Home server case, what to do?

[IvanIvanovich]

I need a good ATX case, that dosen't look childish, has at least 6 3.5 hdd mounts with 8-12 being better yet which does NOT have a bunch of useless 5.25 bays (none at all would be ideal), isn't made like a tin can or with lots of plastic, and doesn't cost a ****ing fortune ($150 or less)... which is not gigantic. does this even exist? help?
Essentially I am looking for an ATX version of the Lian Li PC-Q26... that case is like perfection except being for itx.

BLAH BLAH BLAH

More

So, I am currently running out of space and options in my current set up and can't seem to come to a decision on a course of action.
Current build: Lian Li PCQ08, Zotac H67CE, Pentium G620, 2x 4GB memory, 3x 2TB parity array1 (nearly full!), 3x 4TB parity array2 (75% full), 50GB SSD os drive. I also have some other stuff on a 2nd machine (that really needs to go away!) which is a much older core2 duo itx with 2 other 2TB drives approaching fullness.
I had originally planned to upgrade the parity arrays to include journaling ssd (parity arrays without them write speed is SO SLOW!) and had bought a SAS 6gbps 8x card to give me the extra ports to do so, and cram the ssds into a 4x 2.5 to 5.25 bay adapter. This is still possible of course.  It looks like I also really need to replace those smaller 2TB drives with 4TB or even 6TB to be more 'future proof'.

Now, I also have just upgraded my main rig to x79 with a hex core Xeon and 16Gb memory, so I now could move my P55 with Xeon x3460 and 8GB ram down to server duties. But I will have to buy another ATX case, and probably PSU so I can sell on the above ITX setup without the data drives as a full system... But, I am having a hard time finding cases I like that have adequate 3.5 drive bays (at least 9 would be ideal) and are within a reasonable price. The biggest pro of this of course is having the extra pci-e slots to add additional cards and such, like the ability to use a 4x msata to pci-e cards for caching drives and reduce much cable mess from more drives. This cpu will be much better for jobs I run like transcoding or etc than the g620 obviously also. I do tend to run some things like that on my server rather than my main workstation since that is where it's going to be stored and I don't want my main pc tied up doing that crap.

Third option... sell everything besides my data drives, then buy something like an Asus P9A-I/C2750/SAS/4L, Lian Li PC-Q26, another 3x 4TB or 6TB, 6x 24-64GB ssds (2 needed for each parity array, price to performance/durability bigger isn't always better for caching). This option would be the most expensive but is closer to what I really want, but I have a suspicion I would have a hard time covering the costs even after selling all of the above older hardware.


Now really, a lot of this is kind of overkill for home server, and is more about wants than actual needs... Now I 'could' probably delete some things and make some room, and I could keep dealing with the 30-50mb/s writes from the parity arrays (single drives used to hit the 160's MB/s for writes so it's a HUGE difference)... but I don't really want to do those things anymore. I also 'could' just get one of those multibay esata port multiplier enclosures and attach to my main system too... but I don't really like that idea too much and not having a 2nd computer for a back up in case the worst happens is terrible consideration.
Am I totally crazy here? I can't make up my mind really. What would you do?

[tp4tissue]

I'll sell you one of my proliants for $2500 out the door..

After buying 2 of them, i've realized that it's way more machine than I can possibly use..

x7460 cpu

6 core per cpu

4x cpu,

24core total

128gb ram

4x 900 watt redundunt PSU

includes fiberops card if you want to buy your own storage later..

[IvanIvanovich]

Hahah. I don't plan on opening a data center any time soon. Something like that is so far beyond my needs and I have a very strong dislike for rack kit in general since it's usually a loud as a death metal concert.

[tp4tissue]

Hahah. I don't plan on opening a data center any time soon. Something like that is so far beyond my needs and I have a very strong dislike for rack kit in general since it's usually a loud as a death metal concert.

Hell yea it's loud.. m0re loud = m0re fast.

[TacticalCoder]

...(single drives used to hit the 160's MB/s for writes so it's a HUGE difference)...

Silly question but curiosity killed the cat ; )

At 160 MB/s for writes, isn't the network the bottleneck? Where does the data come from and how?

I can't help you: I don't have needs for fast transfer at home so since years I simply rent dedicated servers located in data centers and fetch what I need when I need it- (and I'm obviously not hitting 50 MB/s, let alone 160 over my kinda slowish Internet connection ; )  So I only take care of the software setup of these servers while the data center takes care of the hardware.

[IvanIvanovich]

Internal write speeds used to hit 160s... over the network yes I am hampered by the gig-E, but still used to max out and hit 120MB/s between local computers. My router is top notch speed wise for gig-E. In any case now I am hampered hard by the parity penalty with storagespaces. Writes take ages in comparison... like minutes and stuff often at a measly 20MB/s.
I work on large files quite a bit, and I use scratch space to create them, then move them onto my parity array for archiving. I suppose I am just impatient and hate waiting for things when they are unnecessarily slow.

If I would have been rolling in money I might have gotten some nice sas card with proper hardware parity cpu and ram cache... but on the other hand I like the idea of storagespaces not being tied to anything specific and they are theoretically easy to move from machine to machine with wildly different hardware. I've been burned in the past with raid cards dying and it have done something non standard to the disk formatting making it impossible to mount on anything else.

[IvanIvanovich]

If anyone happens to even be interested...
What I end up doing is keeping my evga p55 and Xeon x3460. I have gotten an old Sun Ultra 20 M2 for $14.25, which after gutting it and adding some additional drive cages and some other minor mods I think will make an excellent case. I will be also putting in my perc h310 sas card flashed to hba mode to run my storagespaces arrays. I'll use a mushkin chronos dx 240GB I had laying around for the Server 2012 OS drive. I picked up some old samsung 470 128GB for very cheap that I intend to put to use as journaling ssd for my parity arrays to speed up the write performance. I also picked up for cheap a VelociRaptor WD2500HHTZ which I intend to mate with my 50gb mushkin atlas on my asmedia msata pci-e + sata port card as a cache drive for it and use that for scratch/temp space. I'll be tossing in my old quadro fx1800 so I can hook up my display if I ever need to logon to the actual machine for any reason, and I figure I may be able to use it's cuda capabilities in some way. I got a new CORSAIR CS450M PSU to run it all.

Now just waiting for some of the pieces to turn up... it's been 'rough' living without my server for the past week or so since I now don't have access to my data/media.

[heedpantsnow]

Cool. Where'd you find the old Sun?  I used to work on one of those back in the day in college. Pretty sweet at the time.

I loved Bitcasa until they screwed us all with their rate hike...had all my data/media uploaded so if my server was ever down I still had access to everything. Just slower but no big deal really.

[tp4tissue]

that's an opteron...  pretty weak by today's standards.. half the ipc and it also eats mucho power for how much it can crank out...

[rowdy]

I would have killed, or at least severely maimed, for one of those Suns back in the day.

[IvanIvanovich]

I got the Ultra 20 M2 on ebay from 'greencitizen' which seems to often have some really ludicrously low prices on a lot of stuff. I don't care at all about the motherboard and CPU... I will be pulling that old stuff out to install my p55 and xeon and will likely give the opty and it's motherboard away for free since I have no use for it whatsoever. I just wanted the case really... I've liked the way that case looks for a long time and it saved me a bundle of money since any other case I like that would be suitable is over $100.
10 Years ago I would have loved that opty too... but now it's just old junk. I think a current Atom could easily match it performance but with 1/10 the power consumption.

While I do appreciate the cloud for some things... I have way to much data, something like 14TB, for that to even be remotely feasible. It would probably take years to upload it all with my crummy 1mbps up.

[tp4tissue]

so you bought it for the back plane?

LOL..  I guess there arn't too many drive backplane systems @ this price..

Buh.... I question the necessity of the backplane, since you're not actually running a system where drive swapping will occur often..


For example. the recent p280 I swapped into yesterday for my downstairs box, it has slots for 6 bottom hdd, 2 ssds, and 3 top hdd via 5" converter..

I have 9 hdd and 2 ssd total in this swap I just did..

Yea the wires are a pain the first time.. But I've only had to do it once in 5 years.. 

[IvanIvanovich]

No, I bought it for the case literally. Just the case. Only the 40 series have the nice 8x drive hotswaps.

Everything else will be taken out including the useless 2 drive hotswap backplane (which won't come with the drive trays anyhow) that comes with the 20 models. It's too small and will just be in the way. I'll be modding in 2x 4 drive 3.5" bays with 120mm fans attached to front. I'll also be chucking the optical drive and putting 4x 2.5" cage there and VFD in front for lulz since I have one laying around and it will cover up the hole in front left by the dvd drive nicely.

[rowdy]

Sun made some nice hardware back in the day.

[IvanIvanovich]

Yeah they did. I still want to grab something with sparc one of these days, just to fool around with for fun... maybe make into a router/firewall or something.

[samwisekoi]

If only you could find somewhere to buy a matching Sun keyboard...

(All joking aside, very nice rig.  Please post pics or a  build log!)

 - Ron | samwisekoi
Sig auto-typed by my GH36 LH keypad.

[IvanIvanovich]

Hehe. It'll be running headless 99% naturally. Maybe I will make some picture like before and after or something. Probably won't take the time to heavily document modding. I plan on painting it and stuff...

[tp4tissue]

Hehe. It'll be running headless 99% naturally. Maybe I will make some picture like before and after or something. Probably won't take the time to heavily document modding. I plan on painting it and stuff...

if you paint it, it won't have the logo..

[dorkvader]

Sun made some nice hardware back in the day.

check the busbars on this sunblade 1000 PSU. 90A on 3.3v and 75A on 5v. OEM'd by sony.

[IvanIvanovich]

So after determining my modding ideas for the Ultra 20 are NOT going to work... I am once again in search of a nice case.

[kmiller8]

I picked up an NZXT Source 210 for $25 a while back, plan on putting 11 drives in it by using a 2x 5.25 to 3x 3.5 adapter + BD drive.

[HPE1000]

I picked up an NZXT Source 210 for $25 a while back, plan on putting 11 drives in it by using a 2x 5.25 to 3x 3.5 adapter + BD drive.

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Hope that board doesn't die on you, I had two die, they were pretty nice though. :/

[kmiller8]

Hope that board doesn't die on you, I had two die, they were pretty nice though. :/

The motherboard or the 8x pcie card?

[HPE1000]

Hope that board doesn't die on you, I had two die, they were pretty nice though. :/

The motherboard or the 8x pcie card?

Motherboard. I looked at newegg and it seems like other people had that problem as well.

asrock treated me like garbage and pretty much told me they were going to deny any further RMA requests unless I sent them my whole computer for them to check. Never again.

[kmiller8]

Motherboard. I looked at newegg and it seems like other people had that problem as well.

asrock treated me like garbage and pretty much told me they were going to deny any further RMA requests unless I sent them my whole computer for them to check. Never again.

weird, I've had this board almost 3 years now, no problems with it.

womp womp

[HPE1000]

Motherboard. I looked at newegg and it seems like other people had that problem as well.

asrock treated me like garbage and pretty much told me they were going to deny any further RMA requests unless I sent them my whole computer for them to check. Never again.

weird, I've had this board almost 3 years now, no problems with it.

womp womp

lucky

I got an MSI board after and it has been solid for over 2 years so far. I don't like it as much though, not as many features and the bios is pretty bad in comparison.

[tp4tissue]

I picked up an NZXT Source 210 for $25 a while back, plan on putting 11 drives in it by using a 2x 5.25 to 3x 3.5 adapter + BD drive.

Show Image

I was gonna get the source for my other computer upstairs.. but it's much harder to get the wires out of the way because the mounting bracket..

With cases like the p280,  it's much easier to get the wires out of sight.

the draw back is p280 is really wide...

[kmiller8]

I was gonna get the source for my other computer upstairs.. but it's much harder to get the wires out of the way because the mounting bracket..

With cases like the p280,  it's much easier to get the wires out of sight.

the draw back is p280 is really wide...

Show Image

Yeah, this case was a bit of a pain to work with, but for $25 shipped, there is literally nothing better, and it fit my need exactly.

[IvanIvanovich]

Source 210 isn't a terrible case, especially when they were in that $25ish price point... but now they are back up in the $45-55 range not so much. For just a bit more I could go for the 230, which at least i wouldn't have to look at the 5.25 bays LOL. If I hop up a few steps, the H440 is on sale for $110. I suppose it probably hits most of my wants...
I wish I would have bid higher on that Lian Li TYR that was on ebay. It was a little larger than I like really, but at least it was only tall... not deep. Ended up being only $100, but I was trying to be cheap )

[tp4tissue]

Source 210 isn't a terrible case, especially when they were in that $25ish price point... but now they are back up in the $45-55 range not so much. For just a bit more I could go for the 230, which at least i wouldn't have to look at the 5.25 bays LOL. If I hop up a few steps, the H440 is on sale for $110. I suppose it probably hits most of my wants...
I wish I would have bid higher on that Lian Li TYR that was on ebay. It was a little larger than I like really, but at least it was only tall... not deep. Ended up being only $100, but I was trying to be cheap )

I used to give a damn about "the look"..   eventually  I realized.. well.. the ONLY person that's ever going to see this thing is ME....

Optimize for air flow and quietude, and call it a day.

[IvanIvanovich]

That is true... I am the only one that would have to see it everyday, but I don't like to look at **** that appears heinous. For example... I would never buy something like this:

even if it were dirt cheap and functionally sufficient.

[tp4tissue]

That is true... but I don't like to look at **** that appears heinous. For example... I would never buy something like this:

Show Image

even if it were dirt cheap and functionally sufficient.

I would buy that...  HAHAHAHA..

But I would run it without the front plastic..  and drill 2 holes in the front for sanwa buttons for On and Reset

The tank is cool imho..

[kmiller8]

Source 210 isn't a terrible case, especially when they were in that $25ish price point... but now they are back up in the $45-55 range not so much. For just a bit more I could go for the 230, which at least i wouldn't have to look at the 5.25 bays LOL. If I hop up a few steps, the H440 is on sale for $110. I suppose it probably hits most of my wants...
I wish I would have bid higher on that Lian Li TYR that was on ebay. It was a little larger than I like really, but at least it was only tall... not deep. Ended up being only $100, but I was trying to be cheap )

What about a Fractal Design R4? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352021

[IvanIvanovich]

Sure, I will put that on my list... not bad when on sale price.

[tp4tissue]

Source 210 isn't a terrible case, especially when they were in that $25ish price point... but now they are back up in the $45-55 range not so much. For just a bit more I could go for the 230, which at least i wouldn't have to look at the 5.25 bays LOL. If I hop up a few steps, the H440 is on sale for $110. I suppose it probably hits most of my wants...
I wish I would have bid higher on that Lian Li TYR that was on ebay. It was a little larger than I like really, but at least it was only tall... not deep. Ended up being only $100, but I was trying to be cheap )

What about a Fractal Designs R4? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352021

Way too expensive for what it is..

and it's actually a very cramp case.. at least compared to the p280..

in the p280, i could put an entire 120mm cpu cooler UNDER my graphics card..

no way you can do that in most cases..  You need a case with at least 9 expansion slots...

Very few such cases come as budgetted as the p280

There's alotta hype around the fractal r4.... mostly by n00bers who don't know what they're talking about..

Saying things like.. ooo it's silent, well designed.. etc.. 

It's really NOT silent at all.. and the design is no better than any modern case with drive trays.   

P280 onsale + rebate is ~ 50-60

Fractal r4 usually $70-90   **** fractal..

[kmiller8]

Also this, lol

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352047

[tp4tissue]

Also this, lol

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352047

This case takes up as much space as 2 cases.. because of how wide it is..

And it's very poor for Drive cooling..

It also mounts the drives Vertically..

That is bad for the drives..  because the drives will spin like the tires on your bike..

The forces will rock the drive back and forth..  as the tires keep you upright while biking.


they'll also run slightly louder,  with increased error rates due to the rocking,  etc..

the error rates issue is electronically compensated for..  but that doesn't change the fact that vertical orientation causes MORE of this..



you CAN run modern drives vertical but why, when there's really no-upside-in-doing-it.

[IvanIvanovich]

I've seen a LOT of complaints about Antec build quality lately, seems it's taken a huge nosedive and they have been cheaping out and using thin crappy metal now, like those awful $15 cases.
Fractal seems kind of hit and miss... the node is something I would consider a gigantic miss. The Array was so much nicer.

Hard drives are fine in any orientation, as long as they are level. It's when you try and mount them at odd angles where it's bad for the motor. Drives are best to run in the 30-40c range actually for longest life span. It's been proven time and time again with data center data... and guess how most servers mount hdd? Yep, vertically for more density in racks.

[tp4tissue]

I've seen a LOT of complaints about Antec build quality lately, seems it's taken a huge nosedive and they have been cheaping out and using thin crappy metal now, like those awful $15 cases.
Fractal seems kind of hit and miss... the node is something I would consider a gigantic miss. The Array was so much nicer.

Hard drives are fine in any orientation, as long as they are level. It's when you try and mount them at odd angles where it's bad for the motor. Drives are best to run in the 30-40c range actually for longest life span. It's been proven time and time again with data center data... and guess how most servers mount hdd? Yep, vertically for more density in racks.

Servers do vertical because they're at a constraint for space..  and they don't care about errors because they've got redundancies and good array cards..

Level is always good, but it does not change the fact that when you have a wheel spinning vertically, it WILL try to rock the drive back and forth..

[heedpantsnow]

Also this, lol

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352047

This case takes up as much space as 2 cases.. because of how wide it is..

And it's very poor for Drive cooling..

It also mounts the drives Vertically..

That is bad for the drives..  because the drives will spin like the tires on your bike..

The forces will rock the drive back and forth..  as the tires keep you upright while biking.


they'll also run slightly louder,  with increased error rates due to the rocking,  etc..

the error rates issue is electronically compensated for..  but that doesn't change the fact that vertical orientation causes MORE of this..



you CAN run modern drives vertical but why, when there's really no-upside-in-doing-it.

Case fans care about orientation, but drives typically don't. There was a white paper by Google on drive failure vs orientation, no correlation.

[tp4tissue]

Also this, lol

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811352047

This case takes up as much space as 2 cases.. because of how wide it is..

And it's very poor for Drive cooling..

It also mounts the drives Vertically..

That is bad for the drives..  because the drives will spin like the tires on your bike..

The forces will rock the drive back and forth..  as the tires keep you upright while biking.


they'll also run slightly louder,  with increased error rates due to the rocking,  etc..

the error rates issue is electronically compensated for..  but that doesn't change the fact that vertical orientation causes MORE of this..



you CAN run modern drives vertical but why, when there's really no-upside-in-doing-it.

Case fans care about orientation, but drives typically don't. There was a white paper by Google on drive failure vs orientation, no correlation.

Just because they Found no correlation doesn't change the Physics of the matter..


All they can determine from their data, is that whatever's killing the drives is something OTHER than the orientation..


that doesn't mean the orientation is irrelevant,  only that something else Killed their drives faster..

sigh...

[heedpantsnow]

Edit: nvm. Tp4 you are smarter than me and smarter than google's engineers so there's no point in arguing.

[tp4tissue]

Edit: nvm. Tp4 you are smarter than me and smarter than google's engineers so there's no point in arguing.

....