New HP G4900 & DS380B Build - Help

So I have three heat syncs. The one that came with the hp, the one that came with the cpu and the artic… did you guys use the fan from the HP? It uses screws.

I used the one from HP only because my lower power cpu didn’t need anything more…went from stock cpu (sold) to an i3-8100 then to an i5-8500T which I realized I had laying around doing nothing. I used the cpu fan pins to split out the cpu fan and the modded noctua fan add-on (splitter came with the noctua) for the LSI HBA card (which gets hot in this small HP290 form factor). Great tip adding the noctua fan to the LSI card came from cobalt!

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yea I also have that fan but I don’t know how to attach it. Do I take off the black one?

Can you share pictures of what you’re talking about?

He’s referring to the last 4 photos in my comment here [Official] HP 290-p0043w Owner's Thread - #631 by cobalt

There’s 2 spring loaded clips that hold the heatsink down. You can pop them out by gently squeezing the tip that’s poking through the circuit board. I used m3 nylon screws washers and lock nuts to attach the fan to the heatsink and circuit board. If yo want to go through the entire height of the fan, heatsink and circuit board the m3 screws need to be something like 3 inches below the screw head. I got 2 inch screws and managed to get them through just the bottom holes of the fan and the rest since nylon is plastic. They bend just enough to make it work

Thanks for replying and posting a link to the pictures that you pointed me to from your post cobalt. I was in and out of the hospital this past week and apologize for the lack of response on this one.

It really is a great build and I hope you get it altogether and in good working order soon. I’m grateful to have ran into cobalt’s post which inspired me to go down this path a while ago (silent and lower-powered). He was great about answering my questions too! I’m still playing around with OMV5.5 and trying to get everything configured just the way I want it (never used it before so giving it a try). Had some trouble with all 8 drives in the DAS showing up but I think I’m almost past that. Good luck!

The i5-9400 I got had come with an retail HSF assembly but that looked like it was meant to be used on a board that had a different kind of stand off system for the CPU. So I just used the one that came with the HP290 instead. Since like you said it just screws back down into the stock stand offs. I think when I was testing I had it hit 82C on all cores under full load. Its never really under full load so at most it hits about 64C. Usually its around 38C when mostly idle.

Thanks @cobalt - as soon as I realized I was missing parts i put everything back on the shelf.

I’ll go pick it up and start again today. I’m also in the middle of an out of state move so I need to get to it. I’m concerned about picking up screws. I’m going to deeply look at your pictures and keep you posted on progress.

@LivePono I hope you’re better.

Update, I finally got this turning on; but ran into some problems. The HP G4900 has a bad board. 1 of the RAM slots does not work. :confused: It beeps. Its not the RAM itself but the board. I moved it around and it’s 100% the board.

@cobalt or @LivePono what cable do I need to buy to connect the fan of the SAS HBA? I don’t have that Y cable you’re talking about.

Last thing; how do I power all of the hard drives? am I missing more stuff? lol

if for some reason none of the Noctua fans for the DS380B or the smaller one for the SAS HBA didn’t come with a Y splitter you’ll want one of these. You plug it in to the CPU fan header. The CPU Fan goes in to the side with all 4 pins. Then you’ll want an extension to plug in to the other side of the Y cable like this. You can route the extension out from under the backside of the plastic shroud that sits around the CPU Heatsink and Fan assembly so that you can plug the fan on the HBA in to it easily.

As far as the drives go you just plug 1 Molex and 3 SATA power connections in to the back of the DS380B’s backplane from the PSU you should have added to the DS380B.

Assuming you bought a fan like this to add/mod the SAS HBA:

https://www.amazon.com/Noctua-NF-A4x20-PWM-Premium-Quality-Quiet/dp/B071W93333

If so, it comes with the Y-cable that’s long enough to reach the card. Also, since I’m using a different enclosure than the DS380B (recycling an old case), I used these for power connected to the PSU:

https://www.amazon.com/Cable-Matters-Pack-Power-Splitter/dp/B012BPLW08

Hope this and cobalt’s recommendations help!

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