Speedbird's home server build log

Speedbird · April 17, 2015

Hello everybody!

I would like to start off this build log by stating that this has been in the planning ever since I became a techie. Which is about a year. At first, I had no hardware for it. Then I had hardware, but no room to put it. Then I was just limited by my internet speed. Now I have hardware, room and high-speed internet. So I did it - built my own server.

I have accumulated piles of old hardware since I got into tech. Several computers could be built out of them. For this, I chose the motherboard and CPU of previous desktop I was running, the RAM from the one before it, and storage from a computer used at a different place. I also ordered a new case and hard drives - the case because I wanted the ATX desktop form factor and the hard drives because I needed 2 500GB ones for a RAID1 array. This whole build only cost me 130 euros.

Here's everything I ordered. A Coolermaster Elite 361 and 2 WD5000AAKX hard drives. Why two? I want to do soemthing with RAID, dynamic disks, or Storage Spaces,or some other thing that needs multiple disks.

This is my motherboard of choice. A Gigabyte 78LMT-S2. A cheap AM3+ board with a 760G chipset. OK for a Sempron 145. The RAM is 2 sticks of 2GB from an OEM PC. That's DDR3, by the way.

The first order of business is to install the power supply. This right here is poop and I do not recommend it. A Delta 300W PSU, also from an OEM computer. At least it's 80 PLUS Bronze.

Moving on to the motherboard. This was rather simple, install the standoffs and screw it down. Also install the IO shield first .

Now I ran into my first problem. As this is an OEM PSU, the cables were rather short. Nobody thought that people will be using this PSU in the bottom of their case and trying to connect the ATX12V connector to the top of the motherboard. I didn't do this, but is having a cable as long as an ATX board is wide too much to ask for? The cable 4-pin supplementary power connector didn't reach the socket on the motherboard. Now that's not the worst part - I actually got it in, but then I pulled it out to route it better, and the 4-pin socket on the board came off too.

RIP board

Alright, after some heavy thiking and cooler swapping, I finally figured out a plan B. That OEM PC I have been talking about had a rather decent chipset - H57.That's LGA1156, and some of you would consider it as an old socket. But I still had the CPU - an i3 550! There was only one problem though. Cooling.

The OEM PC didn't come with the Intel HSF, but instead with a slightly larger one. That cooler required a backplate (attched to the other side by tape!), which I had disposed. I did have another one, but that meant I had to take out another motherboard. So what I did instead was return my CPU to stock clocks, remove the Hyper TX3 from my PC, replace that with an LGA775 HSF (which is incompatible with 115x) and move the Hyper TX3 to the server. This caused clearance issues, but I can get around that.

So after taking out the AM3 board and putting it into storage, I put my 1156 board in and realised that it wasn't micro-ATX - it was proprietary! Luckily, the only difference it had was being the width of an ATX board instead of mATX, so I got around that easily. This whole thing delayed the build by about an hour.

The board is finally in - no power connector length issues this time! Look at dat sexy green PCB.

Now we have the three hard drives and one SSD installed. The SSD is a small 32GB one and will only hold Windows Server 2012 R2. The rest are a 1TB hard drive for new storage and 2 500GB drives for existing storage (old files moved here).

I power it on, and after about six tries and messing with (unmarked) front panel connectors, it finally works. Sorta. I hear a weird noise. Kinda like water flowing. It was one of the WD5000AAKXs! Oh god no.... And the system won't POST with the drive installed! Gotta deal with this too?

I take a short walk back to my local tech store. I explain the situation and they set me up with an RMA. Now we wait if they accept it....

Anyway, back to the server. I can run it with only three drives too. I install Windows Server 2012 R2 successfully. Now it's just a matter of configuring Minecraft and my file shares (btw, what protocol shoud I use?).