not really tested the limits of my Xeons for this, but I would like to think they would never really be pushed with mere data transfers. I have an older HP Elite 8300 SFF with TrueNAS that I need to do some tests with. It seems quite capable despite the well aged 4 Core CPU in there.
I have z series machines and I love them. This was a great video. I've been following your content this last year. This video was great! keep it going! We like a lot of the same things!
The HP workstations open new possibilities if you are brave enough to try and use all they have on offer. Thank you for your support. Lots of content planned, stay tuned!
Great video. I just got an HP Z840. Why use Windows instead of some Linux? I was going to dual boot, but use something like ZFS for the bulk of my storage. I need to use some 3D software in Windows. But most of what I like to do can be done in Linux.
I live and breathe Windows 10 Pro - it's my go-to OS for daily tasks. Likely Linux would be faster and it could do most of what I need but it just gets annoying to deal with software that isn't compatible. Dual Boot Linux + Windows has always been a nightmare to get working for me (recalls many hours of frustration lol). Once working it's great. If I am on Linux it's usually to deal with Windows issues outside of the Windows OS (Windows issues vanish in Linux, surprising I know lol). Linux Server is decent also, but I settled on TrueNAS Core as my secondary OS (well storage OS). I am planning to test out Proxmox and I suspect that might really help with managing several different OSs on the same system. It's handy to be able to boot up a given system in any required OS or to just be able to test something. I have my Z440 Server Build setup to boot into Win 10 Pro or TrueNAS Core, I should probably get another SSD in there for Linux lol.
@@racerrrz I used Windows since DOS days. I still feel like I'm drowning when I get a DOS shell. I remember having to get things running with batch files. Then I learned Linux shell and everything was so easy. You can get Linux shells that run on Windows now. So that helps with low level tasks. In the old days I used to program on WindowsNT, which was a step above regular Windows and written by non-Microsoft people.
There is nothing quite like that throw-back to MS-DOS, but CMD is the closest thing to DOS that I run into these days. I enjoy my GUI lol. Linux does do it well though and once you know your Sudo's it's not all that bad. I recall Windows NT but I don't think I spent much time on it. I went to Win 95 and then to Win XP.
Hi there. Thank you for the feedback. Hopefully your speakers survived! I'll bump up the next one again! In this video I was trying to refine my microphone settings a bit more, while also testing a less energetic presentation style.lol. I have the audio levels hovering between 'orange and red' normally in DaVinci Resolves' Fairlight audio studio, but this video I dropped the volume a little lower to avoid peaking out - so 'green to orange' which is maybe 5-10 dB lower than normal.
I like this content! It could maybe use some refinement but it’s better than what I could do. I see now why you need the helmet. Butting heads with trolls… Now for my main question/comment: I had been inspired by your videos on using an older HP z840 workstation to get some more storage or use as a server of some kind. They seem to be running around $800 or so. So I hadn’t pulled the trigger. Recently I happened to find a used Threadripper 1950x system with everything except a GPU in the case for $400. I jumped on it because I figured maybe i could work with that. It’s in a Fractal Design Meshify. I don’t think it has a lot of bays for hard drives but it has a few. I was thinking maybe I could get an NVMe M.2 PCIe expansion card for it. What would you do with such a system?
Thank you. I am open for suggestions on how to refine things (any input gives a new perspective, good or bad). It's a slow process but I continue to aim to make small improvements with each new video. It's a fine line between the modern hardware and the aged systems. Generally, you pay more to get a "modern" system up and running. E.g. Just getting a decent case that can house lots of HDDs will set you back ~$300 USD (e.g. Z440 + Fractal Define 7XL + Drive caddies - there's a video for that: th-cam.com/video/K4RalaEbRI4/w-d-xo.html ). If you add in the cost of CPU, Fans, PSU, Mobo it usually reaches more than that of the Z840’s price. Your complete system for $400 was a great price! If you were planning to game on it, the newer system would be far better (single core performance on Xeons isn’t great). Pricing on Broadwell Xeons is however really good right now. I got a E5-2697A V4 for my Z440 for a great price (Affiliate link: www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=E5-2697A+V4+&_sacat=0&_sop=15&mkcid=1&mkrid=711-53200-19255-0&siteid=0&campid=5339029473&customid=Xeone52697AV41&toolid=10001&mkevt=1). Threadripper 1950X vs E5-2697A’s benching: www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/2814vs3058vs2814.2/Intel-Xeon-E5-2697A-v4-vs-AMD-Ryzen-Threadripper-1950X-vs-%5BDual-CPU%5D-Intel-Xeon-E5-2697A-v4 I did consider case swapping the Z840 into the 7XL (th-cam.com/video/Rsr_zxOg6K8/w-d-xo.html) which would make for a solid server/NAS foundation. The Z820 / Z840 both have SAS and SATA chipsets, so they are ideal for storing lots of HDDs. The bonus with the HP workstations is the efficiency of the PSU (90% platinum), but your idle power draw is high (like 300-350W). Regarding PCIe M.2 NVMe expansion - I have done tests on 4 different quad adapters so far. This video compared 4 adapters head-to-head: th-cam.com/video/xqg0uQ93KTg/w-d-xo.html and I also have 3 of 4 individual guide videos done (more detailed overview on each adapter). Presuming your motherboard has an extra 1 or 2 x16 PCIe slots that support bifurcation you could work towards the Asus Hyper M.2 Gen 4 adapter. In my testing (I did the Gen 3 adapter in the Z840), that was a great balance between speeds and thermal control for the price tag. Affiliate link: ebay.us/S1qBJE
@@racerrrz Thanks for the detailed response! I wasn’t expecting that. I will use your links as a springboard to do a deeper dive. I had thought about putting the Gigabyte X399 Designare Ex MB with the 1950X TR into a larger case with more room for storage at some point. Last I checked the PCIe could bifurcate. I can’t remember how to verify that but will ask ChatGTP. I’ve never tried RAID configurations before but the moment I heard such things were possible for home computers/servers I’ve been trying to figure out a way to acquire hardware and do it as close to the right way as possible on the first go around. Can’t avoid the learning curve entirely, which usually costs $$$. I will rewatch this video and some others but if I had to make an unreasonable request, it would be to keep it more within reach of newbies without, I suppose, boring the expert enthusiasts out there. Thanks!
Go for it. The challenge lies in finding solutions to problems that present themselves. The X399 Designare Ex with a 1950X TR should give you decent performance and the hardware should be quite capable of handling future expansion that you may want to do. Bifurcation wise, it's best do go down the Google search route (ChatGPT has limits for now). forum.level1techs.com/t/gigabyte-x399-pci-e-bifurcation-support/127130/6 I suspect with updated BIOS you would be ok, although it looks like the board didn't support bifurcation right out of the box (but with BIOS updates the support was likely added). The joys of ChatGPT, I am glad to hear you are using the AI for clarification - too handy these days. Each RAID level serves a purpose and it can be a life-saver if setup correctly. I am impressed by the performance of my RAID 0 NVMe pool, but that is high risk storage. The more optimal format is RAID 5 or RAID 6 which can provide a buffer for HDD failure. It's not really something that becomes important until you have data that you want to keep secure, but I would still think everyone would benefit from that added data integrity. It's less than ideal to loose old photos, videos or documents etc. See how you get on and if you have questions you know how to go about solving them, questions.
@@sachsongkhoe Hi there. Sorry about the delay. The Z840's power use will vary depending on the configuration. My system would typically use ~ 350-400W when loaded into the OS but at idle. When bench-marked the power-use could spike to ~750W. These power readings include all peripherals connected to my machine - so the readings for the system alone will be lower. In case you have not seen it - I did a more detailed overview of the Z840 here: th-cam.com/video/kHkEmaN8ZlM/w-d-xo.html
I hate being limited to just 4x 24 TB of hard disk space. 96 TB is just not enough space to play two different games without having to swap drives, very annoying.
I fully get your frustration. Storage prices are nothing short of astounding (so much so I made a video about: th-cam.com/video/q-DcsSQJISk/w-d-xo.html) and achieving a storage volume of 24TB, never mind 96TB, is out of reach with the current pricing. The question is, if there was a way to attain a large storage volume without having to spend the retail amount - would you want to know about it? The IronWolf Pro 16TB is US$320 at B&H right now, but I got my 16TB IronWolf Pro for ~$200 USD.
Absolutely. I switched out the HP dual fan unit for dual Noctua 92MM slim fans (Part numbers etc. was in my GPU fitment video). The HDDs tend to not do too badly on temp. in the Z840, but that's likely due to a large GPU drawing in some air. But I would like to think the HDD fans are needed to keep the PCIe slots and lower motherboard cool also.
Sorry I was asking only about the HDDs you have in the Olmaster adapter. From what I can see, the dual Noctua's are keeping the lower part of the z840 cool. But what fan, if any, is cooling the HDDs in the Olmaster?
@@myburn Ah sorry I misunderstood! Thank you for clarifying. You are correct, this Olmaster adapter does not have a fan and this will mean less air flow than what is ideal. However, the HP Z840 is designed with a tri-chamber concept. The PSU Bay, CPU Bay and PCIe Bays, all of which have their own fans to create pull through the front face of the case. The 5.25" Bays will be drawing in air through the action of the CPU and RAM Fan Modules. So there is airflow to keep the drives cool. I actually removed the HDD from the Olmaster adapter (I was worried about vibrations) and I opted for a different Olmaster adapter that has fans- but it only supports 2.5" drives. I covered that adapter in a related video: th-cam.com/video/ZczhWw834GU/w-d-xo.html . The SSDs do not get warm in this adapter, and it seems to work well enough for the price. Side note, the HP Z8 G4 has a redesigned case which actually does have a more dedicated fan module placed over the 5.25" Bay area which is cool to see.
@@racerrrz Nice, that all makes sense. Keep up the good work, love your videos, I think you are the only TH-camr that covers the z840 in detail. And quit tempting me with that Z8 G4! I don't know how I would be able to hide that expense from my wife lol
@@myburn Thank you. Yes, the Z840 doesn't get a lot of attention. I have a full Z840 tare-down video in the works, so there will be some action for it soon. Haha good call there. I got lucky with an unusually low priced unit. Quick wifey purchase justification - Honesty is key - You will sell the Z840 for more than what you paid for the Z8 G4 (it's not easy to find that cheap Z8 but it can happen!) Side note, that's bad logic - my Z840 is yet to sell to recoup costs, but I remain hopeful lol.
Well.. I feel inadequate lol. I've been considering a new storage solution for my media library which is quickly growing out of control. its grown large enough, I'd be pretty devasted, if I were to lose it. This video kinda shows me how overwhelming the options have become. I check prices for large capacity ssd's, and nope. Way out of my price range. I check prices for large capacity mechanical drives and it is better, but I'm still not happy since I would ideally like to get 3 drives. Its still kinda pricey, so I check the price of used drives and find it isn't much different than buying them new. While looking at used sata drives, I notice the cost of used sas drives. Large capacity used sas drives are definitely in my price range, but I'd have to get a controller, an expander cable, and I don't even know what else. Does this channel have a guide for this sort of thing?
I agree, when did things get so far out of hand? It can become complex quickly but once you gain an understanding of the current hardware requirements you will be able to resolve what you need. I have done several videos on storage but they tend to be focused on a specific purpose - e.g. how to build a quick home server (easy: th-cam.com/video/pCLYzEOur-o/w-d-xo.html ) or how to create a massive DIY home server (complex: th-cam.com/video/K4RalaEbRI4/w-d-xo.html). What PC / Workstation have you got? If you had something like the HP Z840 you already have an onboard SAS controller which would mean you could install 4x SAS drives into the 3.5" HDD bays and simply plug them into the on-board SAS controllers SAS/SATA ports and you will have functional drives. In machines that lack a SAS controller you will need to get a HBA (Host Bus Adapter) with SAS functionality. I settled on the HP H240 HBA because it is supported by the HP Workstations that I own. It converts up to 8x SAS or SATA drives into PCIe x8 connected storage drives (I use it in my HP Z440 Case Swap build - ~80TB of drives connected in - featured in the second "complex" video link above). You will need a couple of data cables (Mini SAS SFF 8087 to 4x SAS/SATA cable) to connect your drives to this controller. Once connected your drives will appear as per normal in your OS. I have covered this process in several videos but it has not been covered in a stand-alone video, sorry. The H240 HBA and it's specifications / ideal cable featured for a minute in this video ( at 3:42 ): th-cam.com/video/x4wfkCzQ_rE/w-d-xo.html If you run into any questions on the process feel free to ask here, or on our Reddit page: www.reddit.com/r/HSpecWorkstations/
@@racerrrz Cool. I got an msi meg x570 unify, so no onboard controller. I will check the videos out and see if they clear up some questions before ordering drives or anything. I was kinda surprised how much people are willing to pay for used sata drives compared to what they cost brand new. Figured there would be a bigger price difference but not really all that much. One thing I'm concerned about is how loud these things might be. Are they really much louder than normal drives? I'm sure the higher rpm drives are, but what about just 7200 rpm? Thanks for the reply. It was unexpected.
@@ItIsNot1984 Generally the SAS drives are well engineered and I would like to think they make less noise than the cheaper consumer grade spinners. Speed is half the battle - 7200RPM drives will be more noisy than 5200RPM drives - but that's only when you really strain them (SSDs suit that role better). With normal use HDDs tend to be quiet. The most noisy drives that I have used was Cheetah 15K.7 SAS drives. Those sounded intense haha. I would say you'll be fine on noise. I have my Fractal Define 7XL sitting next to me and the 80TB odd of HDDs (mostly W/D Red NAS Plus and IronWolf Pro's) don't make a lot of noise compared with the case fans.
@@racerrrz So not too noisy then. Thats good. I'm used to pretty much everything server related being loud AF. I've never had a need, so my only reference are the server rooms I've been in. Been looking at controller cards, and man there is a ton. I found one that looks interesting. It may be crap for all I know. Its an intel model. RCS25ZB040 . Has some kinda built in ssd acceleration. Its pretty old, but almost all the reasonably priced controllers are, and I only need 3 drives so the one port is fine with me. What you think? Is this thing garbage?
@@ItIsNot1984 Server hardware always is, but then that is expected for the enterprise grade hardware. The RAID controller looks decent but it will cost a decent amount. Having on board SSD cache is a benefit and it should provide fast caching of your RAID disks. It may be old, but most of the ones you'll find will be old so it's not an issue. The newer items will likely still be in service. If you can obtain it for less than say $100 USD it would be a solid option. A typical HBA would cost around $30-60USD - which should be sufficient for most applications. One slight issue with these types of controllers is that they do not always function in all devices. Some server grade hardware is locked to certain machines - which creates a headache with cool items just not functioning in your system. The HP workstations tend to require items that HP have confirmed as functional - which was why I settled on the HP H240 HBA. Just make sure the item you get doesn't say anything about being hardware locked etc.
I like your approach for getting cheap HDDs lol. I opted for a more outrageous method - AliExpress "new" HDDs lol. So far I can confirm they are likely all used drives that have had their SMART data adjusted. But my logic is that for the price point, if I can get a 1-2 year old W/D Red Plus NAS or IronWolf Pro (checking the drives details for a date is a must) for half their retail price then it's worth it. Even if they were used for something like Chia Mining for 1-2 years they should still have a heap of live left - I hope.
Hi there. Thank you for the feedback. I'll bump up the volume for the next one! In this video I was trying to refine my microphone settings a bit more. I have the audio levels hovering between 'orange and red' normally in DaVinci Resolve's Fairlight audio studio, but this video I dropped the volume a little lower to avoid peaking out - so 'green to orange' which is maybe 5-10 dB lower than normal. With headphones on my system I can listen to the video on 20-30 volume out of 100 in Win 10's settings.
You caught me, and it's not my first offense of "let's make a HDD fitment video longer than it needs to be" lol. But in my defense, this is technically two videos that I condensed into one since they match-up well: Video 1] Cool 5.25" Storage adapters that I can't afford (0-7min) + Video 2] Fitting 24TB to the 5.25" adapter that I can afford (8-23min) haha.
@@racerrrz "adapters that I can't afford" would arguably been a funnier video on its own. I have a habit of also looking at NAS enclosures that cost an arm and a leg so I get it
@@TheZerok666 I can't see any videos with that title in a quick search, so maybe it can be hit.lol. You and I both enjoy the “browsing hardware we can’t afford habit”, it’s cool to keep up with the latest tech and there are some awesome channels for that. But I do like a challenge also, so I tend to take that habit a bit further. Once I find what I would not be prepared to buy retail (e.g. QNAP TS-1635AX with 12x HDD slots, 4x SSD, 2x M.2 NVMe slots, 2x 10 GbE ports; ~$2000 USD), I look for a DIY method to obtain the same performance, but without the price tag. Without proof this is hearsay, so proof: 1 year ago, I researched some of the best NAS offerings from Synology, QNAP, ASUSTOR etc. and I compared their specs. I realised that the hardware on offer is overpriced and that you are paying mostly for the software. I did some reading into free NAS software and found TrueNAS. One year later I built my NAS with more functionality and expand-ability for likely a 1/3rd of the price (Z440 case swap + E5-2697A V4, 64GB DDR4 2400MHz, 6x HDDs, 2x SSDs, 4x NVMes, 2x 10GbE Ports) - and I turned the process into a guide so others can do the same. In case you find yourself interested in such a project: th-cam.com/video/K4RalaEbRI4/w-d-xo.html
One could say it's on fire...lol. Jokes aside, the SSD adapter has been doing fine, but I presume you are referring to the Z840's configuration being a little hot. The Z840 has been running daily for several months in this configuration, but it does replace the need for a heater in winter. The 10GbE NIC card mounted outside the case hasn't over heated on me (surprisingly, but the GPU creates sufficient air movement to keep it cool), and the GPU power cables have been solid so far.
Hi there. Thank you for the feedback. I am open for suggestions on how to improve this content and I would appreciate if you had a video link to a better example of how to expand storage on your system (for my and other's benefit). It sounds like my video efforts fell short of your expectations. My goal for this video was simple, provide a resource to allow others to make an informed decision for expanding storage on their system. Most PCs have 2-6 3.5" HDD bays which would be sufficient for most applications. If you found yourself short on storage - maybe for a RAID 0 /1 / 5 pool, this video was made for you. This video provides a comparison of several 5.25" bay storage adapters which can be installed in any PC with 5.25" bays. I focused on single slot 5.25" bay adapters since that is applicable to a wider audience. There are likely hundreds of 5.25" bay adapters and I covered six in brief detail. I then briefly illustrated HDD/SSD installation and 5.25" bay fitment, as well as creating a RAID 1 Mirror with two speed tests for the RAID 1 pool. I am not sure what your "48TB" is referring to, I never mentioned the net amount of storage in my system since that was not in the scope of the video. If you were attempting to calculate the net capacity in my system according to the video footage (say at 20:15) it's less than 36TB, without factoring for RAID loss but factoring for NTFS file system overheads. This footage was filmed in May 2023 and I have since changed this configuration.
Thank you for the feedback, and I am sorry to hear your experience fell short of a spectacular viewing. I would love to hear what did not resonate with you so I can improve on the next one.
For SSD storage: Athena Power BP-15827SAC - 8 Sata SSDs in 1 5.25" slot. Add a cheap 8 port Sata pcie card for about $30 and you are good to go.
I love mine.
That is a work of art right there! Nice find. I had not seen this 8-bay adapter until now. Everything you could want, plus it's space efficient and cost effective. That has to be the winner there. It would pair up well with the Intel H240 HBA which has dual SFF-8087 ports that can be converted to 8 Sata/Sas ports with adapter cables. I'll add your suggestion to the video description for others to track.
Again, great stuff . Makes me feel my age and how much I need to learn :) Thank you so much for all the time you put into your content.
I am glad you enjoyed the video. It really is astounding how far hardware as come and how quickly we age. I need to find some more productivity hacks to get videos out faster, but I feel like I am making progress.
Great video. Very informative and excellent video production. Thanks
Hi there. Thank you for feedback. I am trying my best to continually improve video quality and it's good to hear it's looking decent.
I love your content, rarely reviewer reviews workstation, workstation is incredible machine, it's long life span, I still use workstation from 2014 and still going strong, on par with high end consumer pc i9 14900K without heat issue and thermal throttling, workstation is amazing. I use HP Z840 with 2X E5 2699 V4 and RTX 4090 for rendering, editing, after effect, everything run smoothly, build quality far far more better than dell 7910 that I have too
Thank you for your words. Yes, it is quite rare to see these more aged machines get reviewed these days. The value proposition of the HP Z840 with dual E5-2699 V4 CPUs is difficult to beat - it literally provides a top end experience that is still competitive with modern hardware. There are other systems that are also quite good - and generally Dell Thinkstations do a great job - it would just cost a bit more generally to get a decent modern system. I would like to think the HP systems have a better build quality than say Lenovo or Dell, but if you have to spend more for that it may not always be the best option. I usually just settle on the highest performing system for the lowest price possible. Right now that has landed me on the HP Z8 G4!
Wait - you managed to get a RTX 4090 into your Z840? That's awesome! You should consider to make a post on our Reddit page regarding your experience with the RTX 4090. I initially disregarded the RTX 4090 in the Z840 because of the 4x 8-pin power supply requirement, but I later realized that with a 3x8-pin to 1x 12VHPWR adapter you could very well get the latest hardware into a Z840! In case you haven't seen it - here is my latest video overview of the Z840: th-cam.com/video/2bie4EGJZL0/w-d-xo.html
@@racerrrz I use Y splitter to get 4X pcie pin power, 1 line pcie supply 225 watt, so 3 lines will supply 675 watt, more than enough for RTX 4090
Hello! Why is Z840 better than T7910? Can you talk more clearly about its advantages and disadvantages?
@@agungnorhasni714 Hello! Why is Z840 better than T7910? Can you talk more clearly about its advantages and disadvantages?
Good stuff. I for one enjoy watching content about storage solutions. Getting to the point where you can't fit those newest CoD games on SSDs without going for RAID.
Bit of a rant: Yesterday I just completed my new 8TB NAS setup with 4xNVMe drives striped and while there's a bottleneck somewhere and its throughput is well below what I expected, I can still max out the 10Gb/s link between my workstation and NAS in large file transfers. Could probably fairly comfortably even play games installed on network drive now. Was only getting 4-5 gigs at first, but later I realized manual tuning of socket buffer size in samba was actually hurting performance in this case. I would say one interesting thing I found out was that it's actually possible to configure samba to make use of smb multi channel even with single NIC as long as the NIC supports a feature called RSS, or Receive Side Scaling. My Mellanox ConnectX-3 did have that feature and I tested it to see that it did actually use multiple connections/threads while transferring files. This could potentially help with CPUs that have lower single thread performance.
Nice. It really is intense how large installers have become - some software systems can use 1TB of storage and then still want more. I think my DaVinci Resolve library is slowly hammering my 8TB RAID 0 pool.
Your hardware setup and speeds sound almost exactly like what I obtained on my Z440/ Z840 10GbE network. I did find it strange that I could watch 4K video from the NAS over 10GbE but I could not play back the same video off a HDD mounted in the hose machine. 10GbE does seem to break some logic rules! I am clearing some HDDs for a test. I will test 4x 4TB HDDs with RAID 5 in TrueNAS. I suspect that will give me more than my current limit while writing to a single HDD drive.
Tuning smb multi channel sounds like a viable solution for improving data transfer in certain systems. I have not really tested the limits of my Xeons for this, but I would like to think they would never really be pushed with mere data transfers. I have an older HP Elite 8300 SFF with TrueNAS that I need to do some tests with. It seems quite capable despite the well aged 4 Core CPU in there.
I have z series machines and I love them. This was a great video. I've been following your content this last year. This video was great! keep it going! We like a lot of the same things!
The HP workstations open new possibilities if you are brave enough to try and use all they have on offer. Thank you for your support. Lots of content planned, stay tuned!
Great video. I just got an HP Z840. Why use Windows instead of some Linux? I was going to dual boot, but use something like ZFS for the bulk of my storage. I need to use some 3D software in Windows. But most of what I like to do can be done in Linux.
I live and breathe Windows 10 Pro - it's my go-to OS for daily tasks. Likely Linux would be faster and it could do most of what I need but it just gets annoying to deal with software that isn't compatible. Dual Boot Linux + Windows has always been a nightmare to get working for me (recalls many hours of frustration lol). Once working it's great.
If I am on Linux it's usually to deal with Windows issues outside of the Windows OS (Windows issues vanish in Linux, surprising I know lol). Linux Server is decent also, but I settled on TrueNAS Core as my secondary OS (well storage OS). I am planning to test out Proxmox and I suspect that might really help with managing several different OSs on the same system. It's handy to be able to boot up a given system in any required OS or to just be able to test something.
I have my Z440 Server Build setup to boot into Win 10 Pro or TrueNAS Core, I should probably get another SSD in there for Linux lol.
@@racerrrz I used Windows since DOS days. I still feel like I'm drowning when I get a DOS shell. I remember having to get things running with batch files. Then I learned Linux shell and everything was so easy. You can get Linux shells that run on Windows now. So that helps with low level tasks. In the old days I used to program on WindowsNT, which was a step above regular Windows and written by non-Microsoft people.
There is nothing quite like that throw-back to MS-DOS, but CMD is the closest thing to DOS that I run into these days. I enjoy my GUI lol. Linux does do it well though and once you know your Sudo's it's not all that bad. I recall Windows NT but I don't think I spent much time on it. I went to Win 95 and then to Win XP.
Love your videos. Increase your mic levels in post production, I had to turn up my speakers 2x to hear at the same level.
Hi there. Thank you for the feedback. Hopefully your speakers survived! I'll bump up the next one again!
In this video I was trying to refine my microphone settings a bit more, while also testing a less energetic presentation style.lol. I have the audio levels hovering between 'orange and red' normally in DaVinci Resolves' Fairlight audio studio, but this video I dropped the volume a little lower to avoid peaking out - so 'green to orange' which is maybe 5-10 dB lower than normal.
I like this content! It could maybe use some refinement
but it’s better than what I could do. I see now why you need the helmet. Butting heads with trolls…
Now for my main question/comment: I had been inspired by your videos on using an older HP z840 workstation to get some more storage or use as a server of some kind. They seem to be running around $800 or so. So I hadn’t pulled the trigger. Recently I happened to find a used Threadripper 1950x system with everything except a GPU in the case for $400. I jumped on it because I figured maybe i could work with that. It’s in a Fractal Design Meshify. I don’t think it has a lot of bays for hard drives but it has a few. I was thinking maybe I could get an NVMe M.2 PCIe expansion card for it. What would you do with such a system?
Thank you. I am open for suggestions on how to refine things (any input gives a new perspective, good or bad). It's a slow process but I continue to aim to make small improvements with each new video.
It's a fine line between the modern hardware and the aged systems. Generally, you pay more to get a "modern" system up and running. E.g. Just getting a decent case that can house lots of HDDs will set you back ~$300 USD (e.g. Z440 + Fractal Define 7XL + Drive caddies - there's a video for that: th-cam.com/video/K4RalaEbRI4/w-d-xo.html ).
If you add in the cost of CPU, Fans, PSU, Mobo it usually reaches more than that of the Z840’s price. Your complete system for $400 was a great price! If you were planning to game on it, the newer system would be far better (single core performance on Xeons isn’t great). Pricing on Broadwell Xeons is however really good right now. I got a E5-2697A V4 for my Z440 for a great price (Affiliate link: www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=E5-2697A+V4+&_sacat=0&_sop=15&mkcid=1&mkrid=711-53200-19255-0&siteid=0&campid=5339029473&customid=Xeone52697AV41&toolid=10001&mkevt=1).
Threadripper 1950X vs E5-2697A’s benching:
www.cpubenchmark.net/compare/2814vs3058vs2814.2/Intel-Xeon-E5-2697A-v4-vs-AMD-Ryzen-Threadripper-1950X-vs-%5BDual-CPU%5D-Intel-Xeon-E5-2697A-v4
I did consider case swapping the Z840 into the 7XL (th-cam.com/video/Rsr_zxOg6K8/w-d-xo.html) which would make for a solid server/NAS foundation. The Z820 / Z840 both have SAS and SATA chipsets, so they are ideal for storing lots of HDDs. The bonus with the HP workstations is the efficiency of the PSU (90% platinum), but your idle power draw is high (like 300-350W).
Regarding PCIe M.2 NVMe expansion - I have done tests on 4 different quad adapters so far. This video compared 4 adapters head-to-head: th-cam.com/video/xqg0uQ93KTg/w-d-xo.html and I also have 3 of 4 individual guide videos done (more detailed overview on each adapter).
Presuming your motherboard has an extra 1 or 2 x16 PCIe slots that support bifurcation you could work towards the Asus Hyper M.2 Gen 4 adapter. In my testing (I did the Gen 3 adapter in the Z840), that was a great balance between speeds and thermal control for the price tag. Affiliate link: ebay.us/S1qBJE
@@racerrrz Thanks for the detailed response! I wasn’t expecting that. I will use your links as a springboard to do a deeper dive. I had thought about putting the Gigabyte X399 Designare Ex MB with the 1950X TR into a larger case with more room for storage at some point. Last I checked the PCIe could bifurcate. I can’t remember how to verify that but will ask ChatGTP. I’ve never tried RAID configurations before but the moment I heard such things were possible for home computers/servers I’ve been trying to figure out a way to acquire hardware and do it as close to the right way as possible on the first go around. Can’t avoid the learning curve entirely, which usually costs $$$. I will rewatch this video and some others but if I had to make an unreasonable request, it would be to keep it more within reach of newbies without, I suppose, boring the expert enthusiasts out there. Thanks!
Go for it. The challenge lies in finding solutions to problems that present themselves. The X399 Designare Ex with a 1950X TR should give you decent performance and the hardware should be quite capable of handling future expansion that you may want to do. Bifurcation wise, it's best do go down the Google search route (ChatGPT has limits for now). forum.level1techs.com/t/gigabyte-x399-pci-e-bifurcation-support/127130/6 I suspect with updated BIOS you would be ok, although it looks like the board didn't support bifurcation right out of the box (but with BIOS updates the support was likely added).
The joys of ChatGPT, I am glad to hear you are using the AI for clarification - too handy these days. Each RAID level serves a purpose and it can be a life-saver if setup correctly. I am impressed by the performance of my RAID 0 NVMe pool, but that is high risk storage. The more optimal format is RAID 5 or RAID 6 which can provide a buffer for HDD failure. It's not really something that becomes important until you have data that you want to keep secure, but I would still think everyone would benefit from that added data integrity. It's less than ideal to loose old photos, videos or documents etc. See how you get on and if you have questions you know how to go about solving them, questions.
@@racerrrz Hello! When the Z840 is in idle state, how much voltage is consumed?
@@sachsongkhoe Hi there. Sorry about the delay. The Z840's power use will vary depending on the configuration. My system would typically use ~ 350-400W when loaded into the OS but at idle. When bench-marked the power-use could spike to ~750W. These power readings include all peripherals connected to my machine - so the readings for the system alone will be lower.
In case you have not seen it - I did a more detailed overview of the Z840 here: th-cam.com/video/kHkEmaN8ZlM/w-d-xo.html
I hate being limited to just 4x 24 TB of hard disk space. 96 TB is just not enough space to play two different games without having to swap drives, very annoying.
I fully get your frustration. Storage prices are nothing short of astounding (so much so I made a video about: th-cam.com/video/q-DcsSQJISk/w-d-xo.html) and achieving a storage volume of 24TB, never mind 96TB, is out of reach with the current pricing.
The question is, if there was a way to attain a large storage volume without having to spend the retail amount - would you want to know about it?
The IronWolf Pro 16TB is US$320 at B&H right now, but I got my 16TB IronWolf Pro for ~$200 USD.
Nice. Are you worried though about the lack of fans on your spinny HDD? They can get a bit warm.
Absolutely. I switched out the HP dual fan unit for dual Noctua 92MM slim fans (Part numbers etc. was in my GPU fitment video). The HDDs tend to not do too badly on temp. in the Z840, but that's likely due to a large GPU drawing in some air. But I would like to think the HDD fans are needed to keep the PCIe slots and lower motherboard cool also.
Sorry I was asking only about the HDDs you have in the Olmaster adapter. From what I can see, the dual Noctua's are keeping the lower part of the z840 cool. But what fan, if any, is cooling the HDDs in the Olmaster?
@@myburn Ah sorry I misunderstood! Thank you for clarifying.
You are correct, this Olmaster adapter does not have a fan and this will mean less air flow than what is ideal. However, the HP Z840 is designed with a tri-chamber concept. The PSU Bay, CPU Bay and PCIe Bays, all of which have their own fans to create pull through the front face of the case. The 5.25" Bays will be drawing in air through the action of the CPU and RAM Fan Modules. So there is airflow to keep the drives cool.
I actually removed the HDD from the Olmaster adapter (I was worried about vibrations) and I opted for a different Olmaster adapter that has fans- but it only supports 2.5" drives. I covered that adapter in a related video: th-cam.com/video/ZczhWw834GU/w-d-xo.html . The SSDs do not get warm in this adapter, and it seems to work well enough for the price.
Side note, the HP Z8 G4 has a redesigned case which actually does have a more dedicated fan module placed over the 5.25" Bay area which is cool to see.
@@racerrrz Nice, that all makes sense. Keep up the good work, love your videos, I think you are the only TH-camr that covers the z840 in detail. And quit tempting me with that Z8 G4! I don't know how I would be able to hide that expense from my wife lol
@@myburn Thank you. Yes, the Z840 doesn't get a lot of attention. I have a full Z840 tare-down video in the works, so there will be some action for it soon.
Haha good call there. I got lucky with an unusually low priced unit. Quick wifey purchase justification - Honesty is key - You will sell the Z840 for more than what you paid for the Z8 G4 (it's not easy to find that cheap Z8 but it can happen!) Side note, that's bad logic - my Z840 is yet to sell to recoup costs, but I remain hopeful lol.
Well.. I feel inadequate lol. I've been considering a new storage solution for my media library which is quickly growing out of control. its grown large enough, I'd be pretty devasted, if I were to lose it. This video kinda shows me how overwhelming the options have become. I check prices for large capacity ssd's, and nope. Way out of my price range. I check prices for large capacity mechanical drives and it is better, but I'm still not happy since I would ideally like to get 3 drives. Its still kinda pricey, so I check the price of used drives and find it isn't much different than buying them new. While looking at used sata drives, I notice the cost of used sas drives. Large capacity used sas drives are definitely in my price range, but I'd have to get a controller, an expander cable, and I don't even know what else. Does this channel have a guide for this sort of thing?
I agree, when did things get so far out of hand? It can become complex quickly but once you gain an understanding of the current hardware requirements you will be able to resolve what you need.
I have done several videos on storage but they tend to be focused on a specific purpose - e.g. how to build a quick home server (easy: th-cam.com/video/pCLYzEOur-o/w-d-xo.html ) or how to create a massive DIY home server (complex: th-cam.com/video/K4RalaEbRI4/w-d-xo.html).
What PC / Workstation have you got? If you had something like the HP Z840 you already have an onboard SAS controller which would mean you could install 4x SAS drives into the 3.5" HDD bays and simply plug them into the on-board SAS controllers SAS/SATA ports and you will have functional drives.
In machines that lack a SAS controller you will need to get a HBA (Host Bus Adapter) with SAS functionality. I settled on the HP H240 HBA because it is supported by the HP Workstations that I own. It converts up to 8x SAS or SATA drives into PCIe x8 connected storage drives (I use it in my HP Z440 Case Swap build - ~80TB of drives connected in - featured in the second "complex" video link above). You will need a couple of data cables (Mini SAS SFF 8087 to 4x SAS/SATA cable) to connect your drives to this controller. Once connected your drives will appear as per normal in your OS.
I have covered this process in several videos but it has not been covered in a stand-alone video, sorry. The H240 HBA and it's specifications / ideal cable featured for a minute in this video ( at 3:42 ): th-cam.com/video/x4wfkCzQ_rE/w-d-xo.html
If you run into any questions on the process feel free to ask here, or on our Reddit page: www.reddit.com/r/HSpecWorkstations/
@@racerrrz Cool. I got an msi meg x570 unify, so no onboard controller. I will check the videos out and see if they clear up some questions before ordering drives or anything. I was kinda surprised how much people are willing to pay for used sata drives compared to what they cost brand new. Figured there would be a bigger price difference but not really all that much. One thing I'm concerned about is how loud these things might be. Are they really much louder than normal drives? I'm sure the higher rpm drives are, but what about just 7200 rpm? Thanks for the reply. It was unexpected.
@@ItIsNot1984 Generally the SAS drives are well engineered and I would like to think they make less noise than the cheaper consumer grade spinners.
Speed is half the battle - 7200RPM drives will be more noisy than 5200RPM drives - but that's only when you really strain them (SSDs suit that role better). With normal use HDDs tend to be quiet. The most noisy drives that I have used was Cheetah 15K.7 SAS drives. Those sounded intense haha. I would say you'll be fine on noise. I have my Fractal Define 7XL sitting next to me and the 80TB odd of HDDs (mostly W/D Red NAS Plus and IronWolf Pro's) don't make a lot of noise compared with the case fans.
@@racerrrz So not too noisy then. Thats good. I'm used to pretty much everything server related being loud AF. I've never had a need, so my only reference are the server rooms I've been in. Been looking at controller cards, and man there is a ton. I found one that looks interesting. It may be crap for all I know. Its an intel model. RCS25ZB040 . Has some kinda built in ssd acceleration. Its pretty old, but almost all the reasonably priced controllers are, and I only need 3 drives so the one port is fine with me. What you think? Is this thing garbage?
@@ItIsNot1984 Server hardware always is, but then that is expected for the enterprise grade hardware.
The RAID controller looks decent but it will cost a decent amount. Having on board SSD cache is a benefit and it should provide fast caching of your RAID disks. It may be old, but most of the ones you'll find will be old so it's not an issue. The newer items will likely still be in service. If you can obtain it for less than say $100 USD it would be a solid option. A typical HBA would cost around $30-60USD - which should be sufficient for most applications.
One slight issue with these types of controllers is that they do not always function in all devices. Some server grade hardware is locked to certain machines - which creates a headache with cool items just not functioning in your system. The HP workstations tend to require items that HP have confirmed as functional - which was why I settled on the HP H240 HBA. Just make sure the item you get doesn't say anything about being hardware locked etc.
I really need to stop shucking HDDs. The WD white labels only have 4 mount points.
I like your approach for getting cheap HDDs lol. I opted for a more outrageous method - AliExpress "new" HDDs lol. So far I can confirm they are likely all used drives that have had their SMART data adjusted. But my logic is that for the price point, if I can get a 1-2 year old W/D Red Plus NAS or IronWolf Pro (checking the drives details for a date is a must) for half their retail price then it's worth it. Even if they were used for something like Chia Mining for 1-2 years they should still have a heap of live left - I hope.
Buy a better mic. My volume is cranked up and I can barely hear you.
Hi there. Thank you for the feedback. I'll bump up the volume for the next one!
In this video I was trying to refine my microphone settings a bit more.
I have the audio levels hovering between 'orange and red' normally in DaVinci Resolve's Fairlight audio studio, but this video I dropped the volume a little lower to avoid peaking out - so 'green to orange' which is maybe 5-10 dB lower than normal. With headphones on my system I can listen to the video on 20-30 volume out of 100 in Win 10's settings.
This is basically just mounting hardware and you made a 23-minute-long video about it? lol
You caught me, and it's not my first offense of "let's make a HDD fitment video longer than it needs to be" lol. But in my defense, this is technically two videos that I condensed into one since they match-up well: Video 1] Cool 5.25" Storage adapters that I can't afford (0-7min) + Video 2] Fitting 24TB to the 5.25" adapter that I can afford (8-23min) haha.
@@racerrrz "adapters that I can't afford" would arguably been a funnier video on its own. I have a habit of also looking at NAS enclosures that cost an arm and a leg so I get it
@@TheZerok666 I can't see any videos with that title in a quick search, so maybe it can be hit.lol.
You and I both enjoy the “browsing hardware we can’t afford habit”, it’s cool to keep up with the latest tech and there are some awesome channels for that. But I do like a challenge also, so I tend to take that habit a bit further. Once I find what I would not be prepared to buy retail (e.g. QNAP TS-1635AX with 12x HDD slots, 4x SSD, 2x M.2 NVMe slots, 2x 10 GbE ports; ~$2000 USD), I look for a DIY method to obtain the same performance, but without the price tag.
Without proof this is hearsay, so proof: 1 year ago, I researched some of the best NAS offerings from Synology, QNAP, ASUSTOR etc. and I compared their specs. I realised that the hardware on offer is overpriced and that you are paying mostly for the software. I did some reading into free NAS software and found TrueNAS. One year later I built my NAS with more functionality and expand-ability for likely a 1/3rd of the price (Z440 case swap + E5-2697A V4, 64GB DDR4 2400MHz, 6x HDDs, 2x SSDs, 4x NVMes, 2x 10GbE Ports) - and I turned the process into a guide so others can do the same. In case you find yourself interested in such a project: th-cam.com/video/K4RalaEbRI4/w-d-xo.html
This an absolute fire hazard!!!
One could say it's on fire...lol.
Jokes aside, the SSD adapter has been doing fine, but I presume you are referring to the Z840's configuration being a little hot.
The Z840 has been running daily for several months in this configuration, but it does replace the need for a heater in winter. The 10GbE NIC card mounted outside the case hasn't over heated on me (surprisingly, but the GPU creates sufficient air movement to keep it cool), and the GPU power cables have been solid so far.
This is why you build your pc. I have 48tb of storage ...and paid 1/3 of oem price. A long video about nothing
Hi there. Thank you for the feedback. I am open for suggestions on how to improve this content and I would appreciate if you had a video link to a better example of how to expand storage on your system (for my and other's benefit). It sounds like my video efforts fell short of your expectations.
My goal for this video was simple, provide a resource to allow others to make an informed decision for expanding storage on their system.
Most PCs have 2-6 3.5" HDD bays which would be sufficient for most applications. If you found yourself short on storage - maybe for a RAID 0 /1 / 5 pool, this video was made for you.
This video provides a comparison of several 5.25" bay storage adapters which can be installed in any PC with 5.25" bays. I focused on single slot 5.25" bay adapters since that is applicable to a wider audience.
There are likely hundreds of 5.25" bay adapters and I covered six in brief detail. I then briefly illustrated HDD/SSD installation and 5.25" bay fitment, as well as creating a RAID 1 Mirror with two speed tests for the RAID 1 pool.
I am not sure what your "48TB" is referring to, I never mentioned the net amount of storage in my system since that was not in the scope of the video. If you were attempting to calculate the net capacity in my system according to the video footage (say at 20:15) it's less than 36TB, without factoring for RAID loss but factoring for NTFS file system overheads. This footage was filmed in May 2023 and I have since changed this configuration.
unwatchable crud
Thank you for the feedback, and I am sorry to hear your experience fell short of a spectacular viewing. I would love to hear what did not resonate with you so I can improve on the next one.