Supermicro 836 + Rails, NIB 115+ shipping

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nthu9280

Well-Known Member
Feb 3, 2016
1,628
498
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San Antonio, TX
This is a Dell Compellent CT-SC030. Seller claims it's new in box so less chance of packaging / shipping issues. Has 26 in stock at the time of posting. Being the motherboard such an older gen, I assume SAS1 back plane. So the innards are eWaste and most likely need replace the backplane and FANs. Rails are included in the PICs which more than offsets the backplane cost.

Dell Compellent SC030 CT-SC030 Storage System Controller Server M4WJP 0M4WJP | eBay
 

BlueFox

Legendary Member Spam Hunter Extraordinaire
Oct 26, 2015
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Looks like a TQ backplane to me (you can make out the AMI MG9072 chips for SES2, so that makes this a 836TQ-R800B), so won't need to replace it after all. PSUs are ancient though and not very efficient.
 

Samir

Post Liker and Deal Hunter Extraordinaire!
Jul 21, 2017
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HSV and SFO
These lga771 xeons are power HOGS! I have several servers based on them (Dell 2950, HP DL380) and they will heat up a whole room QUICK when they're running processor intensive stuff. Plus the fbdimms get scalding hot too.

Even if power and ac is cheap, these are still not a good deal imo. I got a whole dual e5620 Dell r410 with 4gb shipped for under $100 a few years ago.
 

Philmatic

Active Member
Sep 15, 2011
124
85
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This is a great way to get a chassis that supports EE-ATX, but you’d have to e-waste the motherboard, cpu, ram, backplanes and PSUs.

Seems like a wash after all the money you’ll have to spend to replace those components.
 

RedX1

Active Member
Aug 11, 2017
132
144
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Hi



Some observations might help prospective buyers.


I purchased 2 of these units a couple of months ago, BNIB Dell Compellent CT-SC030. I paid almost the same price the above seller is asking for the units, in the same condition - including delivery, which in Europe is a very good price.

These are normally used as head units for external disk arrays. They come with 16 LFF disk caddies, filled with blanks.

The boot drive is a small 512MB - CF Card, connected to the motherboard with an IDE cable. The CD Drive is also an IDE device.

The Backplane is a BPN-SAS-836TQ. https://www.supermicro.com/manuals/other/BPN-SAS-836TQ.pdf

The main interior components are a Supermicro X7DBI Motherboard with one CPU and 4G RAM. As mentioned above all of the interior components can perhaps be considered as inefficient, electronic waste.

The X7DBI motherboard has a screaming fan profile, no doubt due to the inefficient older design generation.

The chassis fans are standard supermicro PWM units and will work quietly with newer generation motherboard fan profiles.

The mounting rails that I received are Rev “A” and will not interchange with the more common Rev “B” rails. These chassis will accept the Rev “B” rails.

Some motherboards will require the tapping of a 6/32 Thread for the mounting standoff under the rear fan, nearest the PSU. This is quite difficult as the hole is very close to the rear-window.

The front power connector cable is short and may require the use of an extension.

I removed the PWS-801-1R power supplies and used PWS-920P-1R power supplies in one chassis with a X10DRL-iF motherboard, with no problems. The PWS-721P-1R power supplies in my other chassis using a X9DRD-7LN4F-JBOD motherboard return garbage readings to the IPMI power consumption page, otherwise they are fine.

These PSU’s are less noisy than the cooling fans and almost silent when the units are in the shutdown state. They can be easily found for really modest cost.

If you are looking for a “New” Chassis that will accept full height AOC’s, 16 disk drives, with rails, perhaps these units make a “Compelling” case.


The system will not let me upload any photos at the moment, but I hope this helps.



RedX1
 

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
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I bought one for the chassis. Good to know the fans are PWM. Thanks.
 

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
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Mine arrived today. I'm still waiting on the new guts so I bumped the memory up to 16GB and fired it up, loaded Windows and ran Cinebench R15 just for S&G. It scored 156. It draws about 150 watts at idle with all bays empty. Ear muffs required to avoid hearing damage. Only options for fan speed are -

Full power takeoff
3 pin Workstation
3 pin Server
4 pin Workstation
4 pin Server

There isn't much difference between these choices.

It came with an add in IPMI card and a mystery card I've yet to identify.

The guts are junk but the chassis is nice. Shows very little wear and the rails are a nice touch. :)
 

cheezehead

Active Member
Sep 23, 2012
723
175
43
Midwest, US
These are late model CT030's. The chassis is a 836TQ-R800B with the narrow railkit, earlier rev's use to use the old fat rail kits which are hard/expensive to get. As RedX1 mentioned, swap the PSU out if it's going anywhere where noise is an issue..there are a few other threads on these PSUs.
 

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
3,372
1,375
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`I have an abundance of PSU's so that's not an issue. The missing mounting hole in the corner isn't either, I plan to use a flat footed plastic standoff. I may have a problem with cable lengths. The rails are Rev B.
 

nthu9280

Well-Known Member
Feb 3, 2016
1,628
498
83
San Antonio, TX
Are you talking about the Front panel cable length? Different length cables with 20 or 16 pin connectors are available. May not be reasonably priced on eBay though. You may have better luck on Supermicro eStore or RMA department
 

Fritz

Well-Known Member
Apr 6, 2015
3,372
1,375
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I was able to get all the cables to reach but with issues. The 24 pin PSU connector was way too short. I had a 24 to 20 pin extension cable and used that but I have no post and I suspect this may be the cause.