Server Rebuild
March 3rd, 2020, 02:52amServer Upgrade
I recently ordered a bunch of parts to convert my R620 into a custom whitebox server. My rackmount cabinet sits next to my main pc and I honestly just can't handle the noise anymore. I previously had silenced all of the networking equipment in the rack (including the Dell PowerConnect 6224) by replacing all of the fans with aftermarket ones.
NEUTRON is Born!
Once upon a colocation I had a server named NEUTRON, said server was the most powerful computer I had ever worked with at that point in my life. Given that it was such a huge beast I had named it NEUTRON after the neutron star, the most dense material known to man. Such a name I once again find fitting.
NEUTRON Hardware
I have cobbled together all of the important parts out of the R620 and either purchased new or like-new used parts to fill in the gaps. The results of this build have been most impressive, with the dual CPUs idling at roughly ~23°C. That said, here is the final list of parts that went into the build.
- 1 x InWin R400-03N Open-Bay 4U Server Case
- 1 x Supermicro X9DR3-F Motherboard
- 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2650 v2 (20M Cache, 2.6 GHz, 8.0 GT/s QPI)
- 6 x SAMSUNG 8GB PC3L-10600R (2Rx4, 1.35V, ECC Registered)
- 4 x SAMSUNG 4GB PC3L-10600R (2Rx4, 1.5V, ECC Registered)
- 2 x Noctua NH-U9DX i4 CPU Fan
- 2 x Noctua NF-R8 redux Case Fan
- 1 x EVGA SuperNOVA 750 G5
- 1 x LSI 9207-8i SAS Host Bus Adapter
- 1 x ICY DOCK ToughArmor MB607SP-B + Noctua NF-A4x10 FLX
- 1 x Samsung SSD 830 Series 128GB
- 2 x HGST Ultrastar C10K900 600GB 2.5" SAS2 10000RPM
- 2 x Seagate Barracuda 5TB 2.5" SATA 6Gb/s
Conclusion
After getting the new machine put together I did some testing with ESXi, but once again settled on using Arch Linux + KVM for the host OS. Given the new hardware I wanted to do some extensive testing and some of that would have been a bit hard running just a hypervisor.
Finally here are some pictures of the new machine.
And of course after getting the new server setup, I removed the R610 and R620 along with a 2U blank spacer from my rackmount cabinet and added in the new 4U. Hilariously enough, the loudest thing in my room now is the fan on my ODROID XU4.
