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Stan_Lite

Stan_Lite

Stan_Lite

Man of Honour
Man of Honour
Joined
27 Apr 2004
Posts
107,330
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In bed with your sister
My original thoughts were to build a completely new, low power machine with loads of storage as a download/storage/media server machine. I decided that, rather than buy new hardware, I'd utilise unused gear I already had. I decided on my old gaming rig which has been retired for some time now and convert it into something I could use for my server needs.

The old gaming rig specs are:

i7 950
6GB DDR3 RAM
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
Nvidia GTX295
Corsair HX 1000W PSU
500GB HDD
Cooler Master CM-690 II Lite Windowed Gaming Tower Case

All cooled with a custom watercooling loop.

e0zASJU.jpg

The intention is to use basically the same hardware but underclock and undervolt it and run it headless to cut down on power.

I bought a load of storage:

iUniGiw.jpg

6 3TB Hitachi Seagate Barracudas and a 128GB Samsung 840 PRO as an OS drive.

I made a start tonight but I was doing it quick and dirty and it just looked messy so I've decided to take the whole thing completely apart and start from scratch.
This is it looking messy :o :

7sUZsxn.jpg

There isn't any particular hurry with it but I do want to get it set up to the stage I can install the OS before 31st Jan - that's when Microsoft's £24.99 Windows 8 upgrade deal ends. I plan on installing the copy of Windows 7 already purchased for the gaming rig and upgrading to Windows 8 pro and using its 'Storage Spaces' I'll be installing the SSD as a system drive and 5 of the 6 Barracudas in parity mode (basically RAID5) and keeping one for replacing any drive that fails.

The machine will mainly be used for storage as well as downloading and decoding stuff (NZBs and stuff through Couchpotato etc.).

I'll post up some pics once I get it all dismantled and then update as I build it up again. I would start now but I'm rapidly approaching drunk and can't reaaly be arsed so I'll just have another dry martini and make plans for tomorrow :p
 
jamesfreddie said:
Are you still going to use the GTX295?
Click to expand...

Sadly, the 295 is no longer with us :( The main reason the rig was retired.

jamesfreddie said:
You would be better off selling the current pc and buying a N40L.
Click to expand...

I thought about that but, after weighing up the pros and cons, I decided I would prefer to do it this way - largely because it's much more fun :D

I've gone about as far as I can for now. Ordered some stuff today which should be delivered tomorrow. Namely; shorter SATA data cables to cut down on cabling clutter, a cheapo, fanless, low TDP graphics card and an Arctic Freezer 7 cooler. I decided that a 240 rad and watercooling loop was a bit overkill for an underclocked CPU. I do have a 120 rad but it's too thick to fit anywhere sensible. I decided, rather than buying a new rad, I'd be as well going for a cheap and quiet air cooling solution.

Pics of where I'm at now:

Just waiting for the cooler and GFX card:

PEwrn5g.jpg

140mm fan at the front to cool HDDs, 120mm at the back for vent, fan controller to keep the noise down and DVD RW installed:

2GThZEa.jpg

Cabling looking pretty tidy so far:

2QW8Dta.jpg

SSD and HDDs in place, waiting for data cables:

NAx8pEu.jpg

Should get it finished tomorrow when the rest of the stuff gets here, leaving me 2 days to get the OS installed and sorted out.

Looking into installing plex as well as SABNZBD, Couchpotato and Sickbeard.
 
Much tidier although if I were you, I would pull of each of the sata power connectors and space them out to the distance of the drives. Makes for a much neater job and is easy to do :D
Looks a great case for home server!
 
I think my only change would be to sell the i7 (seems to be rated at 130w) and swap it with an i5 3470T which only uses 35W, would likely need a new motherboard to, but that would give you onboard graphics.

Still more than enough power but much more efficient.

Out of interest have you got a power meter to see how much your is drawing? Mine is considerably lower powered (AMD E450, 4gb ram and 5x2tb drives) but it only pulls 43w at normal operation :)
 
Marvt74 said:
I think my only change would be to sell the i7 (seems to be rated at 130w) and swap it with an i5 3470T which only uses 35W, would likely need a new motherboard to, but that would give you onboard graphics.

Still more than enough power but much more efficient.

Out of interest have you got a power meter to see how much your is drawing? Mine is considerably lower powered (AMD E450, 4gb ram and 5x2tb drives) but it only pulls 43w at normal operation :)
Click to expand...

The idea was to build the rig, as much as possible, from redundant parts I had lying around. I'd rather not go through the hassle of trying to sell hardware that's 3 generations old and buying new stuff. I realise the CPU has a high TDP but, hopefully by underclocking and undervolting it, I can keep the power draw reasonable. I'm not all that bothered about the power tbh - I wouldn't be running F@H on a 3770K with 3xGTX 670s if I was :p

I've ordered a power monitor so will see what the power draw is when that arrives. I'm also interested to see how much power the Folding monster draws :o
 
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Haha that should be an interesting reading!

Yours seems a logical approach, i think sometimes people (me included) get too caught up with getting something low powered and end up spending more on "low powered" components than it would cost in extra electricity.
 
Marvt74 said:
Yours seems a logical approach, i think sometimes people (me included) get too caught up with getting something low powered and end up spending more on "low powered" components than it would cost in extra electricity.
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That was my thinking. If I sold the CPU, mobo and RAM, I might get about £160 for them (that's what similar bundles have been selling for in the MM). After postage, I might be £150 up. To buy the 3470T, mobo and RAM would probably cost me in the region of £220-£230 so I'd be £70-£80 out of pocket. It would probably take a year in electricity savings to claw that back.
 
Stan_Lite said:
That was my thinking. If I sold the CPU, mobo and RAM, I might get about £160 for them (that's what similar bundles have been selling for in the MM). After postage, I might be £150 up. To buy the 3470T, mobo and RAM would probably cost me in the region of £220-£230 so I'd be £70-£80 out of pocket. It would probably take a year in electricity savings to claw that back.
Click to expand...

Nice to see a build citing common sense! Very interesting read as I'd nor come across Couchpotato or Sickbeard - I stopped using newsgroups ages ago, but seeing that this sort of technology is now out there, I'm going to have a dig around again - they look to trump newssharks functionality somewhat!
 
Tattysnuc said:
Nice to see a build citing common sense!
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Thanks :) I've done the insanely overpowered, overpriced build thing many times, I thought it was time for a change.

Tattysnuc said:
Very interesting read as I'd nor come across Couchpotato or Sickbeard - I stopped using newsgroups ages ago, but seeing that this sort of technology is now out there, I'm going to have a dig around again - they look to trump newssharks functionality somewhat!
Click to expand...

I was introduced to Couchpotato by a friend and it's excellent. I haven't tried Sickbeard yet but the same friend assures me it's just as good.
 
As far as the build goes, I've finished the actual build and am transferring files from the NAS (transferring about 1.5TB over the network takes quite a long time). I was going to post the finished product shots but the pics I took were very poor so I'll take more once the transferring has finished and post them up. I'm quite happy with how the build has gone.

After I got the thing finished, I had the usual apprehension on first boot. "Will it boot first time?" "Have I made any schoolboy errors?" etc. No worries on that score, she booted first time and I got into the BIOS to check all the drives were working.

eKyhaOr.jpg

All was well on that front.

I hit a couple of strange snags (Windows related).

I installed the old copy of Windows 7 on the SSD as planned (had to get an activation code over the phone as it's been installed and activated a few times already). I patched Windows 7 with all the updates I could find and then went to upgrade to Windows 8 Pro. Before I did, I checked in Disk Management to make sure Windows could see all the drives. When I looked in there I saw something odd. windows had installed on the SSD as planned but, for some odd reason, it had created its 100MB reserve space on the first HDD - not what I wanted at all. Very strange.
Anyhoo, I did a bit of Googling and found a solution. I created a 100MB partition at the end of the SSD, disconnected all the other drives and booted up. Obviously, Windows wouldn't boot so I bunged in the disk and did a repair (had to do it twice) which sorted that issue out. I then connected the HDD which had been changed and booted up with a live USB with gparted and erased the partitions Windows had made on the HDD. That got that sorted.

The Windows 8 installation was a breeze and creating the storage space was equally simple. I used 5 of the 3TB drives in parity mode. Parity uses 1/3 of the drive space so I now have a 9.08TB storage space and a spare HDD for when one fails.

After that, I started transferring the files across from the NAS which is when I hit my second snag. It worked away fine for a while and then, for no apparent reason, the transfer stopped and I could no longer access the NAS. I could ping it fine and I could get into the web interface fine, I just couldn't get into the folders over the network. I tried it on my everyday machine (Windows 7) and could get into the folders easily enough. I then tried on my gaming/Folding rig (Windows 8) but couldn't access through that either. For some reason, both of my Windows 8 rigs couldn't access the folders.

Eventually, in desperation, I installed the WD software on the server PC and that brought up a new location in the network area with the ip address of the NAS as opposed to "mybooklive" as before. I can now access through that. Can't for the life of me work out what happened there but at least file transfer has been resumed.

That's where I'm at at the moment. I'm still transferring files. Once that's finished, I'll get some new photos and post them up. Next will be installing Plex, Couchpotato, Sickbeard and sabnzbd (and anything else I might need) and then working on the underclocking/undervolting to try to slim down the power draw while still maintaining an acceptable level of functionality. My power monitor has arrived so I'll be able to see how much of a difference any changes make.
 
Stan_Lite said:
I've ordered a power monitor so will see what the power draw is when that arrives. I'm also interested to see how much power the Folding monster draws :o
Click to expand...

Marvt74 said:
Haha that should be an interesting reading!
Click to expand...

Power monitor arrived today and I've bunged it on the Folding rig for a laff. It's drawing 540W at full tilt :D - less than I was expecting tbh, considering it has an overclocked 3770K and 3 overclocked GTX670s running at 100%. Also means the 1250W PSU is way over the top :o
 
coolamasta said:
Nice server build bud, what sort of I/O speeds you getting using the Windows RAID/parity set up? Can you run CrystalDiskMark as im pretty interested :)
Click to expand...

Here are the results of the test on the storage space with the parity. I just ran the utility at its default settings. If you would prefer different settings, let me know and I'll happily oblige. I'll confess to having no idea what the numbers mean. I've installed Plex and tried it out and there seems to be no issues with streaming.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 249.157 MB/s
Sequential Write : 35.322 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 38.042 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 12.751 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.711 MB/s [ 173.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.568 MB/s [ 138.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 1.133 MB/s [ 276.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.541 MB/s [ 132.1 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [E: 10.1% (939.1/9308.4 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2013/01/31 19:11:13
OS : Windows 8 Professional [6.2 Build 9200] (x64)

As a comparison, here are the results for the SSD:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.2 x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 343.795 MB/s
Sequential Write : 219.666 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 286.496 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 217.949 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 28.305 MB/s [ 6910.3 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 50.018 MB/s [ 12211.5 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 31.587 MB/s [ 7711.6 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 67.059 MB/s [ 16371.9 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 61.1% (72.8/119.1 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2013/01/31 18:36:23
OS : Windows 8 Professional [6.2 Build 9200] (x64)
 
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