Judge my Norco 4224 build!!

N

nicholasfarmer

Limp Gawd
Joined
Apr 19, 2007
Messages
238
The Nnew Norco 4224 is going to be released in August. The new Areca 1880 is going to be released next week. Why should I spend money on this stuff? Because I can I guess….

Wants: Low watt consumption but not green, great Ghz on the cheap, easy to build, grow, and will have vender support for a least a few more years and a great warranty. No over clocking for me, stability is key.

Quick specs:
24 Hard Drive case to hold my Hitachi 2TB drives. A low power (watts) motherboard that supports two or more PCIe 2.0 slots and onboard video capable. I went with the Intel i5 Clarkdale for the video without a card (less watts) and 3.2Ghz on the cheap. 8 GB ram, and a power supply that can power the system without any inrush current issues. Also note that I jumped up on some items to make it easy to throw in a i7 CPU and PCIe 1x video card if the server power needs to grow.

I already have the Hitachi drives, OS drive, HP SAS expander, and peripherals.

Case:
Norco 4224: $395.00 + $32.07 = $427.07
http://www.norcotek.com/item_detail.php?categoryid=1&modelno=RPC-4224
http://www.ipcdirect.net/servlet/Detail?no=252

Raid Adapter:
Areca 1880i : Greater than $700 I'm guessing…. (taken from 1680i is $629.99)
Link and price released next week.

RAM: DDR3 - 1333
Gskill 2X2GB = 4GB = $94.99 X2 = $189.98 - free ship
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231274

CPU + Video:
Intel i5-650 : $179.99 - free ship
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...115220&cm_re=Clarkdale-_-19-115-220-_-Product

Motherboard:
MSI H57M-ED65 : $159.99 - free ship
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130263
http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=prodmbspec&maincat_no=1&cat2_no=&cat3_no=&prod_no=1968

Power supply:
$119.99 - 650Watt Modular + 4.99 shipping
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139012

Total cost:
$427.07 + $189.98 + $179.99 + $159.99 + $119.99 + $4.99 = $1,082.01 + (Areca 1880i) = $2,000 estimate


Please let me know if you would change out any parts and why. I will also be testing the system with some Seagate 1.5TB drives.

Update:
"pjkenned" : I was thinking about changing the motherboard to support three PCIe slots so i can throw in a four port Gb nic or using the current motherboard and cut a 1x slot to hold the HP sas expander (power only)
For the KVM over IP, I have a LCD with keyboard and touch pad mounted in my rack that will be connected to the Norco. The beast lives in the garage and I use Remote desktop to manage the current server (Windows Server family)

"[LYL]Homer 2" : Windows 2008 R2 for now.

"nbat58" Thanks for the suggestion. I'll change out the power supply to help avoid inrush issues.

"PigLover" I did consider the H55 boards but they lack the extra PCIe 2.0 slots. Its so hard to find a motherboard that does not down clock the PCIe bus when you start populating the other slots. Granted that the ARECA, HP SAS Expander, and GigNic will only use 8x or smaller ports.

I did check out the Supermicro server board but I disliked the three 8x PCIe slots (Two 8x PCIe v2.0 and a third PCIe v1 @ 4x but 8x slot mounted). The spacing wouldnt allow enough cooling (air flow) between the Areca Fan and Expander or NIC adapter. The idea that I can remove the server guts and turn them into a baby PC in the house feels better than locking in the server hardware. Better "hand-me-down" parts going with the MSI board and Intel i5.

Also to note: I run 12-Core AMD Opteron (2 CPU for 24 core) HP servers at work. (DL 385 G7). It would be nice if I could just snag one of those with some 15K SAS drives. Then I wouldnt need to upgrade for a few months.....


Thanks everyone for the input!
 
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Thought: Q57 based board or other KVM over IP based management. It is like $30 or less over that motherboard to get into a non-consumer grade motherboard.

That motherboard also has a single Realtek D8111__ based onboard ethernet. You are probably overbuying the raid card and under buying the NICs/ motherboard.
 
So, here's the thing, if you are using any OS, and it freaks out before boot for whatever reason (I think most people have seen Windows XP do this at some point), you need to plug in a monitor, keyboard, mouse (for a windows system), maybe a DVD drive (which you don't have room for in the case really). That is why you really want KVM over IP on a 4U storage system since that is a lot of moving parts (fans/ spinning drives) that make noise, forcing you to place it out of earshot. I made a "minor" mistake to an OpenSolaris installation on my Intel motherboard test system (no KVM over IP) that made it not fully boot and not able to have shell access to. I had to go troubleshoot sitting in front of the equipment closet that has tons of machines running. Not fun.

Consider something like a Supermciro X8SIL-F with lots of PCIe slots, KVM over IP, dual Intel onboard NICs + IPMI 2.0 on a third management NIC. With that, you could also step up to a Xeon X3440 and ECC memory for a bit more. Twice the cores/ HT cores, ECC memory, no modification of slots required, correct motherboard layout for a rackmount chassis (i.e. things like DDR3 go the correct direction), KVM over IP, and etc. Compared to what you posted, it is probably pretty close to a wash since you could buy a dual port Intel NIC instead of a quad.

BTW for reference, my main storage server I started with a "prosumer" Asus P6T7 WS supercomputer motherboard which was a poor server board as it turned out. That was changed out for a Supermicro X8ST3-F within a month. It is much cheaper to overbuild a bit once than to build twice.
 
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Look at H55 based motherboards instead of the H57. If you like MSI, look at the H55M-ED55. The only advantage of H57 over H55 is the integrated Intel Raid (and two more on-die USBs). But the H55 costs less and consumes 2-3 watts less power. You are buying external RAID so the on-board raid is of little value and you did say you were looking for low power...

I'm guessing (though you did not say) that your primary application is a storage server. You might want to look at the Pentium G9650 CPU. It is LGA-1156, dual core, 32nm CPU with 45nm GPU just like the newer I5s, but since it doesn't have hyperthreading they put it into the 'Pentium' family. Works with H55/57 chipsets and runs stock at 2.8Ghz (and easily overclocks to 4+ on air). I happened to buy one last week paired up with a Biostar H55 MB and was stunned at the low power consumption - I threw together a test and I measured 21 watts idle, 70 watts prime95 load when set up with the G9650, biostar TH55B , 2x2Gb XMS3 memory, 2xOCZ Vertex 65Gb + 1xSeagate 1.5TB, Win7 x64 and a random PSU from my junk pile. Pull off the extra disks I had, add your Areca controller and the port replicator and I bet you could stay under 30 watts idle before you start adding drives to the array.
 
Check out the new amd 6100 series server processors. VERY good price/preformance ratio. Then search for new supermicro H8sgl-f mb.
Wf
 
Check out the new amd 6100 series server processors. VERY good price/preformance ratio. Then search for new supermicro H8sgl-f mb.
Wf
 
Another vote for buying a real server motherboard. I won't repeat everything pjkenned said, but he is exactly right. I have the SM X8SIL-F (less than $200 at buy.com) and it is excellent for what you want to do. Add an Intel i3-530 (paid $90 at microcenter) and you will have a great server.
 
ok... I have to admit... After I bought my Norco 4220 and plugged it in I wished I went for a server with integrated fan control (being honest). After a short while I was pointed to the fact that for ~2k I could have purchased a Supermicro case with integrated SAS expander backplane and a Supermicro Motherboard with onboard RAID that matched perfectly and had an integrated system.

I love my Norco but given the budget again thats what I would have done. Thought I'd share.

Can't recall the exact models but lets see if I can get close...

SC848/846 case

no clue on the mobo so i'll leave it up to others...
 
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