Building a PowerNAS G4 MDD

[DaNilePharaoh]

PowerNAS G4

My all the time favorite

 

[joeschmuck]

Have you got all the parts together yet? Curious how well it runs in the case. Please note the drive temps before you close up the case and then after you close up the case. Also, temps around the MB are just as important.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

Have you got all the parts together yet? Curious how well it runs in the case. Please note the drive temps before you close up the case and then after you close up the case. Also, temps around the MB are just as important.

Not yet :( unfortunately I was so busy working this week I couldn't go shopping for the rest of the components. Hopefully tomorrow I'll manage to visit the PCMall again.
Temps are my main concern now, the summer is almost over here but yet my well ventilated "Thermaltake Level 10 GT" hackintosh build reads 55º in some areas specially around GPU and HDD Cages.
But i figured out a plot for the cooling and airflow system, Motherboard position and PCI Expansion cards that you really going to like so much, yet I still have no time to draw it.
Also i noticed something in the Motherboard booklet made me hesitate ordering the ram sticks, it said max memory 8gb ram!!! while ASUS website is saying 16gb!? I guess i must find a 16gb kit somewhere and try it first before i order from amazon.
now i'm seriously thinking of going 4x hdd as it will increase airflow, reduce heat, power consumption and cost, but did not decide yet raidz1 or z2, the more i read the more i get confused :) theoretically raidz2 sounds perfect but cost effective, available disk space and with lower capacity drives (2tb or less) I believe raidz1 is the way to go specially if you have a second backup system.

Have a nice weekend and Thanx for your interest :) will try to post new updates soon.

 

[joeschmuck]

If you have any questions about RAIDZ1 or Z2 with respect to drives sizes and what you want for storage, let me know. Not sure if you have used the RAID Calculator but this helps me out quite frequently. Usable space is what you want to use. The good thing you have going for you is you say you have a backup for this data so with that in mind and assuming you plan to keep that backup up to date, I think it comes down to only two things, cost and if you don't mind doing a full data restore. Cost is one you are aware of because it costs the price of one drive between RAIDZ1 and RAIDZ2. Doing a full restore could be a possibility if while you are replacing a drive in a RAIDZ1 and you have a second drive failure before the resilvering has completed. If you run 4TB drives and they are fairly full, this is possible. It can take a very long time to resilver large drives. If you ran a RAIDZ2 then a second drive failure is tolerated.

I'll toss in another factor you might not be looking at... Plugins. Plugins are typically stored on the hard drives. If you have a few configured plugins like CouchPotato, SickBeard, etc... to grab stuff like TV shows or whatever, well you might not want to reinstall and configure all that stuff from scratch again so this is another reason RAIDZ2 is favorable.

Yes, a lot to think about but if you are only going to use FreeNAS to backup data and maybe run Plex to show your movie collection, then you should have no issues using RAIDZ1.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

If you have any questions about RAIDZ1 or Z2 with respect to drives sizes and what you want for storage, let me know. Not sure if you have used the RAID Calculator but this helps me out quite frequently. Usable space is what you want to use. The good thing you have going for you is you say you have a backup for this data so with that in mind and assuming you plan to keep that backup up to date, I think it comes down to only two things, cost and if you don't mind doing a full data restore. Cost is one you are aware of because it costs the price of one drive between RAIDZ1 and RAIDZ2. Doing a full restore could be a possibility if while you are replacing a drive in a RAIDZ1 and you have a second drive failure before the resilvering has completed. If you run 4TB drives and they are fairly full, this is possible. It can take a very long time to resilver large drives. If you ran a RAIDZ2 then a second drive failure is tolerated.

I'll toss in another factor you might not be looking at... Plugins. Plugins are typically stored on the hard drives. If you have a few configured plugins like CouchPotato, SickBeard, etc... to grab stuff like TV shows or whatever, well you might not want to reinstall and configure all that stuff from scratch again so this is another reason RAIDZ2 is favorable.

Yes, a lot to think about but if you are only going to use FreeNAS to backup data and maybe run Plex to show your movie collection, then you should have no issues using RAIDZ1.

Thanx for heads up about the Plug-ins configuration I don't recall reading this anywhere, The PowerNas will be more like a black box for all my Artwork, Photo Sessions and Studio Recordings.

I guess I've decided to go with 4x 3 TB Green in Raidz for the following reasons:
- Higher Space Efficiency (75%)
- Fault Tolerance = 1 disk drive (Better than Nothing :) )
- Significantly Low Price per Usable TB
- Lower Resilver Time (in compare with higher capacity drives 4TB and up)
- I'll keep all my data in its original locations, buy new disks for the NAS project and run weekly Sync.
- Will go with WD Green Drives as the price gap between Red and Green is enough to buy me a 3rd backup solution (Like the Lenovo IX2 - 77$ on Amazon) which I'm willing to buy for media usage only.
- I consider myself a lucky person as the last time I had a drive failure was almost 15 years ago :) not to mention your continuous support.

Find below the comparisons I made (Prices in Egyptian Pounds)



5x 2TB Raidz would be a cheaper solution (3000 Egp), with higher space efficiency 80%, but I decided not to go with it to reduce heat & power consumption, increase airflow inside the case, also I think increasing the number of disks will increase the failure possibilities (please correct me if I'm wrong)

 

[joeschmuck]

You have everything in the correct perspective. You you are looking at 8.2 TB of storage with that setup. If you have 4TB to 6TB of data you expect to store, then I'd say you are doing fine. If you actually have 8TB of data to store then you need more storage. You never want to be at the top of your storage capacity. For me, I have 7.2TB of storage but I never plan to get there. I have used 2TB of storage so far and I don't see me ever doubling that usage, however I planned for the worse. I do store a few movies but I deleted just about my entire library because there were movies that I'd only watch one time. Why keep it I said. I have been thinking about reducing my vdev down to five 2TB hard drives but I'll wait on that for a while.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

You have everything in the correct perspective. You you are looking at 8.2 TB of storage with that setup. If you have 4TB to 6TB of data you expect to store, then I'd say you are doing fine. If you actually have 8TB of data to store then you need more storage. You never want to be at the top of your storage capacity. For me, I have 7.2TB of storage but I never plan to get there. I have used 2TB of storage so far and I don't see me ever doubling that usage, however I planned for the worse. I do store a few movies but I deleted just about my entire library because there were movies that I'd only watch one time. Why keep it I said. I have been thinking about reducing my vdev down to five 2TB hard drives but I'll wait on that for a while.

Exactly what i'm thinking, I currently have around 4tb scattered around the house and my home workstation, I'll just back it up in one place. also the cheap 2-bay lenovo sounds very appealing for media files, movies, music etc., also less complicated for my wife n kid to deal with it if I'm not around.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

Motherboard Positioning
There was no way I can instal the motherboard facing the original case expansion slots or I/O ports as they are reversed. I had to figure out how to solve this...

So I positioned the motherboard to the center lower bottom of the side-panel, closer to the ATX 24 pin cable, allowing the maximum space to the back of the PCI expansion slots, also I had to slide the middle HDD cage up a little to prevent it from crashing to CPU cooler, it took me some time to get it in the right position as when i pulled it all the way up it was crashing to the graphic card (Original MDD Card is shown in the photo).

I’m planning to use the (now internal) motherboard 4x USB ports for the FreeNas flash drive, Wireless Keyboard and mouse, wireless Bluetooth and WIFI (For the gaming rig/HTPC or maybe future FreeNas Wireless support).



GPU Hack
For this build I do not need a graphic card but I have a second MDD that I’m planning to make as HTPC or gaming rig for my son. with this design I can install dual slots graphic cards as long as 28cm.

To connect the graphic card to the motherboard I’ll use a
PCI-E 1X To 16X USB 3.0 Riser Card Adapter Riser Extension Cable SATA-powered
Usually used by bitcoin miners.

View: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00IKT1OGM/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=XJ1SBO3UP4WM&coliid=IXL96BJBC5AI7




Built-in Graphics
for the built in Graphics I’ll buy a VGA Video Extension Male/Female Cable, Black (1 Foot/0.30 Meters)
View: http://www.amazon.com/C2G-Cables-50235-Select-Extension/dp/B00CJRRY9M/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1414955092&sr=8-12&keywords=vga+extension+1ft


90° VGA Male to Female Cable Adapter, Black
View: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00E6IPQSS/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=XJ1SBO3UP4WM&coliid=I2Q8MHLGTV9JIG


and simply remove the original MDD Graphic card VGA slot plate and screw in the extension cable, connect to the motherboard VGA. the 90º adapter is to prevent the VGA cable from eating the space I made for the graphic card.



TO BE CONTINUED....

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

Cooling System
This MDD was originally designed to have 1x 120mm exhaust fan, 1x side 60mm fan for optical drives cooling and 2x 60mm fans inside the PSU, I removed all the originals except for the PSU fans (which I’m planning to change later because they are very loud) and Brought my new 3x Cooler Master SickleFlow X 120mm fans and I positioned one to the back of the original I/O ports as an exhaust fan and I positioned 2 to the left of the motherboard on top of each other as intake fans.

When the side panel is closed the lower fans will provide significant airflow for the CPU, RAM and lower drive cages, sucking air from the lower 4 mirrors front mesh exhausting from the back.



The upper fan will provide extra airflow for the top drive cage, GPU and will align with the PSU 60mm fans exhausting from the PSU back and the mesh PCI plates. also installing a pci fan in the upper pci slot sounds like a cool idea for me to exhaust hot air collecting on the top of the case, but i will measure temps with this setup first then i’ll get it if needed.



My Asus motherboard have only 2x fan headers, 1x 4pin for the CPU cooler and 1x 3pin case fan.
Only the 4pin header supports PWM and Asus Q-Fan technology that intelligently supposed to adjust fan speeds according to CPU load.

I know its stupidity to run the 4 fans i have on a single motherboard header, as the cooler master fans rated current 0.35A each, also they are 3pin not 4, but I wanted at least the cpu fan if not all to be controlled by the Asus Q-Fan, then I found an amazing solution to run all of them on the CPU fan output without overloading the board hopefully it will be the answer to my prayers.



In case it failed to work in PWM mode for the 3 pin fans, I guess i’ll buy a pci fan controller, to prevent the fans from running 100% all the time and reduce the noise.

TO BE CONTINUED....

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

Super Bargain Intel NIC
Intel NICs are rare to find in Egypt, Mostly we have other consumer brands like TP-Link and D-Link, So i was planning to purchase the Intel NIC from Amazon ($18 + $12 Customs and Shipping) along with the ECC Ram, but In one of my visits to the PCMall, I managed to dig-out a super bargain from the used gear area, bought an Intel NIC Pro1000 GT PCI Adapter for less than $4 in perfect condition. it was originally installed in a Dell Server, I believe this is my second best purchase after the $1.5 dead PSU.



Intel NIC Hack
Removed the slot plate from the Intel NIC by pushing 2 metal brackets that were holding it in its place, installed the NIC on the motherboard PCI slot, and installed the PCI plate in an expansion slot near by, and bought a small screw-in RJ45 Male to Female M/F CAT5E LAN Ethernet Adapter Network Cable, to reconnect the plate with the card.



TO BE CONTINUED....

 

[Ericloewe]

I have two of those fans. One of them ended up with its bearing completely ruined (it required quite a bit of force to turn even by hand), so let's hope you have better luck with them.

 

[Ericloewe]

Super Bargain Intel NIC
Intel NICs are rare to find in Egypt, Mostly we have other consumer brands like TP-Link and D-Link, So i was planning to purchase the Intel NIC from Amazon ($18 + $12 Customs and Shipping) along with the ECC Ram, but In one of my visits to the PCMall, I managed to dig-out a super bargain from the used gear area, bought an Intel NIC Pro1000 GT PCI Adapter for less than $4 in perfect condition. it was originally installed in a Dell Server, I believe this is my second best purchase after the $1.5 dead PSU.

View attachment 5376 View attachment 5377

Intel NIC Hack
Removed the slot plate from the Intel NIC by pushing 2 metal brackets that were holding it in its place, installed the NIC on the motherboard PCI slot, and installed the PCI plate in an expansion slot near by, and bought a small screw-in RJ45 Male to Female M/F CAT5E LAN Ethernet Adapter Network Cable, to reconnect the plate with the card.

View attachment 5378 View attachment 5379 View attachment 5380 View attachment 5381

TO BE CONTINUED....

Bad news, PCI is likely to bottleneck GbE... Give it a try and decide if it's worth getting a PCI-e NIC.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

USB/Firewire Slot Plate Adapter
bought 2 of these very cheep around $2 each to connect the motherboard usb headers to the back of the case, my motherboard doesn’t have a firewire support but i couldn't find the usb only version so i bought 2 for a maximum of 4 usb ports.



BE CAREFUL HE’S GOT A GUN!!!
I’m thinking of giving the steel interior of the MDD a matt black finish with some blue highlights. :) I guess its time to disassemble everything and head for the garden.



TO BE CONTINUED....

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

Bad news, PCI is likely to bottleneck GbE... Give it a try and decide if it's worth getting a PCI-e NIC.

this is the card i got its supposed to be 10/100/1000
View: http://www.amazon.com/Intel-PWLA8391GT-1000-Network-Adapter/dp/B00030DEQE/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1414971586&sr=8-7&keywords=intel+network

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/adapters/pro1000gt/pro1000gt-overview.htm

$4 worth a try :)
also i'm thinking of getting a PCI-E x1 to PCI 32 Riser to use the same card on a PCI-E slot, but I doubt its going to be a major change.

For the fans I'm kinda lucky with cooler master products, till now :)

 

[Ericloewe]

this is the card i got its supposed to be 10/100/1000
View: http://www.amazon.com/Intel-PWLA8391GT-1000-Network-Adapter/dp/B00030DEQE/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1414971586&sr=8-7&keywords=intel+network

http://www.intel.com/products/desktop/adapters/pro1000gt/pro1000gt-overview.htm

$4 worth a try :)
also i'm thinking of getting a PCI-E x1 to PCI 32 Riser to use the same card on a PCI-E slot, but I doubt its going to be a major change.

For the fans I'm kinda lucky with cooler master products, till now :)

I'm not familiar with the performance of PCI-e/PCI bridges, but it should be just enough, provided everything supports the fast PCI speed (whatever frequency it is, can't remember), if it can keep up with PCI's theoretical limit. At that point, it's easier to just go with a PCI-e NIC. Less stuff that can go wrong.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

I have two of those fans. One of them ended up with its bearing completely ruined (it required quite a bit of force to turn even by hand), so let's hope you have better luck with them.

Send it to cairo, will clean it for you :p

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

I'm not familiar with the performance of PCI-e/PCI bridges, but it should be just enough, provided everything supports the fast PCI speed (whatever frequency it is, can't remember), if it can keep up with PCI's theoretical limit. At that point, it's easier to just go with a PCI-e NIC. Less stuff that can go wrong.

I tipped the young seller before i leave the store, and he promised to keep looking in the pile of NICs he have for a dual PCI-e Intel Card, lets hope he finds one.

 

[joeschmuck]

Question: The fans around the MB... The fan near the PCI slot, is it pulling air into the case? You have more than one photo showing different directions for the fan so it's not clear. The south bridge chip gets very hot so it would be a good idea to have that fan pull in air. This would push air across the SB chip heatsink.

EDIT: I want to see what you do with that spray gun!

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

Question: The fans around the MB... The fan near the PCI slot, is it pulling air into the case? You have more than one photo showing different directions for the fan so it's not clear. The south bridge chip gets very hot so it would be a good idea to have that fan pull in air. This would push air across the SB chip heatsink.

I was just trying to collect all the pieces of the puzzle together :) I might have missed on the fans airflow direction as I was busy documenting (Only) I did not mount the fans yet as I need a method to mount it vertically... have to think about it and try to find a solution for this.

The double fans is the intake fans and the single (Near PCI) fan is exhaust.
I guess the south bridge chip will be fine with this cooling system as its surrounded by plenty of airflow.
I made few diagrams for the cooling system Original, PowerNAS and Advanced PowerNAS please check below, I will work on the PowerNAS Cooling System for now, measure the temps and will upgrade to Advanced PowerNAS if needed.

PowerMac G4 Original Cooling System

PowerNAS G4 MDD Cooling System

PowerNAS G4 MDD Cooling System - Advanced

EDIT: I want to see what you do with that spray gun!

ME TOO LOL! I never used one before.

 

[DaNilePharaoh]

PowerNAS G4 MDD Cooling System - Advanced (6x HDDs 2x/Cage) just for the record :)