Case Mod - In Progress The Almost Silent File Server: Mostly finished 12-18

As most of you who have been around a while know, I'm no stranger to building systems. Being one who prefers function over form, my computers are seldom much to look at, but they work great. This one will be no exception, but since I haven't seen anyone else try what I'm doing I thought I would share it.

The project, tentatively titled ASFS for Almost Silent File Server, is a simple home file server based on a Via C7-D 1.5 ghz flex-ATX board. The goal is to build a very quiet, low wattage file server which has almost no moving parts when at idle. Based on the board specs the finished machine should draw less than 50 watts maximum. Without further ado, here are the provisional specs:

Via PC3500G motherboard with embedded C7-D 1.5 GHz CPU
1 GB (2x512MB) DDR2 memory
OS drive: 2 or 4GB CF Card
Data drives: 2x 250, 500, or 1000 GB SATA drives in RAID1

Many of these are still up in the air, but as you can see this is aimed at silence and reliability rather than performance.

Parts Porn...

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The motherboard is a pretty nifty accomplishment of miniaturization. It has essentially everything you would ever need on-board and a few extras I don't.

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The CF card adaptor with card. This unit is designed to plug directly into the IDE port on the motherboard, no cables, no muss, fuss. Very clever design IMO.

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This is the intended donor case. It originally held a AMD K6-500 MHz that I got on Craigslist in trade for some BB guns. Nothing special, but it should work for what I need.

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I'm positively gutted at how this project is coming along

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The components assembled and mounted on the motherboard tray. So far so good!

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DOH!

The CF Card hits the floppy tray. OK, that's easy enough to fix, just yank the floppy tray (who needs one anyway?). Then I discovered the next problem, which will be a bit harder to fix (and photograph). The toggle arms on the RAM slots interfere with the Optical drive tray, and that tray is structural. The finished server isn't going to have an optical drive, so that's not the end of the world, but if I'm going to use this case I will need to get in there with a dremel and notch out the 5.25 tray.

To be continued...

 

Nice idea! I particularly like the CF boot drive - what OS will you be running?

 

I hope for you that it will be FreeNAS

 

OS is still an open question. Possibilities include Ubuntu Server or Xubuntu server, Openfiler, some older flavor of Windows server, or (prepare to laugh) WinME. I've used plain-vanilla Ubuntu before, so I have some familiarity with it, I've heard good things about Openfiler, and WinME is what my current server is running and it has the advantage of familiarity and it just works.

FreeNas is an option, but the last time I tried it I didn't like how it handled the drives. I want the OS on one drive and the data on a seperate, distinct, array. The last time I tried FreeNas it wanted to pool all the drives into one volume and wouldn't allow for the kind of setup I prefer. Maybe they've changed that in newer releases. If you know, please let me know.

 

Fixed

 

subscribed as im about to start modding an identical case

 

on that note, does anyone have a sketchup model for this case?

 

i shot my wod on that parts porn

 

Looks good so far!

... also you might want to reverse these two:

 

Check if the bottom of the heat sink is flat. If it is, you could change it out for a huge P4 sink or something, and go passive.

 

I don't have a sketchup model, but a word of advice. If you have anything that sticks up more than an inch or so along the top or left sides of your motherboard (assuming slors are to the left) you're liable to run into issues. The case was designed for a specific Mobo and doesn't have standard clearences.

I've thought about that. I may just mount a quiet 80mm diagonally across there and see how it does. I may also try running it without a fan and see what it does. There needs to be some airflow in there somewhere and the PSU has a very quiet fan, so that may be enough.

 

OK, update time!

I got out my trusty Dremel substitute and started hacking away on the 5.25 drive bay. Here are the results...

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And it all fits perfectly, right? Right?

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DOH! Still not quite big enough to let the memory arms swing freely.

Remember the Bit-Tech motto: Measure twice, then cut twice, the swear at the Dremel for being so stupid in the first place.

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A little more hacking and everything now fits

Next I put all the important pieces together and gave it a whirl.

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It didn't boot.

Of course it didn't boot! I have no memory! But it did turn on, the fans spun up (though I had to touch them to be sure as they are VERY quiet) and it screamed at me for not having any memory. So far so good. Maybe I'll get memory ordered tonight. That's all for now, folks, see you next time!

EDIT: Memory ordered. Should be here sometime in the year 2000-and hell freezes over

 

well ive found the standard amd hsf wont even fit in the case with the psu brace so we shall see what i can find to solve this problem...

 

where does the RAID array go?

 

no optical leaves room for hdd's

 

Couple of possibilities for that. One is a two or three disk cage in the front on the bottom, or there is room (with a little hacking) in the 3.5 and 5.25 bays. There is actually quite a bit of room in the front of the case, so probably there with the connectors pointed towards the side of the case.

 

Your biggest noise will be hard drives - in a case like that you'll have to bury them in lead or something. Get some greens to reduce the noise if you don't care for performance (why should you?), and mount them on rubber bands, but they still might require some gentle airflow since they've then nothing to conduct heat away with.

 

The hard disk for my server sits between two aluminium plates covered with sound matting stuff and stuck out the way to reduce the whining. To keep it cool it has a length of aluminium box section screwed to the side of the drives where they would normally mount to the case the aluminium then extends out to the little airflow the psu provides. Seems to work very well the hard disk isn't too much above ambient.

 

Pardon the ignorant American, but what do you mean when you say "greens"?

There is a PSU fan and a small CPU fan, and I'll keep an eye on temps and add something more if need be. The data drives should only be spinning when actually being accessed, which should minimize both heat and noise.

 

I would assume he means Western Digital Green Power hard drives.