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January 21, 2005

Home 1.62TB RAID project update

Ok, so yesterday I started screwing the thing together. Here is a blow by blow:

8:00pm
- Unpacked all the stuff.
- Read all the quick start guides.
- Removed case side cover. They say to just push on the button and push to the back of the case, but forget to tell you to remove the two screws in the back. Quick fix.
- Removed port plate that came with the chassis. Installed the one from the ASUS mother board.
- Removed 2 rear slot covers for the two extra port boards that come with the ASUS. Removed the two closest to the fan since they don't have PCI ports near them and PCI are not needed.
- Installed memory onto CPU. One in slot one one in slot 3. Leave the cooling covers ON with the clips!
- Installed the CPU on the motherboard. Then heat sync. I guess it doesn't really matter which side the securing lever is on, but it may as it gets crowded. I put the fan lead on the side closest to the plug on the motherboard. It wouldn't reach if it were on the otherside.
- Took all the fans out of the chassis for more room. The two by the drives are easy slide outs and two case screws and one thumb screw to remove the mounting plate. The exhaust fan is easy slide out.
- install the stand-offs in the "D" holes in the case. The case has all the holes marked with a different letter. The "D" pattern fits my ASUS ATX motherboard. Nice touch Super Micro.
- installed the motherboard with all screws provided. It is a little trick to get the ports to line up with the port cover. A couple of the cheap tabs I have to break off because they get stuck outside rather than inside where they should be.
- installed the extra firewire card in the slot closest to the fan since it had the most clearance. The Game port and 2USB card had less clearance and was hitting a couple of diodes on the MB, so had to be installed in slot 2 away from the fan to prevent conflict.
- Plugged in the various wires from these two cards to the points on the MB. The male and female parts are color coded to match so it was dead simple to not make a mistake. Good call ASUS!
- I notice with the Game Port that this is really a game motherboard but I don't mind. Hey it has 6 free RAID controllers.
- The chassis comes with a Super SATA 7 port backplane to allow you to just plug in your SATA drives using the hot swap rails and not worry about cables. VERY nice feature if you are building primarilly a storage box and worth the extra money from a standard PC box. Thanks Super MIcro! I connect this backplane to "com 2" on motherboard for control.
- Take out 6 SATA cables and plug 0 and 1 into the NVidia RAID controller and 2-5 into the Silicon Image controllers.
- Connected power to the backplane (two standard floppy/drive power plugs)
11:30pm
- try to connect the powersupply to the Motherboard. OOPS this case has a brand spank'n new 550W STX power supply with a 24 pin power connecter. The MB has a 20 pin ATX power connector. So I have to find out the difference. For a moment I think about just craming it on there (it would fit) and try powerint it up. But I see from the web that lots of plugs have been remapped and think twice about it. I hope I can buy a back-converter at Frys tomorrow. FIRST SHOW STOPPER.
12:00pm
- think about quitting for the night, but decide to press on to see if there are any other show stoppers that will require stuff to be bought at Frys.
- Start screwing in the drives to the handy dandy hot swapable rail system. Drive 0 will be the 10,000 RPM system drive. Drive 1 is the 250GB. I will leave these two separate drives probably. Drives 2-5 are the 300GB and will be RAID5.
- plugged in the LEDs from the case front to the appropriate MB power spots. I am left with Overheat, NMI Switch (what the hell is that?), HDD LED (the backplane has an LED led I already connected so I don't care), and two NIC LEDs left. Apparently SuperMIcro is pulling the old razor and razorblade trick. I bet if you used their motherboard you would have enough power points for all the LEDs they put on the front of their case. The only one I wish I could figure out is the Overheat one. I zip tie the extras up out of the way.
12:30
- installed the DVD ROM. LOVE the false rails on the bottom side. This means that with the case lying on it's side, open, you only have to unscrew two screws on the side that is up and slide out the plug. Remove the false rails from the bottom, put them on your DVD, slide it in and screw in the four screws on the top. You don't have to pick up the case and open the other side to complete the device install as you have to with some other cases. Very thoughtful SM guys!
12:45
- Ok, what am I missing? Well this case has two fans over by the drives and the MB has only one HD fan power port. So I need a splitter to power both the fans. Frys will have that. I pluged the exhaust fan into the plug for the "Power Supply" fan and wonder if that is wrong. There is a 4 hole female connector comming out of the Ablecomm SP5500-LP power supply that has three wires in it that looks like a fan power thing and I have no male connector on the MB for it. AFter some thought I bet it is the Over Heat or Power Supply Failure LED, and I think it should plug into an LED on the front pannel, but no luck. Oh, I just found this: SP550-RP Rev A, PWS-0046, 550W EPS12V Redundant Cooling PSU, for Supermicro SC742T-550 Chassis, +5V & +3V3 Combined 50A Max, +12V1 & +12V2 Combined 40A Max, +3.3V 30A, +5V 30A, +12V1 26A, +12V2 20A, -12V 0.8A, -5V 0.8A, 5Vsb 2A, 24-pin, 8-pin & 4-pin ATX Power Connectors, 5x HDD/CD & 2x FDD Power Connectors, Fan Fail/Over Temp LED, Buzzer Reset Switch, 100-240V AC In & Sanyo SanCooler 80 9A0812S401 Fan on Back of Case, 150mm W x 86mm H x 184mm D. Looks like it is a Fan Fail/Over Temp LED connector, but I can't find where to connect it.
- The exhaust fan doesn't reach the power port, so I have to remove it from it's plastic mounting rack and rotate it 180 degrees to get the lead on the other side so it will reach. Glad you can do this, good design!
12:50
done, go to fry's tomorrow.
clean up
1:00am bed

1:50pm next day:
- bought two 3 pin female to 2 male molex splitters to power all the fans. $3.95 Frys.
- bought a Universal CD ROM cable from Fry's (not included in the CDROM from NewEgg). Oh, by the way all the stuff from NEW EGG was OEM in bubble wrap with NO CABLES. $4.99 for DVD cable.
- Fry's didn' t have the 24/20 power converter
2:00pm
- ordered 24 pin power supply to 20 pin Motherboard connector from ExtremePCGear. $9.99 plus next day air for $38.19 total.
2:15
on hold for power cable.

So the new total for the system is:

Home 1.624TB RAID Server

total: $2121.01. Now I am at $1.31/ gig. still a bargin!

Posted by Martin at January 21, 2005 10:45 PM

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