January 29, 200818 yr Case: Rosewill R6A34-BK 0.8mm SECC 120mm Fan ATX Mid Tower Computer Case - Retail This case is based on an older Antec design, and is also shared by HEC and a Thermaltake design. It has 4 external 5.25 bays, and 5 internal 3.5 bays. The 3.5 bays have a fan mount in front of them. Mobo: Foxconn 945G7MC-KS2HV LGA 775 Intel 945G Micro ATX Intel Motherboard - Retail This is about the cheapest 945 Chipset mobo I could find on the 'Egg. I am concerned about the Realtek 8110 LAN chip. Have those issues been fixed yet? PSU: SPARKLE ATX-350PN-B204 ATX 12V 2.0 350W Power Supply - OEM This PSU has 16A on the 12V2 rail... will this be enough for six (or more) drives? I know some folks have said Tom recommends "the 350W Sparkle", but which one? This one seemed to be pretty nice. CPU: Celeron 420 - This seems to be creeping up in price; I wonder why? Mem: A Generic 512x2 kit... HDD: Just a single 750GB WD SATA So, what do you folks think? SirWired
January 30, 200818 yr Author Well, I finally pulled the trigger... My final order was a little different, due to some last-minute promotions. The case got changed to an Antec Solo, which I expect to be much quieter and definitely has better drive ventilation than the Rosewill, without having to pull out the Dremel. (It was on sale with a rebate + free shipping... couldn't turn it down.) The PSU got changed to a Antec NeoHE 380. Again, this was done primarily for noise and price reasons. The specs of the PSU's are slightly different, with the Antec having three rails, all of which max out at 15A each. To me, it appears that this will result in me being able to "steal" more power from the CPU/mobo, which doesn't need it. (A single-core Conroe-L and 1GB of memory, plus GigE and SATA just isn't going to pull that much.) This unit is also more efficient than the Sparkle. Total came to $330, including shipping, after rebates, w/ one 750GB drive. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. I think I can run my max six-drive goal in this case without too much trouble, and I don't anticipate too many issues with cooling. SirWired
February 6, 200818 yr Author Grr... Foiled again! Well, I received all my new toys, plugged everything up, and then... no POST. I write Foxconn, and their reply is that my processor is so new, I may need a BIOS update to get it to POST. Their helpful suggestion is to "use a spare, older, processor" to boot it up, flash the BIOS, and then use my shiny new Conroe-L 420. (a.k.a. Celeron 420). If I owned a spare processor, it is already what I would be using here, since I am such a tightwad... To top it off, I work for a large computer company you have all heard of, but when I go trolling the lab for spare parts, the lab tech informs me that since it is a server lab, he doesn't have any Socket 775's lying around... Grr... literally millions of dollars of parts lying around in one room, and I can't find a stupid outdated POS LGA 775 Prescott lying around for me to borrow... *sigh* RMA-ing for a replacement won't help, since the 'Egg will just send me another board w/ an outdated BIOS. Right now, I have sent Foxconn a request for an alternate solution, like mailing me a new BIOS chip, which is oh-so-helpfully socketed on this particular board. If I have no luck there, I guess I will just have to return it and buy a better board... And I was so proud of my $180 server (disk not included) SirWired
February 6, 200818 yr You must be able to find someone you known with an old POS processor sitting around. Perhaps post what city you are in and a kind soul here will help out. Bill
February 6, 200818 yr Author Well, color me surprised! I actually got Foxconn to send me out a new BIOS chip! They claim it will be going out USPS today. I opened the support call yesterday evening, had my first response before bed, and no more than a half-hour lag today between my feedback and their response! I am quite impressed. Some of the back-and-forth responses were a little unimpressive... but once we got out of the stage consisting of: "We're just going to paste a standard template in the e-mail form and hope you go away", things went much better. I think they tried to intimidate me when they stated I needed a PLCC puller and agree that if I screwed up the board, I wouldn't call it their fault. Heh. A PLCC puller is about the easiest thing they could have asked for... even if the chip was soldered down, that wouldn't have been a problem either; the lab I work in has a full solder re-work station. Unfortunately, everybody I know either doesn't have an Intel at all (much less an LGA 775), doesn't know, has a laptop, or their box is several years old. What an interesting group of friends and colleagues I have... Borrowing a $70k PCI-express bus analyzer would have been trivial, but I can't scrape up a $30 Cedar Mill or Prescott from some low-end PC... (we all have laptops as work machines) If the BIOS update doesn't work, back to NewEgg it goes, and I guess I'll spend more than $38 this time. SirWired
February 6, 200818 yr Lol, I've been bitten by that more than once buying new hardware. I just purchased a new 45nm E8400 and feared that this would happen to me but thankfully the board went to POST and simply whined about the CPU. Flashed it off of a USB using the internal flasher and off I went to the races! The new 45nm chips overclock like mad but I wouldn't waste one on an unRAID Good to hear you were successful in getting a new BIOS - here's hoping it doesn't come with the older firmware
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