My cheapo quiet file server

[Jay_S]

Hi all,

My main reasons for wanting a file server were 1) I wanted to tinker with linux, and 2) I wanted a low-powered 24/7 pc for serving FLACs to my new squeezebox. So, for $40 I picked up a 766 mhz PIII coppermine Dell Optiplex GX110, with 256mb of ram, a 10gb hard drive, and an old sony cd burner. I think that's a great deal - and the PIII has more than enough power for what I'm using it for. Plus, it's very convenient to have a pc on all the time - for stuff like quick emails and checking the weather.



It's, well ... ugly to say the least. Dents, missing paint, extra paint in some spots, etc. Oh well - it's going in the office closet. Oh- and it's LOUD. Chainsaw quality loud.

The rear case fan:
At first I though it was the rear case fan, an 80mm JMC Datec 0825-12HBTL powered from a motherboard header. The fan was mounted like many Dell case fans - with a 90-degree duct that covered the CPU heat sink. The fan pulled hot air off the CPU and exhausted it out the back. I asked about this fan in elsewhere on these formus, and another poster replied that it was high-speed ball-bearing fan that ought to be quiet noisy. I wanted to replace this fan with a spare 92mm fan I had from an old Zalman socket 423 flower HS.

Based on a thread at the official Dell forums, the 3-wire fan leads Dell uses are proprietary, as are the connectors. The third (yellow) wire is for rmp-sensing on most aftermarket fans, so it is reasonable to think that the white wire on the Dell fan would do the same. This is not exactly the case. Instead of reading and reporting RPM, this wire apparently has to see 12V - so the motherboard knows that the case fan is spinning. If you cut this wire, you'll get a POST error message telling you that the fan is not on, and the computer will shut off in a few minutes.

I initially wanted to power the 92mm fan using the existing motherboard header, splicing the Dell wiring & connector onto the new 92mm fan wires. Since the 92mm fan uses only 2-wires, I followed the advice in the Dell forum & I taped the white Dell wire to the black wire. Sure enough, everything worked - fan spinning and no POST error messages. But, the fan was running at a constant 12V and was very loud. So, I finally just powered the 92mm fan @ 5V from a PSU molex, and left the white & black motherboard fan leads taped together and not connected to anything (you can barely see them bottom/center of the photo below - they're just taped together and dangling there). Now, the motherboard still thinks the case fan is spinning (because it still sees 12V at the fan header) and my case fan is quiet. Good.

Mounting the fan:
The Dell fan mounted to the sheetmetal with interlocking plasic retaining clips. Although the orig fan was only 80mm, the fan grill was almost large enough for the 92mm fan. I decided I could make it fit. I hacked out the grill and was getting ready to drill new mounting holes when I realized there was a much simpler and much less elegant way to do this (in keeping with the overall sh1tbox theme ). Using elastic, I tied the 92mm fan to the underside of the psu, aiming at the CPU heatsink.



The hard drive:
But it still sounded like a chainsaw. I now realized that it wasn't the case fan afterall (although it was very loud). It was the ancient 10gb hard drive. Searching for a sale I found a 250 gig Seagate (love the 5 year warranty) 7200.9 for $70 after rebates. I installed it and finally had a normal sounding computer. The 7200.9 series are not known for silence, and the seeks are very noticeable - especially since it's hard-mounted. But's it's good enough and the price was right. It's mounted in the usual location and does not get any airflow (the Dell case has intake holes on the bottom, not the front). So I made a fan-shroud from some excess foam and wedged a spare Antec 120mm case fan in it, aimed up at the hard drive.



This is sitting right over the bottom case intake holes, and the fan is also running at 5V. Can anyone comment on this - should I mount the HD upside down? I seem to recal that the top plates usually get warmer than the bottoms... any input (with evidence please!) is appreciated.



You'll notice the huge hole in the back where the expansion cards would normally go. The Dell motherboard has all of the PCI slots on a "riser" card (you can see the slot at the bottom of the mb). Since LAN and VGA are onboard features of the i810 chipset, I just removed the PCI sub chassis all together.

Conclusion:
It's running Ubuntu breezy (which was another challenge - with Ubuntu, xorg & xconfig need tweaking before they would recognize the shared 4mb of system ram the i810 chipset uses for onboard VGA). Slimserver (the new debian build) installed without issue, and runs without issue. I have no idea where my temps are, because I can't get lmsensors to read anything off of the Dell motherboard - despite its compatibility with the i810 chipset. I know it's installed and running, but it fails to output anything meaningfull - just the ram stats. Oh well - the CPU heatsink is never even warm to the touch, so I think I'm ok.

If I ever have the time (or the ambition, since it works just fine as it is), I'd like to re-do the 120mm fan housing. I think I could get away with having only 1 fan (plus the psu fan). I'd like to make a new hard drive enclosure that would sit right in front of the huge rear PCI chassis hole, using it as the intake. Then mounting the 120mm fan on top, blowing up onto the CPU heat sink. We'll see.

Later,
Jay

[diver]

I love it. $40 PC, Linux, unique foam fan mount, the whole thing.

[IsaacKuo]

should I mount the HD upside down? I seem to recal that the top plates usually get warmer than the bottoms... any input (with evidence please!) is appreciated.

I think you should have the HD right-side up, so that the airflow hits the circuit board. It really doesn't matter if the top side gets hot because it's just a plate of metal. The drive spindle and seek head assembly are mounted to the main block of the drive. The only thing the top plate touches is the outer edges of the main block.

[Fat_bloater_dave]

Thats briliant, ive been thinking of a file server for a while but finding a cheep comptuer cheep enough hasnt been easy.

[Jay_S]

I think you should have the HD right-side up

Thanks - makes perfect sense.

but finding a cheep comptuer cheep enough hasnt been easy.

Yeah, I did endless cost/benefit analysis with the used P3, mini-ITX systems, undervolted/clocked Semprons, and this strange little Asus barebones with Via C3 thing (looks like Newegg no longer has them). In the end, I decided that $40 was worth the eBay gamble. There were even a few slightly cheaper ones on ebay, but mine included 256 megs of PC100 (most other auctions only included 64 or 128). Unregistered PC100 today costs about as much as the whole computer!

I'm not sure if I could build a lower powered Sempron-based PC. And I'm quite sure I could have built a lower-powered mini-ITx machine. But there's no way I could have done either for $40.

On the other hand, this computer is really only useable for serving files. It gets bogged down pretty quickly if I have a bunch of stuff running or even a bunch of firefox tabs. I don't expect it will have any value as a desktop (or anything else) once it's server lifecycle ends.

I wish I had a power meter (or current measuring clamp dmm or whatever). I'd like to know what it consumes at idle, and while streaming flacs to the squeezebox. I've though about building the DIY power-measuring mains cable in the SPCR article, but just haven't gotten motivated enough. I have a dmm that can measure current, but not a clamp-style.

Jay

[Nat]

Next up, you'll be wanting a backup server for the peace of mind...

[aidanjm2004]

No pic of your Squeezebox? They are so sleek and lovely looking, I am lusting after a Squeezebox 3 at the moment...

[IsaacKuo]

Yeah, I did endless cost/benefit analysis with the used P3, mini-ITX systems, undervolted/clocked Semprons, and this strange little Asus barebones with Via C3 thing (looks like Newegg no longer has them). In the end, I decided that $40 was worth the eBay gamble. There were even a few slightly cheaper ones on ebay, but mine included 256 megs of PC100 (most other auctions only included 64 or 128). Unregistered PC100 today costs about as much as the whole computer!

One deal which has long caught my eye is this system for $60: http://www.directron.com/usedpc.html

It's hard to tell for sure, but it looks like very standard components all around rather than weird proprietary Dell stuff.

So far, though, I've managed to satisfy my old computer needs with scavenging rather than spending money on it.

[Jay_S]

Ask and ye shall receive...

In the living room, connected to my 13 year old sony es receiver (pro logic what? Say it with me: s t e r e o).

Note the siberian husky - momentarily silenced, but certainly not low temp. And certainly shedding all over the place.

Closeups - it's hard to photograph, I didn't even know it was that smudged until I saw the picture. Yikes.


Can't make out the display with the camera's flash on, so...


The squeezbox is really an amazing little machine. It's currently connected to the living room system because we've only just moved into this house and I haven't had time to properly set up the listening room and my main system. I will say this - the Squeezebox has night-and-day better sound than the es cd player connected to that receiver. The worst feature is the included remote - it is not nearly as high-quality looking/feeling.

Next up, you'll be wanting a backup server

Not exactly a backup server... but I definitely need another hard drive for backups. I'm shuddering at the thought of spending another 3 months re-ripping my cd collection. I'm trying to decide if I should: 1) buy a USB hard drive, or 2) buy a new SATA drive for my other system and use its existing PATA drive in an external USB enclosure. I don't really need 250 gigs on my workstation, and I would love the easy cable routing SATA allows. We'll see - I'm kinda waiting for the right sale to make my mind up for me.

Jay

[Jay_S]

this system for $60

Hi Isaac - yeah, I looked at that one as well. The slot CPU turned me off actually. As far as I know (meaning you probably know more), the socket 370 coppermines were much more powerfull than the Katmai P3's, and I like the 256k cache and the 133mhz bus. I also wasn't sure how easy it was going to be to cool the CPU, and in case I needed to get an aftermarket hsf, socket 370/A units are abundant and cheap.

Regarding "normal" non-dell wierdness, yes I sometimes wish I had an aftermarket motherboard and PSU. We have some ancient socket 370 celeron machines at work collecting dust, all have asus motherboards. I'm waiting for my boss to give me the green light on them. They're CUSL's or something similar - I really don't remember. My whole family's getting wimpy servers for christmas.

Directron's "tight budget" section has some pretty good deals too.

[aidanjm2004]

The squeezbox is really an amazing little machine. It's currently connected to the living room system because we've only just moved into this house and I haven't had time to properly set up the listening room and my main system. I will say this - the Squeezebox has night-and-day better sound than the es cd player connected to that receiver. The worst feature is the included remote - it is not nearly as high-quality looking/feeling.

thanks for the pics. How does the Husky do on the polished floorboards?

So you output the squeezebox to a receiver/ amplifier which outputs to the speakers? is the squeezebox doing the digital to analog conversion, or do you pass that task on to the amplifier? does the squeezebox have an amplifier itself, for directly powering speakers?

[IsaacKuo]

this system for $60

Hi Isaac - yeah, I looked at that one as well. The slot CPU turned me off actually. As far as I know (meaning you probably know more), the socket 370 coppermines were much more powerfull than the Katmai P3's, and I like the 256k cache and the 133mhz bus. I also wasn't sure how easy it was going to be to cool the CPU, and in case I needed to get an aftermarket hsf, socket 370/A units are abundant and cheap.

For my first attempt at slot-1 fanless cooling, I used a Zalman heatpipe VGA cooler. This has been able to passively cool my 616mhz PIII in open air and even within the confines of a computer case totally outside the main airflow. (The straight-thru PSU has its fan flipped to blow air straight forward toward the DVD burner, which is more valuble to me than some old slot1 processor.)

For every other attempt at fanless Pentium 3 cooling, I've simply removed the fan/casing from whatever stock cooler there was. I find that stock slot-1 CPUs are totally reliable when operated fanlessly, while socket 370 can flake out if there isn't airflow purposefully blown toward/across it. Of course, a stock clot-1 heatsink tends to be very large and has quite a bit of surface area even if it's very shallow.

For anyone thinking wondering how easy it is to fanlessly cool a Pentium 3--it is REALLY EASY. In the case of the cheap Directron PC, all that would be needed is to flip the PSU fan and remove the CPU HSF case front. From my experience, the air blown vaguely toward the CPU from the PSU will be plenty to keep it cool and operating reliably.

In particular, one P3 550mhz I put together for a friend has been operating this way for many months. The PSU isn't actually ducted to the CPU, it's just that the bottom exhaust is vaguely pointed in its direction. (With the fan flipped, the intake becomes the exhaust.) This example is significant because her house is kept very warm--her Dad is too cheap for air-conditioning the place down to a humane temperature. The heat is so much that her hard drive was overheating and I had to add another fan to specifically cool the hard drive. (That's why this build never became an entry in my "Single Fan Madness" series.) The CPU never had any overheating issues.

[Jay_S]

How does the Husky do on the polished floorboards?

She's 2 years old and so has only 2 operating states: full speed running, and sleeping. When she's sprinting around the house, the wood floors of course offer no traction so she looks like a cartoon running in place. This is obviously not good for our floors. The livingroom and diningroom are oak, the rest of the house is maple. The maple floors seem to show the scratches more. They will need refinishing by the time we sell the house. We keep her nails short, but it doesn't seem to matter - if she only knew how to walk.

So you output the squeezebox to a receiver/ amplifier which outputs to the speakers? is the squeezebox doing the digital to analog conversion, or do you pass that task on to the amplifier? does the squeezebox have an amplifier itself, for directly powering speakers?

You can find out just about everything you want to know in the review SPCR did here. I believe there's a signal diagram that they copied from the SlimDevices web site. The squeezebox can natively convert flacs (or other formats - mp3, aac, etc) and does all the D/A conversion internally. It has the following outputs: digital (via optical/coax), line level (rca's), and headphones (1/8" mini jack). So you can have the SB do the AD conversion or if you have a better DAC, use the digital outs. There are no internal amps (other than the analog gain stage). You'll need either powered speakers or an external amp in addition to the squeezebox.

The SB has a pretty huge following, and there's a ton of info on the web. This guy's blog is pretty good and has a lot of links to reviews and articles about it.

Jay

[Jay_S]

cool a Pentium 3--it is REALLY EASY

Isaac - indeed, the lower clocked P3's are incredibly easy to cool. That is the very reason I got one! I started at the SPCR recommended CPU charts, focused on the coppermine for it's power dissipation vs. performance, and then read every thread I could find in these forums. They're so easy to cool that for a while, I didn't have ANY fan on the heat sink. But it got a little warm while encoding all the flacs. I think with a larger or higher quality heat sink and some decent TIM, I could run this without a fan on the CPU at all. Especially if all it was doing was serving flacs. But since it's working fine and I can't hear it, why spend the money?

I have read just about everything you've written on your single fan, positive pressure systems. But I think the physical nature of my Dell PSU (it's a front-to-back flow system, mounted vertically in the case) precludes me from trying your inverted-fan-blowing-down-onto-the-CPU technique, but I think it's brilliant. However, even if I could achive such a setup, I'd still need coolling for the hard drive. Thus my plan to build a different hard drive enclosure that exhausts onto the CPU heatsink. I think I could hack together something out of scrap wood for next to nothing. I just need to find the time...

Jay