Hi there,
I'm hoping someone can help out with building a mini home server using the Streacom FC8 EVO case. I have a couple of specific questions, but also if anyone has any advice or opinions, that would be great. I've been looking into this for several days, so I've already read everything I can find online about this case.
I want to re-use some laptop memory I have (16GB), so I'm looking at a thin motherboard (I can't find any standard mITX boards with SO-DIMM slots), either the Gigabyte H87TN or the Asus Q87T. Both the these look like they are compatible with the case - I've checked the system build guide. It looks like the heatpipes will go over the memory, but they are lying flat so they shouldn't be in the way - I hope!
The biggest question I have is does anyone know if it's possible to fit 3 hard-drives (and a blu-ray player)? I know it only has space for 2, but I've looked at loads of photos of the case and it looks like there is room if I am creative (especially with the thin motherboard). Does anyone have any suggestions on how this could be done? I'm looking at getting two of the WD Green 2.5" 2TB drives and using RAID 1 for these. Then I have a spare 2.5" 256GB SSD I can use for the OS. I know another solution would be to buy a cheap mSATA drive instead of the SSD, but I'd rather re-use what I have to keep costs down.
Also I want to add a wifi module, I'm not sure about the best solution for an antenna. Streacom do an internal antenna for a different case, would that work? I've seen you can get internal laptop aerials, would one of those work? I'd rather do that than have an external aerial. For external I think I'd have to drill a hole at the back of the case, since there is no connection on the back of the motherboard for it.
I'm going to add a TV card too. So ultimately I'm looking to use this as a NAS, PVR and media server combined. I have a Raspberry Pi running OpenELEC connected to my TV, which does all the decoding (and is working great!), so the server is only needed for back-end stuff.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Michael
I'm hoping someone can help out with building a mini home server using the Streacom FC8 EVO case. I have a couple of specific questions, but also if anyone has any advice or opinions, that would be great. I've been looking into this for several days, so I've already read everything I can find online about this case.
I want to re-use some laptop memory I have (16GB), so I'm looking at a thin motherboard (I can't find any standard mITX boards with SO-DIMM slots), either the Gigabyte H87TN or the Asus Q87T. Both the these look like they are compatible with the case - I've checked the system build guide. It looks like the heatpipes will go over the memory, but they are lying flat so they shouldn't be in the way - I hope!
The biggest question I have is does anyone know if it's possible to fit 3 hard-drives (and a blu-ray player)? I know it only has space for 2, but I've looked at loads of photos of the case and it looks like there is room if I am creative (especially with the thin motherboard). Does anyone have any suggestions on how this could be done? I'm looking at getting two of the WD Green 2.5" 2TB drives and using RAID 1 for these. Then I have a spare 2.5" 256GB SSD I can use for the OS. I know another solution would be to buy a cheap mSATA drive instead of the SSD, but I'd rather re-use what I have to keep costs down.
Also I want to add a wifi module, I'm not sure about the best solution for an antenna. Streacom do an internal antenna for a different case, would that work? I've seen you can get internal laptop aerials, would one of those work? I'd rather do that than have an external aerial. For external I think I'd have to drill a hole at the back of the case, since there is no connection on the back of the motherboard for it.
I'm going to add a TV card too. So ultimately I'm looking to use this as a NAS, PVR and media server combined. I have a Raspberry Pi running OpenELEC connected to my TV, which does all the decoding (and is working great!), so the server is only needed for back-end stuff.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Michael