Anniversary NSFW build #2

[D4M4EVER]

I ended up building two of the Anniversary NSFW build’s, this is my second completed build.

I will be using this one as a VM host running either ESXi or Proxmox, going to be testing both of them out soon. Still undecied on what one I will end up running in the long run.

Parts list copied from my first post:

Building on my desk, I used a piece of cardboard underneath it (not a static bag!) I don’t want to short this board, never have shorted one out and don’t want start now (knocks on wood).

I grabbed a red LED and some jumper wire’s I had laying around to make a power light and a quick power button for testing this guy out.
Need to connect the LED POS to POS and NEG TO NEG, if not the LED will not light up when powered on. For the power button jumper it doesn’t matter in regards of POS and NEG, I will just short the two jumpers out by touching them together for a sec and then keeping the wires separated. To power it off I just make connect with the two wires again for a sec, just long enough to power it off.

Using dual E5-2650V1’s CPU’s.

128GB RAM (16x 8GB Samsung PC3-10600R ECC).

Got the CPU’s installed and a single 8GB stick of RAM for each CPU to test first power up.
Added some cheap fan’s on top of the copper heat-sinks for the CPU’s, the heat-sinks alone will keep the CPU’s cool enough for first boot but i plan on running some RAM test out of case. will keep the fans just for some added coolness.

Now time to plug in a old PSU I have to power this baby up!

So far so good, after turning on the PSU we have wait for wait seem’s like a life time for the solid green light to start blinking. These boards take some time to power up.

Light is now blinking so I can jump my makeshift power switch.
The two fans I put on started spinning up and my add on red LED are both working, looking good!

Booted up first try with no issues, jumped in the BIOS by pressing F2 and waiting about 30sec for to open the BIOS settings.
Looks good, it’s showing both CPU’s and 16GB RAM total.

Looks good to me, I went ahead and powered it down to install the other RAM sticks.
After 2nd power up it showed all 128GB RAM!

I a big fan of the “Ultimate Boot CD” (UBCD), for anyone who doesn’t know what it is check out there web page here. https://www.ultimatebootcd.com

I have a USB thumb drive with UBCD on it I’ll use to test the memory.

MEMTEST86+ going rung for a little while, some say run it for minimal 24-72 hours, or until it errors out. I hope we don’t get any error’s on it, no one like bad memory!

I’m very impatient, don’t like waiting for ever for things to finish up, I think after a few hours I will stop the memory test.

As of this write up it’s been running 1 hour, maybe stop it after 2 or 3…So far it going good.

More to follow…

[D4M4EVER]

After a few hours of running my memory test I deiced to move into the case. I was to worried about my kitten playing around with the spiing fans and or chewing on things that kittens don’t need to be shewing on lol.

After stopping the memory test I went ahead and check to see what firmware was loaded on my on-board SAS controller. Looks like this board was already flashed into IT mode.
Saves me some time from not having to flash it.

The Rosewill 15 bay case looks so sad when empty.

On a side note you will need to remove these 6 screws circled in red to remove the 5-bay HDD stations.

Removed the upper support cross bar and marked locations for all the stand-offs that needed install, double check you don’t have any stand-offs in unused locations.

Perfect Fit!

Installed the PSU Got this little guy off the EVGA B-stock Wednesday sale.

After I plugged in the front panel USB, reset & power buttons, and indicator light’s. One bad thing about the Rosewill case is how short the front panel connector cables are. As you can see here there is not much room to route them all way over. I’m going to dig out some male to female dupont connectors and extend the length on these guys later.

The board is very limited on USB connectors, I ended up ordering some USB extenders today. Per the 7PESH2 manual you can connect 4 USB devices off the single USB header if using a special USB header extender, I ordered a few different kinds to see what ones fit best.

I plan on booting off USB and keeing it inside the case to prevent me from removing it while running. On-board USB will get hooked up to this little guy.
You can get these off amazon for about $7.50 or E-mail for $1.30. Ships from China when getting off Ebay.
Amazon link:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B016RPA2N6/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_U_fraRDb5E6Z1Q5
Ebay link:
https://ebay.us/obVRbp

The USB headers will be here Monday. When I hook one of them up I’ll also extend the front panel cables.

Got my old fans sitting on top the CPU heat-sinks again, want keep this guy nice and cool. I will start the memory test again tonight before sleep.

Tossed in some old 1TB SATA drives into one of the 5-bays. mounted a pair of old 160GB SSD in a dual 2.5" to 3.5" adapter. As you can see in the pics the 2.5 to 3.5 HDD adapter makes the SSD’s set way back so plugging in the cables to these guys will be a pain in the ass once in the case.
SSD’s on the left and SATA HDD on the right.

SSD drives vs SATA HDD

On the hunt for some different dual 2.5 to 3.5 adapters that will offset the drives to sit more towards the back for easier plug access.

Thats all for tonight!

More to follow soon.

[D4M4EVER]

My memory is done, I ended up letting it run over 31 hours. No errors so I’m happy about that.

Today I working on extending the length on the front panel indicator LED’s and the power/reset button. I’m still waiting on parts for my USB cable extenders, hopefully will arrive tonight and cant work on them tomorrow AM.

I added some 8inch dupont cables to the existing wiring for some more length.

I ended up removing the bottom tray for the front HDD mounting bay area. I wanted to tuck the new longer wires underneath it keep them out of the way.

Before modifications.

Here’s the bottom panel after I removed it. Need cut off the area in red.

On the bottom side there is 2 stand offs that provide support when installed, we don’t want our wires to get pinched under these guys.

After routing the wires around with the bottom support removed you can see where the 2 standoffs make contact to bottom of case. I tapped the wires down to keep them from sliding over for when I re-install the tray.

Fired up the chain saw and took some of the corner off, be sure to file it down after cutting. Don’t want raised burrs left haning to cut our wires and get metal shaving floating around in the server case.

Almost forgot to get the USB cables pushed under the support tray.

Here’s a close up of the newly modified front corner with tray back in place and all wires routed under it.

Looks pretty good with all those wires out of the way, looking down inside the HDD bay area front view.

FYI the rosewill cables for the front power/reset and LED all has a little arrow on back side that indicate the positive side. I makes it really nice for getting the NIC 1 and @ plugs in correctly the first time, if the LED don’t get connected correctly they will not work.

Added the arctic P12’s fan’s in. Took some re-adjusting to get the cables just how I wanted them.

No loose wires hanging around to get sucked up in the fan blades!

Ended up putting n some arctic 12 CPU coolers, think I will remove and replace them with the arctic 33’s. I don’t like the small contact point on bottom for the CPU, but at least I can still somewhat access my RAM if needed.

Had to make a custom 4-pin PWM fan connector to plug into the 4-pin molex. to cheap to get a fan hub and ran out of fan headers on the motherboard. Going use this connector for the front 3 HDD bay fans.

Done for the day, more coming soon.

[D4M4EVER]

reserved #3

[D4M4EVER]

reserved #4

[JDM_WAAAT]

Nice log! Looking forward to seeing your progress. Subscribed!

[D4M4EVER]

Thanks, figured I get some more detail in there for you guys this time.
I’ve got a lot of great info from everyone here so figured least I can do is share my build process with everyone.

[D4M4EVER]

Updated

[JDM_WAAAT]

Any updated pics for us?