Those front fans look like a 3d render… awesome!
I’d rotate your CPU cooler 90 degrees clockwise, keep air flowing front to back.
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I had to refer to the manual to get the power switch and LEDs connected, which wasn’t obvious.
This was a super fun project and I learned way more than I expected.
Build complete!
Big thanks to JDM for the inspiration and guidance. Now to figure out what to build next…
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Black Friday eve and about to pull the trigger on a NAS build. Very impressed with what you have done. Any suggestions or changes?
Thanks
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Thanks! It was a fun build and I can’t really think of any changes. No regrets on spending a little extra on the case as it was a breeze to build in and looks very civilized in the office.
What type of HTPC are you running? I’m looking at adding speakers to several rooms as well as combining HD HomeRun for all TV’s and adding surveillance cameras. Finishing up CAT 6 network cable upgrade to whole home now. Ready to tie it all together, so many options and technology changing daily.
I used the same case for my gaming build, it really is a great case to work in. Plenty of space for everything, great airflow, and QUIET!
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Well, after about a month of operation I’ve shut this server off as I noticed ~40% spike in my electricity bill starting on the day I first powered it on. Next steps are to verify that drives are properly being spun down, updating sleep schedules and possibly a wake on LAN setup. To assess my usage, I grabbed some energy monitoring smart plugs off of Amazon. If anyone has suggestions on what else to try, I’d be happy to hear them.
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Thank you @invisiblerobots for this post (and @JDM_WAAAT for this awesome site)! It inspired me to build my own UNRAID NAS using mostly the same components you have listed.
But I have a noob question… Everything seems to be working well except that I’m getting the continuous alarm tone from the motherboard. I’ve figured out that part of it was due to the fans not being connected so I disabled the BMC Alarm. However, it also beeps if it’s not connected to a VGA monitor.
I thought these servers ran headless normally, but do I have to do something special in the BIOS? I have not flashed the SAS2008 controller to IT mode (because I don’t know why you need to do that), but is it related to this issue?
Thank you in advance for your help!
I had that alarm too and I determined that it was the case open alarm, which I was able to find in BIOS to deactivate. I also did not flash the SAS controller so that shouldn’t be related to the alarm.
Hope that helps!
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You should flash the SAS controller.
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Thanks for the reply!
In conclusion, this was a fun quarantine project but my ultimate takeaway is that having a server in my home is total overkill for my needs. I was hoping that by building one, its utility would reveal itself but after running it for awhile I could not justify the total cost of operation.
Unraid is an impressive OS and I’m glad I took the time getting it up and running to mess around with. The community around it is great and I’ve been super impressed by all of things being built around it. At the end of the day though, I couldn’t find anything in it that would be useful for me. Running Plex on my Win10 HTPC is fine.
I’ll salvage the drives and maybe the case but the rest of it is headed to Goodwill/PC recycle. Sometimes the best way to learn about something is to get totally hands-on with it and I’m glad I went through this learning exercise. x
Is it not useful to have your data parity protected?
@invisiblerobots Would you be interested in selling? I was about to start building one almost identical to the one you built…so I will gladly buy it from you if the price is right! Shoot me a DM!
I’ll keep a backup in cold storage but I rarely access this data and almost never add to it.