Soldato
Needed a NAS box and found the current micro/mini servers or a Qnap/Synology a bit rich for me, so am putting together my own and thought I would post up here for anyone in a similar position.
Spec
CPU: Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core with HT (Kabylake) 3M cache, 54W TDP
HSF: CM Hyper 103
Motherboard: Asrock E3V5 WS
Memory: 8GB Kingston Value 2400 ECC
Boot drive: Samsung 840 PRO 128 GB
Storage Drives: 4 * 4TB Toshiba X300
PSU: Antec TruePower 650
Chassis: Silverstone CS380
Other: Asus GT640 GFX card
Planning to RAID mirror the SSD once funds allow so it can be more safely used for caching, will probably move the OS onto a USB drive on internal header at that point.
Also planning on getting a pair of Asus XG-C100C 10GbE NICs, one for this box, and the other for my main system, or failing that some second hand Mellanox Connect 10Gb SPF NICs (2 for £50) or similar.
PSU (overkill for this), display adapter, HSF, and the SSD all came out of my spares box I had in the cupboard, the 4TB X300's have all come out of my main TR system.
Anyway, some pics!
Cheapest Intel C232 chipset board I could find anywhere, its not full size ATX (full height but not width) which is perfect for my chassis, has 6 SATA ports, an Intel NIC, and with a BIOS update can take the E3-12** v5/v6 Xeon if required.
Completely unneeded addition, but I've never been a fan of the stock Intel HSFs:
Very impressed with the Silverstone CS380, very cheap, quality seems fine, and its nice and compact for a full ATX capable tower. You get 8 hotwswap bays that can take either 2.5" or 3.5" drives, and there's 2 x 5.25 bays as well, allowing the addition of extra hotswap capacity for 3 x 3.5" drives or 8 to 12 x 2.5" drives.
Front door seems sturdy enough, with a magnet to help keep it closed if not locked, you can also move a slider to the up position on the inside of the door to prevent the power button being pressed without having the door open. You'll find 2 USB3 ports behind the front door which is handy if you have a large amount of data to upload via 'sneakernet'
In this image you can see the backplane - its quite a cheap looking affair, but is neatly soldered, be careful if mounting a full width motherboard in this chassis - it would be quite easy to catch one of the capacitors with the edge of the board if not being attentive enough during installation. Each tray has its own SAS/SATA port on the back of backplane, 2 molex connectors provide power, and the fans for cooling the drive cage can be both be plugged into the provided 3 pin fan headers for a nice neat installation.
I had 2 spare PSU's to choose from, the Antec HCG is much newer than the Truepower, but is non modular, and is a much lower quality unit internally, but I tested both on a PSU tester to help with the decision. If funds had allowed I would have purchased a decent quality 300/350w Seasonic - but for now one of these will be fine
PSU tester showed several errors on the HCG - which made the decision much easier!
Good old Truepower passed - so I gave it decent clean and installed it first
Then installed the motherboard - you can really see how narrow a board the Asrock is, case might allowed the installation of boards upto CEB, though it would be very tight.
I added some extension cables for the 8 and 24 Pin power connectors to allow a neater installation, plenty of space to play with behind the motherboard tray to get things hidden away
And that's as far as I've got for now, having realised only after installation that this board has arrived with a v1 BIOS - so have been waiting in for a Celeron G3900 to show up today so I can flash the BIOS with a newer one that supports Kabylake.
Updates to follow!
Spec
CPU: Pentium G4560 3.5GHz Dual-Core with HT (Kabylake) 3M cache, 54W TDP
HSF: CM Hyper 103
Motherboard: Asrock E3V5 WS
Memory: 8GB Kingston Value 2400 ECC
Boot drive: Samsung 840 PRO 128 GB
Storage Drives: 4 * 4TB Toshiba X300
PSU: Antec TruePower 650
Chassis: Silverstone CS380
Other: Asus GT640 GFX card
Planning to RAID mirror the SSD once funds allow so it can be more safely used for caching, will probably move the OS onto a USB drive on internal header at that point.
Also planning on getting a pair of Asus XG-C100C 10GbE NICs, one for this box, and the other for my main system, or failing that some second hand Mellanox Connect 10Gb SPF NICs (2 for £50) or similar.
PSU (overkill for this), display adapter, HSF, and the SSD all came out of my spares box I had in the cupboard, the 4TB X300's have all come out of my main TR system.
Anyway, some pics!
Cheapest Intel C232 chipset board I could find anywhere, its not full size ATX (full height but not width) which is perfect for my chassis, has 6 SATA ports, an Intel NIC, and with a BIOS update can take the E3-12** v5/v6 Xeon if required.
Completely unneeded addition, but I've never been a fan of the stock Intel HSFs:
Very impressed with the Silverstone CS380, very cheap, quality seems fine, and its nice and compact for a full ATX capable tower. You get 8 hotwswap bays that can take either 2.5" or 3.5" drives, and there's 2 x 5.25 bays as well, allowing the addition of extra hotswap capacity for 3 x 3.5" drives or 8 to 12 x 2.5" drives.
Front door seems sturdy enough, with a magnet to help keep it closed if not locked, you can also move a slider to the up position on the inside of the door to prevent the power button being pressed without having the door open. You'll find 2 USB3 ports behind the front door which is handy if you have a large amount of data to upload via 'sneakernet'
In this image you can see the backplane - its quite a cheap looking affair, but is neatly soldered, be careful if mounting a full width motherboard in this chassis - it would be quite easy to catch one of the capacitors with the edge of the board if not being attentive enough during installation. Each tray has its own SAS/SATA port on the back of backplane, 2 molex connectors provide power, and the fans for cooling the drive cage can be both be plugged into the provided 3 pin fan headers for a nice neat installation.
I had 2 spare PSU's to choose from, the Antec HCG is much newer than the Truepower, but is non modular, and is a much lower quality unit internally, but I tested both on a PSU tester to help with the decision. If funds had allowed I would have purchased a decent quality 300/350w Seasonic - but for now one of these will be fine
PSU tester showed several errors on the HCG - which made the decision much easier!
Good old Truepower passed - so I gave it decent clean and installed it first
Then installed the motherboard - you can really see how narrow a board the Asrock is, case might allowed the installation of boards upto CEB, though it would be very tight.
I added some extension cables for the 8 and 24 Pin power connectors to allow a neater installation, plenty of space to play with behind the motherboard tray to get things hidden away
And that's as far as I've got for now, having realised only after installation that this board has arrived with a v1 BIOS - so have been waiting in for a Celeron G3900 to show up today so I can flash the BIOS with a newer one that supports Kabylake.
Updates to follow!
