My DIY 9 Bay Micro Server

ash.881 · September 13, 2012

Here's my server that I finally completed today. It's been a work in progress for a few months now (note: in the pics the case looks a bit yellowish and the motherboard looks a bit of a funny green - that's just due to the flash, the case is crystal clear and the motherboard is a normal dark green.

OS at time of building: unRAID 4.7 Pro

CPU: Intel Atom D525

Motherboard: Supermicro X7-SPA-H-O

RAM: 2 x G.SKILL F2-6400CL5S-2GB SO-DIMM

Case: LCDMOD KIT Perspex Mini-ITX case

Drive Cage(s): 3 x SNT 2131 3in2 cages

Power Supply: Antec Neo ECO 400C

SATA Expansion Card(s): None currently

Fans: 1 x 120mm Coolermaster Excalibur for motherboard, 2 x 80mm Fractal Design Silent for drive cages

Parity Drive: WD20EARX

Data Drives: 2 x WD20EARX, 1 x WD20EARS, 1 x WD10EADS

Cache Drive: WD2500JD

Total Drive Capacity: Currently 7TB (Expandable up to 16TB using 2TB drives, or 24TB using 3TB drives)

Primary Use: Streaming to XBMC/Openelec client machines

Likes: I built it myself, small, quiet, expandable

Dislikes: None

Add Ons Used: Mysql, Unmenu, Clean Powerdown

Future Plans: Perhaps paint the silver edges of the case black.

Here is the story of how it came to be:

It evolved through necessity from my very first server which was this ghetto machine:

As you can see it started off as simply a single 3 bay drive cage, a psu, and a motherboard/case sitting on my desk. This was my server (with 3TB) for around a year, when I first built it I could never see myself filling those 3TB, but that changed when I discovered HD content.

The drive cage is an SNT 2131 which I bought used off ebay for $50 or so. The 2131 drive cage is one noisy beast from the factory, (the standard fan is stupidly loud), so it was removed and a fractal design silent 80mm was installed to replace it. The standard fan is an 80 x 20mm and replacements in that size can not be found, so the fractal design was mounted on the outside of the cage at the rear.

The motherboard is a Supermicro X7SPA-H-O that was also bought used off ebay (a guy had bought it to use as a hardware firewall or something, realized he didn't have the time to muck around with it and sold it with only a few hours use). The PSU was an Antec Neo Eco 400C. ( I originally had a Corsair CX430 but it had coil whine and drove me crazy so I sold it.)

The case was purchased from an ebay seller in Hong Kong called Lcdmod Kit.

The case itself came with a tiny little fan mounted underneath the motherboard that made tonnes of noise for very little gain, so I removed it. Even though the motherboard is passively cooled, being installed in a small case with no active ventilation caused CPU temp to rise to about 75 degrees C. Though this is well within spec for the D525, I didn't like it being to hot so I added a fractal design silent 80mm fan screwed on the top of the case lid (as there was no space inside the case to mount it).

This little machine was rock solid for a year, it ran nice and cool and quiet. When it became apparent that future upgrades would be necessary I realized that I would not be able to have any more than 6 drives with the current case, as there are only 6 onboard sata ports, and the case was not tall enough to allow me to install a pcie sata card. So I thought I had better do something about it at the time incase the ebay seller went out of business in the future. So I contacted the seller and had them custom make

me some taller sides to suit my existing case. With the extra height I gained I was able to install a 120mm Coolermaster Excalibur PWM case fan on the underside of the lid. I went 120mm and PWM in order to get plenty of airflow at low rpm (and thus very low noise).

Even though I never thought I would ever need more than 3 drive bays, I did consider that maybe in the future things may be different, so I initially chose components that could be incorporated into a larger project in the future, rather than having to be replaced. I new that were I to build something in the future I would want it to be low power, quiet, have a small footprint and be expandable. I am now glad I did think ahead a little and that has allowed me to reuse everything in this "new" server.

Once it became apparent that I was going to need more space and I would need a bigger server in the future, I started keeping an eye on ebay for more SNT 2131 drive cages. After months of nothing an auction popped up for 2 cages. While I was really only looking for one, they went really cheap (both of them for $55 delivered) so I got them both.

I decided I wanted to build something myself rather than buy (as computer equipment prices are really high in Australia). I sketched out multiple layouts for my 3 drive cages, psu and motherboard, and finally decided on the configuration seen in the photos. I went with this configuration firstly to minimize it's footprint and secondly so that if necessary a second tower of 3 drive cages could be added to the right hand side with minimal modification.

After taking plenty of measurements and doing many mockups I took my drawing down to a local sheet metal shop and had them cut and bend some galvabond up for me.

There is another piece too but I did not get any photos.

After drilling out all the necessary holes I had the drive cages mounted in their final position.

I built a frame out of timber to support the case and the house the psu (the psu is concealed behind the black front panel, below the motherboard.) This was how the server stayed for many weeks while I decided how to finish it off.

I originally considered painting the metal, but decided instead to cover over it. Initially I considered using vinyl wrap, but this is expensive, so one day I had the bright idea of using self adhesive contact used for covering schoolbooks. Problem was no one sold it in black, after a few weeks of hunting I finally found some at an office supply store. Today I finally got around to laying the contact.

I am pretty much finished now, I'll probably paint the silver edging of the case black but that will be about it. I'm pretty happy with it, the contact came out better than I thought it would. Once I run out of space I'll get a 4 port sata pcie card and connect up the top drive cage, which is currently unused, giving me another 6TB (8TB if I remove the cache drive) before I need to either add a second tower of drive cages or (more likely) replace some drives with 3TB's.