Sr Vr. The sleeper server

[AlienALX]

Last year I converted a MDD G4 mac into a Sandybridge based NAS. It went really well, and other than the crappy powerline adapters it has served me well (yeah, yeah, puns ahoy !).

 

Right now I have 5tb in that. It's more than enough to backup my music collection. I don't collect other DATA, so it's fine. However, I would like something more purposeful with more storage space. I would also like it faster, as streaming FLAC uncompressed sometimes causes stutter which isn't nice through a very high end sound system.

 

I had some parts lying around from upgrades, so I decided I was going to start a new server project in the New Year. This was accelerated a bit because I built this.

 

 

Which won't accept any 2.5" storage at all now, and this.

 

 

Another of my PCs at a different location that is currently undergoing a Alderlake upgrade. You can put drives in it, but you need 60CM SATA DATA cables. Plus with 4 NVME and a M.2 Samsung 970 1tb I don't need to. This means an awful lot of SATA SSD storage has been piling up on my desk. One PC had three 240s and a 500, and the other had three 1tb. None of which are now needed nor in use. So when a buddy very kindly donated me his "Drawer full of crap, take it all or take nothing" for the cost of mere postage I obliged. Mostly because this.

 

 

I know, it's a very old OCZ Revodrive. Only, it's not even that old (version 3 after the Toshiba take over) and it's 1tb and has 1700/1500 IIRC RW. So it's fast and pretty large.  In the pile of parts he sent there was also this.

 

 

A four port SAS card. Which gives you sixteen SATA ports. Even though there is about 6 more SAS cards I think that one can do the job alone tbh. GPU was also found in his pile. 7300 GT passive. Needs hacking a bit to install a driver, but TBH I think safe mode may well be enough. I only need a VGA connection.

 

 

For board and CPU I have the TR4 X399 Aorus Pro with a 1920x Threadripper. Cooling comes by way of a H100x mounted using Bitspower mounts (no springs fitted yet) and a pair of Eloop bionic fans.

 

 

RAM TBD.

 

For the case I wanted a 4u server chassis. I don't want to rack mount it, which turns out to be good if you need to cut a 240mm radiator into it. I also wanted something "funny" and a bit out of the ordinary. I managed to stumble across this, a (no shit) ACME 4u server chassis. It has an AT keyboard connector on the front, is NOS, and about 30 years old. That said it's perfect. Beige, solid steel with alu handles and bay covers and you can lock the power button and reset button (they are behind the front panel with the lock on).

 

 

Inside. Like I said, it will need a fair bit of cutting to the sides.

 

 

 

I will be taking apart the lower end single SAS cards in order to steal the PCIE plates with 90' screw holes on. With these I will make acrylic blades that allow me to mount 3 2.5" SSDs directly to the PCIE slots.

 

Yesterday I stripped out the rest of the Threadripper system.

 

 

Do you reckon 1500w platinum will be enough?

 

 

To cover the holes on the sides of the case I will be using these

 

 

Mmmmm, brown.

 

Stay tuned !

[AlienALX]

Four SAS cables ordered.

 

 

And two vents.

 

 

If they really look terrible I can paint them easy. Even have some beige paint left.

[AlienALX]

God I am such an idiot. DERP.

 

So I have one of these.

 

 

If you don't know what it is that's OK. They weren't around for very long. It's basically a U.2 drive (I know, I doubt you remember that). When Intel decided to start inventing NVME they did it via a 2.5" drive. That has this cable.

 

 

It's a SAS end. You can't put it into a SATA SAS controller though I don't think. And besides you don't need to. The way they worked was via this.

 

 

I put mine in this though, as I had my M.2 slots all filled with drives.

 

 

So when I thought about fitting it I thought "Well it won't fit where the rad needs to be so I can't use it". Then it just dawned on me about 5 minutes ago that thicky Mc-chit here can actually remove the U.2 to M.2 and put it in a M.2 slot right under the radiator and fans.

Derrrrrrp.

[AlienALX]

Well that's the RAM sorted. I didn't think I was going to have enough cash just yet, but a quick browse on Amazon brought these up for £44 a set (16gb 3000). So I ordered two.

 

 

Not exactly ideal in white, but the black or red is £63.

[AlienALX]

OK so some good news and some bad. I don't have to hack the drivers to use that 7300GT. I am getting back a PC I donated to my aunt, and it has a Quadro FX 4800 in (like a GTX 285) so is still fully Win 10 X64 supported.

 

 

The bad news is my Black And Decker Firestorm rotary tool smoked its last ciggy today. It started acting funny, then slowing down and speeding up before going bang and releasing the magic smoke. RIP lil buddy, you did bloody well for 11 years.

 

This means I can't do much of the modding now. I do have two cheaper ones (with the button that locks them so you can change bits) but both of those buttons are a bit crap. However, I do have a Dremel chuck (the ones you can do up and undo) so I may get away with that. Problem is they are elsewhere, and I don't have a way to get one until next week.

[AlienALX]

Soooo nostalgic. Those were the days. Every case demanded its pound of blood.

 

 

[AlienALX]

OK. So after four hours of scratching my head and realising certain ideas I had post case were not going to work I have figured it out.

 

Firstly the rad position. Now I was almost scuppered here, because I do not have a mobo to test fit. I need this for the height of the board and its slots. So I know where to put the rad, or if it will even fit. Thankfully I remembered I had a mining riser left in the drawer and this did the trick. So here is where the holes will be going.

 

 

The other problem was how to intake air. My idea of putting a fan opposite were destroyed by the tank of the 5.25 area. Its a huge metal construction, and you can not fit the blanking plates without the whole thing attached. IE, if you remove it you lose the bay covers. I wasn't prepared to accept that, and tbh? I wanted that bit intact because it will hold 16 SSDs easily. 

 

So the big problem to solve was where to put the intakes. Thankfully I did work that out. I fitted the mining riser to the GPU, which in this case is passive (so sticks up well above the slot) and.

 

 

I can cut two into the top of the case. This is excellent because it will blow a ton of air down onto the PCIE area (for the GPU, SAS card and ETC) but also it will blow fresh air into the rad directly. Meaning all of the parts of the inside that need cooling will be directly under two fans.

 

Then came the issue of how to go about cutting it. TBH I am not in the mood for a two hour Dremel session. I need something more powerful and quicker. Jigsaws are good, but getting the holes exact can be hard, especially in thick steel like this. The saw tends to jump around a bit.

 

So I went for the fastest option.

 

[AlienALX]

OK so wrapping it up for today..

 

I now have the side mapped for where the rad will go. I've drawn the holes (wasn't needed but did it any way)

 

 

That did make me laugh. TANK is written there because that is where the end tank for the rad goes. However, at 17kg it's about right lmao. This is where the fans will go in the top.

 

 

Then I figured I would fit the cards I am using in order to make sure the fans clear. They do. However, I made a mistake at first. The GPU is obviously 16 lanes. What I had mixed up was the SAS card (because it uses 8) and the Revodrive which uses 4. Good thing for manuals.

 

 

 

So yeah that all worked out really well. Plenty of room left for the rad and fans, and everything where it should be.

 

I am not making drive planes now. My Dremel died (RIP) and I have a much better idea. 

[AlienALX]

Right. Quite probably the hardest work day on the case. I cut the holes (was scary, but it did the job very well) and then was worried about getting the fan/rad screw holes right. I've used templates before, but you can't find them now. Plus I have no vinyl to cut, or ink in my printer.

 

My engineer was having a day off, so I made a really super fantastic tool. I present, the El Crappo Fanholio.

 

 

And no, I totally didn't bolt the fans onto my new EK AIO and then tape it all together and tape a metal ruler to it. That's a bloody precision tool that is mate !

 

Any way it worked very nicely.

 

 

 

 

I don't know if that will be an issue. I doubt it, given I will be running the fans as low as I can. However, if it needs to be cleared I can use the jigsaw.

 

Oh and I caved and ordered three of these from China.

 

 

 

[AlienALX]

OK so the major modding is over. Thank god. It's fun, but not in a freezing attic. Top vent on. I am going to remove them in a bit and run cloth tape around the lip so it seals better and stops any vibration.

 

 

The side vent attaches like this. Meaning you only have two extra screws to worry about.

 

 

The bottom part needs some neoprene, as there is a step down in the case (for the top clamshell). I have that too. This is it assembled.

 

 

What's great is the vents are directional. Meaning you can aim the intake and exhaust.

 

All done.

 

 

When I fit the gaskets I will put the interior stuff back in.

[AlienALX]

OK, we're there. First thing I did today other than drilling lots of holes and making all the fan bolt holes bigger (I realised I needed the low profile self cutting fan bolts) was cut two slots into the inner chassis to clearance the two top side vent bolts.

 

 

After marking it out I put down the 2mm Neoprene gasket.

 

 

This will stop any vibration due to the panel thickness. I also want it to be as "bug free" as possible as I have noticed one or two earwigs in the crawl space when in there. These are buggers, as they crawl in there, get zapped and then decompose causing a short. So the back PSU part will need fine mesh too, but that's cool I got loads.

Onto putting a cloth tape gasket onto the upper part of that grille.

 

 

And then a full cloth gasket for the top one.

 

 

You can see here why that neoprene was so important.

 

 

It stops crap getting in. Put the internal parts all back together, and.

 

 

Now I need a couple of decals. Because my flat has the best roof access the maintenance guys sometimes come in (after I have allowed it and have someone there). It's been known for them to check the crawl space at times. My rent is very high, but for that I get the best service you could ever expect. They are meticulous. However, I don't want them shifting gear around and possibly covering either vent. Especially if I hook it up online and leave it going whilst I am gone.

 

I also mentioned that I had braided the IO cables. I did, last night.

 

 

I did them in pairs, as well as the speaker (important on a build like this).

 

That should now be all of the mod work done, hurrah.

[AlienALX]

 

 

[AlienALX]

Right. Last of the mods. TBH it isn't even really a mod, more of a easy hack.

Bottom right of the pic. You can see those plastic things.

 

 

Those are for full length cards to go into. I don't have any.... Inside that area goes a 80mm fan. I have removed it, as it's a molex power house (annoying). I will be replacing it with this.

 

 

Couple of problems though. Firstly it's not really all that necessary unless it's doing a job. I have found one for it... Secondly, if you were around in the early 90s to about 2000 you would know that dust filtering was at best rudimentary. AKA - awful.

 

 

It was like trying to suck a golf ball through a garden hose. Now whether I use a fan or not I need a better solution than that crap. So I had a dig around and found this.

 

 

Which is up to modern standards. Then I needed to find a use for the fan. I did. I am going to remove the plastic parts (they just pop out) and fit a drive carrier there for 2.5. The reason? I go back to this.

 

 

These were designed for server use. The reason? well they are blisteringly fast. However, they are also the most reliable stable SSDs ever made. So are still very much in use in the server space. Linus runs his servers with them, only his are much bigger. IIRC he bought them from Amazon when they upgraded. They run warm, but are supposed to be in a cooled drive sled. Obviously I don't have one of those, so I am going to bolt it right in front of that 80mm fan. The bottom is all fins, so I would imagine that is where most of the heat comes from.

 

Given this will be the OS drive it needs to be very well looked after.

[AlienALX]

Decided my whole network is going 2.5gb. Meaning I need the last slot I can access on the board. Only with the fans I had I can't. Enter these.

 

 

Had a bonus. After switching my mother's internet she gave me the £100 pre paid Mastercard she got. Another 32gb ordered (4x8)

 

 

OK so I got home yesterday and had a thousand things to do. Smashed those out, so I started plugging things in. Already pasted the CPU. Turned out EK throw in some Kryonaut with their 1700 kit. I didn't need it, as I hadn't mounted that yet.

 

 

I would say cable management is going to be erm, complex.

 

More good news. The SATA back planes arrived at mum's today. No duty ! So that's four days air from China and no duties. Stoked !

 

Have had to order a 5m VGA cable. I have no way of outputting video ATM. That's maybe a good thing, as I have so much to do.

[AlienALX]

OK so since Wednesday here is what happened.

 

Firstly I tried various operating systems. Sadly the GPU may be dead, as it only worked in Windows without a driver. Ubuntu was not an option at that point, because as soon as it booted it was garbled and covered in lines. This was not helped by the 7" screen I had to use.

 

 

It did give me practice in installing things, though. Which is where I learned a lesson. The 3Ware 16 port card will not work in this rig. Sadly as soon as you install the driver for it it kills Windows stone dead. Like, literally puts it beyond repair. Having looked around it would seem that the driver is from 2013, and was kind of a half ass from Broadcom. I have read instances of it working fine, but I was not even getting the RAID BIOS on boot. So, either the card is dead, or has been flashed into some sort of IT mode, or finally it's an AMD thing? I don't know. What I mean is, all of the issues I have seen with people trying to run this card have been on AMD. And it happened after a Windows update and was not fixable.

 

This was a bit of a bummer. Thankfully I did bring home a single port Adaptec 6gbps card and was able to get that working after some seriously odd behaviour. I would go into the RAID BIOS, set JBOD, then get into Windows and see two 2gb SSDs rather than the 1tb they are supposed to be. After a ton of head scratching I realised if you started a format via the RAID card it would not work. Like, I left it sitting on one drive for about 8 hours. However, when I finally pulled the plug and reset the machine? it was available to be worked with in Windows. And it did. I set the second 1tb formatting, then after about a minute rebooted and Bob's your Auntie's lover, it worked.

 

So then I moved onto the smaller SSDs I have with me. Two 240s. I played around with those, eventually getting to the part I wanted to get to which was Spanned Volumes. Worked beautifully. At this point I had all but decided to use Windows, then the first curve ball arrived.

 

I have been advised that Nextcloud is amazing. As such I wanted to use it. What I did not foresee was that the Windows seems to be nothing but a way to set it up via VM using Linux. /slaps forehead. I tried again with Linux, but because of the constraints I gave up.

 

So this left me with two issues.

 

1. I need a new GPU. Thank the heavens that Quadro should be incoming for when I return next.

2. I needed a better SAS solution. Running four Adaptecs is not really possible, and TBH? nor would I want to. They run really hot, and are slow as balls to boot with the RAID firmware enabled. I also don't think you can disable that either. Plus, 2-4 SAS port cards are hideously expensive and IMO rather out dated.

 

Then I had a brainwave.

 

I went back to when I built my NAS, which is happily chugging along as I type this. Then I remembered all of the ball ache I had with FreeNAS and other NAS software wanting IT mode on the RAID card and having to buy a Dell Perc H200 which is some sort of LSI. Then flashing it, removing the RAID BIOS, making it JBOD only and it booting up super quick and can run any file system you like (so ZFS which is what FreeNAS insists upon).

 

 

So I went back to my auction listing for the one I bought almost two years ago and they still have a big pile. Made an offer of £30 for two (need 4 ports remember) and it was accepted. Thankfully all of the hours I spent learning how to flash it into IT mode and coming up with a much easier, faster solution were penned down by me when I did it. Meaning I can flash both of these into IT mode, which is a sort of "silent" mode meaning it doesn't take the rig about 20 minutes to boot through all of the slow RAID BIOS and array building.

 

So, in summary.

 

I will 100% be using Linux. Sadly there seems to be an issue I am getting on my system config and a couple of errors on boot. I will get to these when I have a GPU that can output a signal and I am not crouched over a tiny screen with garbled graphics. I would give FreeNAS another go, but sadly it does not support spanned volumes in any shape or form. This is not good for me, as I plan to lob in a ton of small SSDs and make them into one drive. And whilst I am fully aware that this means if one fails they all stop working? it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter because there will be a physical spinning disk in the 3.5 bay that will sit idle all week, then run a once a week backup from all of the SSDs in there to the one drive.

 

I will try to document this as much as possible. I know very little about Linux, but thankfully know that whatever you need is usually out there in cyber space and just a few terminal lines away....

 

Other things. I am going to change the fan out in the PSU. Being an older PSU it runs full time. It also over runs when you shut down the system. As such it's noisy. The noise issue doesn't matter to be one bit, but what does is the fact it is several years old and has unknown mileage on it. I will switch it out for something way quieter, and better built.

[AlienALX]

OK. Been quietly plugging away when I feel like it. Got to a point where there really isn't anything else I can do.

 

After doing a lot of research it seems that the cloud software needs Linux. Either through Linux or a VM, no matter what. It does not function under Windows on its own.

I would have gone down the Linux rabbit hole (and will) but sadly it seems the 7300 GT is dead. What I mean is it works in Windows with no driver loaded, but if you go into Linux it installs a driver (which Windows doesn't have) and is garbled really badly. Due to this I can not work on it. Mostly because I am using a 7" screen. Maybe if I had it plugged into a better monitor or my TV I could get around that, but I really don't see the point in struggling for the sake of it.

 

As such I decided to focus my energy on other things. Like sorting out the PSU. I don't need many SATA connectors (maybe four?) but as of right now they were on Molex to SATA runs. Which are a real pain to plug in, and mean you need two lots of cable to do one task. Also, I decided to basically not use any extensions as they are not needed and the case doesn't have a hidey hole for left over wire.

 

Thankfully this PSU came with a set of connectors and a whole buttload of pins. You could basically get your own wire and remake every thing it uses. As such I removed the Molex ends from the SATA cables, and changed those to PSU connectors. I also found a Molex run (I didn't have any and was using red ones I made) which had a floppy connector on the end. I removed that and added a 5th Molex, which should be enough to power everything (the back planes use molex, so that's three). Any way, like I said I also decided to ditch the silver and red cables.

 

So yesterday I got to that.

 

 

When I was done I was left with this.

 

 

Which is much, much better. The only other black braided cable other than the two SATA runs is the 4 pin (board needs 8+4) which I also had to make because the PSU only comes with 8 pin connectors and they don't split.

 

Am currently working to obtain a new fan for the PSU. It's cheap, flimsy and noisy and has developed a rattle. Am trying to get a Noctua, but it has to be a 3 pin so I have had to bid on a couple. If that falls through I will go with something else.

[AlienALX]

Right, decided to go a different route on the fan regardless of whether I win the Noctua.

 

 

One main reason, getting it to work. The fan in the PSU has a non fan connector on. 3 wire, RPM, power and ground. It's also pretty short, meaning I would need to cut up the fan cable on the Noctua or whatever else and solder on the connector. With this? it has a connector about 40mm out of the fan. Meaning all I need to do is solder the wire from the Enermax fan to a fan extension. Meaning less soldering, and a much tidier solution without wrecking the fan itself.

 

I've also ordered an alu mesh filter/frame.

 

 

Right now the PSU has a two piece assembly on it. A sort of normal 140mm silver grille and a surround piece.

 

 

Which should replace both of those and offer filtration. Not that it needs much as the air it will be using is already filtered, but more to stop anything creeping through the PSU and ending up inside the PC. I will filter it at the back too, but any isolation "zones" will be better.

[AlienALX]

Right. Realised yesterday the cables on the PSU are mostly too long. Not the Molex and SATA etc, but mostly the heavy duty ones. So I spent the entire day shortening them.

 

 

 

Now they won't need to be stuffed in and coiled up. I left this morning, so it was like my birthday when I got here.

 

[AlienALX]

So finally some fun time. Not cutting wires and crimping on pins.

Mum was right, they are bloody heavy.

 

 

They look amazing though. Very "nessy" which matches the decals I made.

 

 

Trial fitted the thin fans.

 

 

Which don't even reach where the board will be.

 

 

Made sure the 80mm filter would fit.

 

 

It will. Had a look over the 140mm Eloop.

 

 

This is why I got this over a Noctua.

 

 

All I need to do is cut the fan wire off the fan in there and wire it to a male connector, of which I have about 200. That's no joke either.

All I need now is one of those cheesy 80's keyrings that says "My other PC has a 3090Ti in it"

 

[AlienALX]

 

Right, that's that crappy part out of the way. It was just as I expected. Jigsaw jumping around like zebedee when I turned the corners and really made me not very calm.

[AlienALX]

Decided against using the Quadro FX4800. It's a bit of a power guzzler, and uses up two slots. Spent hours and hours doing research as I don't want it to run games, but wanted something that behaves itself.

 

 

 

It's a Quadro K4000 3gb. In other words it's a GTX 660ish, clocked lower, with 3gb of VRAM. Meaning it will be cool, quiet and well behaved. Unlike the equivalent of a GTX 280.

Was £50. I will probably save that in leccy in a couple of months the way things are going.

[AlienALX]

OK, so the penultimate spend. £10.

 

 

All this time I've been failing to remember that once it goes into its home I will have no rear access at all.

[AlienALX]

GPU came. Didn't realise the whole cooler assembly was metal, it's quite heavy tbh.

 

 

Got an idea for stabilising the plane. Will get onto that later.

 

My buddy sent me three SSDs.

 

 

So a huge shout out for that !

 

Then, after doing up a lot of screws.

 

 

Should hold a copy of COD

 

[AlienALX]

Next week we build !

 

[Anthony_95]

Looking great so far !