CHH ID: Van Gogh’s Left Ear
A few years ago, I played with Gen8 using EXSI as the underlying virtual system to tinker with AIO solutions. The system was very stable when running normally. However, after several incidents caused by my own mistakes that led to the collapse of the home network, I decided to separate various functions like soft routing and NAS. Currently, my home setup consists of a soft router and QNAP running for many years. This installation is mainly to experience the underlying virtual system of Unraid, which has significant advantages in Docker and applications.
Hardware ConfigurationSince Unraid already supports Intel 12th generation CPU hardware decoding, I abandoned the old platform solution, and it is currently very difficult to find a brand new old platform motherboard on major online shopping platforms. During the Double Eleven shopping festival, I purchased most of the hardware at different discounts across various platforms.Here is the hardware information:CPU: Intel i3-12100Motherboard: MAXSUN (铭瑄) MS-Terminator B660M RedMemory: CUSO DDR4 32Gx2 Desktop Memory 64G 2666MHzPower Supply: Tt (Thermaltake) Rated 450W Steel Shadow Toughpower SFXHard Disk: Kioxia RC10 500G NVME SSD and several old hard disksNetwork Card: Inspur X540 T2 Dual Port 10G EthernetUpdate on 11.21: There is a compatibility issue between the Inspur decomposed card and the MAXSUN motherboard. After shutting down, it cannot boot normally and requires a complete power cut. However, the software recognizes it normally after booting.Pass-through Card: Inspur LSI2308Cooling: Thermalright AXP120-X67+NF-A12x15 PWMCase: Yufu Seat MATX 6-Bay NAS CaseHardware selection thinking: I chose the 12th generation i3 mainly to prevent the waste of funds caused by excessive performance. After modifying the cooling and power supply solutions, switching to i5 should not have heat dissipation pressure. The motherboard was chosen for its sufficient expandability, and as a NAS motherboard, it does not require WiFi or overclocking capabilities. However, I must say that the BIOS interface is quite poor, feeling like going back seven or eight years.I purchased the Yufu Seat case mainly because it was recommended in a forum post. This case supports ATX power supplies but can only use coolers below 55mm in height, and by reversing the fan, it forms a wind tunnel relay with the power supply fan. In this case, the CPU cooling efficiency decreases, and the power supply temperature will rise. However, the biggest advantage is that it can save costs on the power supply and cooler, allowing for a power supply under 300 RMB with good sustainability and ripple performance under low load. I personally used an SFX power supply because I originally had an AXP100RH on hand. I thought I could purchase a cooling backplate to support the 1700 socket, but after being informed by the merchant that it was not supported, I later purchased an AXP120X67.Since Unraid’s array performance is relatively weak compared to other NAS systems, I need to virtualize a DSM for dedicated storage. To ensure DSM’s performance, I purchased a 10G network card and a pass-through card. The Unraid system itself supports soft pass-through, but my familiarity with Linux is limited, and most operations can only be done by imitation. Therefore, I directly used the method of passing through PCIe devices to transform the virtual machine into a physical machine, ensuring that other hard disk slots on the motherboard belong solely to the Unraid system itself, making it convenient for Docker and other applications.Currently, I am only utilizing the surplus hard disks for system software testing, and after stabilizing, I will add large-capacity hard disks to the DSM.If I summarize the key features of hardware procurement, it should be frugality.Assembly ProcessThis assembly is largely due to the purchase of this Yufu Seat case, which I really like for its white aesthetics. However, there are still many unsatisfactory aspects upon actual arrival.
The top cover and side panels are fixed with screws, and the front panel is magnetic.I looked at the thickness of the materials, which is basically 0.9-1mm thick steel plate with a spraying process. Personally, I suggest that future products should adopt thicker processing for the back panel, as it has too many cutouts and the strength is somewhat low, especially at the back panel position between the power supply and motherboard, which can be clearly felt to deform and bend when pulled by hand. There is an ATX power supply support rod on the side to prevent the power supply from deforming due to its own weight, and the support rod can be removed.The power supply supports ATX standard power supplies, the motherboard supports MATX motherboards, and there are four full-height PCIe slots, which is commendable, and it also has a PCIe fixing block. The hard disk compartment and hardware have spatial separation, with two 9025 fan positions above and below forming independent air tunnels. The hard disk compartment has two 3.5-inch SATA hot-swappable backplanes, supporting SATA/SAS hard disks, with a total of six slots, and there are also two 2.5-inch upright slots on the left and right sides for installing thin disks or SATA drives. From a certain perspective, it can also be considered an 8-bay case.
TT’s SFX450 fully modular power supply, according to the horizontal evaluation of SFX power supplies by Bilibili UPs, although it is slightly inferior in various indicators compared to Corsair SF450, the gap is very small, and it is already considered a very good small power SFX power supply. Moreover, the fan supports start-stop and comes with a middle ATX conversion plate. Coupled with the price advantage, it has a high cost-performance ratio.
AXP120x67, because I used a third-party ATX conversion plate, the cooling height has been expanded to over 8cm. Although I still can only use down-pressing coolers, I can now use the six-heat pipe AXP120x67. After actual installation, due to the small size of the SFX power supply, it does not affect the cooler’s airflow. The advantage of having a larger cooler is lower temperatures and less noise. After completing the installation and sealing all side panels, I ran AIDA64 FPU and CPU tests for an hour, maintaining temperatures around 60 degrees, and the noise was very low. Under normal standby conditions, the CPU temperature is around 30 degrees, and the fan noise can only be heard when close to the case side panel.
MAXSUN’s B660M Terminator motherboard, with four DDR4 memory slots, three M.2 hard disk interfaces, one M.2 wireless network card interface, and three PCIe slots, has very high expandability. Although there are only four SATA interfaces, if there is no need for array cards or pass-through cards, it can completely convert many SATA interfaces through PCIe 3.0 x1 or M.2 wireless network card slots, and under Unraid, soft pass-through can achieve similar effects. Because I couldn’t find a reasonably priced black version, I settled for the newly released red version, which I personally don’t like this armored color scheme very much.
CUSO’s DDR4 memory, I bought CUSO memory sticks a few years ago, and they have been used for office work since then without any issues. For those who do not have overclocking needs, stability is sufficient.
After installing the case fan and motherboard, the appearance of the case. The case does not have a dedicated cable management space, and most of the cable organization relies on zip ties for bundling and fixing. The most uncomfortable thing is that the hard disk backplane’s indicator light uses a ribbon cable, which is relatively fragile and not conducive to cable management. The case fans connect to the motherboard’s fan interface through a 4-pin one-to-two adapter, and this MAXSUN motherboard has four distributed 4-pin PWM fan interfaces, allowing for independent control of the upper and lower fan speeds. Any excess can be used for cooling the 10G network card.
The Yufu Seat hard disk rack does not use a universal quick-release structure and is fixed with screws, which looks a bit simple. However, during actual use, the backplane insertion and removal are smooth, and after securing with screws, it is very stable. Moreover, the entire hollow environment is beneficial for heat dissipation. The official claims that the temperature after installing the hard disks is only 6 degrees higher than room temperature. In practice, the temperature data detected after installation without running data is basically consistent with the room temperature difference.
The third-party SFX to ATX adapter plate is not original, and since I re-measured and made a new top cover, I turned the power supply fan port upwards, creating an independent airflow path for the power supply from the outside of the case, which will not compete with the CPU cooler for airflow. In actual use, because my device’s power consumption has not reached the threshold for the power supply fan to start, it has remained off.
The internal situation of the case after installing the power supply box shows that the CPU cooler is still a certain distance from the power supply. The cables supplied with the power supply are very stiff, and some lengths are extremely limited. For example, the 6-pin data cable for powering two back panels is almost at its maximum length, and the 24-pin cable is too long and has to be wrapped several times in this small space. I plan to consider making a set of custom cables when I update my daily-use computer. The USB 3.0 cables and ribbon cables that come with the case, I fixed them to the case fan with zip ties, slightly managing the cables to make the internal space look tidier.
Since I have processing equipment, I measured the dimensions of the top cover and laser-cut a new top cover from stainless steel, then did a black electrostatic powder spray coating. After thinking about it, I also made two black side panels to modify the overall color scheme. The original screws were M3 countersunk cross screws, and for convenience, I replaced them with M3 hand-tight screws. These hand-tight screws were given to me many years ago when I bought a custom aluminum alloy case to fix the glass side panel.
The completed appearance, although the internal color scheme is messy, after sealing the cover, it can be considered a panda case.
Problems discovered during the installation process of the case (already reported to the author):1. The front panel, due to spraying and tolerance issues, can get stuck in the internal frame of the case, making it difficult to install. During the disassembly process, it can scratch the paint surface of the front panel. The author may improve this in future versions. My personal solution is to use a clamp to slightly open the scratched contact points; when doing so, it is recommended to place two flat boards on the front and back to clamp them.2. The magnetic position of the front panel’s magnets is internally offset and does not contact the front panel, failing to achieve the magnetic effect. The author stated that they will replace the size of the magnets in the future. My personal solution is to use spacers to raise the upper magnet flush with the edge of the case, while the lower square magnet can be removed and fixed with adhesive such as no-nail glue. Because the magnets are strong and fixed with glue, it is already very firm.
Software TestingThe underlying virtual system UnraidThis system has a free version and a paid version, with the paid version divided into three tiers based on the number of hard disk slots, with a one-time fee. It currently supports the Chinese localization of most menus, has a friendly graphical interface, and offers a large number of applications and Docker. Virtual machine pass-through is also very convenient. The system does not support traditional RAID, and the hard disk transmission speed is limited. After adding a parity disk, the speed is basically considered slow. However, this facilitates the expansion of disk slots, and idle hard disks can be directly added. For those who urgently need RAID, they can virtualize DSM or TrueNAS to solve the problem. More detailed information can be found by searching online, and for video tutorials, you can check out the guides from UPs like Sibotu and Qianweide on Bilibili. I personally suggest that after new players successfully install Unraid, they first install the application market and some very useful plugins, as subsequent installations of virtual machines and pass-through hard disks will require the help of plugins.DSMIt is recommended to use a self-compiled method to install the DSM system. Since I used the PCIe device pass-through method to install DSM, I did not add virtual hard disks during the virtual machine setup or use the Unassigned Devices plugin for hard disk pass-through, so I couldn’t install normally after looking for several boot disks.For DSM 7.X boot, the ARPL compilation tutorial can be obtained from the GXNAS blog, and the graphic tutorial is very simple and clear. After trying, I successfully booted the 3622, but the 918 failed for unknown reasons. During the boot process, it will automatically recognize hardware information and download drivers. After the boot installation is complete, it can normally recognize my 10G network card and the hard disk information under the array card.
Network port recognition is successful; the first is the virtual network port, and the second and third are the 10G network card ports.
Hard disk information is normal, and the hard disk temperature information can be detected.
Using the Unassigned Devices plugin, the shared disk files on the internal network of DSM can be directly recognized. For my DSM, which does not support 12th generation CPUs, I can use the software under Unraid to mount multimedia files via SMB or NFS for hardware decoding playback.
SummaryDue to my limited skill level, I am still exploring and learning the software usage under Unraid, and I cannot share more content. However, from my short-term contact, I feel that the playability is very high, and the hardware update compatibility speed is relatively fast, allowing for the construction of the entire system with relatively new hardware. The software requirements still depend on personal usage habits for assembly since it is a virtualization system. Various virtual machines have many pitfalls to navigate. For example, the DSM I installed currently has some small issues that need to be resolved. However, there are many shared cases online that can basically solve them, but it requires spending more time and energy to set up.
