Project Supermicro 846 Part 4 - Transplanting Hardware
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 18 มี.ค. 2020
- We have finally got to the end of this project! Today is relatively simple, as we're just swapping over the motherboard and hard drives to the new case. The only two changes are removing the SAS expander card since the 846 backplane already has an expander built in, and re-purposing a 120mm noctua redux fan I had over the PCIE slots to do duty as CPU cooler fan.
By combining all 3 120mm fans on the fan wall into one fan header on the motherboard, I can easily set up fan throttling using unRAID's Dynamix auto fan control. This controls fan speed based on hard drive temperature, not by CPU temperature. The only drawback to using that plugin is it only works on a single header. The two back exhaust fans are tied to the CPU temperature and controlled through the BIOS.
After the full swap over, I have been able to compare idle power consumption with the cpu running at less then 5% load, and all hard drives spun down. On the old rosewill setup, it would hover around 60 watts. On the newer supermicro setup, it hovers around 70 watts. Even though the power supply in the supermicro is a platinum rated power supply versus the gold rated rosewill power supply, the supermicro is rated for 920 watts while the rosewill was only at 550 watts. This means that the supermicro has a bigger gap in wattage before it hits it's highest efficiency percentage.
One other note regarding the backplane, for the BPN-SAS2-EL1 backplane, when using sata drives, the power indicators do not function, but activity LED's still work. On SAS drives, both work. This is programmed in the backplane firmware and a choice that supermicro made when designing this backplane. As for the better bandwidth of using 8 SAS lanes vs only 4 with this backplane, I can not comment yet as I need another 4 or 5 hard drives before I even get close to saturating a 4 lane SAS connection. When that time comes I'm sure I'll make another video about that subject.
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Almost the same case setup I got except this one has 2 of the standard power supplies:
www.theserverstore.com/Superm...
Supermicro 6-Inch 16Pin Front Control Split Cable (CBL-0084L):
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Noctua NF-A12x25 PWM, Premium Quiet Fan, 4-Pin (120mm, Brown):
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VVIVID® Black Brushed Steel Vinyl Wrap Roll with Air Release Technology (3ft x 5ft):
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HELIFOUNER 450 Pieces Computer Standoffs Spacer Screws Assortment Kit:
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Nice and THANKS for showing that cable spliter. I was attempting to put my a AMD 3900X in my Supermicro case and got stumped with that ribbon cable. I now have hope again THANK YOU
You're welcome!
Great Job man!
Really cool build! Gonna do this for my Plex server someday.
👍
Very neat and cool!
What is the perceived noise-level when you're tired and it's 3 a.m.?
BTW, what distro are you using?
At 3am everything is pretty much at rest server wise, so fans are spinning slowly, hard drives are usually spun down, you won't hear it all from 5 feet away.
I'm running unRAID.
Great conversion. You mentioned that you were not sure whether your HBA would use all 8 SAS channels to the backplane . I am setting up a similar unRaid server in a 836 (3U) chassis with the BPN-SAS2-836EL1 backplane and a HBA flashed to IT mode. I have looked at the Chassis manual regarding the cabling between backplane and HBA and It appears there would only be a single SAS connector from the Backplane to the HBA. Does the 4U have 2 backplanes you have to cable to the HBA? (Sorry, my first server build)
I really liked your power readings in earlier videos, how much power are you currently using when populated and active? Also which CPU are you using?
Yep, I'm also wondering what the power supply are eating
Very very nice setup!! Super clean and mega expandable...22 external drive bays...daggum!
What was that USB 3 internal adapter thing?
most mobo's have 2 usb 3.0 or 2 usb2.0 headers, this allows you to turn one of the usb headers into an internal usb port, that way you can put the unraid OS drive on the inside of the case so there is no tampering.
I hope you have a second camera running to catch a wide angle of the table crashing. Because I have the suspicion it will happen if you keep handling that server on there. :)
Lol you're not the first person to comment on my wobbly table!
Question: When the Supermicro machine is turned on, do the blue LEDs stay on all the time, or just for drive bays that have drives in them? I ask because I picked up a SAS2 backplane and all of the blue leds are lit even without drives attached and I think the backplane is defective. I can't see any drives on the backplane, so that's why I'm asking (both Adaptec 5405Z and 6805T controller).
I'm Pretty sure the 4pin goes to the backplane. I'm using an ATX PSU in my 846 which doesn't have the connector with no issue.
It is 5pin connector with 4 wires. It goes to Supermicro server board for PSU conntroled by BMC.
Great job on the media server swap. What kind of back up strategy do you use?
Dual parity to protect from drive failure. Most of the data is replaceable, so not backed up. Personal data such as pics, docs, etc... Gets backed up to backblaze nightly.
With the modifications Is it quiet enough to be in the same room as your desktop/gaming rig or do you still need to put it in like a server closet
I’m about to mount my sc846 in a vertical rack. Did you attach it by the rails or by the ears? I really don’t need the extra milage the rails provide when pulling up the case but I really doubt those ears can handle the weight.
What kind of rack is that and how much weight can it hold?
You can buy the blank caddies on ebay really cheap for a bunch.
Motherboard LED's can usually be turned off in the bios
I just got a supermicro 846 chassis with this same backplane but none of my drives are being seen in UNRAID 6.8.3. The pertinent hardware is an LSI SAS 9201-16i HBA (IT mode) and obviously the BPN-SAS2-846EL1 backplane. I am pretty stumped on this and then when I watched your video, I noticed you are using P1 and P2 instead of P0. This still did not help me however. Do you have any ideas as to why my drives arent being seen by unraid or the backplane? I get red lights that turn on briefly when I power on the chassis. I have 4 6TB and then one 12TB WD, and 8 14TB WD. I jumped the board to power in on because I don't have the breakout for the motherboard yet. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
how did you find the ears of the case did for holding the chassis vertically like that?
Do you find it's detrimental to temps to keep the case "upside down" like that? My first thought was that hot air naturally rises, so aren't you fighting against by having it hanging in that configuration (you are pushing hot air out the bottom, right?)
Your line of thought is the same as mine when I first decided to vertically mount the server. Surprisingly, with the fans blowing down there has not been any issues with it. Maybe if I was running dual xeon at full tilt and not a 7700k at idle most of the time the story could be different.
I was going to say that hes running some relatively low TDP hardware in there. I think the thermal performance in his particular case would be negligible. I run a dual socket 2011 server that I actually tried doing something like this with before I just bought a server tower and it didn't work well in the slightest. I'd say with what hes got going on right now he's perfectly okay. Definitely inspired me to make another video about putting some upgrades in my server. I usually just upgrade without picking up the camera anymore.
I have a few hard drives all around my work space. Would this be the way to go to keep them all out of the way, and not get unplugged from time to time??
It doesn't have to be a server case, some tower cases can hold over 14 hdd's, regardless if you can put them in a case they will be safer then out in the open (dropped, static shock, etc...)
@@madelectronengineering Thanks for the help.. I will take some time and look at this now...
I can't figure out what the second 8 pin does too so i was hoping you knew.
The 2nd 8 pin was for the original motherboard that was dual socket cpu, it powered the 2nd cpu.
First!!! 🤘🏻😎🤘🏻
i think that the LED's could have been disabled from the BIOS...
what is the HBA card you're using for this?
What are you using for wall rack your server?
Here you go, 6u vertical rack:
amzn.to/3a4Rjxc
@@madelectronengineering Well now that is sweet! Thanks for replying!
@@mrhay4 you're welcome!
You ever end up rackmounting it?
what are you hard drive temps ?
they max out at 91'F, most run around 86'F.
@@madelectronengineering That is pretty low temperature. What is the ambient?
Is the server possible to access via browser interface?
Via IPMI? No. Via freenas /true nas web interface, ss.
4:20 @5:40
Ummm no, it's a vape.