WHS 2011 Build - The Maw

[blueonblack]

Nice work on the sleeving! Haven't tried that myself yet, but I'd be happy with results like those.

[TheMainMan]

Nice work on the sleeving! Haven't tried that myself yet, but I'd be happy with results like those.

Thanks blueonblack! I've been pretty happy with the results overall though I have learned the importance of a jig for sizing heatshrink the same. You can notice the difference in the last photo with the left connector. Not a terribly big deal for this build as there is no way to see any of this once the case is closed but it's something I think I can improve on for the future. The one drawback I've noticed is that they don't seem to be as durable as my previous results with plastic loom sleeving. I think that might be due to the fact that I'm using cheap heatshrink though.

So with the sleeving done, it was finally time to take the server out of service and start actually swapping parts. For some reason (I must have lost my mind), I thought this would be a quick and easy swap. I was wrong.

Here's the old on the right and the new on the left.

All the parts out of the old. Not shown are the extra 4 hard drives that will be added.

A large pile of cables out of the old case. I'll sort through them as I go and only put back in what I need.

First step is to install the motherboard at the bottom of the case. It's a pretty close fit as you can see from the second photograph. There is just enough room to bring the headers around from under the board.

Pop in the eSATA RAID card, the PCI 2-port SATA card and the fan controller.

Starting to get tight with the PSU in place.

Decided that this would be a good time to plug in the fan controller before I added anything else in and wound up with too little room to work. The rear lights are plugged into the fan controller pass-through and the whole assembly will sit hidden just under the center rail.

The main ATX power supply cable is a bit of a tight fit in such a small case but I won't shorten it since it's not modular and replaceable.

At this point I was feeling pretty good about how it was all coming together but that quickly changed when I went to install the lower hard drive cage. This is what I was referring to earlier in my picture-less rant update.

Hard to get a good shot of the size of the gap but it's too small for SATA power connectors that aren't a perfect custom fit. Since I tried to fix it before the comments people left here, I decided to swap the CPU cooler around since the excess cable between the connectors would have wound up in the fan blades.

Thankfully, the GELID Tranquillo 2's overhangs weren't symmetrical so I actually gained a decent amount of space when I turned it.

Satisfied that it would fit I next routed the plethora of SATA data cables that will be needed to connect all the drives.

It was way easier to do the power cables with the drive cage out of the case and then plug cable into the PSU after installing the cage. The excess cable between drives is what would have been the biggest problem before I turned the CPU cooler. Not a lot of room in the end but enough and the fan is very protected on the other side.

The top drive will be powered of a Molex->SATA adapter for the time being until I can make a custom power harness.

The top drive cage was another close fit but there is just enough room between the PSU and the center support rail to feed the power and data cables through.

The DVD drive turned out to be another challenge which I'll save for the next update.

[TheMainMan]

Not dead yet! Just busy with the holidays and neglected to post any updates.

With the hard drives finally fitting into the bays, I moved on to the slimline DVD drive as the 5.25" cage is the one closest to the top. The biggest downside to slimline drives in my opinion is the super tiny screws that secure them. In case you've never had to deal with them, here's a shot so that you can feel my pain.

The screws to hold it in the adapter may have been annoying but at least they weren't as bad as the holes in the cage. Somehow, I don't think that's going to fit...

As this is a modding forum, I did what most of us would do and made my own Masked off the area so I didn't scratch it, measured 4 times before drilling, and still had to adjust the position of one of the holes afterwards. If only I had done this after Christmas when I got a set of digital vernier calipers... Oh, well. It's off by less than the head of the screw so it's only noticeable when the drive isn't installed.

After a few tweaks, it all lined up nicely.

At this point I was back to having a working system so I slapped the top cover on, took a few finished shots and dropped it into the spot in the side table.

Once I booted it up, I learned that the add-in PCI SATA card used the same chipset as my on-board controller and so I could choose between 2 ports or 6 ports. Back onto the work bench it went and when I opened it up I realized that I had a fan that wasn't spinning. The other two that were plugged into the fan controller were spinning really slowly, even set to max, so I picked up a four way splitter with PWM.

I re-packed everything back in and made some improvements to the cable management, having learned that hiding fan connectors under the motherboard is a REALLY bad idea in this case.

I took some shots to try to illustrate how close the entire setup is to the wall and why I wanted to install the lights on the rear. It was tough to photograph but there is enough room to reach behind to plug things in but not enough to also let in light while reaching back there. The lights make a huge difference in how easy it is to plug stuff in.

I've accidentally left them on overnight and didn't notice walking past the door to the office as it's a nice soft glow. I can't wait to make the same mod to my desktop as I really hate how dark it is behind it as well.
I'm mostly done on this project in terms of appearance but I will be doing some internal changes now that I have a USB 3.0 to 2.0 converter, a new SATA slimline cable for the DVD drive, a new 2-port SATA add-in card with a different chipset, and most of the supplies to make my own custom SATA power harnesses. Hopefully, I'll get that done in the next little while once I can clear off my workspace again.

[TheMainMan]

Okay, I finally got around to trying to finish up the things I listed at the end of the last post since I had some space on my workbench and I needed to use the two 750GB drives that were not hooked up in order to have room for client computer backups.

The old slimline SATA cable and the new one replacing it, plus the USB 3.0 to 2.0 converter to allow the front USB 3.0 port to work on my older mobo.

I had originally put a 4-pin molex connector on the slimline cable thinking that the connector it came with was a proprietary HP connector. After doing that I saw the male plug and realized that it's simply a floppy power connector. Since there won't be a floppy drive in my server (that would be so wrong) I can use the 1 connector the PSU comes with and free up a molex plug. Combined with custom SATA power, it meant I could take one of the modular 4-pin cables out entirely.

Old cable on the left, new on the right. I had also removed the locking tab on the old cable but have it in a port where it can be used now so that's a bonus for the new cable.

Trying another 2-port SATA RAID card to see if I can find one that works WITH the onboard chipset AND doesn't use the same controller chip as the eSATA card. This one is an Adaptec 1220SA.

For the first custom SATA cable I started with the furthest connector inserted into the drive since that was an existing connector on the cable and would be used to reference where the new ones should go.

Placed the other connectors on the drives and laid in the wires.

Stripped and tinned the ends so that I could add an extension in between the 1st and 2nd plugs.

Once everything was soldered together, including the end for the modular PSU, I took the three end connectors off so that I could do some simple sleeving. I thought about using paracord but decided against it as I wasn't planning on sleeving all the other PSU wires as well.

Once that end was done, I took the PSU connector off very carefully (used a pair of pliers to hold the staple to release the pins) and put heatshrink on the joins and then sleeved that end.

Testing the fit on the drive cage. There is a hole on the bottom of the cage that is unused but is perfect to run a zip-tie through to route the cable.

The sharp-eyed among you may notice a small issue with this picture compared to earlier photos. I thought I was done here but had to take everything apart and correct the outside wires which I had accidentally swapped while sleeving. Drives didn't seem to suffer any damage but they sure didn't work either.

Clearance is a lot better on the main cage now.

Secondary cage was pretty easy to make a cable for as I only needed to relocate the original connectors closer to the bottom one.

Once I was done correcting the error in the SATA power cables, I plugged in all the hard drives and fired the server up... and was quickly disappointed when the Adaptec card did the same as all the cards prior. It takes over from the onboard controller and the only drives that show in the boot menu are from the add-in card. Since the SSD is in the onboard ports I can't specify to boot from it and the server won't boot. I spent a day or so thinking about what to try next as I've gone through the 3 cards I had access to without success. I was working on an HP DL380G6 at work that was spare and realized that I could try the HP P400 card that was in it. Cleared it with the boss and brought the card home for a test which went beautifully. So I've ordered the card, two SFF-8484 to 4x SATA fanouts and an PCI-E 8x extender cable, which I will explain with pictures once it all arrives. Total cost was less than $60CAD so I'm pretty happy with the result, and I get to do some more modding.

[TheMainMan]

Sorry for the poor lighting in the photos, one of my next projects is to make a better work area light from the leftover LED strips that I used on the back of this case. Should make the future photos more evenly lit.