October 9, 2016
I finally got the rest of the parts for this build yesterday so here's the rest of this build.
I decided to stick with the i3 just because I don't play games or stream much of anything if at all. I did want a cpu with a little more power in case I did need that, but since the Xeon is still a bit up there and takes more power than this one, I was fine with this one. It also supports the ecc memory and the power sipping compared to the xeon should be fine for a nas too.
I decided to go with the asrock since it had all 8 sata ports on the board. I didn't want to add any more boards just to get all 8 drives connected. Although I was able to plug all 8 sata bays, this does leave me with one little issue, the OS drive. It does have a usb 3 port so you can use a regular stick, but I also read that it's not the best choice to go that route if you use OMV, FreeNas seems fine. There is some other software that you have to add in order to use it with OMV. Not to mention there isn't much else mentioned on the manual about this. I will be testing that however. Keep in mind that this board seems to mainly suggest windows and no linux system. The case has a spot for another 2.5 inch drive on the side which is fine, but there is still no port to plug that into with all 8 sata ports being used by the 3.5 inch hard drive bays in the case I'm using. So I would have to add a pci sata card if I want to use the raid on the board for example with all those drives and just install the OS on a 2.5 inch drive connected to the pcie. Assuming the board lets me use that separately from the 8 sata ports. So this will be a bit of a challenge until I can test things. I do have a two port sata pcie card that I bought a long time ago, it's only sata 2 but assuming I can go that route with a raid 5 array on the 8 bays, then I guess that will be an option too. I really don't know how this will play out at the moment but there you go, you now know what to expect. There are of course a few more ways to go about this, like maybe building two raid 5 arrays if the board allows it. Again, it's hard to say what will work since I haven't gotten that far yet. Also, I found out that you can use the software raid instead and just go that route which would make it much simpler, and FreeNas I know actually suggests this, but both OMV and FreeNas I believe can do this.
NOTE: I wanted to make a big note here because I really don't know how I missed this, but this is a
workstation motherboard and not a
server specific board. The reason I bring this up is because I was under the impression it was a "server" board until I saw the website again today and it says it right on the box. It's not a huge deal since I wanted all 8 sata ports that it has, but if you want that IPMI, you will need to look for a server specific board that has it. I also read about what a potential security problem that could be, but I can see how that would make it easier for an admin to check on things if the need arises. I also noticed that all the asrock server boards have about 6 sata ports only. In short, if none of their boards fits your needs you can always check the other manufacturers. This just happened to fit what I was looking for in my own build.
The board box was sealed so this is a spanking new board.
The box is also very small which is nice too. They just keep getting smaller and smaller.
I decided to just get a new mini itx and this one was also affordable. I have been through a couple on my other nas, that I figured, as long as it works, then it's all good. It's inexpensive enough that I can always pick up another if it ever needs replacing. I'm not sure what kind of power this will need once it's full if I even get that far, but I think this will work. I was just concerned about the length of the wires and since I don't have that many drives I can just leave the second fan unplugged for now. I'm also not sure how the flex psu will affect the drives but there are a few other settings in the bios that can be tweaked for power saving or to turn them off. FYI, I don't recommend putting the drives to sleep on a nas. Lets just say they kept dying on me until I turned that feature off. Live and learn.
Here are the specifications of this power supply.
So far it looked good. Unfortunately I later found out that the power cord is about 4 feet! That is just a weird length and it's just a bit too short. The cord looks nice and thick, but I just wished it was 6 feet instead. The good thing is that I do have a couple laying around, so it's not a huge deal but it would be if you don't have any. Update, the short cord worked out fine where I installed my box, so it turned out okay in the end.
What the sticker shows on the actual power supply. This side ends up towards the inside so I don't see it once it's installed which is why I took the picture too.
The wires look a bit longer than the old one I had which is nice.
I did find my other mini power supply that was included with a case I have. It's the top one with the shorter wires as the case is very small. Needless to say, I was pretty happy the new psu had longer wires and it looked just perfect for my case.
These are the included screws that came with the case.
I used two on the top but they kind of catch the edge of the case there so although they did work, they don't sit quite flat. They will need to notch these edges a bit to let them sit flat. Not a huge deal but this case felt a bit unfinished in some areas like this one for example.
Here's a closeup of the psu screws. I used two smaller rounded versions on the two bottom holes as they seemed to be a fine thread and had smaller heads so they wouldn't sit on that edge. These holes are on the psu and not the case, but again, if I used the larger screws they would not sit flat which I just found a bit annoying. I hate when people can't find the correct screws to put into a case or anything for that matter and just use whatever they can find so these small details are something I tend notice. I don't like to just throw random screws together.
Well, I'm still not sure how that bracket is supposed to be used. There's another small tab right below the cables with three holes, but I also have no idea what that is for. Again, there were no diagrams or instructions about these parts so it's hard to know exactly what or how they are to be used.
Here's the new psu finally installed. So far the only screws holding this are on the back of the unit. So make sure you don't strip those holes or you will hate yourself.
Always check these connectors before plugging them in. I have had so many bad connections with these, it's not even funny, not to mention the headaches they can give you. These came just perfect, notice each metal piece is closed as it should be, not squashed or open. You can always fix them, but it's nice to see these came fine and ready to be used without messing with them.
It's a bit tight up here, but the wires reached just about right.
Here's the second plug in its place.
And finally, here's what this looks like from this side. This is the only way to get those plugs up there. The length was just right for my case. Routing from under the cage would not reach. It looks a bit weird, but the cover sits a bit higher so the wires don't get pinched by the cover. So far it looks like the floppy plug is the only one that will not be needed and used. It seems to have just the right amount of plugs needed for this build.
Here are the rest of the plugs this psu comes with.
I didn't need the six plug version on this build either, but if you use a graphics card, that looks to be the type of plug they use. I helped someone with a build not too long ago and the graphics card they were using actually had two of these plugs. It was a larger case so it had two of these and both were plugged in to the graphics card. So far everything worked fine there which is the reason I bring this up in case you haven't seen these yet. At least that's what it looks like to me.
And here's another closeup of the cpu I'll be using.
Here's what you get with the motherboard. They did a very nice job packing this up. They did not include a speaker and the board does have the headers for one. There is also an LED for an alarm, but I just could not find one to plug this connector into.
The cables are all sata 3.
This is the cd you get with this board. Keep in mind that the software is for windows. I'm not sure what version because when I tried to open the disc in windows 10 I got the following message.
So it's pretty useless to me at the moment since I can't even look at it.
To be fair, here is what the cd includes. I'm not sure if it's for a server only or the software is just old which wouldn't make sense since this is a fairly new board. I'm not sure what that application is for since it won't install on my windows 10 to at least look at it. Now I don't have any software installed windows or linux on this new build so I just wanted to take a look at this for now.
The board in all its glory.
A few closeups of the board components.
Here's the cpu cover. It is an 1151 socket. This was not clear on the manual since they only mention the xeon chip. Now you know that it is and the i3 I got works on it.
The board does have a usb 3 header which is nice since that's all you get. Unfortunately my front panel has one usb 3 and one usb 2 which is really odd so only the usb 3 will work since the wires for the usb 2 are very short and there is nowhere to plug that into on this board.
So keep that in mind if you need more usb headers.
Here's the internal usb 3 connector.
This top rear serial port is a bit weird with all those exposed connections but that's how they did it so I'm just showing this to you. The only thing missing is a wireless card if you wanted to use one. I know this is a
server workstation board, but at home you won't be using this like you would at work, well at least for most people.
There is no mention of IPMI which I thought I read about this board having. Unless they call it something else I have yet to see that. I think I read something similar to that, but I have never used it so I don't know anything about it at the moment. I have now found that this board does NOT have IPMI. So if you thought it did, now you know. At least that's what I found after reading the FAQs on their website. So this is just a workstation board with 8 sata ports as I mentioned before.
Here's the included cpu fan.
And the cpu.
And everything that's included in the retail cpu box.
And now to the part you really need to be careful putting together. These have small pins/tabs in there so don't drop anything in there or even touch them when you are doing this.
Here's a closeup of the socket. It always amazes me how tiny and perfect these parts are.
There are no more pins coming out of this cpu which is nice.
The arrow for the corner is so far away from the actual corner that it was a bit harder to figure this one out. I used the side cutouts as I didn't realized that large arrow was the one I was supposed to be looking at. I was looking for something closer to the chip and that arrow looks a bit off. I just used the side guides and it's all good. Remember, this only goes in one way.
That looks pretty no matter what cpu you use.
Here's the board with the cpu and memory. I only used one dimm because it's still pretty expensive and for what I'm using this for, that should be fine. I can always get another later on.
And a look at the bottom of this board.
Here's the IO shield. Just your basic plate.
It did fit just perfect here.
And the money shot! Yes, there is plenty of room in this case for a stock cpu and fan. I was a bit worried about this, but it looks fine.
Although, any cpu or board resetting will require removing the board because there is no removable tray here. Just stand offs for the board to sit in.
So here are the front pin headers connected. These are the two inner connections.
Here are the two outer connections.
This board comes with an auxiliary pin header where you can plug the front nic LED's. This was pretty good because it allowed me to make use of those extra LED's in the front. Remember those nic1, nic2 and nic3 connections from the case. Here's where they can be used. This means that when you connect these here, the activity shown on the back of the nic can now be viewed from the font of the case. Although I had a third one, there are only two headers for one and two so the third one doesn't get used here. The other connector that I have left over is the alarm since I'm not too sure whether I can use that on the SMB alert. I read a bit more and I think that's for something like a sensor. I'll just leave that off for now. I'm just not sure what that is, but that's the only header pin close to being an alarm on this board. I'll have to ask because I don't see any other alarm headers on this board. Either way, it was nice to at least use most of the connectors built into this case. Every board is different so check whatever board you are planning on using before you buy it. I did, so I was fine with two connectors left over. All others are being used.
At first I thought they had only included four sata cables. I then opened one bag to take a picture of the labels and found that there were two cables in it. So you get two bags with two cables each. One is straight on both ends and the other has one 90 degree on one end. The other two bags include just one cable, at least the one I got, so I got a total of 6 cables and not eight. I'm glad they included the cables in this case even though I can't use them with this case. I hope I'm wrong and they actually meant to include all 8 since that's how many ports it has. I rather have all the same cables from the same company so I'm not mixing and matching things later on.Well, I don't know if you are supposed to get all 8 since this is what was included.
Here's a closeup of the cables. I tried very hard to get these but my camera just refused to focus. Maybe because it was in the middle of the night and it just wanted to go to sleep. Either way at least you can see they are well labeled.
Finally, here's what this side looked like as I added all the wires. There's plenty of space left, however there is no place to tie the cables to on the case. So a bit of cable management tabs or something would help this case a bit more.
It looks messy and tight, but I was just starting to test each sata port to make sure I got the order correct. I have an old sata drive I used to check each port and to make sure they were labeled correctly so I know what to look for later on.
Here's what the psu side started to look like once I started cleaning things up. I ran out of my cable ties so I used the included metal wire ties for now. I do like how much room I still had left over even with all the parts in. This thing actually looked empty which I like.
I had to label the fans since I had to route them through the bottom to the opposite side for this board. Unfortunately this board only has one fan port, the other is the cpu fan port. So I need to get a splitter in order to use both fans which sucks. Another part that needs to be ordered. Oh, just buy the 4 pin splitter since they are backwards compatible with the three pin fans which is what this case has. I will get into this a bit more below. For now, just know that the board fan header has 4 pins in order to use a fan with pwn or temperature control which both included fans are not. :( There are also different lengths which doesn't help since any replacement fans don't really show this either.
Finally here's the back. I thought it came with two hdmi ports, but nope, you get three choices here. VGA, hdmi and one display port so that's nice. At least you still get a few choices. I am using the vga port on my tv, so this worked out great and I no longer have to keep unplugging my desktop computer to make changes. It now has its own mouse and keyboard as well. I don't need a mouse for a nas, but it's there in case I use anything else.
And here's a picture of the cpu specs in the bios.
I started this for the first time to test the first drive bay. The first thing you notice is the super bright and annoying green LED. All other LED's are very subtle, I don't know why they didn't keep that going with this power LED. Usually it's the blue LED's that are blinding, but even those are nicely toned down on the drive bays, the green however, just blinds you. I guess any color is fine as long as it's subtle and not blinding. I definitely can't say that about the blue lights here. The green light sure lights up the room at night though.
Here's the nic1 LED working even without the computer being on. So even with this off, there was still a ton of activity here. The one picture I don't have is of the usb 3 header. It has the usb two header on it and it's very short. Unfortunately I can't use it with this board as there are no other usb headers. So although there is a usb 3 headers which I did use, the usb 2 on the front here is non working in this build. Not that I would use these much, but I would prefer both front usb 3 ports so that this would have been taken cared off with just the usb 3 header since I can't even plug the usb 2 header anywhere on this board. Again, not a huge deal since I got a few on the back, but I think it's worth mentioning this for this case. It's just an oddball way of using one usb 2 and one usb 3 instead of just using two usb 3 ports since those are newer anyway. There are two usb 2 ports on the back of the motherboard I got so that's covered.
Now the mini sas to sata reverse cables. Although the cables seem to be working fine, the labels are pretty useless. One, because the board only sees sata0-sata7. The sata ends are labeled p1-p4. The case back plane labels each drive bay starting from the bottom up 1-8. So none of this will match and you have a few ways of dealing with this. I went the quick and dirty sharpie route. I just took a sharpie and started re-labeling all the cables from 0-7 to match the board bios below. I have since bought some labels but haven't needed to use them here yet.
I now wish Norco would include number labels from 0-7 that I can stick on the front panel for each drive bay so I don't have to remember what number each one is. I'll have to go get me some of these before I forget and stick them on there. This of course will come in handy if I ever need to change a bad drive. Not hard to figure out, but that should save some time later on. Update, I had a bad drive from the test drives I had lying around and the labeling came in handy finding the bad drive I needed to remove. So label everything before you need it, it's worth it.
Here's sort of the final look. Things get much better once you clean it up. The only thing are those sas connectors, the cables are pretty stiff so you can't bend them too much nor do you want to. I haven't seen any right angle versions of these so that may help a bit more since they just stick straight out as you can see. I just routed and left the hard drive power on this side ready to use in case I decide to use it. Again, the length of the wires on this psu worked just fine for this case which was a relief. As far as how well this power supply will work, only time will tell. As you can see the second sata connector would not reach the hard drive. So if I ever decide to use one or two hard drives I would need to have them lowered. I think I have now come up with a way to do this though. I haven't done it yet so that's why I'm not getting into that here.
Here's what the case looks like on with the cover closed. All the rest of the led's are very nice and subtle except that green power one unfortunately. Yup, that's an oddball.
I wanted to show this here because there is just no mention of what this blue header pins are for. There is nothing on the manual either. The other part is the cmos clear pad which is missing the actual header pins. Without them you really have to remove the board and then short the two pads with something instead of just using a jumper and header pins like the blue one here or any other board. According to the manual, they just left the solder pads on there and sure enough that's what they did. Yeah I'm a bit puzzled by that now too. It just makes no sense but maybe I'm missing something. That would be painful if the need to reset this arises.
I decided to remove one of the fans to take a look at the specifications and just get a better look at what this case came with. The reason being that they are only three wire fans so there is no temperature control option here. Meaning the board has a four pin fan temperature control option. This means that this suckers only work at warp speed as soon as the computer is powered on. I don't have a splitter which would have been nice to have included as well as fans with four wires instead of three. The single fan I connected was loud as heck. It works, but I'm guessing having the temperature control would be helpful. Also, having empty drive bays just seems to add to the hollow but loud noise these make. These work but they are loud and so far I was only using one to test this out.
The side facing the back plane has a nice plastic cover on it. It's a nice little touch but still, no specifications whatsoever. I just realized I didn't take this grill off. So I may have missed something. So I'll be looking into some brush-less pwm fans later on anyway. I did notice this fan go over 1800 rpms just to give you an idea. Having a lot of drives would get hot so having a higher wider range fan wouldn't be a bad idea. I looked and it's hard to tell what's what. So this is going to be a bit of a challenge, finding something that works well here and finding fans that have a long enough 4 wire like these.
I decided to take this cover off for even more cooling down below. I'll be designing a 3d printer cover with holes instead. I already had this bit of experience with the heat down here on my own 3d printed case and know this will help even more here. I'll just leave it open for now until I can get my printer working again whenever that happens or I'll just drill holes on the plate myself.
Now, after having to reboot this a few times since I have no OS installed, I can now say that that buttons are a bit small. So updating to some slightly larger buttons that can be easily pressed would definitely be a good thing. I had to keep grabbing the screw driver to reset the computer which got old pretty quick since that button is concave too.
While this was installed, I just took a sharpie and traced the inner opening so I can then take some measurements for my new part. It was a bit off but should be enough to get the right dimensions.
Again, here is the cpu info.
And the fan speed, when it started. The rpm slowly started going up so this is what I was staring at for a while in order to get a better idea of what range the included fans may have. It's tough to know these things when you don't have any specifications on the labels. The other problem is finding fans with leads long enough to work on this case as well. It's always something. LOL
Well, there you have it. The drives will have to come later. I still have the software to figure out, but I'll do that as I go. I have a couple of old drives I can test with so I'm not in a hurry to buy anything at the moment. Plus the holiday specials are coming so I may just wait for those. I'll post the rest as it gets done but I think I got most of the physical build done.
If you know of any fans that would work with pwm and have long enough wires let me know below. This is why I haven't bought the splitter yet, I don't know if I will need a longer one or the short one depending on the fans.
Norco ITX-S8 nas case 1 - The build
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