Hey guys, so I started my home server build late September this year (just a few weeks ago) as some of you may have suspected. Was gonna use this as a file backup and FTP server, as well as anything else that may need some sort of hosting. Just finished today and finally got all my pictures up!
So here goes:
For the case, an old school Antec SX830 beige full tower. Got it from a buddy and here's the configuration it came in:
Had to take out that CD-ROM drive + the floppy and zip drives to make room for what I ended up putting in it!
Got one hell of a good deal/trade for my motherboard + CPU combo on my local Craigslist... and here they are, the Tyan Thunder K8SR S2881 server board and DUAL Opteron 250s:
The power supply I chose is an Antec EA650 Green, since it's the most cost friendly one I could find at my local Fry's and at the same time 80 Plus Bronze. I've had good luck with Antec PSUs ever since I started building from way back in 2005... I know many of you here may not agree with me and probably wanna yell at me for being stupid for putting this in a server machine...
but oh well. Here it is!
Case didn't come with any fans, so I had to drop by Fry's to pick up these two fans... Enermax 80mm Enlobal bearing little beasts. No screws needed since the case fan mounting mechanism is via those two pretty purple fan holders
Mounted those on the front as an INTAKE, since they're literally right next to the CPU sockets:
So here's the server built, without hard drives yet, and stock heatsinks used.
Booted up to test for functionality. Seems to be good so far!
Now... let's upgrade the RAM shall we? Acquired 8 x 1GB sticks of DDR PC3200R ECC RAM for cheap (under $40).
Now, with those stock heatsinks my idle core temps while in Windows sat in the 50s. This was way unacceptable for me, so I went out and got me a pair of these right here:
At first, I thought they weren't gonna fit... I was half right, because they did indeed fit without their fans. In fact they are touching each other:
Problem here is, the fans won't go on anymore because the mounting brackets couldn't fit between the two heatsinks. Came up with an alternate solution instead... you may have guessed, ZIP TIES!!
Now it fits nicely
Now I have a new problem. The server case has a hard drive holder that extends out from the front, below the optical drive bays, as you can see in one of the case internal picture above. That got in the way of the TX3s... so I had to find a way to get rid of it. Found out that they were rivets, so I had no choice but to drill them out. I posted a topic asking for help on this too, and thanks to
EliteGeek91, I succeeded!!
http://forums.evga.com/tm.aspx?m=1265476 Here's the outcome of removing the hard drive holder via power drill, btw, ignore that Antec SpotCool fan, it was there for testing purposes
Now, to get my HDDs properly installed and well ventilated, I got one of THESE!
Basically it takes up 2 x 5.25 bays and fits up to 3 HDDs, along with a double ball bearing 80mm fan behind a removable dust filter. VERY NICE!!
These are the HDDs I'm using for the server, 300GB Samsung HD300LD, and 200GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.7. Samsung drive is used for storage while the Seagate drive is for the OS:
Mounted and good to go!!
YAY!!!! Now the server build is complete, and here's a final shot before closing the door and setting it up:
Installed Windows Server 2003 R2 x64 Enterprise Edition. Seems to be the latest OS this dinosaur machine can handle. I still have a lot of configuring and setting up to do. Gonna slowly learn them as I progress. Once everything is ready, I may get rid of the monitor/KB/mouse so the server is only accessible via Remote Desktop.
Everything seems to be going great so far! Except the fact my internet is a piece of junk
