[The_Punisher]

So, I'm finally getting ready to put my dinosaur PentiumIII server to rest. It exceeded my expectations for a media/minecraft server, but I have recently come into possession of an HP Proliant DL160 G5 server. This one, like my current server, was also given to me for free

There's only one problem: it's in a 1U enclosure, and as such it is much too loud for my townhouse. In this build log I'm basically keeping the CPUs and RAM, and replacing everything else. Here's what I have now:

2x Xeon E5405 2.0Ghz, 12MB L2, 4C/4T
8x2GB DDR2 FB-DIMM ECC Ram
320GB SATA (Boot drive)
3x1TB WD Green drives (will be RAID5)
HP SmartArray P400 SAS RAID

First things first, I got a new PSU. Picked up an Antec Neo 620W for $50 this past week, just arrived today.

Should have enough juice to power everything just fine.

The HP mobo won't work unless every one of these little fans is plugged in with their special connectors, so I went ahead and bought a new one. Got a SuperMicro X7DA3 off ebay for a reasonable price. That should be here next week, so we'll see how it works out. This EATX mobo actually requires 24-pin, 8-pin, and a 4-pin power connector. I was able to find a molex to EPS 4-pin on monoprice for a couple bucks, looks like it will work.

That's all I have so far. I have had this server for about a month, just now getting into this rebuild. A couple concerns I have starting out:

The mobo. I will have to wait and see how well this works out with my PSU. I have heard that Xeons like these can have problems if the board is powered from multiple 12v rails, so I made sure to get a PSU with a single 12v rail. Still, this isn't exactly a server PSU, so hopefully it works ok.

The heatsinks. The current ones are small, solid copper weights that rely on a shroud and 1U fans which spin at something like 15k RPM. Other than these it is near impossible to find affordable 771 socket coolers. Thermalright does make a 771 bolt-thru kit that looks like it could work with something like the hyper 212+, and I already have one of those lying around. If I have to hack a couple hypers to fit in a 4U case, I'm alright with that.

The RAID card. Not sure how well this HP P400 will work in a different mobo. If it presents a problem I can go with a Perc 5/i or 3Ware card for pretty cheap.

If anyone would like to enlighten me on those areas I would appreciate it. The new server will run Fedora/Amahi just like the last one, and will be used for media streaming and minecraft primarily. I will have a look into hosting more games for myself and my friends as well. At some point I would also like to look into virtualizing Untangle on it. I currently have UT running on an old Athlon, but feel this is a tremendous waste of power.

Will update log as I get parts. Also this project needs a name! Build Name: Metamorphosis

 

[mbudden]

Subbed.

 

[IzninjaFTW]

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[cyclist14]

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[The_Punisher]

Subbed! Oh wait this is my thread

Should have several parts in the mail Monday - including the mobo - so many questions will be answered then.

 

[The_Punisher]

Got a couple packages in the mail today

All the frozen corn I ordered! The box made me laugh.

Please don't freeze my motherboard

Here's what actually came in the corn box:

For being used it seems to be in pretty good shape. The other two packages contained a dual-cpu backplate and the two thermalright 771 bolt-thru kits.

The extra Hyper 212+ cooler of mine had a slight problem.

This pin sticks up on it for no apparent reason other than to get in the way of things. So I took the dremel to it and ground it off. Now the bolt-thru kit will fit perfectly - or so I thought! Turns out since it was made for thermalright heatsinks, there is a small gap b/t the hyper and the bracket that is supposed to hold it down.

And this is where I need a macro lens for my camera. Ever the shameless ghetto-rigger, I wedged a piece of copper in between there so it will make contact until I come up with a better solution. Now the hyper212+ is attached more or less securely to the cpu.

After hooking almost everything else up I came to the shocking realization that this mobo has NO ONBOARD VIDEO
I double-checked the specs online, and sure enough it was no mistake. I didn't even know they made server mobos without onboard graphics, so I overlooked that in my research. My bad on that one. I stuck a temp gpu in there until I come up with a low profile one.

Everything else has gone better than expected so far. I updated my HP P400 raid controller's firmware before moving it over - from 2.0-something to 7.22! The supermicro board seemed to have no problem picking up the HP controller, so that's good.

Next on the agenda is to get this thing into a case ASAP. I made the mistake of laying my hand on the ram while the system was on and almost burned myself very badly. I had read that fully buffered ram got hot, but man! This needs to have some serious airflow over it. So the next step will be a case and another hyper212+ so I can mount the second CPU in place.

That's it for this update, stay tuned for when I get my next paycheck.

 

[The_Punisher]

Bought a used Rosewill RSV-L4000 4U server case off fleabay. Got a pretty good deal on it, and it included rails for when I eventually put this in a small rack. Previous owner had done a couple small cable management mods to the inside which helped quite a bit.

It has two drive cages that hold 4 drives each. Currently have 4 drives installed.

Kudos to this guy for coming up with a great way to keep my FB-DIMMs cool. Works really well, will only requite minimal cutting to the fan housing itself.

The drive cages:

Here's the whole thing. Almost completely done, except for installing the second CPU. I'm also looking for a lower profile GPU.

As far as the second CPU goes, I should be ordering a second hyper 212+ soon. I just need to fix one small issue with these coolers:

The top just barely sticks up too much for me to get the case lid on. I have read that these heat pipes should absolutely not be cut; maybe I will try carefully bending them? Not sure on this one, but I will come up with something.

 

[The_Punisher]

Minor update: Getting closer to being finished with my ESXi setup (details on that here). I just added two 160GB IDE drives to my datastore - 1 for running either Untangle or pfsense firewall, and the other will probably run as a failover drive.

After thinking about it today, I decided to scratch the hyper 212 setup in favor of two smaller coolers. It's currently between the Hyper 101 (80mm) and the Hyper TX3 (92mm). The reason I'm leaning toward the 101 is that I could mount the 80mm fans inline with the direction of airflow in this case, instead of perpendicular to it.

 

[IzninjaFTW]

Wow it is looking good so far. I know how it is to try to put the side panel on and the CPU cooler is JUST BARELY sticking out.

I've had the TX3 before it was really good (after I strapped 2 fans on it of course.)

Can't wait for another update

 

[The_Punisher]

Quote:

Originally Posted by IzninjaFTW;15091982
Wow it is looking good so far. I know how it is to try to put the side panel on and the CPU cooler is JUST BARELY sticking out.

I've had the TX3 before it was really good (after I strapped 2 fans on it of course.)

Can't wait for another update

Thanks. It ended up being just a minor setback. I ordered two Hyper 101 coolers, which are basically baby 80mm versions of the 212+

As you can see, I didn't put the coolers inline with airflow like planned. That had to do with the 771 bolt-thru clips not playing nice with small coolers. Long story short, mounting these little things was a huge pain! It took a while but I finally got it up and going. The lid fits on it now!

I also picked up a dual-gigabit PCI-X card for cheap. This machine now has 5 Gb NICs, though all are connected and used only 1 is needed to run above 100Mb.

One other cool add-in I got was an IPMI card. It allows remote monitoring and control of the system. It sends data through one of the onboard NICs that I can pull up in a web browser. Also integrates automatically with ESXi, which is a huge plus.

Web interface looks like this:

One thing I love about this SuperMicro mobo is it doesn't complain about fans being unplugged. I could run it with nothing plugged into any of its fan headers and it wouldn't stop me, unlike many HP/Dell mobos. This is the IPMI card below my massive GPU heatsink. It has a special slot type.

I had replaced GPU with a much smaller, low-profile card (5450 I think), but it stopped working within a couple reboots so now it's back to old faithful.

Well, that's it! For less than $300 I converted a 1U HP Server into a very nice 4U "whitebox" server with a couple added features. Best of all, it is virtually silent compared to its former self. I cannot hear it at all over my sig rig.

Currently I'm running ESXi with 4 VMs, performance is fast and stable

 

[mbudden]

Looks great mate.

 

[IzninjaFTW]

Congrats

Looks great!

 

[gamerdude74]

Where did all your images go?