Should I have any concerns with getting the ASUS B365M-A PRIME with the unas case? Seems like the best option they have. Just worried if it will fit.
Edit: All of those motherboards are micro ATX.
This case takes Mini-ITX.
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Whoops, thanks.
Microcenter has little in the way of mini-itx locally.
This was fun!
So, when I was building this thing I knew that the motherboard would be small… But it really didn’t hit me until it arrived in the mail and my hand could fit right over it. I didn’t really stray from the parts listed in the guide. I looked around but the only real thing I chose to get because it had a deal already was the Aorus NVMe for $100 it came with a heatsink already and was a little faster. I wasn’t worried that it was 512.
Learning process:
Plastic Shield
I realized later the plastic sheet in the case was there loose to protect the motherboard from inadvertently coming in contact with the metal case. So… after throwing that away, later I cut an old plastic report cover to fit. Made sure to leave room on the right for ventilation.
CPU power cord always falling in the fan
It’s pretty obvious what I had to do here, or the cord would constantly fall in and I’d have to keep opening the case and all 5,000 screws.
HBA was bad
I swear, I changed out every part before this thing. It was really tricky to figure out because it would only sometimes fail. I would get Unraid all set up and this crap would occur. I swapped out all of the disks, re-ran the replaced cords with new ones, and then I finally tried replacing it with a 1slot HBA I got free from one of the BitDeals array starter kits. Boom that was it, just had to wait literally a month for a replacement 
.
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I’m so chapped I didn’t order up when these dropped.
As people have mentioned, the price is higher than the last one, but this is still cheaper than they were originally around 200+ and the PSU is also 100+ so if you were really wanting this form factor its not a bad deal. they have Make offer open so id be interested if they would accept offers close to the original listing price (its the same seller). If anyone makes an offer please post here any results.
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I offered $150 ($21 over original selling price, plus original shipping was $25 instead of $35), Seller countered with $240 ($40 off list). I countered with $200; seller declined.
Just so everyone knows, they want double the original list price after shipping ($154.57 shipped in October, versus $274.99 shipped at their best offer, or $313.99 shipped at list).
yeah definitely not as good of a deal, but these are marked as new in original packaging, so im wondering if they are the best versions of the stock they did have. still a good deal if its the form factor someone needs.
This is a different guy. Why are comparing two different sellers…
That’s a really good point.
I goofed and ordered a HP 487738-001 expander without a bracket. Didn’t even think to check.
Ebay has no standalone brackets, holes don’t line up to mount the card to the case.
Best way to zip tie mount this? It’s a das build so the whole mobo bay is clear.
Edit: I was able to secure it to one of the rising standoffs. Between that and the small riser car its supported well enough.
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What a doozy this build was, my first LSI SAS9207-8e was DOA so I had to order a second, since I had never used one it was hard to troubleshoot. Then I ran into the issue with the HP expander card not having the bracket but it was still able to be mounted in the 8bay case.
I put two wd140edfz drives in here so far, one worked no problem and the other needed the 3.3v mod to work. Both are the same model, so that was a bit perplexing. However it’s all done now, and another 26 TB online to bring me up to around 50TB total.
I changed both the fans and the sata cables that it came with.
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@Bretos that’s the HP expander card, HP 487738-001. I went with it so I didn’t need to buy two 6’ SFF-8088 to SFF-8088 cables and a breakout back plate. The expander card is slow, but with the shucked drives it should not matter.
Put together a build today using the ASRock Rack C236 WSI motherboard referenced below OP. I wanted to use the PCIe for something else so I needed to go with 8x SATA on the motherboard. Also used the Arctic Alpine 12 LP because it’s much cheaper new and I was on a timeline so I couldn’t wait for the Noctua NH-L9I to pop up on ebay for a similar price.
The CPU socket is located in a slightly different location on the ASRock motherboard and that led to two arms of the Alpine hitting the case. There were three contact points in total. One arm hit the HDD backplane and one arm hit both the backplane and the HDD cage.
Since cutting two arms off was out of the question and I needed the build done on a schedule I tried to just shave the arms down. It was quite successful so I figured I’d post about it. The plastic shaves pretty easily. Makes the sound that a boot makes when going through fresh snow. I think that means it’s nylon. I’d advise using a fresh razor and taking many shallow shaves because pushing directly down into the plastic while cutting #1 caused it to fracture. Thankfully the fracture remained within the area I ultimately removed.
Quite happy that I didn’t need to cut any arms off. I took some photos with a ruler and they’re posted here.
Just curious, any reason you chose to go with the C236 WSI Mobo (this doesn’t have any m.2 slots right?) vs. a mobo with two m.2 slots (which each can support 5 SATA ports using one of those $50 M.2 to SATA adapters)?
Nice build btw!
No particular reason, just hadn’t considered that route. I can confirm this board does not have any M.2 interfaces.
I’ve been digging into this unas case a bit, do you think I can get SAS3 (12Gbps) working on this backplane?
Not without switching the backplane, no.
Wait really? Are they not just direct passthrough?
I guess I could test this out myself in a couple days if the 10k rpm spinners I ordered from Bitdeals are SAS3.