[dirty moogler]

Greetings all ....
its been a while since ive been active here ...
working in a hotel doesnt leave u much free time ... and then i managed to get hooked on wow (big mistake)
but now since i got buggered in that job (hotel politics and a shift in management) i moved back to the motherland (KL malaysia) . In Search of a new job ... a gd friend of mine asked me to mod his server rack and the 2 4u cases hes putting in them ..... and being the madmodder that i am ... i accepted willingly ...

anyhows on to the mod ......

firstly ill give a basic run down on the specs of each casing ....

the first 4u....(formally a gaming rig and will be a file and media server once the new one is built)
this is my friends old gaming rig....
specs are sommat like this
opteron 146
asus A8n-sli
2gb kingston value ram
2 x 1tb western digital Hdd 16mb green power
1 x 320gb
2 x 120gb pata
lg dvd-rw
2x 6600gts sli
680w psu (i think)
Coolermaster Aquagate

The second 4u ...
2x intel Xeon quad cores ( not sure which one yet but there will be 2)
Asus serverboard (will update the model wen i find out)
8gb unbuffered ram (mayb 16gb)
2x 4870 or g250 either sli or crossfire .. not sure as of yet though .....
at least 2tb hdd
and mayb 70gb ssd hdd


ok with the internals covered ....

heres a basic idea of whats planned.....
for the rack
1. strip the rack down and repaint it .... a blood red outside ... with a darker red inside... the trays prob a diff shade of red or maybe black ......
2. cut out a evil inside design in the rack side panels plus flames and others ....
3. windows and vinyl designs for the rack ....
4. if i can find a airbrush artists mayb a fancy paintjob ....

For the server 4u
1. paintjob
2. windows
3. sleeving
4. mod the watercooler
5. custom led hdd monitor

for the gaming 4u
1. paintjob
2. custom windows
3. custom watercooler
4. custom from panel

mounting a wireless router
custom mounting - read drillin holes :excited:

gonna try and do a sketchup for everything soon .... and ill post it up .....

ok with the dull part done and said ....
here are some pics



the victim .... 48u rack ...with the side panels removed.....

well my friend, Husein as seen in the pic above ... had the sudden urge to mount his wireless router to the rack ...
and our luck the mounting holes of the dlink router didnt match up with the racks .....
so wat do we do .... drill new holes :excited:

continued nxt post

[dirty moogler]

the victim ..... dlink wireless router....

heres where we intended to mount it ....




after opening here up .....


the mounting holes marked ....

now i tried sommat stupid .... trying to make the holes with a screw and screwdriver .....
not exactly the easiest thing to do .....( my rtx (dremel) was at hme )



this is wat it looks like after bout 20 mins of screwing .... not so good ....

well a trip hme and 30 seconds with the dremel and a drill bit .....


continued.... again ...

[dirty moogler]

and here it is mounted nicely perfect fit



hooked up and ready to go

well prob extend the antenna with a cable so we can route it out the back ....or mayb a bigger antenna....

with dremel in hand i turned to hussein's first 4u rack ....


his coolermaster aquagate fan had fried .... and so seeing he had a huge delta like fan lying around ... thought we might as well stick it in .... with a bit of hacking and slashing


premoded coolermaster aquagate.......


and it opened up ... nuffin special inside ... the rad is hardwired to the resevoir...... and a weird looking pump setup

anyhows out comes the dremel



with the fan removed


after removing one of the mounts for the fan


continued yet again ......

[dirty moogler]

both removed....


the cuts ... not to bad lucky the right was straighter ...cause we decided to scrap the left hand side one.....


after ripping the left one off



with the new fan in place ....


rear view ... the fans cables will b routed through that blowhole....


with casing back in place ... it hold the fan in place nice and tightly ....

continued yet again .......
@ mods jz wondering is there any chance for a higher pic limit ??

[dirty moogler]

fan power cables .....


mounted back in the case



hussein rewiring the watercooler .......


remounted in the rack

ok it looks a bit ghetto now .... but needed to get the server back up and running .... hussein had bought his 2 1tb hdd hard drives and wanted to consolidate his media ... like a kid on christmas ...had to play with the new toys .....

i plan to build a new face plate .... give it nice clean look .... prob either black acrylic with red mesh .....

till the nxt update
Dirty Moogler signing off ....

:edit: latest we landed ourselves a FREE 4u case .... it was a former pabx (telephone switchboard) from a lil office stockpile (u got to love office clearances) plus a couple of ups's (cant remember which ones but they are the industrial standard ones..hehe)
get some pics up once hussein is back from singapore ...damn business trip slows down modding ...

till then........

[dirty moogler]

erm can one of the mods move this to the project logs .....
was kind of sleep and salah posted to wrong section

[LordAlfa]

You can consolidate his router, firewall, file server, pabx and MythTV/VideoLAN server with Clarkconnect.

I have done all the above except the video streaming part. Needs a WinTV 350 PVR. No HD for this at the moment. Looking for a solution.
Any ClarkConnect users?

The 4U is a HEC or clone. Cost S$130. You find it in Jurong Port Rd, Wyn2000. Search the yellow pages. I have 4 of these cases.

Use 1TB but mirror them. Protect his media files. Or get another 1TB and Raid5 to get 2TB with redundancy. Use Linux Software raid. very cost effective since he is only serving his own files.

OS is booting with 2x 40GB IDE drives in Raid1. I am running 8x 500GB 2x Raid5 arrays with scalability for another 8 HDDs using a 12port SATA raid card. 4 onboard are used. 4 on the SATA card is used.

The HEC is missing the air filter element in the pictures.

The 2nd 4U, my recommendations

The second 4u ...
2x intel Xeon quad cores, E54XX
Asus serverboard, Z7S
8gb unbuffered ram, The is no unbuffered RAM, only FBDIMMs, if you want ECC unbuffered, Asus DSAN-DX. No SLi or XFire.
2x 4870 or g250 either sli or crossfire, Must get Z7S.
at least 2tb hdd, for storage else for gaming SSD
and mayb 70gb ssd hdd

As for water cooling, the server rack should have 4pcs of AC fan mounting on top. I suggest you run the water cooling on the top shelf with a car radiator mounted. Let the fan suck and blow up through the radiator. You can run either an AC water pump or DC. Your choice. I'll go AC since the metal shelf can shield the electronic interference from the computer components.

With this you can probably water cool all the PCs inside the rack.

[dirty moogler]

the air filter has been removed .... it annoyed the shit out of me ...
plus the case is gonna b modded ... so as lil stock stuff the better ....
i have big plans for each of the 4u cases ... hehehe

the pabx is not actually gonna b used .... jz the 4u case it was in before .... i dont think many homes really need a pabx server as cool as it would b

erm hardware wise is not really my dealing .... apart from the cooling ..... thats my friends part of this project ...
ill try get him to join the forum to explain his choices ....wen it comes down to the install time

should get back to work this wkend .... after paintball and his raya open house ..... so more pics soon

any recommendations for a watercooling setup for xeons ?? plus gpu and chipset ?

[tensor]

hmmz did anyone say project logs?

[dirty moogler]

thanks for moving it ........
i got to start posting wen im not half asleep

[HusseinMaruan]

Updates:

Current System:
Opteron 146 (OC 2.8)
Asus A8n-sli
3gb kingston value ram
2 x 1tb Western Digital SATA
1 x 200gb SATA
2 x 120gb PATA
lg dvd-rw
2x 6600gts sli
680w psu (i think)
Coolermaster Aquagate

Addons:
ADAPTEC SAS Controller Card
12 x 1TB Western Digital SATA Drives

The second 4u ...
2x intel Xeon quad cores ( not sure which one yet but there will be 2)
Asus serverboard or MSI cant remember the model (about RM2.3K)
8gb buffered ram (mayb 16gb)
2x 4870 or g250 either sli or crossfire .. not sure as of yet though .....
at least 2tb hdd
and mayb 70gb ssd hdd

yay!