Server case upgrade project

[redwudz]

January 8, 2011

This is a photo of one of my Uneec full tower server cases with about 2.5TB storage. The full towers take up a lot of space. And they are heavy, about 52 lbs and are awkward to move around. I wanted to upgrade to a more compact case. I was also having problems with Wake On LAN with this setup, so I needed to tear into it anyway.

The MB is a Asus M2-NPV-VM Micro ATX with a AMD X2400 dual core CPU running at 2.5Ghz. It has 2GB of DDR2 Mushkin RAM and runs Vista as I already had that on the hard drive. The MB, CPU and RAM are more than enough for server operation. It has eight 320GB HDDs for storage.




Same case with the side cover removed. It does cool quite well with five 80mm fans. But a bit noisy. Being a tall case, I also had to use longer SATA cables for some of the drives.




The drives pulled out and stacked. The HDDs to the right are in 5.25>3.5" adapter trays. Each tray has two 40mm fans, part of the noise problem as more than half of them failed and were fairly noisy when they worked. Also shown is the PATA DVD ROM drive. The boot drive is also PATA, a 80GB Maxtor which works fine for this application. The motherboard has four on-board SATA connectors and I added a PCI four SATA connector card. The other PCI slot is taken up by a Intel Gigabit LAN card.




The case cleaned out, ready to remove the motherboard.




This is the new case, a ARK 4U-500-CA Black 4U Rackmount Case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811182566 About $60 - $75US. No PS included. It's also heavy, but fairly well built and designed for the price.




The front cover open. I will replace the front 120mm fan with a quieter and more dependable 120mm Scythe S-FDB case fan. The rear fan will also be replaced with two 80mm quiet Enermax UC-8EB fans, running off a 'Y' power splitter. Both type fans are long life designs.




The front air filter extends all the way across the case.




The rear of the case, nothing installed.




Top view. The brace across the center has hold downs for the PCI cards, but I won't use them. There is also a two bay 3.5" drive box attached to the brace. Won't need that either.




A better shot of the drive bays. The one on the left can hold three 5.25" optical drives and one 3.5" floppy drive. The case does come with one 5.25" > 3.5" adapter and I'll use that for the boot drive and the bottom 3.5" slot for the eighth SATA data drive. The bay to the left can hold seven 3.5" HDDs. Both bays can be removed with four screws each. The parts bag shown here contains misc screws, MB standoffs, rubber case feet and the 5.25" > 3.5" drive adapter. Front panel cables are also shown.




A bit hard to see, but the brass MB stand offs are threaded in. I have the MB there on a anti-static pad so I can compare the MB holes to the stand off locations. Those stand offs only need to be finger tight as the MB screws will finish tightening them.




I decided to upgrade the PS with this spare 500W Thermaltake I had laying around. The original PS was a 430W Coolermaster and was more than sufficient to supply the power for the server. It ran fairly cool, but with my WOL problem, I wasn't sure it was supplying enough standby power.




The PS and MB mounted, but no case fans yet.




Case fans and drive bays mounted and wired. I used latching 10" SATA cables for the short runs and 18" and 24" for the longer runs. The PATA cable is a 18". I did add three SATA power splitters to operate all the drives. Excess PS cables are stuffed between the bottom HDD and the boot HDD. Some are also shoved to the side of the 5.25" bay. A modular PS would have made this a bit easier.




Another photo from the rear of the case. I didn't use wire ties on the 10" SATA cables as they were short enough not to interfere with air flow.




Top view. There's about a 1/4" spacing between the HDDs, enough for decent airflow. The eight WD black 320GB drives run cool enough. You can also see the PCI SATA adapter and the Intel LAN card to the rear of the case. I used 320GB HDDs as they were the best price per gigbyte when I purchased them. The newest server uses 500GB and 1000GB drives for the same reason.




This is with the case brace installed.




The front cover open. The indicator lights, from right to left are, Power, HDD Activity, Fan Fail indicator, and LAN activity. I didn't hook up the last two. There is also two USB ports and a rocker switch for power and reset.




Up and running. It's fairly quiet and seems to run about as cool as the tower case. It weighs in at 50lbs, so no big improvement there. But I can stack four of them in the same space as two of the tower cases. And now after a bit of adjustment, the WOL works like it should. Apparently it was a settings problem and not the PS. I have the server set to go to standby after 30 minutes of idle, then if I need it, I use WOL from the other room to turn it on. This MB doesn't seem to be able to wake from off, but from standby it's faster to run anyway. This reduces the power needs when the server isn't needed.



I think the project was very successful and I will order two more of the ARK cases, along with fans and cables. One of my other servers is all PATA, so that should have some interesting cable management problems.

[redwudz]

The ARK cases went up $15 each and the SATA cables doubled in price. I guess I should have ordered them both as soon as I got the first case.

[Moontrash]

to me those 120mm fans are the key to quiet..they run a little lower in the rpm's but move a lot of air...those antec ones with 3 speed adjustable are nice. In my case they're set on the lowest speed. I don't need a wind tunnel to move air

[aedipuss]

web server or file server? i use a zyxel dlna network file server (was on sale for $80 recently at buy.com) with 4tb storage (2 - 2tb w.d. green media drives). quiet, cool and hibernates when not in use.

[redwudz]

It's just a file server for my LAN. In fact I block my servers with my router from any internet access. I have about 26 HDDs between the three servers, so I already have the investment in them.

The MBs and components I use in the servers are recycled from older PCs that I have upgraded with newer CPUs and MBs. Most of them have DDR2 RAM and my new PCs are DDR3, so I couldn't use them either. The main cost was the HDDs.

All those case fans are low RPM, the 120mm is 800RPM and the 80mms are 1600RPM but they are very quiet. And they have magnetic bearings, so they will last quite a while.

I should get the two additional cases next week, then a few days to put them together.