Sr Vr.

OK so like every other PC under my ownership this one is getting an upgrade.

I removed the Threadripper ages ago. I sold that, and 3/4 of the RAM. That leaves me with two 8gb sticks running at 3200, and I have two Corsair DP at the same speed. I am sure I can get it all running.

I will have an 11400F left over from the TV gaming PC soon when I swap it out for an 11700KF. So I needed a board. Right now this has my old NAS in it (3570? 8gb) something like that, so I got this.

USGwn8G.jpg


Was £80 on OCUK. I should still have this.

uKokcBN.jpg


So that is that bit done. Will reuse the two SAS cards (same ones I sent Nosser).

Just one problem.. No onboard. This is why I have not started to buy things to do this. My mate did send me a 2600K, but I don't know if it would even work in the Dell board, and the RAM is still what is limiting me. I tried to watch a pure 4k rip of Avatar 2 last week and it was lagging with the RAM running out.

So, I grabbed this, as no onboard.

nx9h1m2.jpg


Was £31 on Ebay. I then got this for £3. Going to try this first.

KU380P9.png


If that fails I will need to move onto things like this.

yDdy1lY.png


But we shall see.
 
Last edited:
Wendall done a few videos on them type of extension boards for adding a ton of different things to boards, might be worth looking into his thoughts on them, was to do with him adding a ton of different Intel Optane drives.

Got the extra 2tb drive the other day so 2x2tb going in and 2x1tb going into Ugreen enclosures done and done, so i have some things to mess around with tomoz and bike to sort out.

Next stop for me is a switch 2 / new GPU.

That HBA card has been rock solid touch wood, only other thing i'm meant to be doing is switching out molex for sata powers, but i just know it's going to be a pain so they live on top of the case until i want to do things :D
 
Cool I will bear that in mind !

Oddly enough I actually have a 16gb Optane drive here too. Doubt it will do much in Truenas, but hey I might be able to use it for the install !

Yeah the Dell PERC/LSI are excellent dude.
 
Yes it's been solid no issues thankfully, so tomoz when I need to take out the GPU and Perc I'll take my time as need to upgrade 2 of the nvme drives, Wendall is a big fan of Optane but it depends on the use case as to how well it'll work for what you want. He brought a ton of them as they were finally at a viable price, but he's a strange beast idk wtf he really does at times seems to be into so many pies, but he's interesting at times :)
 
OK so I did some reading and the optane will not be big enough for a boot drive. Bummer. What I did find out, though, was that I can use it as a cache drive for Truenas. Which is far more interesting, as it means when I pop for 12 1tb SATA SSDs I don't need to worry too much about them having a cache.

I also found my blue mining risers here, so that was cool. Always good to have spares of those, so the yellow one will be lobbed in the parts drawer.

Today I took it all apart, removed all of the SSDs in there ready to load it up, and then did quite a bit of work on it.

vopoKEr.png


Obviously I never took any pics of it with the Dell board in, but it was messy. Firstly I had to retain the original USB port and etc block, or it whines. I also had to keep the case fan, or it stalled every boot. I won't have those issues any more now, and it allowed me to remove a whole clump of wires and molex to fan adapters and so on. This board actually has IO, so that was nice.

I just got done watching the first three eps of Robodoc, and the last one is not out until I go on holiday, so it was cool to strip it all down.

It's nice to have an IO shield too, although I am amazed by how good those caravan vents turned out to be at keeping crap out of the case, even dust. It was pristine in there.

I will replace the 60gb SSD I was using to store Truenas with one of the 180gb Intel drives I bought. Will then lob the other 8 in the storage bin as well, always handy to have smaller SSDs kicking about tbh.

Edit. Forgot to say. I had to remove the fans in the lid. Obviously the cooler does fit, but not with those in. This isn't an issue, as the heat will rise out of there any way. I then took the two thin Arctic fans and put those in the side as the intakes.

Edit again. FFS. I decided to remove the Platimax. The wiring on it is very thick. Like, ridiculously so. I bought the 850w Super Flower a while back for £30, and decided to use that instead. I had already stripped it all apart and cleaned it to look like new, and the black cables are much softer and floppier (ooer) so that was great for managing cables.

Last edit. I have to replace the power button connector. I wired in the Dell one. Everything else will just plug in though.
 
Last edited:
OK. So it is back up and running.

I ended up using one of the 180gb Intel drives for the Truenas install.

The GPU worked perfectly on the mining riser, but not without a 6 pin PCIE power connector plugged in.

bFCvvM5.jpg


EkxR4dR.jpg


Unfortunately the SAS card got in the way a bit. BTW, that SAS card is warped that is not anything touching it. It has always been like that. What I had to do was grab a mobo mounting post (UNC) and then screw that into the PCI screw hole. Then add a Corsair M3 spacer for a AIO, and then use a nut to secure the GPU. The underside of the riser is insulated with neoprene, so there is no danger. It isn't ideal, but then it works. Thankfully it is Displayport only, so I have a DP to HDMI in there permanently meaning you never have to poke the back of the GPU.

So the big test. Can I now stream Avatar 2 as a full 4k BR rip without hitching and stuttering? yes !

GCniCFB.jpg


j3WQ8wa.jpg


What a stunning movie.

Right now it is just running on the two 3tb 3.5" discs. The planes are all emptied out, ready for the big purchase in around 3 weeks. Which will probably be 2tb SSDs x 12, but we will see. If money is tight I will go with 1tb for now.
 
OK time for the final upgrade. 12 1tb SSDs.

yC1KyJe.png


I got 5% more off at checkout so they were around £450 for 12. The fans in here are dead too.

9iKSW1u.jpg


So I bought three of these.

Q6xlrE8.jpg


What I failed to notice, however, was that they are 24v. Bah. So I got this.

YDVIpDg.jpg


It's a buck converter. Turns 12v into 24. Thankfully the fans come with low noise adapters.
 
OK so I had the bays apart and fitted the new fans. I wired up the buck booster, works lovely. Fans are now silent.

I found that one of the two intakes (cheap Arctic slims) was dead. Seems it doesn't like server duties. So I got two of these.

LkYqNdc.jpg


And one of these for the CPU cooler.

vdyFWts.jpg


Have fitted all of the drives now too. Hopefully it will be back up tomorrow.
 
Nightmare.

The 40mm fans can not be removed without stripping the entire planes. 20 screws in each. Then 12 x 4 for the drives. My scrrewdriver saw a lot of use that day.

y7JVdH6.jpg


You will note the lack of fans. That is because not only had the 40mm crappo fans in the planes spewed their oil and sounded awful, but two of the 3 Arctic fans were straight up dead. Which had led to this happening to one of my mech drives.

rmIbiKB.png


Thankfully karma was on my side and I would not have caught it had I not been upgrading and logging in to TrueNAS. I lost about 8 FLAC files, I can live with that. But yeah.. Heat and mech drives = worst enemies.

So lesson learned. Don't use crap fans in a rig that is up for up to three weeks at a time.

I've now set up the 12 1tb in ZFS 2. Which means 10 in RAID, and two in case one starts to die. Or two in this case. In other words, you get two dead drives before any data loss. Which IMO is more than enough.

However. I will also be buying a 12gb 3.5 that will mirror the entire pool. I nearly lost all my music, which was a scare I needed tbh.
 
OK fans in.

WkC1PDL.jpg


4X8j9Z1.jpg


Better. The only thing I wanted to do was upgrade the LAN. Literally only between the server, and the PC I use to operate it and send stuff to it. However, when I copy from one drive to another on it it all goes through the LAN, so it's capping out around 180mb PS. So, I got two of these.

FJcaCMR.jpg


And a switch.

ujMyH7m.jpg


I can't go 10gb because it would need new wiring, and the server only has a X1 slot free. 5gb is absolutely hated by Truenas, and good luck getting a NIC card to work. So I went with what does, Intel 225v or something cards. I then realised this.

hSlZHSW.png


But there is one more PC in the equation that needs to be connected to LAN. The TV gaming PC. So yeah, way cool.
 
Back
Top