Node 804 build in progress

Technology Hardware
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Started assembling my new plex/NAS build last night after I finished my last final of the semester. So far I have 4 HDDs mounted in place, but I figure I will test the system and boot unraid first before I connect them or the LSI 9207-8i card. Plans for the build include 10 3.5" 3TB HDDs and possible 2 2.5" drives up front as the parity drives if I determine I haven’t sank enough money into the build yet. Also, the other 6 HDDs are currently in my gaming computer with data on them, so I will have to transfer files and slowly migrate drives over.

Components:
Intel I3-10100

H470 prime motherboard by Asus

2x LSI 9207-8i HBA cards

Redragon RGPS 600 fully modular psu

10x HGST ultrastar 7K3000 3TB HDDs

3x arctis F14 case fans

5x arctis F12 case fans

32GB usb flash drive to boot unraid

Cheap $10 amazon fan controller

4x sata to molex adapters

4x Molex to molex Y splitters

1x Mole to 5x sata cable

1x mini sas to sas cable with male sata power built into the back of the sas connectors

2x mini sas to sas cables with individual molex power connectors branched off from each sas connector (lower profile over the psu)

Going to have to wait until morning to install the cpu cooler and boot test as I forgot to pick up thermal compound before bestbuy was closed for the night.

Pictures from start to where I am now

20201211_223040
20201211_2230403000×4000 1.84 MB
20201211_223043
20201211_2230433000×4000 2.25 MB
20201212_004859
20201212_0048593000×4000 1.75 MB
20201212_004929
20201212_0049293000×4000 1.79 MB
20201212_015411
20201212_0154113000×4000 2.06 MB

I tried to get a little creative with how I routed the case fan cables. I routed three of them out the top of the main compartment and back down through the main HDD compartment. Also was able to get a zip tie in between the case and the HDD track to keep two of the cables somewhat tight and out of the way elsewhere.

20201212_015418
20201212_0154183000×4000 2.53 MB
20201212_015427
20201212_0154273000×4000 2.15 MB

One annoyance is that the dust filters in the front portion of the case are very loose and fall out extremely easily. So I added a bit of tape to keep them in place a bit better.

20201212_020638
20201212_0206381500×2000 1.11 MB

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A couple of questions if anybody can answer them.

  1. if I use 5400rpm drives for parity, will that limit the speed my data drives can operate at in unraid? I would think it wouldn’t based on how unraid operates, but this will be my first time using it.

  2. is there any useful purpose I could throw a 120GB ssd at? I have an older intel ssd that I used for about two years before I upgraded to a bigger ssd in my gaming rig. 120GB is likely too small to be an effective cache drive as I am often transferring large batches of movie rips at a time. Are there any other things I could use it for where I would get a benefit?

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  1. I don’t believe this is going to be an issue for you.
  2. If you’re going to use docker containers, this would be a good place to have them…I’m running 12 of them on an older 128gb nvme, soon to be upgraded though. I also run the OS off the nvme.