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Cooling The Beast...
Heat in this build is the strongest foe.
Fourninately we have a vorpal heat slaying dagger
with a +9 agent's heat. In this build we will be
doing a fair amount of fabrication of cooling devices.
We will be taking advantage of the case its self
to minimize the amount of raw / difficult fab work.
So to cool this project adequately we will be using
good old fashioned air, like the stuff you breathe.
We will start with the front panel. Simply remove
the panel from the chassis. The panel is simply
a metal frame with a piece of smoky plexi attached
with double sided sticky tape. Simply use a screw
driver to separate the two. Using a dremal tool,
or an 80mm hole saw and a drill, cut a hole in the
plexi for the fan, and some smaller ones for the
screws for the fan. Assemble the panel with fan
and grill like it was. Super glue can more than
hold it together if your tape fails, or you get
it covered with sprinkles from the donut you're
eating at the time.... |
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| Reattach the modified panel to the server and
make sure the alignment still allows it to open
and close like it did prior to you fiddling with
it. I also took the air filter out of the case to
help promote airflow in the front of the case. One
final thought on this step make sure you have your
fan blowing the right way. Or you will have problems
getting the desired result. Although the alternative
could be fun to watch as well. |
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| With the front blower finished we will be moving
on the main blower array in the case. This is what
causes the case to have a negative pressure and
draw in the cooler air to keep those drives from
glowing. Using a piece of cardboard, make a template
of the hole where the rear panel was once located
in the back of the case. Space out 3 fans on the
cardboard and trace them on to it with screw holes
as well. Carefully cut it out and use it as template
to construct the same out of plexi. Use a dremal
tool or 80mm hole saw for the main cutting. One
tip I learned here is run the hole saw in reverse
and melt through it. Some times the teeth can bind
and shatter the plexi. |
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| Assemble the fan array with fans on the back and
front of the array (total of 6) stacking the fans
will help increase the "bite" they have in moving
air. Next chain the power all together and use twist
ties to attach the cables to the plexi (drill additional
holes if needed) and give it the shake test to see
if the cables can move and can come into contact
with the fans. Grills are optional here but always
look cool. I mean come on, chrome and cars and chrome
and computers that's the something.... right? |
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| Take the newly constructed fan array and carefully
mount it to the case. Take care when tightening
the screws not to over tighten them as it will cause
the plexi to crack or even shatter. Take the power
leads to the unit and attach them to the power supply.
Fire up the up the server preferable with out power
to the drives to verify that you are getting the
airflow you need. Some fans operate at 4000 rpm
and some at 2000 rpm. This will directly affect
the amount of air you can move through the case.
If you have the slower fans you can get nicer ones
really cheap |
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| Now with the fans tested and the drives wired,
and the SCSI cables installed we can move on to
firing up this monster. Double check all your connections
and fans to make sure no surprises are awaiting
you down the road. I recommend getting a small home
thermostat with the little outside sensor and running
it in the case just so you know exactly how hot
it gets inside. Some double sided sticky tape or
superglue on the front of the case to hold it in
place and you should be good to go. Seal the case
up and screw the cover on to make sure you have
optimum airflow and fire it up. Just a word of caution
again on heat with this unit. If you get it too
hot, and you shut down the unit, the drives will
not have anything cooling them, but the drives will
still be radiating heat. The hottest this will get
is when you shut it down after you have been running
it. So shut it down long before you "have to" shut
it down... or.... run the hell out of it, and use
the top of the case as a skillet and start your
own dinner.... |
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Final setup and configuration
Take the raid controller you have and install
it in your case. A note on this, the IBM card we
had shown earlier is a great card, its only drawback
being that it is a full length card. Extremely long
that is. So not likely to be used in a normal case.
we had another raid controller laying around to
test the drives and make sure our SCSI chains were
all working like we wanted. Most older RAID controllers
are PCI only. But there are allot of very affordable
PCI-X or PCI-E cards out there also. Its up to you
on the system spec you dump this all into. |
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| We chose another rackmount server case to build
out the final server configuration we went with.
This allowed us to just run the SCSI ribbons out
the back of the cases to the server. Having a dedicated
server is definitely the way to go if your not going
to be moving this allover the place. Although in
the alternative configuration we did chose to use
the Adaptec SCSI2USB devices to make this process
simpler. We have a little tweaking to do with the
terminators using them, but if you want a really
plug and play type setup and don't mind the overhead
of software raid they are definitely the way to
go. But a dedicated server is really handy for mp3
servers, bittorrant servers, and other socially
questionable services and servers. |
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| The final step here is just working with the raid
controllers setup. We chose in this build to use
a hot ready drive so if one failed we can have automatic
failover to the ready drive. In the end we built
out 2 of these units and added a second RAID controller
to the server. Not too bad, the ole cost to TB ratio
I think... |
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