Specifications

cooling shroud to fit around the motherboard power cables.
The process of assembling the motherboard, CPU, heat sink,
disks and memory was conventional, so I don’t cover it here.
RAID Card Installation
Most of the 3ware 9650 controllers use “multi-lane” SATA
cables with a single connector on the controller fanning
out into four individual SATA cables. As this is a 16-port
controller, four of the multi-lane cables connect to the
SATA backplane. I made the process of connecting the
SATA cables much easier by first removing the chassis cool-
ing fans—they pop out quite easily. I also had to remove
a couple of the disk backplane power connectors to access
to the bottom-most SATA connector.
Be sure to connect the correct SATA cable to the correct
SATA port, as a mistake here would be a disaster. You will
need to determine the physical location of a disk with certainty
when it comes time to replace one, or you will risk destroying
the entire array. Familiarize yourself with the cable and disk
numbering schemes before proceeding. For example, in the set
of four multi-lane cables that came with my controller, one
64 | august 2008 www.linuxjournal.com
Table 1. Parts List
QUANTITY DESCRIPTION SOURCE PRICE PER UNIT TOTAL PRICE
1 Intel Xeon 5110 Woodcrest 1.6GHz Newegg $211 $211
1 Supermicro MB X7DBE-O Newegg $426 $426
8 ATP AP28K72S8BHE6S 1GB RAM modules ATP $65 $520
1 Supermicro Chassis SC836TQ-R800B Super Warehouse $923 $923
1 3ware 9650SE-16ML Newegg $919 $919
1 3ware BBU-Module-04 The Nerds $109 $109
1 Supermicro Heat Sink SNK-P0018 Wired Zone $30 $30
16 Seagate ST31000340AS Newegg $274 $4,384
Grand total: $7,311
FEATURE One Box. Sixteen Trillion Bytes.
Figure 2. Inside View of the Server Chassis
Figure 3. SATA Backplane with Cooling Fans Removed