BUILD 60TB home server (but will expand to more in the future)

[depasseg]

What's the noise level of the SC847E16 like, anyone know??

Loud enough that you wouldn't want it in the same room, but quiet enough to be in a basement or closet.

 

[tvsjr]

What's the noise level of the SC847E16 like, anyone know??

Sent from my Passport using Tapatalk

As @depasseg indicated, unless you're pretty tolerant of noise, you aren't going to want it in the same room. Stick it in a closet (make sure you have either HVAC or at least a large exhaust fan... these things generate a lot of heat, especially fully populated) and you'd be good. Or, you could consider one of the acoustic management server cabinets (which are basically roll-around closets).

Make sure you connect all the fans to the motherboard (you'll need one PWM splitter, if you have active heatsinks on both CPUs) rather than the backplane... on the backplane, they run wide-open, and then you definitely don't want them in the same room.

 

[TheKiwi]

The liquid cooler is a bad idea. Not only is it overpriced and overpowered, it has a far higher chance of catastrophic failure when compared to an air cooler. You have to take into account the possibility of leaks, contamination, and pump failure. Getting a good, solid air cooler like a Noctua is a far better option if you insist on an aftermarket cooler. With that you only need to worry about fan failure, and many of them use dual fans so that's no issue.

Additionally, that case is pretty awful. It has bad build quality issues and the design is flawed overall. And that's not even mentioning the extremely poor HDD cooling in the lower chamber, with one choked 120mm fan cooling all 6 drives. Nor the low-quality drive mounts which don't hold the drives securely.

 

[anodos]

The liquid cooler is a bad idea. Not only is it overpriced and overpowered, it has a far higher chance of catastrophic failure when compared to an air cooler. You have to take into account the possibility of leaks, contamination, and pump failure. Getting a good, solid air cooler like a Noctua is a far better option if you insist on an aftermarket cooler. With that you only need to worry about fan failure, and many of them use dual fans so that's no issue.

Additionally, that case is pretty awful. It has bad build quality issues and the design is flawed overall. And that's not even mentioning the extremely poor HDD cooling in the lower chamber, with one choked 120mm fan cooling all 6 drives. Nor the low-quality drive mounts which don't hold the drives securely.

Well, if the OP goes with the supermicro chassis he mentioned then cooling probably won't be a problem. I'm pretty sure you could build a hovercraft with the fans in that behemoth.

 

[c32767a]

Trying again:

Chassis:

As of right now I cannot decide on a chassis. I will be expanding to more drives in the future when my finances permit me to do so. I don't want to spend $2000 on a chassis but have the capacity to expand and fit in more drives while saving money. In short, I have read (https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/hardware-recommendations-read-this-first.23069/) about the airflow importance, cooking up the drives. I am looking at two options right now with high difference in price. Hoping to get more input from the people who have built high storage server (50TB+) and are still expanding.

1. Supermicro 3U Chassis - Black CSE-836BE16-R920B for $1183.33
2.
Antec Nineteen Hundred Component Cases Nineteen Hundred Red Black/Red for $179.99

45Drives offers their bare storinator chassis for just under $2k, including the minimal extra parts you'd need (PSU, cables, etc).

I bit the bullet and bought my first one 2 years ago because we started running into situations where we needed 25 or 26 drives in a super micro 24 drive chassis. With 45 slots, we can stick to one chassis and be flexible with drive allotment at each site.

As far as noise goes, that's entirely dependent on what type of 120mm fans you put in the chassis. We have great luck with slower fans, but our deployments are in locations where we have adequate HVAC and air temps in the low 70s. Airflow won't be an issue until you have enough drives in the chassis that you can't be creative with drive spacing. (around 26 drives or so).

Only other caveat is the chassis is quite long. The 45 drive version is a full 800mm deep. Make sure it'll fit in your rack.


$0.02