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Case Mod - In Progress ⭐ Queen of Dreams. OG Stacker 830 Home Server. *CANCELLED*

Discussion in 'Project Logs' started by lowfat, 30 Aug 2018.

  1. lowfat

    lowfat Minimodder

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    This has been an on and off case mod I've been working on for like 5-6 years. First few attempts were going to be water cooled. But about 2 years ago I decided to actually build a server to replace my aging Opteron 6168 + Supermicro H8SGL-F system. I'll try to compress it as much as possible. Still not done but getting close'ish.

    When I pulled the case out of the closet it looked like this. It is a Cooler Master Stacker 830 from ~ 2006. One of the last great aluminum cases IMO.
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    Case looks like this normally.
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    As this case has zero 3.5" drives, I used some Lian Li drive cages I had laying around and trimmed them up.
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    Cut a hole in the side of the 5.25" bays to access the drives.

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    And back in place
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    I cut a piece of aluminum to cover the ugly mesh floor the case originally had.

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    Also cut a piece of aluminum to cover the back side of the 5.25" bays.
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    Cut some thin aluminum to cover up all the holes on the 5.25 bay to clean things up. JBWeld'ed them in place.
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    Drill some holes and used some counter sunk rivets to hold the drive cages in place. I'll be using epoxy over the rivets before painting so they won't be visible.
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    Cut a hole on the backside of the 5.25 bays to give access to the back of the drives. The little hole @ the top is for a few SSDs.
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    Drilled and taped some holes in the false floor and screwed in some brass standoffs. Then epoxied them in place and filed them smooth.
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    As this is a server, I don't need front panel USB, Firewire :p, or front panel audio. So I used some Bondo to cover everything except for the power button. Started sanding out all the scraps and nicks the case has had over the last 10 years.
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    More to come.....
     
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  2. lowfat

    lowfat Minimodder

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    One of the first attempts at designing some cable management combs.
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    Also designed a simple cover to hide some more cabling near the PSU.
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    Starting work on the cables. This is the colour scheme I'll be going with. All MDPC-X. Diamond Red, Riviera Blue, Perfect Pink, Grand Bleu, XXX, B Magic, Ranger Green, Color X.

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    WIP pics of the cable management.
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    Printed some really low quality combs to assist w/ training and getting the lengths right. Will be removed.
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    On to the hard part. Adjusting the lengths of all the wires @ the PSU.
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    Printed a slot adapter for an IBM M5015 since it came w/ a low profile adapter.

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    And then the project sat untouched for the next 14 months..... Started back up about a month ago.

    When I started this, my 3d printer was not great. I've went through many printers since then and my current machines are quite a bit better. So I wanted to redo some of the combs I printed.

    Before:
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    And now:
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    I also made the mistake of starting my wires @ the motherboard end instead of the PSU. With my method you should do the hardest curves first. I knew this but most have not been thinking. So I pulled all the wires out and did the PSU first. The combs will be cut out when finished.
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    Finished off the ever so tedious 24 pin and both 8 pin wiring.
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    More to come...... Thanks for looking.
     
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  3. lowfat

    lowfat Minimodder

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    Designed a simple SSD mounting bracket. SSD model was design by HAS from GrabCad https://grabcad.com/library/ssd-7-mm-1
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    Printed on my Mini. Not perfect. But I just started using the printer this past week and I never print PLA. So I'll need to spend some more time tweaking the print settings.
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    Also reprinted another piece. This time on my other printer. A cover for some wiring next to the PSU.
    Pics of said printer
    'Prusa' 3D Printer. Single Z Motor

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    Pic showing the quality compared to the old printed part. These are vertical walls. Old piece is on the left.

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    And a macro of the same.

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    Pic of a horizontal comparison.
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    A few years ago I dyed a bunch of Nidec Gentle Typhoon AP-15s but I didn't have enough black ones to complete this mod. So I pulled the blades off the remaining grey ones.
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    Had a major accident w/ coolant back in 2011 and dye got everywhere. This is a hub on a fan after removing the blades.
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    Working on the sleeving for the CPU fans. Always a good idea to off the sticker so you don't melt it.
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    And if the back of the fan is visible, always orientate it so that its vertical.
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    Black blades :).
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    Finished the wiring for the CPU and intake fans. But black sleeve over black heatsinks makes them hard to see. I guess that is a good thing since I don't think any secondary wiring should really be noticeable.
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    Did a lot of painting & sanding on the front panel parts were the original front panel IOs were. Pretty happy w/ the outcome. Can't tell at all where I used the bondo. Still need to do a bit more work as there are a couple of scratches that I'd like to sand out yet.
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    One of the front panel IO boards I can trash, the other I needed for the power button. However I needed to remove the USB ports.
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    Came off pretty much hassle free.
    [​IMG]
     
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  4. Cheapskate

    Cheapskate Insane? or just stupid?

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    Looks promising. Your flannel shirt cables are strangely pleasant. I gotta see what you do to compliment them.
     
  5. TheMadDutchDude

    TheMadDutchDude The Flying Dutchman

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    What do you use all of that CPU power for in the home? :D
     
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  6. lowfat

    lowfat Minimodder

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    I really don't need it. I bought the board way back when 2 CPU rigs were good for folding@home. But I'll make use of all the PCIe.



    Worked on the drive cabling.

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    3d printed small covers to cover the holes where the wires pass-through. See top right where the wires come through.
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    Had to make adjustments 3 more times to the top channel cover shown here. But now I'm able to fit all the cabling.

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    Designed a simple fan mount to blow air over my PCIe cards.
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    After printing the part I melted in brass threaded inserts so I can easily mount the fan and the bracket.
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    Easy way to make sure I drill holes in the case in the right place, is to design and print a template.
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    I just held the template to where I needed to drill the holes and then drilled the holes. See 3 vertical black screws on the left.
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    Bracket in place.
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    Printed a small cover to cover up a modding mistake I made a few years ago w/ this case.
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    Supposedly this board has onboard VGA but no VGA/DVI/etc outputs. There is a VGA header though. Bought some cheap header off eBay, dyed the ribbon black, and painted the slot cover black.

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    The storage related PCIe drives I hope I'll be using. IBM M5014 RAID card, IBM M5015 RAID card, a 400GB Oracle F40, and a 320GB SLC Fusion-IO ioDrive Duo.
    [​IMG]
     
  7. KayinBlack

    KayinBlack Unrepentant Savage

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    Following this with great interest. Want a 2p system for my new one.
     
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  8. lowfat

    lowfat Minimodder

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    Got a few of these in. Sonoff SVs, wifi switch (not networking switch). They'll allow me to turn off the systems led strips via Google Assistant.
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    Quickly modeled a mount up in Fusion 360.
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    Printed and melted in some threaded inserts.
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    Kinda went overboard on the superglue to give the cable some strain relief at the solder points....
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    3 or 4 more redesigns of the top channel cover I can finally fit all the wires.

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    Wired up the PCIe cooling fan straight up to the 5V on the PSU to keep things clean.
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    Where The Sonoff SV is mounted. Excuse the mess here. Nothing can be done about those SATA cables AFAIK. :(
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    The front fan breakout cable. Excuse the poor pic. The fans go back straight to the 5V on the PSU.
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    With the fans in.
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    Earlier I posted how I printed a piece to cover up a past modding mistake. Well a couple of minutes later I edited the design and bam its now an LED mount. :)
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    Installed.
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    On to the drive cage LED mount.
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    I printed a drilling template and drilled holes to mount it.
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    Those holes are covered once the case goes back together.
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    With the LED strip installed. The strip won't be visible w/ the case side panel on.
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    The main chamber bottom LED mount. Now screwed in yet. But once again it won't be visible w/ the side panel on. Also notice the new CPU fans. I ended up having to swap them to PWM fans.
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    Where the last LED strip hides.
    [​IMG]
     
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  9. Cheapskate

    Cheapskate Insane? or just stupid?

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    Lovely. :D
    Are you planning to cap the heatsinks? Those things are pretty ugly.
     
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  10. lowfat

    lowfat Minimodder

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    The CPU heatsinks? Honestly hadn't thought of it.

    Hmm. Should be rather easy to 3d print something.....


    EDIT: Yes! Someone has already gone to the work of 3d modeling the Hyper 212. So making covers for them will be crazy easy.
    https://grabcad.com/library/cooler-master-212-evo-1
     
  11. lowfat

    lowfat Minimodder

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    Didn't like the 11ty standoffs and holes the motherboard tray had. So I epoxied all the standoffs in place. Filled all the holes. Then flush cut off all the standoff holes.
    [​IMG]

    Then a whole lot of sanding, primer, sanding, primer, sanding. Not perfect. But at this point I'm just chasing the dragon.

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    This is a server and I don't want to have to carry it outside to blow it out whenever it needs cleaning. So I wanted all fans to have tool-less fan filters. After some work in Fusion 360. I came up w/ this.

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    Filter is a charcoal paint booth filter. Pretty restrictive but on the 140mm Yate Loon PCIe cooling fan there is still enough air coming through.

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    Been doing a whole lot of priming. Using 'Rustoleum V7400' industrial primer. Bought a gallon of it and using an electric HVLP sprayer. Even though I thinned the primer by a good 30% it is ridiculously thick. Which is giving everything a new texture. And its extremely durable. A few more coats on the motherboard tray and it looks perfect.

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    A few of the other pieces that are done w/ primer.
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    I totally humped up on the how I mounted the drive cages. I riveted the cages to the aluminum sheet that I installed to separate the chambers. I didn't think how I was going to paint behind the drive cages. So I had to paint and primer the drive cage section first. Rivet the drive cages in place. Tape it up. Epoxy, file, and sand them smooth. Then need to finish primering the main chamber. Yes I also accidentally primered the entire main chamber before hand.:eek:

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    Finished the toolless filters for the CPU coolers. Pretty much the same design as the 140mm one I did earlier.
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    The IPMI module came for the motherboard. The tiny board w/ the yellow sticker. Except I can't get it to work.......:(
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    The Mellanox ConnectX-3 cards and DAC cables showed up. This server is in the same room as my workstation so I don't need very long cables.
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
  12. lowfat

    lowfat Minimodder

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    After the primer, the interior was painted w/ Dupli-color Jet Black lacquer. .

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    Put the case together w/ MDPC-X rivets. Painted the tips of the rivets black so that the backsides of the rivets would be 100% black.
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    Trying to limit damage to the paint from the rivet tool.
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    Once the weather clears up I'll be doing the pearl coat on the interior.

    Using this paint. It is matte clear lacquer.
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    With some candy apple metallic flake.

    The case exterior I used plasti-dip.

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    Then using HaloEFX Real Clear as the matte pearl coat. Think of it as a premium plasti-dip. Using a blue aluminum pearl.
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    Here is a teaser of the exterior colour after the pearl coat. It is on thick so no black shows through really. The black was installed mostly to add thickness for durability. Having a hard time taking pictures of it. After like 15 pictures one actually turned out.
    [​IMG]


    So I ended up buying some Raspberry Pis and I'll just make my own KVMoIP. I've ordered the rest of the parts required from China. One of the Pi Zeros will for my PfSense machine.
    Fmstrat/diy-ipmi

    [​IMG]
     
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  13. _Prometheus_

    _Prometheus_ Minimodder

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    w.jpg
     
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  14. kim

    kim hardware addict

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    Great ideas in re-designing this "beast", I admire the attention to details, your modding is flawless and now you're blowing out my mind with that KVMoIP:jawdrop:
     
  15. LePhuronn

    LePhuronn Minimodder

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  16. zogthegreat

    zogthegreat What's a Dremel?

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    Hi lowfat,

    Great detail work! And I love your wiring, very clean! Keep up the good work!

    BTW, I noticed your bi-lingual circulaire. What part of Montreal are you in?
     
  17. lowfat

    lowfat Minimodder

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    Not in Montreal sorry. Grande Prairie, Alberta.



    Unfortunately I cancelled the project even though I was very close to completion. I setup the software and used it for a while but power consumption was just too high to have this thing on 24/7.


    A few last pics.
    export-17.jpg
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    export-14.jpg

    Ended up moving to 2 ITX systems + a Raspberry Pi instead. RPi and PfSense cases I designed and 3d printed.
    [​IMG]

    I am in the process of 3d printing another full ATX system. Will probably start a log soon.
     
  18. zogthegreat

    zogthegreat What's a Dremel?

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    (chuckle) a place colder than Montreal! Brrrr!

    Did you try some aggressive power management? I'm setting up my server to essentially sleep all the time unless there is a wake on LAN request. SuperMicro motherboards have some advanced C states in the BIOS that you could try.
     
  19. lowfat

    lowfat Minimodder

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    Sleep doesn't really work for me as the server ran a bunch of virtual machines that were critical. Networking and home automation services that I need to work 24/7 and I don't like having to wait for drives to resume when I need to access them. I still have the case and it sits exactly as it looks above. Maybe in the future I'll grab a lower wattage board + CPUs to use instead. But I'm happy w/ my current setup and it uses like 50% less power on idle.
     
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  20. Cheapskate

    Cheapskate Insane? or just stupid?

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    Aww. :( You could at least slap the panels on and take a picture of that.
     
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