Upgrading the living room Media and Dev Server

[Anghammarad]

So it came the day, that the good old trusty Abit Fatal1ty FP IN-9 Sli died after 10 Years of hard use. Still fixable I think, but it has now to make room for new hardware.

 

It's way of life, at first it was the upgrade for my wifes gaming computer. I couldn't get hold of a C Stepping C2D E8400 so I plugged in a C2D E4400 first. Two of the ram sticks a 2 GB set Dual Channel ADATA Vitesta DDR2 800 were plugged in as well as a GF 7600. The poor machine was tortured in a Sharkoon Rebel9 Case in which it developed a kind of claustrophobia.

 

After getting swapped with a ASROCK Fatal1ty Z77 Professional it found its way into our living room, running 24/7 as Media (Kodi) and Development/Test Server.

 

Some of the Elkos died so it seems, I'll swap them out some day to see if the board can be kept and running, because, it is a beauty =) 

 

If you want to see a really nice casemod including this board, head over to Million Dollar PC and look up the Edelweis. (not my work but a really good looking mod I think) 

 

Plugged in it was a Gainward Phantom GTX 560, an awesome powerful and really silent card I loved. But it will make room too and will be kept as spare part on a shelf.

 

Yes the ugly thing all the components are put upon is the temporary case that will be used on for some time.

 

 

Here a last look at the beauty it even has RG without B:

 

 

[Anghammarad]

The Case will firstly stay the same, an ugly miditower from InWin. Inside are still left the 2 500 gig WD Blacks.

 

I'm thinking about moving the EKL Alpenföhn Panorama over as well. But I don't know if I still have the socket 115x backplate and brackets. It is a small silent cooling beast which kept the C2D E8400 nice temperatured even while overclocked to 4 ghz for some test runs.

 

The first new parts should arrive today including:

 

1 Intel Core I5 4460

1 ASRock Z87 Extreme4/TB4

and finally

ADATA DIMM 16 GB DDR3-1600 Kit

 

Pictures follow as they arrive.

 

A cleaned out pretty ugly case. But the time I got it it was nice and cheap. It will be the temporary home of the new Media Server, I took the old one out of it. I wanted a Seasonic Modular PSU, but my local Hardware Hoeker only had the "Medusa" version. So I had to grab that...

 

 

Blu Ray and Be Quietsch installed. SSD just hanging around unmotivated.

 

 

Fetched the delivery from a Post office, which wasn't mine, was a small travel... annoying... but DHL... 

 

The new Board:

 

The whole bundle, CPU, Board and RAM:

 

Ram in bigger =) :

 

And assembled...:

 

And now... the fun Part... this thing is DOA... Board is saying, no cpu installed please check... so I checked, CPU reseated, again please insert CPU to continue... Yes the CPU is supported without a Bios update. So retour all this and wait again... grumble grumble...

[Anghammarad]

Second Stage:

 

4x 4 TB NAS Drives, WD Red or Seagate Ironwolf 

1x Crucial MX300 275 GB

1x Blu Ray drive (perhaps 2 due to the region code locking mess, 1 for EU and 1 for US/CA)

 

And finally when I changed some furniture:

 

1x Fractal Design NODE 605 

 

To make it fit to the Pioneer 830.

[Anghammarad]

Went to a local Hardware Shop and got this:

 

So Blu Ray, SSD and a more silent casefan to get the 8 cm one out that gets noisy every now and then. The Mobo, Ram and CPU are still in transit.

[Anghammarad]

A small update... The replacement board and cpu should arrive today or tomorrow. 

 

Due to the Case not supporting USB 3, I ordered a 3.5" Floppy bay USB 3 connector from Icy Box. In it I could put the SSD into a own spot. So, I removed the Floppy, which would have been dead with that board anyways, and put in the USB 3.0 Front bezel. 

 

(Pictures later)

 

 

[Anghammarad]

Stage one nearly done... had to fight a little to reactivate the windows 10 Licence, but after a quick call to MS Support, I received a new key to activate it. 

 

Now what still needs to be done is moving the OS onto the SSD. 

 

Scrubbing out all "dead" devices and drivers is already done. Perhaps I need to update a few "new" drivers but right now the Machine is back up and running. 

 

Funny thing, right now the Core i5 with 16 gigs ram feels more sluggish than the old Core 2 Duo E8400 with 6 gigs of ram.

 

I think this will change when I'm done cleaning up the system.

 

Moved the OS to SSD and now its schwuppdi again.

 

 

And a wider view: 

[Anghammarad]

Stage one finished.

[Anghammarad]

Stage 2: 

 

adding 4x4 TB as raid 5...

 

after being on the road for about nearly a week, they arrived yesterday: 

 

 

4 of these beauties... 

 

Even while it was quite late already, I took apart the system and added those 4 and created the RAID 5 volume. The Raid build finished this morning. So tonight I'll transfer the first 500 gb to it from the old 2 disks. And try to put everything back into the case. Maybe some stomping and jumping on it will help =) 

[Anghammarad]

How it looks now:

 

 

I connected the two old drives as well, then the machine wouldn't boot... so all cables out, finding one sata cable that slipped... putting all back together and... again no boot. So I only connected one of the old drives and et voila, Windows is again up and running. The bad thing, due to the tries booting up, the raid controller deems the Raid 5 as inconsistent, so it does a full rebuild... 

 

So again, no data movement tonight... waiting for the rebuild to finish, then cramp everything back into the little case, until I find an adequate new one, or build one myself.

 

 

With all drives connected...