My Mini-ITX Build

[MilesTails]

All arrived on Tuesday, thought I'd finally get around to posting some build images.

Enjoy:

Specs:

• IN-WIN BM639 Case with 120W PSU
• Q8400
• Stock cooler
• 4Gb OCZ RAM
• 1TB WD Green HDD
• Zotac 9300 Mini-ITX motherboard
• Samsung slimline DVD drive
• Extra NIC

I didn't want to risk wasting my money on a cooler that wouldn't fit. I've yet had time to test how the case performs under load. I'm seeing temperatures vary from 46 to about 50 degrees idle. At the moment just doing a massive yum update it's at 48 degrees.

Was a very fiddly build but I expected that. My only two issues were that during the journey home (I built it during my lunch hour at work), one of the SATA cables came loose and jammed the CPU fan. BIOS alerted me that the CPU was then running at 220 Degrees C. I don't appear to have done any damage, but as I say I've yet to run tests or dared to take the heatsink off. Aside from that the PSU's fan doesn't appear to be working unless it is thermally activated.

Love the box, I wish the hardware was ESXi supported, however for now I'll have to settle with dual booting windows server 08 MSDNAA and fedora 11. I'll probably virtualize a couple of things from fedora for my University's LAN party

All in all, a nice tiny powerful box. Just what I wanted!

 

[MilesTails]

Looking good!! Can I ask how noisy it is? I know its not full of fans and whatever but wondering if that little 80mm fan is a screamer? Looking at building a Mini ITX system in that case, just for media useage really, so would want it as near silent as possible

It's virtually silent. The PSU fan is temperature sensor activated.

The only fan you can really hear is the top 80mm fan. It's awesome. I shall be testing my setup out as a LAN server within the coming few weeks.

Already got HLDS loaded onto it, I'm running fedora 11 off of it. So we shall see, she should cope rather well at a 50 person lan

 

[MilesTails]

Sorry, I don't check these forums very often. Last responses:

Wow ive just noticed it runs off 120W, how is it possible ? lol

No idea personally but I've had it run at load for over 24 hours running 2x 24 Man 100 tick css servers and 1x L4D Vs servers at a LAN party. At full load it had no problems.

Nice build anyway, though I'm wondering about the adapter you're using your your DVD laptop drive - I bought one as well (for IDE) but can't seem to get it working. Did yours come with one or did you have to buy it separately? Basically, how does it connect to the mobo?

Ah yes the DVD laptop drive. It's connected to the motherboard/power using this cable:

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CB-032-AK

Hmm - Scrap the DVD drive, add a small SSD drive and use usb+isos to install games, and you have one heck of a LAN party dedicated server - it'd barely be bigger than the switch . Would depend, of course, on temperatures.
Or alternatively, keep the DVD drive, exchange the 1TB for an eSata version and stick an SSD in there.

That board is packed with features - It's Crazy! Nice build.

Heh thanks. It does what I need as a LAN Party dedicated server.

I also use it to run HTTP/MySQL/DNS Server/DC++ Hub as well as game servers