seeking advice for low noise, short-depth rackmount chasis

[Razvan]

Hello,

I'm trying to build a low noise/heat/power/footprint system. Everything needs to fit into a 9U, 450mm deep wallmount rack. This means two or three servers, switch and cable management. The depth requirement limits the options, but the supermicro servers (5018D-FN4T, 5018A-FTN4) and chasis (SC505-203B, SC101i) seems to fit nicely. The front IO was chosen to simplify installation/cabling since there is no side access to the rack.

About 4U will be taken by the nas (NSC-800). Switch and cable management is 2U, leaving 3U for two servers (atom and xeon-d).

In order to prevent hot air reuse and heat buildup, the roof of the enclosure will have one 120mm fan + exhaust duct attached and connected to the exterior.

Not having worked with any of those products before, I'm not familiar with their noise and heat output. Sound dampening technniques won't work very well in this case (glass or vented door) so it would be preferable to have the absolute lowest noise produced by the equipment. The target is below 30 dBA.

The parts list for 5018D-FN4T shows "FAN-0065L4", which is a 40x28mm 13K RPM PWM 52.5 dBA fan. That does not look silent at all.

The parts list for 5018A-FTN4 and SC505-203B shows "FAN-0100L4", which is a 40x28mm 8.5K RPM PWM 34 dBA fan. That seems more reasonable, even though you can install two of them.

The power supply is listed as "200W Low Noise" but without dBA numbers. Worst case, this could be (hopefully) swapped for a SS-300M1U + adapter.

The SC101i has one "6cm 4-pin high performance cooling fan", without part# and/or noise specs.


Now for the questions

1. What is your experience with the above servers in regard to noise? Anyone has audio recordings and/or dBA numbers on idle/load? There is a mp3 recording for 5018A; does anything similar exist for 5018D-FN4T?

2. Which would would be quieter for housing an atom c255X: SC505-203B or SC101i? The SC101i looks good, but the SS-300M1U would be as quiet as a power brick and probably more reliable. Also, only one U instead of two + shelf. The goal is to minimize noise and heat output.

3. Does the 13K RPM fan on the xeon-d chasis spin down to near silent levels for a, say 20-25 deg. C room temperature? What is to be expected (noise-wise) if the room temperature is 30-35 deg. C to begin with?

4. How noisy is the soc fan shipped with X10SDV-TLN4F?

5. Has anyone used a fanless X10SDV-* in a revision N SC505-203B and with what results (heat/noise)?

Another option would be using 2U/3U chasis with 80mm fans, but nothing under 350mm (14") seems to be available. Also this would require a 12U rack, which is ok IF the 3U chasis is quieter.


Thanks.

 

[Hanss]

Hello,

...Another option would be using 2U/3U chasis with 80mm fans, but nothing under 350mm (14") seems to be available. Also this would require a 12U rack, which is ok IF the 3U chasis is quieter.


Thanks.

The noise will be less if use a 1,5 ... 2U enclosure.
For example it is - 1.5U and a depth of 326 mm.

Or such an assembly of two "half-U" chassis.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

It's possibly a diversion from the original purpose of the thread, but does anyone make a short-depth rackmount with hot-swap drives on the front? Quick back-of-a-fag-packet says that fitting in a mATX or mITX board and a dozen or so hot-swap trays would be doable in a 400-450mm deep 4U but don't think I've ever seen one...

Edit: Well blimey, they do appear to exist in a fashion (45cm deep): IPC202|2U Storage Appliance, 8 SATA hot-swap bays, support dual Mini ITX motherboard, 17.5 depth, two 250W power supply

Edit 2: That case is actually made by Casetronic/Travla T2280 2U Rackmount

That's a twin-mITX with eight hot-swap discs and twin 80mm fans and what looks like provisioning for flex ATX PSUs (so you wouldn't need an adapter for those awesome seasonics fingers crossed). Tempted to see if I can find anyone in the UK selling them as I've been thinking about chucking a small rack into the loft...

Anyway to revisit your points... noise-wise it sounds like you're going to be having people within earshot of the rack... in which case I'd be looking for stuff that was 32dB and under. 40mm and probably even 60mm fans should probably also be avoided like the plague. How busy do you expect the kit to get? Do you expect the CPU or the HBA/hard discs will be pumping out the most heat or just the motherboards in general?

If you can afford to go 12U then I would say go 12U and if you can afford to go 18U then do that too - if quietness is of prime concern than you want to get the biggest, least cramped cases you can get your hands on so you can avoid those 40mm screamers at all costs.

FWIW I used to have an old 4U rackmount as a file server until I got sick of the noise and ended up buying a QNAP. By the time I was sick of off-the-shelf NAS vendors the U-NAS NSC 800 was available and I built my NAS out of that; it's laid out well enough that the two fans at the back turning at 900rpm are enough to keep the CPU and the HBA cool enough without having to turn on active fans. Those seasonics never turn on

 

[pyro_]

How many hot swaps do you want? and in 3.5 or 2.5?

I am planing on building a 2.5" hot swap setup with a norco rpc 231 2U 14" deep mATX case with a couple of 6 or 8 in 1 5.25" bay hot swap setups from Icy Dock

NORCO RPC-231 Black Server Case - Newegg.com

 

[Marsh]

I used this chassis to house 8 Intel S3700 SSD
RAID Machine 1U 8 Bay 2 5" SAS SATA Rackmount Enclosure | eBay
6G SAS Backplane
1U form factor, 10.5" depth

For systemboard, I choose iStar D-213-MATX 2U chassis , 15" in depth
iStarUSA D-213-MATX Black Metal/ Aluminum 2U Rackmount microATX Server Chassis - Newegg.com

This setup does require SFF-8087 connection to SFF-8088

Not cheap, but swapping 8 x Intel SSD to another system making it super easy

 

[Razvan]

Or such an assembly of two "half-U" chassis.

Interesting concept. The ITS-1810, ITS-2812 and ITS-2812LCD look nice and are 12" long at most. However they use 40x40mm fans so we're back at square one. The ITS-2812 2U model is 88.8mm in height and I wonder if you can stick two 80mm fans in the front, by removing the optical drive bay.

... noise-wise it sounds like you're going to be having people within earshot of the rack... in which case I'd be looking for stuff that was 32dB and under.

This goes in a small room close enough to living room and bedroom so first concern is noise, followed by heat. There is a door and I hoped to get away with the 34 dBA fan from SC505-203B by closing it, as long as the exhaust air can be vented to the exterior.

How busy do you expect the kit to get? Do you expect the CPU or the HBA/hard discs will be pumping out the most heat or just the motherboards in general?

nas: several 7200rpm drives + hba
xeon: 2.5" 10k sas + hba
atom: ssd or cf+adapter or satadom

Heat is generated by the 3.5" drives, switch and hbas, which are non-negociable. That's why I'm going with the lowest tdp cpu for each role. If Supermicro had a m-itx lga1150 I would have chosen an e3-1240l (25w) instead of the xeon-d (45w) which also has lower single thread performance.

If you can afford to go 12U then I would say go 12U and if you can afford to go 18U then do that too - if quietness is of prime concern than you want to get the biggest, least cramped cases you can get your hands on so you can avoid those 40mm screamers at all costs.

12U is the most I will go for. After all, the ideea is to replace a 22U 700mm deep open rack with something smaller, quieter, cooler and low-profile.

FWIW I used to have an old 4U rackmount as a file server until I got sick of the noise and ended up buying a QNAP. By the time I was sick of off-the-shelf NAS vendors the U-NAS NSC 800 was available and I built my NAS out of that; it's laid out well enough that the two fans at the back turning at 900rpm are enough to keep the CPU and the HBA cool enough without having to turn on active fans. Those seasonics never turn on

Current 4U nas rackmount case is silent but the heat is unmanageable. I am betting on the ideea that a closed wallmounted rack along with outside heat exhaust will lower the temperatures and save a lot of space.

For 450mm deeep racks, the maximum usable space seems to be about 330mm. The NSC-800 is already bought and being only 255 mm deep will fit just fine. As for the other servers, the stortest cases in 2/3/4U range are about 350mm. Given that no case bigger than 1U seems to fit the bill depth-wise, the remaining options are either cutting a 3/4U case or designing one from scratch.

The noise will be less if use a 1,5 ... 2U enclosure.
For example it is - 1.5U and a depth of 326 mm.

I like the ideea of two m-itx boards in one case. Now I only need to figure a way to cut/shorten the current 4U nas case AND fit the atom + xeon-d boards AND the power supply(s) AND relocate the 3 120mm fans AND fit more leds/buttons on the front

Thanks again.

 

[Hanss]

Interesting concept. The ITS-1810, ITS-2812 and ITS-2812LCD look nice and are 12" long at most. However they use 40x40mm fans so we're back at square one. The ITS-2812 2U model is 88.8mm in height and I wonder if you can stick two 80mm fans in the front, by removing the optical drive bay.

You're right. ODD - is archaic elements.
This is an example of a concept or implementation. I do not know whether there is a version with a 80mm fan ... Ask the manufacturer / Google.

 

[JimPhreak]

It's possibly a diversion from the original purpose of the thread, but does anyone make a short-depth rackmount with hot-swap drives on the front? Quick back-of-a-fag-packet says that fitting in a mATX or mITX board and a dozen or so hot-swap trays would be doable in a 400-450mm deep 4U but don't think I've ever seen one...

Edit: Well blimey, they do appear to exist in a fashion (45cm deep): IPC202|2U Storage Appliance, 8 SATA hot-swap bays, support dual Mini ITX motherboard, 17.5 depth, two 250W power supply

Edit 2: That case is actually made by Casetronic/Travla T2280 2U Rackmount

That's a twin-mITX with eight hot-swap discs and twin 80mm fans and what looks like provisioning for flex ATX PSUs (so you wouldn't need an adapter for those awesome seasonics fingers crossed). Tempted to see if I can find anyone in the UK selling them as I've been thinking about chucking a small rack into the loft...

That T2280 case is very intriguing even though I'd probably only use a single mITX system inside it. Howerver my main concern would be cooling. Two 80mm fans mounted on the side of the chassis don't seem like a very effective cooling solution for both the hard drive trays and the CPU/motherboard.

Did you ever wind up going with this case or did you go with an alternative? There are so few options for shallow depth server chassis' with 8+ host swap bays, it's quite annoying.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

Nope, I'm sticking with my NSC-800's for now as realistically I'm at least a year away from contemplating installing a rack of any sort - I'd need to redo the loft and get proper wiring around the house done really. But like you say, no-one really seems to make much in the way of short-depth storage rackmounts in any size and the NSC-800 is pretty much perfick for an extremely space-efficient and quiet server.

 

[JimPhreak]

Nope, I'm sticking with my NSC-800's for now as realistically I'm at least a year away from contemplating installing a rack of any sort - I'd need to redo the loft and get proper wiring around the house done really. But like you say, no-one really seems to make much in the way of short-depth storage rackmounts in any size and the NSC-800 is pretty much perfick for an extremely space-efficient and quiet server.

What's the specs of the system you're using in the NSC-800?

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

ASRock E3C226D2I, xeon E3 1230v3, 2x8GB crucial ECC, M1015, six 6TB WD greens in RAID10. Backup server is the same sort of deal but with eight 3TB greens in RAID6.

 

[JimPhreak]

ASRock E3C226D2I, xeon E3 1230v3, 2x8GB crucial ECC, M1015, six 6TB WD greens in RAID10. Backup server is the same sort of deal but with eight 3TB greens in RAID6.

How much do you push that E3? Wondering what temps you see in that case.

 

[whitey]

I used this chassis to house 8 Intel S3700 SSD
RAID Machine 1U 8 Bay 2 5" SAS SATA Rackmount Enclosure | eBay
6G SAS Backplane
1U form factor, 10.5" depth

That Raid Machine is SEXY!

 

[cesmith9999]

Habey DS-1280 3U 12-bay SAS Expander Direct Attached SAS/SATA JBOD Storage Array - Newegg.com

Chris

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

How much do you push that E3? Wondering what temps you see in that case.

I think I've got it up to 55 doing an x264 encode as a test but for the vast majority of the time none of the cores will be above 3%. But I'm not the sort of techie that worries about temperatures until I can start cooking eggs on things.

 

[JimPhreak]

Habey DS-1280 3U 12-bay SAS Expander Direct Attached SAS/SATA JBOD Storage Array - Newegg.com

Chris

That case is like exactly what I'm looking for. Unfortunately the reviews talk about how terrible the build quality is.

I wound up purchasing this case yesterday and I'll see how it works out for me. With 10 bays I'll have 80TB of raw storage (72TB actual) so that should keep me happy for a while.

iStarUSA D-3100HB Black Aluminum 3U Rackmount Compact 10x 3.5" Bay Hotswap microATX Chassis

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

That Habey box is just for discs though isn't it? The sort that won't take a motherboard but has some SAS ports on the back to plug into an HBA on another computer.

Had seen that 3100 case at a UK vendor but missed the fact it was labelled as "compact". Any impressions you have of it would be welcome

 

[JimPhreak]

That Habey box is just for discs though isn't it? The sort that won't take a motherboard but has some SAS ports on the back to plug into an HBA on another computer.

Had seen that 3100 case at a UK vendor but missed the fact it was labelled as "compact". Any impressions you have of it would be welcome

Ah, you're right. I missed the fact that there is no motherboard backplate cutout, I got thrown by what looked like motherboard screw standoff's inside the case.

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

Following me stumbling into the Ablecom 8-bay tower as used by the FreeNAS Mini XL or whatever it's called, I notice they also make some 2U <600mm rigs with either 8 or 12 hot-swap trays.
ABLECOM 大訊科技 - Products - ABLECOM 大訊科技 - CS-R25
ABLECOM 大訊科技 - Products - ABLECOM 大訊科技 - CS-R26

Looks like a bank of 4x80mm PWM fans so assuming you can keep the rpm's low enough it might be able to be made non-deafening at least... backplane connectors are described as "3xmini-SAS to four SATA" although not terribly sure what it means (I guess an 8087 breakout).

 

[EffrafaxOfWug]

Found another sort-of one from Xcase, looks like a new line. They're flogging them as barebones boxes - price is rather high (but is's basically an E3 motherboard and HBA in a box as far as I can tell) but this one for example will get you 16x hot-swap bays at only 500mm depth (plus 2x2.5" at the rear for the OS), a mobo tray, space for a HH PCIe card and an integrated LSI controller of some description:
EasyStore S16REH - Short Storage Barebone Server with 16 Hotswap Bays

Wish someone would make something in a near-as-damnit format that'd take one of SM's flexATX xeon-D boards...