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Case Mod - In Progress Project: Tuxedo, 14th June

Discussion in 'Project Logs' started by okapi, 14 Jun 2008.

  1. okapi

    okapi What's a zebra?

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    This will be a black outside, white inside dual Xeon number cruncher and fileserver. The case is a Rocketfish, the Lian-Li made for Best Buy. There was a great deal on these 2 - 3 months ago. I bought several. I won't bore everyone with shots of it since many are available.

    The first thing a fileserver needs is disk space. This one will need a lot. So I am going to make a RAID 5 array with six 1 TB disks. That should net about 4200 GB. I got two of the six disks for $120 each from Newegg when they were having a special deal.

    [​IMG]

    The Rocketfish was easily disassembled. Only screws were removed, I didn't bother with rivets. The interior parts were primed and finished with Duplicolor acrylic enamel which worked well. Holes have been cut in the motherboard tray for cables.

    [​IMG]

    The top board in this photo of my ghetto rigs is going into the server.

    [​IMG]

    In the partially assembled case. Note the gray quick releases for the 5.25" drive bays. Detaching for painting and reattaching them in the tight confines of the drive bays was by far the worst part of painting the interior. Other than the mobo, the hardware in the photo is just for testing, not permanent.

    [​IMG]

    A bit farther along as it is today. All bays in, PSU in, casters on. The white box in the center is for an exhaust fan intended to remove heat from a graphics card. I won't be using one in this box, so at the moment it's blowing in to put some airflow over the chips. I'll probably end up removing it completely since it obscures the view of the motherboard. I think I'm going to have to move the 3.5" bays. There's insufficient clearance for cables if the hard drives are put in backwards, as I intend to do for cable management purposes.

    [​IMG]

    More soon.
     
    Last edited: 15 Jun 2008
  2. jhanlon303

    jhanlon303 The Keeper of History

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    Good start! I only have two questions 1.) Which motherboard is that? and 2) Where did you get the casters?

    John
     
  3. Oreon_237

    Oreon_237 CHEA BRO!

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    this will be one mother of a file server! 4.2 tb!!
     
  4. okapi

    okapi What's a zebra?

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    Mobo is an ASUS:

    [​IMG]

    Casters are Lian-Li WB-01B available from Performance-PCs. They are also available in brushed aluminum.

    [​IMG] [​IMG]
     
  5. jhanlon303

    jhanlon303 The Keeper of History

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    Thanx

    John
     
  6. okapi

    okapi What's a zebra?

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    TBH, I wish it were at least ten times as big. Getting tired of shuffling DVDs at 5 GB a pop is bad enough. When that disease spreads to high def discs at 25 GB or more each, 4.2 TB doesn't sound so big anymore.
     
  7. okapi

    okapi What's a zebra?

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    July 6th update

    Quick update, just one pic to show progress.

    [​IMG]

    Painting is essentially complete. The right side panel is not on in the pic. I'm using 120 mm Yate-Loon fans in this machine. Two more will go under the radgrill on top. I'm waiting on screws for that. At least one more will go in front as well. The hard drive cages have been moved forward about an inch to allow for cable clearance out the back. All six terabytes of drives are in. The window was cut with a jigsaw and Dremel and turned out quite nicely. Bulgin switches have been sleeved for power/power LED and reset/HDD activity, although they are not mounted yet. I'll experiment with white CCFLs after the fan installation is complete.
     
  8. MrWizard

    MrWizard What's a Dremel?

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    All of your projects come out so incredibly clean. I really admire the efforts you put into making things look neat and simple, because all of us here know how hard it can be to pull off. Yet again, I'm subscribed and watching intently. :dremel:
     
  9. Asulc

    Asulc Minimodder

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    So do you put your DVDs on your computer? How do you get the DVDs onto the Hard Drive?
     
  10. b1g-d0g

    b1g-d0g Multimodder

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    I like the black and white look,dont see much of it :)
     
  11. bigsharn

    bigsharn Officially demotivated

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    that isn't so hard, you use DVD Ripper software, most people (like me) use DivX

    when you bear in mind I only have 400Gb (including my external drive), 4Tb does seem a fair bit for a PC:p Looking good so far:Thumb:
     
  12. frizzeh

    frizzeh What's a Dremel?

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    Really liking the clean look, is the fan outside of the case on the back panel? it looks like there is a fan there, might just be a trick of the light though.

    How are you planning to cable tidy all the sata wires for all those lovely, shiny harddrives?
     
  13. okapi

    okapi What's a zebra?

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    Thanks man.

    The fan on the back is inside the case. It looks a bit odd because there is a grill mounted inside the case.

    The SATA cables shouldn't be a problem. There's space behind the mobo tray and I have a hole cut through for the cables to reach the board.
     
  14. okapi

    okapi What's a zebra?

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    Top fans 9th July

    The effect of the top fans with their grill looked good so I thought I'd upload a couple of pics.

    [​IMG]

    The lighting inside the case is improved:

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    The blue LEDs are temporary, of course.

    I think I'm going to have to get rid of those extra standoff holes.
     
  15. Guest-23315

    Guest-23315 Guest

    Looks very nice indeed.

    I wish we could get budget re-branded Lian-Li's in the UK. :p
     
  16. Oreon_237

    Oreon_237 CHEA BRO!

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    yes it does look very nice, just a question is the back panel off or do you have case windows on both sides of the PC?
     
  17. okapi

    okapi What's a zebra?

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    Back panel is still off so I can do cable management. Some of which will be getting rid of those dangling fan wires.
     
  18. b1g-d0g

    b1g-d0g Multimodder

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    White grill blends in well and it looks very clean so far. :)
     
  19. Bracketology

    Bracketology What's a Dremel?

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    This is already an amazingly nice pc, and I live the 4.2TB Disk Space, I only have 460GB in mine, hoping to get 2 1TBs soon.
     
  20. Tulatin

    Tulatin The Froggy Poster

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    I've always been a fan of duallie setups... Are those single/dual/quad chips, and how much do they / the mobo / matching ram usually run for?
     
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