Putting an antique server tower to use.

[Nasha]

Have you ever had computer parts laying around in your garage that you felt like making into something useful? Well my Dad had a old dual CPU motherboard laying around and we needed a computer to stuff in the closet to act as a home server. So here's what we did.

 

Before:

 

 

 

 

The I/O plate for the motherboard got lost somewhere along the line so one was fabricated out of aluminum tape and cardboard:

 

The goal of the modding was to keep the computer cool while seeing how far it could be overclocked before being put into the closet, we got somewhat carried away with things...

 

 

 

 

The on off switch had died and that one was in the garage. Three 80mm fans were added, and two 60mm fans are in the works. I am aware the case needs a good cleaning, I will post another set of pictures once it's been cleaned and assembled. Total cash investment $20-30 for a hole saw and the fans.

 

Edit: feel free to make suggestions and point out mistakes

Edited May 18, 2009 by Nasha

[TheConqueror]

Well, big mistake with those small fans. If you were going to cut holes anyway, why not go 120mm or 140mm? They push more air and make less noise. This case actaully looks exactly like a tall version of my first computer lol. Also, window modding + spraypainting is pretty awesome, but its like 50$ for a window and same for spraypainting (primer, paint, clear coat).

 

I HATE that beige color on computers

[Nasha]

Well, we have had a box of 80mm fans laying around while we don't have any 120mm fans laying around. And yes, I have the beige box factor aswell and a can of spray paint may be in order, but then again if it's going in the closet that doesn't matter does it?

[Venocide]

u could go to lowes and buy some plexi and make a window urself. Also, $12 in some primer, paint, and clear from wally-world. Heck a nice flat black could be cool. Call this ur Rat-Mod, instead of rat-rod. maybe in the closet but I will still make it a lil more appealing.

[Andrewr05]

Does that switch work?

 

I thought power switches were momentary switches...

 

 

 

Nice job though, might as well use the old parts if you have them.

[Nasha]

Yes that power switch works, it has a momentary function as well as the on/off

[Nasha]

More progress has been made:

 

 

Yes, that is part of a 2 liter soda bottle, so what? It's a prototype fan duct for the side panel fans.

[Andrewr05]

Anything goes in the world of modding.

 

The cheaper and more functional the better...

[GabrielT]

I like it, I'm cheap too!

I especially like the pop bottle fan cowl.

[damian]

Specs?

Looking good!

[BigBirdAZ]

Specs?

Looking good!

 

Thanks! We had all these parts laying around, so I figured why not! It's a Gigabyte dual MP board 2400 CPU's , 4 channel IDE RAID. I have a SATA 150 RAID card that I paid $1.00 for brand new, 2 new Vantech Stealth 60mm fans for the backplane ($3.00) the fans in place now are old cpu heatsink fans. I got a box of 10 Manhattan 80MM fans for $7.00 so that is why we used that size fan. The vid card is an old NVidia 4400 that was running fine with a seized cooling fan, I just put that Zerotherm fan on the card today, I got that for $1.99. the case was from an old E-ATX dual PIII server I had, with 7 optical bays plus the regular drive bay that we fabbed to replace the stock 3.5" cage we can slap just about whatever we want in there. I have a pile of various ATA66/100 and SATA drives to choose from to populate it. There is even room to add more 3.5" bays if we need to, I've got plenty of other donor cases! The original drive bay had been chopped down to clear the CPU's on the old board. I need to find some more ECC memory I don't have much of that on hand, but it will be fun to play with. When I get it put together the rest of the way I'll benchmark it and play with it a bit, I'm new at overclocking it was enough just to keep the systems running much less push them harder but now I have enough to spare to keep everybody happy if I blow one up. I do plan on painting it as I hate the beige myself but that can wait. Thanks for all the positive comments. I'll keep you updated as progress is made.

[cybergrunt69]

Very cool retro case - and yes, it could use a good cleaning.

 

Don't worry too horribly much about the benchmarking though. If you are going to use it as a 'closet server' it should probably focus more on the network connectivity and disk I/O. With the available space, maybe you could also look at adding in more drives to use for RAID - using a mixup of older drives, you don't want to risk losing data because of a dead drive.

 

What will the final purpose of this machine be? Just a file server? Printing? VM testing? If you want some advice from the forum for other setups, maybe knowing that could help with ideas...