[Duality92]

Hey guys, yet another build, but this one is quite different and updates will be done on a per part basis, explaining a bit the hardware used.

Let's start off by the case.

This case is a Silverstone RM21-308, it features eight front storage caddies and is the perfect candidate for a server at just 2U height. There's also two internal 2.5" drive spots. It has the potential to house either an mATX or mITX system with four low profile expansion slots and for up to ATX sized PSUs.

Has anyone here ever looked at Silverstone server case options?





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Hardware used

• Biostar A10N-8800E motherboard
• Team Group 2*16GB Vulcan 2400 MHz RAM
• Silverstone RM21-308 case
• Silverstone Nightjar 600W Passive PSU
• Seagate IronWolf NAS 14TB HDD(x8)
• Seagate IronWolf 110 NAS 1.92TB SSD
• Seagate Laptop 4TB HDD 2.5"
• Silverstone ECS04 RAID Controller
• Silverstone FW31 PWM fans
• Silverstone FPS01 optical bay accessory
  

 

[Duality92]

As far as PSU goes, I opted for the Nightjar NJ600 Passive 600W 80+ Titanium PSU, Seasonic is the OEM of this PSU, so it hints quality all around, if I remember correctly, they take higher wattage units and remove the fan, change some other minor details and create passive PSUs this way.

Cables are nice and thick helping keep this cool and secure.

 

[technodanvan]

I'd absolutely love to try out one of these (or its 4U brethren!) but the cost is, unfortunately, better put towards hard disks.

 

[Duality92]

Hi there!

As far as motherboard goes, I wanted something low power, as all this will serve as is my photography backup and cloud storage for a few friends of mine. (end destination isn't even my house for this project! As a good buddy of mine who works in the home automation integration field and complete smart home audio integration has a 300/300 connection, while the most that comes to my house is 40/10, T_T).

Anyways, I digress. The motherboard is a Biostar A10N-8800E at version 6.0. They recently released 6.1 which features a slightly bigger heatsink and a bigger fan setup for it too, because some people have complained of high temperatures, Biostar was quick to resolve that issue.

The Biostar motherboard has a SoC AMD FX-8800P, which is sort like a SoC version of the AM1 platform, it features quad cores and a performance roughly equivalent in multi-core to a i5-6200U. (which is 2C/4T) so you can assume it has less performance in ST, but overall, as I said, roughly equivalent performance. Two DIMM slots, which support up to 16GB DIMMs with an m.2 port that has SATA and PCIE compatability. I wanted something versatile as I'm always changing stuff around and upgrading my stuff.

This little CPU is more than enough for my file server and cloud storage for 3-5 people.

The biggest advantage of this platform versus AM1 is that it features a full X16 PCIE 3.0 slot compared to the X4 PCIE 2.0 slot of AM1 (that means it has 8x the PCIE bandwith) and the fact is can use DDR4 instead of DDR3.

PRODUCT LINK

 

[Duality92]

As far as RAM goes, I wanted to max out this platform, to ensure best performance out of this little CPU. Team Group came crashing through the doors with a 32GB kit for this board. This ram is TeamGroups Vulcan 2400 MHZ C15 kit, which runs at 2133 15-15-15 on this board. Low profile, low height and great capacity, this RAM equiped with a heatsink is a no brainer for this PC.

Another good feature of having this board in this case, is that servers have air flow from front to back, which this board has it's ram aligned with, it helps with dissipation heat on each module equally compared to having them perpendicular, with each module getting blocked by the first one.

 

[Duality92]

What am I doing with all of these? Plan is to have these in a RAID array, with a 4TB 2.5" drive as internal off controller backup and the 1.92TB SSD as OS, VM and game server.

Total storage is 118TB of storage on this build! Ready for more? Howbout running them in a RAID 0 for fun!!!

 

[Vassilij]

What RAID controller are you using?

 

[Duality92]

What RAID controller are you using?

Raid controller itself is a LSI 9218, but it's the Silverstone ECS04 card Has miniSAS-8087 ports for this case.

 

[Duality92]

Hey guys, another post! This time it's for the controller itself. It's the Silverstone ECS04, which is LSI 9218 based with two SFF-8087 ports. This enables it to connect directly to the case front storage backplane! It has a lot more potential that just 8 hard drives and can do full 64 GPBS @ PCIE 3.0 X8. I added a Fractal Design 50mm fan since it seems like a corner of the case that won't get much air flow

 

[Duality92]

Since I'm using an ITX motherboard I opted for thicker fans for more airflow as thicker fans have a much easier time taking care of overcoming the static pressure.* These are SilverStone FW31, fully PWM and controlled by the RAID controller.

 

[anti-clockwize]

Really similar build to my file server, has got to be the easiest and cheapest way to get one up and running compared to off the shelf nas boxes. Pretty surprised by the choice of case though! So many other cheaper (1/3rd the price) 2U, 3U + 4U, 8 bay rack cases out there.

 

[Duality92]

Really similar build to my file server, has got to be the easiest and cheapest way to get one up and running compared to off the shelf nas boxes. Pretty surprised by the choice of case though! So many other cheaper (1/3rd the price) 2U, 3U + 4U, 8 bay rack cases out there.

With built in backplate for hotswap?

 

[Duality92]

I opted to put an accessory in the slim DVD slot instead of a DVD itself to make use of extra features like having the potential to backup directly my SD card to the PC instead of having to import through USB.

It has a passthrough for existing USB 3.0 ports so you don't lose other USB ports and potential to have a SATA SSDs in m.2 format up to 2280. (Silverstone FPS01)

 

[ruffhi]

signing on to follow this build. Not sure about the seagate drives based on some reading I did a while ago. Have they improved?

 

[Duality92]

signing on to follow this build. Not sure about the seagate drives based on some reading I did a while ago. Have they improved?

Currently the build is in it's testing stages. I have moved the rig to my friends house as planned since he has 300/300. He had NextCloud setup on it for both of us to use and I'm currently syncing all my files over to my server over a 10 mbps upload speed for 2TB worth of data.

So far, with all the plugins he's installed, it works quite good, but we're potentially seeking to upgrade CPU/motherboard in the future.