Long time no see. Upgrade time.

Blimey. Remember when I asked for some luck? well I got it. I had to pay for it in annoyance, though.

Those 40mm fans were not what I thought they were. No, they were 24v, and refuse to even spin with less than 17v in ffs. I never even knew that was a thing, but apparently 3d printers use them so I hate 3d printers even more now :D

I had to get a buck boost converter. Say that when you have had 3 super Tenants.

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I took the server apart, and the 3 40mm fans in the hot swap planes had basically spewed their oil everywhere. I then found that there are 22 screws in each bay just to get the old fans out :( And then 12 x 4 to fit the drives. Needless to say I spent the entire day with a screwdriver in hand.

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Now you may be wondering where the fans went. Well, two of the 3 Arctic slims had decided to just up and die. As such one of my mech drives was hanging on for dear life in there.

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I only lost about 8 FLAC files so it wasn't terrible. I have now set up the 12 in ZFS 2, which gives me 10tb unformatted and two for spares in case any die. So I can lose two before that happens. However, I have a pair of old hardly used 1tb surveillance drives I bought from OCUK years ago. So those will go in to replace the dead drive and the 3tb sitting next to it, and also be used in case of a failure.
I then needed some fans, and realised that I should not be mean when it comes to said fans, given this thing is up for two to three weeks at a time with no rest.

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Two of those. And, one of these for the CPU cooler.

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My keyboard and new mouse are amazing.

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I also realised why the key caps are £60. Because they are gradient lit and the letters and numbers are shine through gradient also. So are the caps in their entirety, meaning it looks awful pretty in the dark.

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Stoked with that. I then cleaned up the caps on the Hunstman Elite but they were still very shiny from many years of use. Loathe to throw away a £200 board I bought these. I did not want to buy replacements in black and fancied something a bit better.

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So I will have a fully cleaned and re capped replacement. Or, just a board to change out with every now and then. I'm also as thick as two pieces of poo because I never realised that for 6 years I have been using my mouse pad/wireless charging coil etc all wrong. The reason why it pushed my keyboard left is because I had it sideways, not the way it was supposed to be oriented. I always wondered why the cable came out the side and not the top, and why the logo was not the correct way around.

Derp.
 
24v is usually an industrial spec - CNC, control systems, servos, steppers, that sort of thing. Hence why it's common in 3D printers. Noctua started doing those a while back but I thought only in grey....maybe I'm out of date. Think they also do some 5V stuff too....just so you're aware!
Mousepad: well, to be fair, every single other mousepad I've ever seen has been landscape rather than portrait because at least 99.9% of all monitors are set up in landscape orientation.
 
Funny thing is with PUBG you need more height than width with the mouse because you’re continually pulling down due to recoil.

So it would have actually helped.

Fans are coming today though I expect them to move the goal post on times and it will come at 10pm.

Off back to mums tomorrow. Will finish the design of the wood and carbon bits then and once the room has been winter readied and scrubbed I will begin machining parts.

The server won’t take much now. An hour at best I reckon.
 
Just made a great discovery. I thought I had used all of the slots on my server board. Well, desktop board I use in the server. I realised I have a free x1 slot. Result ! I only want a 2.5gb card in the server and the desktop I use to send data onto it. Everything else is read only stream. So I got two Intel based cards, as TrueNAS doesn't like the Realtek based ones.

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And a switch. Again, no point going ham as only two things will use it.

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Router's not really relevant to your in-house speed as it'll just hang off the switch and run at a gig. Obviously if there's an entirely different reason for needing one, fair dues.
You could run 10 gig off that switch to your PC and server too. The SFP slots you can fill with:

  • 10GBase-T. Normal RJ45 connection like you're used to. Expensive though (better part of a ton a piece) and you'd need 4 of them too unless you have network cards with RJ45 ports that are more expensive too.
  • 10GBase-SR. Fibre connection. You'd need 4 of them (PC, Server, two for switch) and two fibre patch cables. Much cheaper at about a tenner a piece. Network card with SFP+ port (cheaper)
  • 10G DAC. Direct Attach Cable. Basically a copper cable with a plug on each end that looks like the slot. Simple, quite cheap, short distances only (<10m). Network card with SFP+ port.

You know me, in for a 2.5, in for a tenner! :D
 
I can't run 10gb. The server only has an X1 slot, hence why I have now bought two cards and a switch. Anything over 5gb needs more than X1, and 5gb cards are notoriously hated by Truenas. Do I need to change the Modem router thing (NowTV) to get the 2.5gb speed? that is what I need to know. And if so, can you email me reccs. I'm ok with cards and switches but past that I know sod all.

Edit. Reason is the board in the server now is a B560? Intel. So it is a desktop board. Two X16 lanes (both full with SAS cards) and two X1. One has the GPU on a mining riser as it would not boot without it, and the last one will take a 2.5gb NIC. Obviously in the gaming PC it will be easier. It may even have 2.5gb in it already on the board I will have to check. Will save some aggro, as I will have to fudge it vertically behind the GPU. Oh joy.

Oh mang, awesome !

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ALXAndy said:
Do I need to change the Modem router thing (NowTV) to get the 2.5gb speed?
Click to expand...
Nope. As long as you connect the server, PC and router to the 2.5Gbps switch, everything will get the highest speed it's capable of. You can still use any spare 1Gbps ports on the router to plug in other devices but that device will have a max speed of 1Gbps.

Ah, makes sense with the lack of PCIE - if it's not slots lacking, it's lanes.
Onboard 2.5Gbps also makes sense. Would like it higher on my next board to be honest...but not so keen to pay £700+ for such a board.
 
It’s handy for me because I can use the spare in the TV PC. Well, if it doesn’t have 2.5gb.

I doubt it tbh. It’s a low end Z690 and was only £230 or so new. Whereas the Tachyon cost well north of 3 times that RRP, not the £199 I paid. It was new too.

It’s not important though as I only play single player on it any way.

Yeah the board in the server was also cheap as chips. I had a spare 11400 F lying around which beats the crap out of the Ivy I5 I had in there. Which couldn’t stream 4k MKVs.
 
OK so finally we are back to this. Bear in mind I already have some 5mm silver. Also bear in mind I bought three RGB 8 LED rings to go in the flow meters. I have a fourth, but decided to get another. So instead of just making a really nice looking panel with wood and carbon in I decided to get a sheet of this.

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I am going to put that behind the 5mm silver. I will then CNC out pockets for the RGB rings. I also got a larger one to go at the bottom. Won't make much sense until I go grab my travel drive and upload a template of how it will be. I can explain it all more then. For now though, here is some filthy smexy slutty carbon for your pleasure.

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srs, it was like the old days of Ali where things took a month to arrive. I reckon they had to basically make it for the order and it took ages.
 
OK so this part was done yesterday at home. It uses the exact measurements of the stack inside.

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Do note I have not put in the connecting pieces yet. I got the dimensions of each piece from Bitspower's site, and yeah we have a copy of the res and flow meters. I need to now make connecting pieces to make it one entire piece. However, before that I designed the areas that will be carved into for the wood and carbon to go. This should make it easier to understand.

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OK, so now imagine that piece with the connecting pieces in place (to mimic the water fittings and connectors) in 5mm silver acrylic, with carbon and wood pieces cut to go in the carve outs.

There. I hope that makes sense. What I now need to go into though is that there will be a piece behind that in 5mm opal, connected behind it. In that I will carve out 5 circles for the LEDs to go in. It will then be screwed together from behind, kinda like a plate res. Basically? this is my "dry run" of creating just that. If it is successful then maybe, just maybe, I will finally get around to making "Fake Plastic Trees". We shall see.
 
OK so I just vernier measured the 8 lamp LED rings. Those are now in the design for the opal back piece.

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I don't have the 12 LED one to hand for the bottom yet as I only ordered it earlier. However, the job now is to create channels for the wiring to sit in. As I literally want one connector coming out somewhere and that is it. Oh and add the pilot holes for the screws, too.
 
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The wire channels are in. Unfortunately they don't give an ID for the 12 LED ring, so I will have to put that in when it arrives. Other than that though that part is done.
 
OK the silver is machining as I type this. Really, REALLY loudly. I forgot how noisy larger bits are. 2.5 hours. Otherwise it would have been like, 6. Thankfully this piece is by far the largest hardest piece to do. Mum is out on Friday, so hopefully the opal will arrive before then and I can crack that out then. To machine the carbon itself I will take the machine into the loft. It's floored out and lino so I can wear a mask. Last thing I want to do is fill the air in my bedroom with carbon dust lmao.
 
OK so what actually happened. Around half way through (so about 1.5 hours in, 2.5 total my bum) the peel on the acrylic was starting to clog the bit. Not only that, but it was lifting up and I was scared it would catch the bit. So I started trying to peel it. And, I pulled too hard and knocked the bit off axis, nearly ruining the entire thing.

Just after that I tried to zero the machine and removed all of the jobs it had done but it was not where it was the first time. Ugh. Thankfully I noticed this before it had done any damage, and went back and put the bit where it should have been. The result is what you see above.

The next job is also a biggun. Machining the LED opal piece. However, lessons were learned. So it should be way less scary. It's also only half the machine time too, which is nice. The carbon and wood? will only take about 30 mins each, if that.
 
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