Scratch Build – In Progress The Itty Bitty File Server (updated 13June11 paint)

I am impressed with the small size and careful fitting of the parts! And it looks nice too. Good concept and size... I may have to try something similar in the future. I look forward to seeing your final pics.

 

Thanks.

I did some tests, the chipset stays perfectly cool, so I just need to button it up and get some good pictures.

Also, it's eerily quiet.
I installed from a thumbstick and in a quiet room you couldn't hear it unless your ear was against the housing. Not even my silent laptop with SSD runs that quiet (the fan spinning slow makes more noise). It's a snappy little bugger too, considering. I know it won't do HD or games, but for what I need it for, it's better than I had hoped.

 

I somehow seemed to have lost the last post on this.

Notes:
The metal has been left raw, the wood has been stained and/or clear coated for a natural look..
The lights go from off to full bright, completely adjustable.
Wattage is somewhere around 25 while idle,
Around 30 watts when transferring, around 80 watts peak.
As mentioned you have to put your ear against it to hear it and runs cool.
It's running Win7 64bit, and fast enough for every day use if need be.
Runs Ubuntu in VM very well.
90%+ Gigabit ethernet saturation (Ubuntu only managed 1/3rd)
It's quite heavy/dense for such a small box.

Pics:
Not the best shots.



rear shot
The open slots are for esata cables to pass through.



Lit up:
This is not shot in the dark, it glows like this in normal room lighting, exactly what I wanted. The black above is a monitor, below is a mouse pad. The room is lit.


Night shot:

 

It's so pretty! Great work. The mesh is definitely a superior choice over a plexi window.

 

Cute.

 

Very nice work saving a lot of space there. Well done. The lighting is sleek and subtle, another great point, for a file server especially!

 

great work. but IMHO switches and other stuff better be hidden on such slik minimalistic case... maybe under the bottom or smth

 

Thanks.


I considered putting everything on the bottom but found that by hiding the power and ethernet cable, while sitting on a shelf, the cube appears to be cordless. Anything coming out the bottom would be seen and be hard on the cables.

Had I put the switches and especially the backplate on the bottom, you would have seen them from underneath and inside the case. As it is, the hard drive blocks the view of them. It was the only location that kept the inside clean. Besides that, there is also simply no room on the bottom for them, I would have either had things exit the back and bottom, enlarge the case, or reduce the fan size.

It's a very tight fit as shown here: