After >30 hours of work on a custom case, my home server (v. 2011) is complete!<\/p>\n
It\u2019s powered by an Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz processor, on an ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe mini-ITX motherboard, with 8GB of Kingston DDR3 1066MHz SO-DIMM memory.\u00a0 The system drive is an OCZ Vertex 3, 120GB SATA 6Gb\/s SSD housed in a Startech Dual 2.5\u201d trayless hot swap bay.<\/p>\n
For storage, there are six Seagate 2TB SATAII LP (Low Power) hard drives enclosed in an Intel AXX6DRV3GEXP hot swap SAS\/SATA expander.\u00a0 The expander is connected to an LSI MegaRAID SAS 8704EM2 RAID controller on a PCI express x8 bus.\u00a0 The drives are configured in a RAID6 array, resulting in 8TB of usable data storage.<\/p>\n
The guts are powered by a Cooler Master Extreme Power Plus 500W power supply, and cooled by two rubber-mounted GELID 140mm 1200rpm case fans.\u00a0 Processor heat is handled by a modified GELID Silent Spirit CPU Cooler.\u00a0 Airflow through the Silent Spirit is provided by the power supply fan, which is mounted 5mm above the heat sink.<\/p>\n
The custom case was fabricated completely from scratch using 16ga galvanized steel for the bottom pan and motherboard tray, and 20ga stainless steel for the fan shroud and cover.\u00a0 All of the steel is recycled scrap from a local metal fabrication shop.\u00a0 The only purchased case components were the two stainless steel handles on top.\u00a0 Why two handles?\u00a0 The complete server, loaded with drives, weighs around 35 lb.<\/p>\n
Last, but not least, the airflow through the case is filtered through a 3M Filtrete high performance furnace filter, cut down to fit the case\u2019s filter holder in front of the fans.<\/p>\n
Overall, I\u2019m very happy with how it turned out. The case fans make more noise than I\u2019d like, especially pulling air through the filter.\u00a0 I may reduce the speed from 1200rpm down to 900rpm once I\u2019m sure heat won\u2019t be an issue.<\/p>\n
Now, you might ask, why did I spend so much time on a custom case?\u00a0 A few reasons: it will save space, as my old server case was a large, ugly MDF beast; it didn\u2019t cost me anything but my time;\u00a0 it was lots of fun.\u00a0 In the process of fabrication, I actually built a sheet metal brake (bender) from scrap metal that\u2019s capable of bending 14ga steel.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After >30 hours of work on a custom case, my home server (v. 2011) is complete! It\u2019s powered by an Intel Core i3-2100 3.10GHz processor, on an ASUS P8H67-I Deluxe mini-ITX motherboard, with 8GB of Kingston DDR3 1066MHz SO-DIMM memory.\u00a0 The system drive is an OCZ Vertex 3, 120GB SATA 6Gb\/s SSD housed in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-176","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.d5.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.d5.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.d5.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.d5.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.d5.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=176"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/blog.d5.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/176\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":214,"href":"https:\/\/blog.d5.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/176\/revisions\/214"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.d5.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.d5.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}