Are You Looking For A Less Expensive Norco 4220 / 4224 Alternative? - Page 33

Has anyone had any success with replacing the power supply on the 2U model? I just ordered this http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817147084 power supply and it's a little bit too tall to fit in the super micro case.. Anyone else have any ideas about silencing the power supply?

Ok. Thanks alot for the update. I will definitely be keeping my eyes open for them.

I have no 2U supermicro server

that PSU is 2U PSU should fit to any 2U server case.

can you try to rotate PSU placement?

I See tams posted uncomplete 4U supermicro on ebay for $250 ,

my suggestion:
Email or Call Tams( Andy) and tell her to email or notify you when a new 2U batch is coming.

I tried rotating it every direction, it's simply too large.

Since I have no 2U SM case, I can not do measurement.

2U PSU should fit on 2U server case generally.

is this too long? or wide?

It is about 10-15mm too wide.

A question for the "server" people. Have this up and running on Win-7 64 system and flexraid on the last supermicro setup and am only using 12 of the bays atm. So here is the problem.

I have problems with drives disappearing after running maybe a few days or hours maybe not exactly sure on time as it varies a little. Its on bays 2-6-10 (have not tried others in that column yet ie 14-18-22). Them 3 bays are on 1 of the controllers but also so is 9 which i have not had problems with. Moved the 3 drives to other bays (11-12-13) and are working normal now.

In my quest to trouble shoot this problem I have checked but not replaced sata cables and power both seem connected like they should be. What do you think my next steps should be? So i'm thinking it could be controller or backplane just have to figure out which?

I don't have the supermicro system but are those bays all on the same backplane? In the other setups the bays where arranged with 4 bays all on the same horizontal backplane card. There were 6 of these backplanes stacked vertically. So if you had a problem that spanned across just that one set then you'd have reason to suspect just that backplane board. If the new setup uses the same sort of configuration that might be a point to check. Could be power to those bays is problematic. I had a 1000W OCZ supply that could not reliably power all the drives when using separate PSU modular sockets. But when I used splitters all off one PSU connection then everything worked.

Anybody knows if the 2 x 2GB included modules are ECC chips?.

The ones I received with my 2U setup were ECC.

I believe is ECC, I planned to get 2U. after getting the detail info from A n d y, I switch ti 4U (just~$80 more for me)

my suggestions:
1) check Sata cables, make sure inserted firmly
2) check 4 pin cables, make sure inserted firmly.

the backplane is a simple SATA backplane .

Thanks for the info guys. Having a short memory time span is not funny when waiting 3 months for the server to arrive (oversea+ship). I ordered 2x2GB 5300 sticks after buying the server. Yesterday bought 4x2GB 6400 sticks after forgetting I bough the other pair... :s

This is a bummer. I'm in search of a quieter, non-redundant power supply for the 2U Supermicro. Have you come across any solutions yet? Did you try removing the metal casing that allows you to slide in and out the individual 1U power supplies?

I tried removing the internal casing that holds the original power supply in case, but there is a rivet holding one part of it in place.

That's what drills are for.

I know.. I was just being lazy

Seem they have a TFX12V section on newegg that should fit perfectly.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007657%20600014004&IsNodeId=1&bop=And&Order=PRICE&PageSize=20

I found these 2 Seasonic power supplies from that list for pretty reasonable prices on ebay. These should be great quality being Seasonic built to go along with the great reliability you want in a server.

Gold rated efficiency, fully modular PSU 350w - $60 with free shipping
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Seasonic-SS-350TGM-350W-80-Plus-Gold-TFX12V-v2-31-Power-Supply-/200807378099?pt=US_Power_Supplies&hash=item2ec10d6cb3

or $42 shipped for bronze non modular 300W
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Seasonic-SS-300TFX-300W-80PLUS-BRONZE-TFX-Power-Supply-/320831454965?pt=PCA_UPS&hash=item4ab30b7ef5

They may fit but they won't provide enough juice to power a 24-drive array. You're probably going to need a PSU rated at around 750-850W for a fully populated setup.

just would like to share the transformation from scratch to almost done on building my system

Closed front side,



fully re-arrangement front rack. IPMI is a nice tool that I can monitor all server without access to servers directly.


back view, ugly... woudl replace when I am not lazy, just the back side.



inside view from rear,



metered PDU and UPS are working together . servers are pulling 3 Amps. and I can turn on/off , do automation switching on/off, and check the status via web/ssh



two last to do:
1)stain front, side panels
2) apply inside fire resistant padding ( when still in the mood)


thanks all for the information that I gathered/shared from this long thread!!
Edited by cantalup - 10/13/12 at 6:55am

This is for the 2U system with 12 HDD. Not the 4U since you can fit a full ATX PSU in it.

OK. That makes much more sense.

putting 300W-350W for 2U with 12HD is kind of risky...

1) need to pick the lowest power consumption CPU/motherboard/cards...
2) Use Green HD ( I Do not like this, 7200RPM HD is better)

the problem would be during cold-booting, where most components will sucks a big power consumption. can 300W-350W PSU handle this hungry demand during cold boot, especially at one time all HDs suck the biggest consumption?.

on the other way, if we can do cold-boot staggering for HD ( where the card/controller will power up one by one.....takes time but not straining PSU).

I would say good luck with 300-350W.. when something unstable during initialization/cold-booting can be happened randomly
and would suggedt 500W is the best best..

I would say it is definitely fine with 350W. Depending on the system components and how much you are going to load the system the 300W would probably be fine as well.

I looked at the peak power numbers for a Samsung F4 2TB for instance are around 12w and idle at 2-3W and the rest of the system if updated likely won't use more than 100W on load with say a 2500K chip. It really just depends on what components you chose though and how much demand you will be putting on it. I won't be using the old E8400 or a video card in mine and likely won't have 12 drives in it in the near future.

I am just worried on cold boot only, where all components need full power ......

try for yourself. If 300-350W can handle cold boot with "your total" HDs.., you are good to go.

old E8400 is rated 65W :P.. not a big power hunger comparing with current CPU ehem i3 during cold boot..
when rated 300W-350W PSU, this is a short power than can deliver in limited time. I would say 80% of total Watts should be a good number.

we had been in a discussion on this thread on PSU replacement

good luck!!.

I'm currently running 18 HDDs on my 4+4 U setup. With 2 CPUs, 32 Gbs RAM, 6 SATA cards, most of the same old components and I run a peak boot load of 380 Watts and an average run load of around 250-300. That does include a KVM, plugged in but off monitor, Network switch and a few other small items plugged into my UPS.

So based on my experience I would say that 350 is likely doable but I would caution that most PSUs stop functioning correctly once taxed beyond 75% of total (assuming they are really good quality and handle 75% well). At 75% you only have 260 Watts to play with and that is very likely to be cutting it close with 12 HDDs and a random assortment of Mobo, CPU, etc. It might be practical to build computers that take less than 50W at full run but those systems don't typically have the ability to handle even the minimal requirements of 12+ HDDs.

cold boot is the key:)... peak boot is not matter.
Cold boot-> "Starting the computer by turning power on. Turning power off and then back on again" grab from the net.

as I stressed on my posting: test on cold boot many times...
I would say 80% is pretty solid number ..

the issues that I know when PSU is getting closed to the peak
1) ripple noise
2) drop voltage (mostly on 12V line )
3)voltage spike/swing( this would cause some damage, supposely swinging from 12V-9V-12V in the matter of seconds)

I would pick a safe way: 500W is the border line..

if someone need to have fun with 300W-350W, buy a good PSU!!!...


an example on my lga775 system:
I reuse my 1U supermicro E6XXX 65W CPU with an pci-x 6 ports nic, 320G HD, and 8G RAM for running esxi5 (firewall, some vms for monitoring). it shoot to 120W during the coldboot... and drop to 80W... and would move to 100W * when some VMs are running cpu intensive program*.
the supermicro PSU is 260W....

Anyone have a suggestion for a 500w PSU than could fit (or at least come close to fitting) into a 2U?

I kicked around the idea of just kludging together a 500w PSU that I would just mount externally, or have it stick out of the top of the server. My 2U is out of sight, so it doesn't have to win any beauty contests.