Laithan

The 140mm fan isn't doing a good enough job for the controllers so I am going to add this Delta 60mm fan directly on the spot. LSI 9271 cards (most LSI cards) are really undercooled...they will overheat without some kind of cooling.. but they perform excellent so as long as you're aware they are a great choice. I'll post some benchmarks once I get Winderz installed. https://www.delta-fan.com/AFC0612D-SP07.html ​ I guess I never really showed the controller so here's a couple pics with the battery backup and the cachecade 2.0 chip installed. http://www.ssdworks.com/MegaRAID-SAS-9271-8i.asp If you have the room, this is a great fan (I use them on all my LSI cards) and is the "proper" one https://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Cooling...YAAOSwxu5ZOB81 Intel 10GB https://www.silicom-usa.com/pr/serve...erver-adapter/

I cleaned up some of the wires as best as I could and bending some things uncomfortably I've also got both RAID controller batteries installed. The fan for the cards are just an insurance policy as the 10GB nic and especially the LSI controllers get quite toasty.

Nope, that would not be a good day... I weighed it with the drives and NIC installed and it is just about 60lbs total. Of course as soon as I installed the fan for the cards I remember that I didn't plug in the HDD led for the controller lol. The array is initializing now.. All that remains for the build itself is a single fan, should be in Monday or Tuesday. I managed to brute force the chrome fan guard on to the CPU fan because there is just something about chrome and beige lol. Comparison of the old fans and the replacement A9

Ty. It sure is nerve racking More so than ever this time, if I had to troubleshoot, both drive bays would have to come out (they cannot just slide forward) and getting the 10 sata cables plugged in when they are on the bottom of the enclosures wasn't joyful the first time.. I am not looking to ever revisit that again. <No Jynx!> Ty. Oh I'm not sitting anywhere near this thing . I have a small rack in my basement with my network/server gear (You can see some pics here). These Delta fans wouldn't be the loudest fans I have lol. The rack fans (two on top and two on bottom) are beasts and are running 100% 24/7. I have the Deltas using Q-Fan (which I don't like) so they are not running at full load all the time and should only ramp up when temps get higher. I have to do some experimenting with this however I understand that once in the O/S (windows) I should be able to define a custom fan curve. One of those features I just never paid any attention to but have had it on dozens of boards. One of the interesting things I didn't anticipate is the weight of this server. Without any drives installed in the bays it is easily 40-50lbs (I should actually weight it somehow). The entire case is flexing considerably if I attempt to pick it up. I would think that 60Lbs would be a low estimate when fully loaded. Due to this reason I had to install some additional support on the rack to hold the extra weight lol. EDIT: I weighed it and with only 2 drives installed it is 46Lbs

Very close now, just have to replace the CPU cooler fans and a few more items. This was a puzzle for sure as everything had a specific order and so many things barely fit! The good news is that the system booted right up and everything was detected. Woo-hoo.

No show-stoppers yet however I now have an army of cables to attempt to put somewhere... lol

Hmm that's not bad at all. So you're not going through a fiber switch? Thank you. I'm very much looking forward to your results. The card looks amazing. I wonder if you can boot from it also?

Come to find out, things are getting even tighter, you'll see in the next update. I was glad that I got that Zotac GPU because just about any other GPU would not have fit. The drive cage fans are massive about double the thickness of a standard fan so I have only a little bit past the PCIe slots. Usually I will run my O/C at full boost all the time (all cores) and temps are managed based upon workload but this motherboard has an EPU feature that I'm going to look into and also see if I get the CPU stable with speedstep and power management enabled since it will be running 24x7. It makes the O/C a bit more challenging but I think I'll be fine since I'm targeting a modest 4Ghz. https://www.asus.com/support/FAQ/1036401 I really like that case also and I had considered it. It reminds me a lot of a dell rack mount chassis and has a nice clean look to it. Rosewill is hit or miss but usually when they hit, they knock it out of the park. I haven't really experienced storage over 10GB+ in my home lab, only 1GB (NFS) where it honestly wasn't very impressive. I am curious how well it would actually perform with benchmarks like ATTO over the wire. A lot of the used equipment like the EMC NS-120s are dog slow but tick all the checkboxes on paper. Good 10GB NICs are still $150.. We seem to be waaaay overdue for an industry standard bump to 10GB, it's still treated like it was just invented yesterday.. EDIT: I looked it up, the standard for 10GB ethernet was defined in 2002... 18 years ago... and only now are motherboards starting to ship with them standard. That's kind of interesting how network performance stayed stagnent for so long.

I'm also curious how that works out

I've got more drives than I need but it is good to have spares on hand.. I think I'll go with (10) 4TB 7,200 RPM Spinners and (4) of the SSD's. That would give me around 36TB of usable storage. I was thinking of (1) SSD for the cachecade and the other (3) for a RAID 5 O/S & apps drive. I ran into some issues with the LSI 9271-8i card it may be defective so I ordered another... <sigh>

Good news! It looks like the drive bays will fit over the motherboard. It was another really tight fit. I need to install the BluRay drive and reverse the fans but wanted to get a quick test fit.

Agree, good advice. It actually didn't even come with a battery, I guess maybe an oversees shipping thing.. So I put a brand new battery in before I fired it up as I have a bunch in stock. The issue is odd, I will set "Advanced mode" in the BIOS and then I find that "Ez mode" is enabled again...usually after power was disconnected. The time and date settings stuck and fan settings stuck but many other settings were reset. I would see a CSM error every time I booted but there were no boot devices attached. Once I attached a drive I didn't see the error so I think it may just be due to not having a boot device to select. It may just be a quirk that will be resolved once I get things assembled and select the boot device. I loaded BIOS defaults etc. also. I also noticed that my U9DX-i4 came with NF-B9 fans (discontinued, replaced with redux) so I am upgrading them to NF-A9 PWM as they are the successor and have a higher RPM (1600 vs 2000). I really didn't feel like the stock fans were pushing enough air. I like the Noctua fans but sometimes they are just too weak. I suspect the cooler would do pretty well for a moderate overclock but not without the better fans. I'm hoping to have it hit 4.0Ghz on all cores (this Xeon is unlocked).

The motherboard has finally arrived and passed initial testing! I am noticing a similar issue where the BIOS loses partial settings after a power off but I just flashed it with the lastest 1704 BIOS + latest 42E microcode and I'll see if it resolves the issue. I can confirm that the latest microcode 42E has been included in the MOD BIOS link I posted a few posts ago at the bottom. I am using BIOS flashback. I immediately noticed about 5C lower idle CPU temps after flashing the new BIOS but it could be specific to this Xeon E5-1680v2 (since it is a very special CPU). Tomorrow we see if things fit... <this is going to be a nail biter!>

Intel has been making motherboards for years but I never actually used one for personal use until just a few years ago (my first ESXi build). I suspect all the thoughts of the SuperMicro boards also apply to these . It does get the job done indeed and is stable... but features are pretty much minimal/stripped.

Great to hear! I'm STILL waiting on my replacement board... and who knows if this one will work. I wonder how to properly benchmark a Plex server.. hmmm

Did the new board come in yet?

This one also belongs in that club https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/Z9PED8_WS/ I downloaded this BIOS, it looks like it has the updated microcode also. The ZIP itself has been updated. https://www.win-raid.com/t4040f44-OF...-Bios-MOD.html

Thanks, will let you know but I am most likely limited to low profile DIMMs due to the size of the drive encosures. Once I get the motherboard I can test fit everything and I'll know (may not even fit with the low profile DIMMs). I actually have 32GB of ram now so I should be good but never know if it will like this board.

The board I am using is hard to find because of the number of PCI-e slots (and dual PLX chips). I will share some pics hopefully soon. Thanks guys https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboards/P9X79E_WS/ (Estimated) SLOT 1 (and covers 2) = GPU SLOT 3 (and covers 4) = LSI 9271-8i SLOT 5 = Intel X550 10GB SLOT 6 = SAS expander SLOT 7 = 2nd LSI 9271-8i

It is never as easy as it is supposed to be I guess... Hope you have better luck with the new one. I always stick with ASUS boards. I ordered another from China... <sigh> The long wait begins all over again.

Yup! Should be arriving today. Praying to the motherboard gods that it works and it fits.. otherwise it will be a nuke in this build since I have embraced "overkill" lol It arrived...and they shipped the wrong ^$(!) motherboard...

I'm at a stand-still until the replacement motherboard comes in... then I can see if the drive cages are going to fit... This is going to be tight, cages are pretty large.. Hopefully next week sometime.

It looks amazing! You got that together pretty quickly also. Hope you get the BIOS issue resolved.

Overkill.. has such a nice ring to it.. love that word! After all, this isn't BarelyAdequateHardware.net I figured I would put the slim drive space to some good use so I picked up this LG BU40N and flashed the modified firmware to allow it to read my UHDs. I needed the sata slim to regular sata adapter also. https://www.lg.com/us/burners-drives...ray-dvd-writer

Looks great! Nice job on the build. I love the case especially the transparent top. Nice selection of gear also this ought to be perfect!