Project Home Media Server.

Looking good, just wondering that since you have designed the shroud with cable holes if you were going to make them large enough to fit cable gromets. It was just an idea as it might aid with airflow and cable management even though it's a server. :)

Also how will you be machining it as will you go by eye or do you have a CAD tool that will cut the metal based to the spec and if so how much does it roughly cost?
 
TechMinerUK said:
Looking good, just wondering that since you have designed the shroud with cable holes if you were going to make them large enough to fit cable gromets. It was just an idea as it might aid with airflow and cable management even though it's a server. :)

Also how will you be machining it as will you go by eye or do you have a CAD tool that will cut the metal based to the spec and if so how much does it roughly cost?
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1: That's actually a good shout I didn't think of to be honest with the rubber grommets (or cats arses); will make it easier with any tool changes as well for finishing. Changed the ovals to x4 25mm holes for some rubber management grommets (19mm usable hole space with the grommet fitted) - they'll just about go in against the fan frames... just. Not really sure they'll have a difference on the airflow as the fans are sucking the air around before it can be "lost"; however will certainly make a difference with keeping the SAS HD and molex cables together for each point of the array on the RAID backplane.

2: I managed to get it converted to an autocad file so I'm just going to send it off to be fabricated; got a rough idea of how much it'll cost but because the case didn't cost me anything (sold the raid card that it came with for the price of the case) then I'm still well under budget.
 
I done very similar previously and I am about to set up something new.

Deciding to make the storage relatively dumb - just a large Sinology Box, I won't be asking it to do anything other than serve up data to client devices. I am then going to run a intel i5 NUC as the Plex Home Server and as my main plex client in the living room. I need something powerful enough to transcode blu ray rips as I am keeping everything in my collection lossless to maintain quality for the future.

6TB drives makes this a lot easier than it was previously.. just need to decide if I want 1 or 2 disc redundancy!
 
And from sketchup to reality...

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Really please how the fan shroud turned out, although have a feeling that I may have been abit too generous on the height measurement by a couple of mm so a small trim might be needed on the height.

With the back panel: an enquiry to the guys at Server Case (and gamble) paid off, picked up a spare back panel for Logic Case's 3u server (one of their 3u models uses an atx power supply) - for £30 I'll live with having to fashion some shims for where the edges don't quite meet; a custom piece would probably have put it beyond that of a new case.

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Not directly server related but definitely media centre related: cobbled together the HTPC that will hold all the "couch games" on HyperSpin and Kodi for playback. Recently did a main rig "downshift" so the HTPC got all the leftovers. Only the 1tb SSD and case were bought specifically for this aspect of the build.

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Specs for those that are interested:

Intel i7 4770k
Reference 980ti
16gb Hyper x Beast
1tb Samsung SSD
128gb Crucial SSD
2tb Seagate overfill

All housed in a Silverstone Fortress FT03 Titanium - possibly one of the most finickey cabling jobs I've ever had to do, but it comes out looking very un-PC for stashing away in a living room or cabinet.

So time to start shifting the motherboard tray and drilling out some rivets.
 
Those manufactured pieces look great, I'm surprised at the quality of them. :) The HTPC looks good as well, not sure what you did to end up with the parts for spares as the HTPC specs are better than my secondary gaming PC specs. Still though I like the idea of it being stashed away as it should help with dampening the noise and making it look cleaner when set up :D
 
Small update this evening as ran out of time to get any further; turns out I got one measurement wrong on the shroud (didn't allow for the original fixture point and it's height) but after abit of work with the dremel it fit pretty snug;

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Test fit with the motherboard tray moved to the top and it's starting to look there.

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Excellent stuff, shame about the wrong measurement but at least you were able to fix it. Amazing how usefull dremels can be :)

It certainly looks the part now, can't wait to see the components fitted and the server up in action :D
 
Managed to get a fair amount done the past couple of days; here's a run down.

Tray trimmed with the angle grinder, came up pretty well and pretty pleased with the result.

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Had to come up with a method of mounting the tray and rear panel in the right place seeing as it is now far from a factory finish - the tray was easy as I just put in new pilot holes to the case and reattached with nyloc nuts in the original tray holes (countersinks gave a good flush fit).

The rear panel was abit more involved as it's from an entirely different case so I had an idea; I pulled the rear panel into position using an old sound card to guide it in to the tray properly with the motherboard screwed down; rather than screwing the rear panel in I applied some JB Weld on the seams and clamped it down over night; resulted in a rock solid bond that's spot on for the current and future expansion cards and will still allow the use of up to E-ATX on the tray.

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Some neoprene cut down ensures a seamless fit and will help keep any dust out - far from a clean finish and not a conventional method to mount it up but it definitely works solidly.

SAS backplane is configured to look after the 3 Noctua PPC fans so cables are at a minimum and all work spot on - noise wise they're alittle loud spinning at 2000rpm but no way near as much as the 80mm and redundant PSU fans it came with. Airflow is substantial. Mounted 6 WD Red 5tb drives.

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Remaining pieces:

- PSU side bracket to take weight off of the rear panel.
- need x2 more 5tb WD red drives for second array.
- mount CPU cooler.
- design small front panel cover where the disc drive and USB header used to sit.
- install OS and configure RAID arrays.
 
Looking very nice, it's great to see the Noctua fans fitted as although most fans that come with servers are okay they can be a bit noisy.
Also what is the white cable that runs across the entire case?

Excellent work :)
 
TechMinerUK said:
Looking very nice, it's great to see the Noctua fans fitted as although most fans that come with servers are okay they can be a bit noisy.
Also what is the white cable that runs across the entire case?

Excellent work :)
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The silver/grey cables are the SASHD breakout from the Adaptec RAID card - each port has x4 SAS/SATA points and the grey ribbon on each bundle plugs into the front backplane sideband; this lets the RAID card talk to it and also indicate HDD usage LED etc.

Not really sure why mainstream motherboard manufactures don't use SASHD / mini SAS on motherboards more often in terms of space to connector output. Probably cost orientated but considering some of the premiums motherboards come with...

darwin1859 said:
Nice work. By the way, what will you use to serve media? Plex or...?
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First thoughts are Windows 10 pro installed to the onboard USB for the OS and just add on plex media server to serve everything up on demand. Might have a look at Windows Server when it releases but if Windows 10 does the job I'm not too worried. I did look at Freenas but I'm using the hardware RAID so not really sure I'd see any benefit of this route.
 
Decided to go alittle unorthodox with the cooling:

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Main reasons behind the use of watercooling:

1: I had a spare 115x Heatkiller block laying around from a previous build.
2: Make full use of the air being drawn through by the mid fans.
3: Removes a lot of internal airflow inhibitors like tall heatsinks and also keeps the number of fans low.
4: RAID controller cards are fine with passive cooling in the data centre environment room - however with potentially reduced airflow/quality air I anticipate the Adaptec running rather hot so...

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...it has it's very own Watercool Heatkiller Northbridge motherboard block in the loop. With the mini loop looking like this:

DDC / Watercool mini reservoir > EK PE 120mm > CPU block > RAID Card Block

Ran Memtest a few days ago and all came back with no issues:

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More soon..
 
This is the project that just keeps on giving :D However I did have the odd thought that this was going to turn into a watercooled build just for the sheer "bling" factor of it if nothing else could justify it. Personally I think it's a great idea (Not for reliability reasons obviously) but because it should allow the system to stay cool with no heating issues that can be common with tightly packed components that generate heat like RAID cards :)

Can't wait to see more as even with the green PCBs I bet this will look great :)
 
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