Atlas - homebuilt file server case

[sunnyUK]

I have a server, 2 HTPCs and a wife who likes to record a lot and store it for eternity. So with room for 10 3.5" drives, my current file server case is running out of physical space for the disks.

Of course it's easy to throw a few of the older 100-200 Gb disks out and buy new 750 Gb disks. But easy isn't the same as economic, and why take the easy way out if there is a difficult one?

I also have a bottom shelf in the linnen closet I built last year which is currently filled with my toolbox and various mess I have assembled over the years.

So I'm going to combine the practical (make better use of that space in the linnen closet) with the fun (build a PC case with room for more than 11 drives).

The only material I can work with is wood or wooden boards. I have no experience in, nor any tools for, working with metal.

Having scanned the forums here, there seems to a number of arguments for using MDF board rather than "real wood". So that's going to be my material of choice.

The linnen closet space is 46cm (deep) x 46cm (wide) x 60cm (high), so that's going to be my max dimensions. It faces up against some other built in closets I made last year.

So much for the background - now the plans.

I intend to use this post as a sort of diary / blog / place to ask for help / place to celebrate successes. If that's not an appropriate use of the forum, please just tell me, and I'd happily take it elsewhere.

Obviously I would appreciate any comments or recommendations from the forum members.

Since the only "real" opening in the closet is the door to the closet, I'm going to have the exhaust fans blowing air out that way. I can easily make some holes in 2 of the interior walls of the closet to drag air in from the bordering closets. But if I exhausted hot air into this little room, I would be worried about it not being able to escape so that my 'puter would overheat. The door on the closet is a louvre door, so air can be forced out that way. Or maybe I will have to replace it with a grille door (wife is okay with that).

There's no way to get to the closet except through this door, so I'm not going to have a traditional "front" and "back" of the computer. Instead, I'll have the mobo connectors, the exhaust fans and the on/off switch all on the door-facing side. It's going to be a server, so 99% of the time there won't be keyboard/mouse/monitor attached, but obviously the connectors need to be there so I can connect them if I need to do any work (or switch the thing off).

I don't have a CAD program and don't want to spend the time learning how to use one. So my layout drawings are done by hand. As the project progresses, I'll scan them and take some snapshots of the case in progress.

Layout

I'm planning a "layer cake" layout with 4 layers.

Bottom layer: Motherboard. ATX is up to 31x25 cm, and including graphics card and RAID controller (to manage all the disks), it comes to a max height of 14 cm.

2nd floor layer: PSU and DVD + 3.5" drive (my expensive 8 disk RAID controller can only update BIOS from 3.5" floppy).

3rd floor layer: 2 CoolerMaster 4-in-3 harddisk cages. These take as much room as 3 5.25" devices but holds 4 3.5" drives plus a fan. They are 14.7cm wide and 13cm high.

4th floor layer: 2 additional CoolerMaster 4-in-3 harddisk cages.

This gives a maximum of 16 harddrives which should serve me well for the next 6 years (so far I've bought an additional harddisk roughly every 12 months, each time buying the largest I can afford).

Noise

There will be vibration noise from the drives as well as whirring from fans and drives.

The 4-in-3 cages are metal, with a "false" side suspended from the actual cage by a small metal rod resting on rubber insets. That should pretty much isole vibration from the drives. These "false" sides have a slim (2 mm deep) plastic rail attached. I'm expecting to let these rails rest on wooden rails in the case - that way the vibration will be isolated from the "false" sides, and hence from the wood rails screwed onto the case.

Not much I can do about fan noise except buy good fans. I've got some slow running 120mm fans emitting 19 db. I expect that to be "silent enough" for my purposes.

I'm wondering how to attach the fans to the case. Is there any significant vibration from a fan? If I screw them into my MDF board, will the board vibrate because of the fan, or will it be okay as long as they're attached tightly enough? Trials will tell, but obviously it would be nice if anyone had experience in this area.

Cooling

I expect the PSU to be able to exhaust the heat from itself, the CPU and the RAID card. It's a relatively old Athlon 2600+. If it turns out to be insufficient, I might add an exhaust fan to the bottom layer.

The HDD cages come with attachment for a 120 mm fan blowing across the drives. If I stick to that layout, I'll have 4 x 120mm fans blowing over the 16 disks and will presumably need an additional 4 x 120 mm fans to suck that heated air out of the case and push it through the louvre doors.

I'm not sure if this is overkill, but I would like to be able to get away with fewer. So I'm considering 2 x 120 mm fans placed some 5-7 cm away from the diskcages to blow against all 4 of them and similarly only 2 x 120 fans to suck the air out.

Comments? Will this be sufficient?

Mobo tray

I don't want to cut the old case up (just in case this idea of mine turns out to be completely unworkable), so I'm imagining using washers with a collar for motherboard stand-offs. They seem to be small enough to fit on the areas under the mobo where the stand off is allowed to touch, but only time will tell if they're tall enough to give sufficient clearance under the mobo.

Not quite sure how I'm going to attach them to the underside of the mobo. Will glue be okay, or will the acid in glue ruin the mobo? (I can't just lay them on the bottom of the case and expect them to stay in place whilst I'm fiddling with screwing the motherboard down.

Again, comments would be appreciated.

Aesthetics

MDF is not particularly pretty but easy to work with.

When building my built in cupboards in the bedroom last year, I chose to buy B&Q kitchen doors for the doors - they look good and have nice rounded edges. And they're made up of particle board with a thin veneer on. Only downside is that they're not exactly cheap when you compare them with the price of e.g. conti board.

So for the time being, I'm building a "proto type" of white conti board. I've bought all the board for less than 20 quid. If it turns out to be a success, I'll probably repeat the exercise but using cabinet doors instead.

(of course, the ever practical wife explains that since the case will be hidden in the bottom of the linen closet, none of it will be visible, so it doesn't actually matter whether it's pretty or not).

Pics




This is the initial layout. I've realised that there's insufficient airflow around the CPU, so the layout will have to be amended.

[andyb]

Dude, this sounds like a relly cool project good luck.

2 Questions, where is your linnen closet.??? Does your linnen closet provide enough fresh cool air into the server section, remember cool air in - hot air out, if you dont have enough cool air in not enough hot air will get out, and your system will overheat. Are you RAID 5ing BTW?.


Andy

PS: What part of London are you in.

[sunnyUK]

Cheers, Andy.

I'm in Brentwood, Essex (but assuming that our overseas friends haven't got a clue where Essex is, it was more meaningful to register as "London") during the night and in Kensington during the day.

The linnen closet is not an ideal location. On the back of it is about 2 inches of free space and then another closet. The other closet is home built and so not airtight by any stretch of the imagination. I hope it will allow sufficient fresh air into the linnen closet... I've asked for advice about fan monitor/controllers that can monitor 5 or 6 fans in another forum. Would like one of them (if they exist) to be able keep an eye on the temperatures, 'cos that is really the big worry.

I'm not RAID5'ing. I was until the RAID array broke a few years ago. At the time I decided that since my data doesn't change (there's additions whenever new shows are being recorded, but I don't update each separate recording), I would back up to DVDs and then make do without the security of RAID5. It also saves me setting aside a full disk for the RAID-bits.

Cheers,
Tomas

[andyb]

Cheers for the info Tomas, I am in north east london, within spitting distance of essex (1/5 a mile), and 21 miles away from you.

I would suggest seeking support on fan controllers on the forums here, as people here are the knowers of all knowlege, also check that the fan controllers are capable of an audio alarm, as you wont be looking at the system too often, or you could use remote access software over the LAN, there are plenty of free easy to use programs to monitor temps from another PC.


Andy

[VERiON]

Does your linnen closet provide enough fresh cool air into the server section?

Better check it out before you start.

Put one of your computers (turned on of course) in your closet for a few hours - there is high chance that it will overheat . If not - you are green to go.

My XBOX (40-50W) in a closed TV cabinet is overheating really bad (+20 'C in about an hour). Althou my TV cabinet is more airtight than your closet - thats for sure.

[gb115b]

expensive...

but may have wife pleasingly aesthetic value....

http://www.kustompcs.co.uk/acatalog/info_1001.html

[sunnyUK]

gb115b,
looks very nice and would do the job. But not as fun as budging the job myself by cutting wood into tiny little pieces

Verion,
ah but that's the problem. My existing tower cabinet wouldn't fit in there. The two HTPCs are SFF boxes that blow the exhaust straight up so it would be hard to mimick the Atlas build that at least will be able to blow air straight out of the cabinet...

hmmm... but you've got a VERY good point. I'll need to figure out a way of trialling it *putting on thinking cap*

[sunnyUK]

Last weekend was spent cutting wood into pieces and put something workable together. I've got some measurements from the mobo temperature sensors.

Code: Select all

                            case     CPU Diode    CPU Socket
Initial layout, idle         49          44           66
Initial layout, busy         52          55           82

The busy measurements are taking as the top temperature (as reported by MBM) whilst spending 3 hours encoding a DivX file. The idle temperature is taken 6 hours after without having the machine switched off in the mean time.

I clearly need a case fan down at the "lower level" of the tower. I'm worried that hot air is just sitting around the CPU without being exhausted by the PSU or harddisk fans.

Not sure what CPU diode and CPU socket means? Maybe CPU diode is the built-in temperature gauge in the CPU whereas the CPU socket is a measure from the motherboard.

CPU is an Athlon XP 2800+. Mobo is an Asus A7V8X.

[sunnyUK]

To address the temperatures, I fitted a 12cm fan on the front of the box. The only place it can sit is just above / slightly covering the keyboard/mouse/serial/parallel/.... ports. Crap location, but not sure what else to do (see picture at the initial post, the cr*p location I have chosen is below the PSU which, incidentally, has its intake at the rear rather than from underneath).

Any other ideas would be greately appreciated.

Anyway, it did help on the temperatures:

Code: Select all

                            case     CPU Diode    CPU Socket
Initial layout, idle         49          44           66
Initial layout, busy         52          55           82

Front fan, idle              35          37           52
Front fan, busy              35          43           58

Whilst I still am not sure why there's such a big difference between "CPU Diode" and "CPU Socket", there's a clear improvement compared to the initial layout.

Now I just need to figure out how to have the fan there and still be able to plug in a keyboard/mouse.