Parts check for my new Chenbro

Technology Buy Curious
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Bought the case that recently dropped in #techdeals and plan to use it to replace an ancient synology that currently houses my photo backup from my bigger server.

Since this is going to only house a small subset of my data my plan is to fill it with a mix of SATA and SAS drives that I have on hand (replacing as more funds/needs arise)

Would love to have a ‘what did I miss’ review as I’m new to the backplane world (my other system I’ve just got SAS->Mobo

And of course, open to alternate suggestions/links if interchangeable parts

Part Chosen Part Price Qty Total Cost Link
Case Chenbro SR301 90.00 1 90
Mobo ZOTAC H87ITX-A- 90.00 1 90 Pardon Our Interruption...
RAM Viper 3 16GB 2x8GD DDR3 1600Mhz Pc3-12800 45.00 1 45 Pardon Our Interruption...
CPU Intel Core i5-4590 34.00 1 34 Pardon Our Interruption...
CPU Cooler ARCTIC Alpine 12 LP 11.00 1 15 Amazon.com
HBA IBM 9207-8I 8-Port 6Gbps PCI-e IT MODE FW:P20 LSI 9207-8I +2*SFF8087 SATA US 50.00 1 50 Pardon Our Interruption...
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I’d hold off on that HBA for the moment. JDM’s reverse sas cable can connect the 4 drives to your motherboard.

We’ll find out more this week as our units arrive and we start testing drives and temps.

If you’re looking to go 6 drives, then you need the HBA. I’d suggest the H1110 to save some money though. The tradeoff is future use of the 9207-8i in a different chassis vs the H1110’s 4 port limitation.

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Reverse SAS cable?

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This cable is the one he’s talking about.

If you were to use a SAS HBA, I’d highly recommend something like an ASR-78165 so you have room for external expansion. This would also allow you to use an SFF-8643 to SFF-8643 cable internally.

Do you plan on using Unraid, TrueNAS, or something else?

I’d recommend this CPU cooler instead, it’s cheaper and better.

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  • The cable link is the Arctic CPU cooler (which I’ve swapped in, thanks!)
  • And planning to throw Unraid on it
  • and why the more expensive ASR? I haddn’t planned on hooking this to a DAS, this was just going to be a basic back up for non-media files. Currently they’re <10TB in storage and this was going to just be a subordinate system to my primary
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Fixed the cable.

I was only recommending the more expensive ASR because it has both internal an external connections if you were to expand it later.

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