Project: "Blue on Black" NZXT Rogue

harrison0550

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 28, 2010
Messages
129
Blue on black
Tears on a river
Push on a shove
It don't mean much
Joker on jack
Match on a fire

Cold on ice
A dead man's touch
Whisper on a scream
Doesn't change a thing
Don't bring you back
Blue on black

The goal:
To build a home sever that can hold 8 hard drives and serve up movies to 5 networked tv's in my house and keep the case below 15 inches tall and 12 wide. Oh and I might add I wanted a minimum of 10 TB all for under $1500. So the search was on and the end result was a used (discontinued) NZXT Rogue. Searched everywhere for one and finally found one here from a user on the forums. Thanks again PrimeSLP.

The Plan:
(Please note that several aspects of this plan have already changed and will probably continue to change more before I am done)
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The parts list...........
in order of purchase.
1: Nzxt Rogue case. and slim dvd drive. From Here yay!
2: 4 120mm Aerocool Shark blue led case fans. From Directron
3: Corsair H50. From Directron
4: Silverstone strider plus 500W PSU. From Newegg
4 1/2: COOLER MASTER hard drive cage. From Newegg
5: Blue uv sleeving from MDPC. Thanks jadawgis732!
6: Black sleeving from furryletters on ebay. Thanks again jadawgis732!
7: Connectors/pins/wire/leds/cold cathodes/control boards/switches/ crimpers/screws. From Frozen CPU
8: Acrylic and glue. From The Home Depot
9: ASUS M4A88TD-M/USB3 AM3 AMD 880G SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard. From Newegg
10: AMD Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition. Newegg
11: CORSAIR XMS3 8GB (4 x 2GB) Newegg
12: Corsair Nova Series 2.5" 64GB SATA II (SSD) Newegg
13: 5 X SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 2TB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Hard Drives
14: Dell monitor. Freebie from a friend. Saweet.

Now the BUILD!............
Before I begin I wanted to show all the tools used thus far in the build, and yes Coors Light and Marlboro Reds are "tools" hahaha......
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First I needed to break down the case so I could chop it up.
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Watching. Got you confused with another guy for a sec, but always good to see someone else get in to the heavy modding.
 
Build Continued........

Now it's time to mark out for the hard drive cage and chop up the front of the case.
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Holly Crap this case has the thickest material I have ever seen on a pc case. What did I get myself into?
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There are 2 front panels for this case. One attached to the door and one part of the frame of the case so both had to be cut.
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There is over a 1/2 inch of space between the two panels that I'm thinking would be perfect for cable management. Will have a look later.

No turning back now! Now I need to fab a bracket for the cage itself. Searched everywhere. Even posted here in the WTB thread with no luck. So first I tried cutting the original cage bottom off to allow for an extra 5 1/4 bay.........
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Then I quickly learned the hard drive cage would not fit in 5 1/4 slots with guide rails so I had to cut slots for the guide rails.
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Problem was that once I cut it up I only had one screw hole on each side to attach the bracket to the case.
The ones in the center here......
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OK OK SCREW THIS! It was starting to look all sorts of getto fabulous so back to the drawing board. I found a video on youtube for cutting and glueing acrylic. A quick glance at leftover parts and a run to Home Depot and I was making my bracket from scratch.

The bottom of the original 3 1/2 case bracket cut in half.....
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Few cuts on acrylic and some glue and I had both my hard drive bracket and slim dvd bracket.....
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A few screws and the metal brackets I cut in half earlier.
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Fits like a glove and the hard drive cage slides right in, Now I wish I wouldnt have cut slots in the cage for the old rails. Oh well Live and learn......
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Now some rubber washers for vibration and some black paint and all is well again.
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Watching. Got you confused with another guy for a sec, but always good to see someone else get in to the heavy modding.

Thanks, This would be by far the first time in years that I have even built a home pc. WOW have things changed.

Now Back to The BUILD......
Now that the cage was sorted I test fitted everything minus the board cpu and drives and fired her up for the first time....
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OH PRETTY!
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Now I have new problems. With just the cooling and 24 pin in the case I already have a mess of wires everywhere........
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Hmmm thats going to be fun. All 4 120mm fans have extensions with resistor things to knock them down to 7V to keep them silent. I wanted to keep those but by no means had room for 4 molex connectors with resistor thingies in this case so original plan called for a fan controller but I changed that and get this little bad boy......
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Will need to build a housing for it later and change the red led it comes with to blue but anyway it will power everything. Saweet!
 
Build Continued.....
So now 4 molex connectors are eliminated as well as the need to have more than 2 coming from the PSU.
You may have seen some of the 24 pin cable sleeving work in the cage fab pics above but there was so much more involved than just that. I wanted to cut each wire to the exact length and crimp new ends and sleeve. This was a huge undertaking, In comes MDPC sleeving and hours and hours and hours, you get the point. To start this week I was snowed in YAY......
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Time to wip out the sleeving.......
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Was fairly new to this as well so I started small with fan wires being careful to mark the wire placement on the connectors for each wire. After a while I could just about tell you what wire goes where without looking.
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With so so results I moved on to the 24 pin and quickly learned all those guys posting pics of perfect straight wires were taking pics of cable extensions and not the actual 24 pin connector. I was so pissed trying to figure out why my wires were all sorts of crossed and theirs were straight and pretty............
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Took all connectors loss with a staple, worked like a charm. Moved ground wires that were all sorts of crossed up and used this pic many times.
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Well I got all wires cut to length new fittings crimped and sleeved. ( I fixed the one black sleeve already that pulled free from the shrink)
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I still wasnt happy with the wavy wires Grrrrrr! I cant use one of those extension thingies there isnt anywhere to hide it. This isnt that Obsidian case, every wire was going to show so I wanted them straight. Are you ready to laugh? HAHAHA I built a jig and heated them all up and let them hang for a week. Do your thing gravity!
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See how the wires cross each other once all the way across in the middle? I can live with that. So OH HELLZ YEA they are all straight now LOL :p
 
Build Continued........
After a week I installed in the case and wires stayed nice and straight. WoooHooo
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Now remember earlier I said I was going to try and use the space between the two front panels to route cables. This is where all cables will be routed through. Well here we go......
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Wow I need to clean up after cutting and sleeving dust everywhere and the work bench looks like a tornado hit it.....
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Time to organize......
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Ok all cleaned up back to the build. A quick trip to Radio shake and another order from FrozenCPU and I'm in business........
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Ordered a new crimper as well cause the one I had sucked balls. Also grabbed a Cold Cathode UV light kit and some LEDS with control board.
Have I gone overboard with this?
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Went ahead and grabbed a PSU tester just in case I didnt wire something up right while sleeving the 24 pin PSU cable.......
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Plugged it all back up for the first time since sleeving and was nervous as hell but woohoo all is well. Oh yea see the eye sore red led on the power board? I need to change that.
Please do not answer whether I went overboard with this. I know I have, lets just leave it at that.
 
Build Continued.....
Almost caught up to present day and thank god cause I got to work in 6 hours and need sleep. By the way Go Steelers! Your still my boys.
Now time to mount the cold cathodes and hook up the 10 leds and board for test......
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Can u see the cold cathodes barely showing from up top?
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OH Pretty! All together now, 10 independent leds, 20 case fan leds, and 2 12" UV cathodes...
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Also ordered some blue UV reactive sata, molex, and fan connectors......
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Inside the hard drive cage..........
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OK OK enough playing with the lights. Back to the build. I only needed 2 molex plugs coming from the psu and had to make them. To minimize wire coming from the PSU in the case I decided to split them in between the two front panels. ( Yes I discovered easier ways after doing this but still happy with what I did)
I didnt like the red plastic crimp look so I cut the red plastic off......
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Now needed a way to attach the wire so I soldered the wire to the fitting.
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The left 4 wires go to the PSU and the right 8 wires go to the two places I need 4 pin molexes.......
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Thats 12 more wires I have to sleeve. And I still have to make the sata power cables.......
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Well that has pretty much caught it up to present day as i just soldered those wires this weekend. Thanks for looking and I'm open to any suggestions you guys might have and feel free to ask about anything I've done up till this point.
Thanks again and Goodnight!
 
Those extensions that you mention, Martin is the only one making them straight like you mention, well, Charles too, but I would think that even he would concede Martin does some amazing things in his lab. Word has it he has a team of elves helping him straighten all the cables before they get sleeved so that they stay that way. But I like your method too.
 
:cool:
Thanks bro, Yea it seemed to have worked perfectly. I gave you a "shout out" up top somewhere for all the help on the sleeving but thanks again. As far as the elves in Martin's lab I would believe it. His pics are amazing! I'm pretty happy with the result after I heated them up and let them hang for week. They stay nice and straight now. ;)
 
Not much new to post today. I had my daughter order the motherboard, cpu, and ram back around Christmas but between her chatting with the e-trade baby about her portfolio and her scary obsession with Bieber fever. I dont think she ordered them so I will be ordering those this week.
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By the way I'm putting together a Bieber lench mob if anyone is interested in joining pm me.:rolleyes:
 
Hahahah your baby has Bieber fever? When will it stop? He's infiltrated every level of American society, just like terrorist cells. Imagine every Bush speech, someone substituted "Justin Bieber" with "The terrorists", "Al-Qaida", and "Taliban." Imagine the look on his face when he realized that 100,000 US forces were bearing down on his house. Yeah, I'm going to sleep well tonight.

Nice progress by the way, can't wait to see how it all turns out, and how straight the sleeves are once you remove that final brace.
 
What is the purpose of the power distribution block?
Can you post more shots of it & where it will be.

Looks cool so far
 
Nice job. I'm going to have to do something similar to straighten my cables. I got some of those individually sleeved extensions from NZXT, which are nice, but they fold them up when they package them, so they come out majorly kinked.
 
Great progress! Can't wait to see it built!
Thank you!:D
Hahahah your baby has Bieber fever? When will it stop? He's infiltrated every level of American society, just like terrorist cells. Imagine every Bush speech, someone substituted "Justin Bieber" with "The terrorists", "Al-Qaida", and "Taliban." Imagine the look on his face when he realized that 100,000 US forces were bearing down on his house. Yeah, I'm going to sleep well tonight.

Nice progress by the way, can't wait to see how it all turns out, and how straight the sleeves are once you remove that final brace.

I went ahead and pulled the last brace off today and they stayed pretty straight. However I did cheat a little and put a smaller version of the same brace on the outside of the case. I'm considering running a line of super glue in the middle of the wires so they will stay straight. I put a few pics below. Oh and I ordered some black sata sleeving finally as well. Thanks again bro.
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What is the purpose of the power distribution block?
Can you post more shots of it & where it will be.

Looks cool so far

I needed something to lower the voltage of each one of the fans in the case as well as a power connection for the leds and UV lights and slim dvd drive. That block powers them all with minimal wires. I will be building a plexi case for it and placing it below the right hard drive bay. You are talking about this one correct...........
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Came for Kenny Wayne's lyrics. Wasn't disappointed.

Nice design.
;););)

Nice job. I'm going to have to do something similar to straighten my cables. I got some of those individually sleeved extensions from NZXT, which are nice, but they fold them up when they package them, so they come out majorly kinked.

Thanks. Yea my straightening idea may be a little ghetto fabulous but so far it has worked so give it a try. Good Luck.

Build Continued.....

Got a few new parts in this week as well and ordered the mobo and cpu............

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I'm hoping to have some extra time next weekend to get all the sleeving done and get everything up and running. "Hoping" being the key word.

P.S My daughters Bieber fever was short lived and quickly replaced by Mariah Carey's song Hero. Thank god!!!!!!!!!!! :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IA3ZvCkRkQ
 
I needed something to lower the voltage of each one of the fans in the case as well as a power connection for the leds and UV lights and slim dvd drive. That block powers them all with minimal wires. I will be building a plexi case for it and placing it below the right hard drive bay. You are talking about this one correct...........
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I'm actually refering to the one you used the solder prong clips on.
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Yeah, not seeing the point of the little 8 screw plate transfer block.
4 wires in, presumably same 4 wires out (colors match, same gauge, etc). Why not just splice?
 
Nice job on the sleeving. That's not easy undertaking to do the 24pin mobo power strand. Well done!
 
Like I said above I could have done this different ways but basically needed to split power to a couple of 4 pin molex plugs but will be adding another soon. Currently it is set up with 4 wires coming from psu into it and 8 coming out to 2 separate locations. I havnt decided if I will be using it to power the slim dvd drive going in or if I will run that through the other power block for the fans. Either way I like the flexibility it gives me to add more or take away on a hidden part of the case so I can have a minimal amount of wires inside the case.

Build Continued.....
OK OK enough playing with the lights. Back to the build. I only needed 2 molex plugs coming from the psu and had to make them. To minimize wire coming from the PSU in the case I decided to split them in between the two front panels. ( Yes I discovered easier ways after doing this but still happy with what I did)
I didnt like the red plastic crimp look so I cut the red plastic off......
Thanks again and Goodnight!

It's mounted with 4 wires going up to the psu, 4 down to the other power block and 4 more headed up to the cold cathodes. With 4 more soon to be added for the slim dvd drive. After done I hope to have less than 3 inches of wire to each device inside the case. Hope that explains it thus far.
Thanks again guys.
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ahhh now it makes sense

Yeah, I never saw the 4 wires in 8 wires out part. Much clearer now.

Thanks guys. :D I found a few different ways to split the wires but couldn't find anything I liked that gave me flexibility to add or take away wires later on. I think once I sleeve the wires they will look ok in the end. I hope so anyway. I will need some advice this weekend on raid settings and bios settings for the SSD. This is literally the first pc build Ive done since Clinton was president so I can use all the pointers and advice I can get. I have never even built a pc that used sata hard drives so this is a huge learning curve for me.

Thanks again for looking future advice.
 
Biggest thing is, make absolutely sure AHCI is on before installing an OS. Switching back and forth is a pain, and with a SSD you will take a performance hit if AHCI is off.

As for RAID -- what do you want it for? A speed boost in exchange for a higher chance of failure? Parity, to avoid data loss if you lose a drive? I'd assume the latter. Probably want to go RAID 5 assuming your controller supports it. This will give you some protection from drive failure without dropping read-write performance too much. If a single drive fails you will have no data loss, though performance will suffer greatly since all data from that drive will have to be calculated from parity on the other drives. You will need to replace the failed drive immediately and rebuild the lost data from parity on to that drive, since if a second drive fails you will lose everything on the array. You will lose roughly one drive worth of space in the array to parity -- so if you have 5 2TB drives for 10TB total space you will lose 2TB to parity and have 8TB available to write data.

Also make note that RAID is not a backup! You need to store anything you care about at all somewhere else, ideally on drives normally left disconnected, and in multiple places. RAID only provides hardware failure tolerance -- virii, lightning, and user error can still lose you all your data just as easily on a RAID 5 array as a single drive.
 
Thanks silent-circuit.
I went ahead and hooked everything up last night to give it a good test run through after getting my last few parts I was waiting on. Currently I am in my 7th hour of prime95 with no errors yet so I will post back this evening or tomorrow on all the results and work I have done this weekend.

On a side note I had a friend of mine ask me yesterday why it was taking me so long to build this little server?
I told him I have been in the middle of 2 projects for the last 6 or so months. He ask to see the second project so I figured I would show it here as well. So here goes a handful of pics that have nothing to do with a pc but everything to do with time management on this build. My daughters room, Enjoy............
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I will try to get some updates for the server build up tonight if the boss will let me stop painting our daughters room long enough:rolleyes:
Thanks for looking!
 
You doing all that freehand from looking at a coloring book or something? Impressive. Luck finding time.
 
You doing all that freehand from looking at a coloring book or something? Impressive. Luck finding time.

Yea it all started freehand with The Lion King and Winnie the Poo and the Castle if I remember correctly and then a friend came by and said "hey man I got a projector you can borrow" :eek:
As appreciative as I was I also wanted to smack him for not mentioning that prior to me free handing 3 of the 4 walls.
Then it really started to move along. However painting all those characters and getting the colors right is a pain in the *** and takes a lot of time.
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Thanks again.
 
Thanks Wahoomcdaniel!

Now back to the build........


To start off I got all the rest of the parts in this week and even though I still need to do some more cutting on the case and sleeve a ton of wires I wanted to go ahead and hook everything up and test all the parts.

Since I ordered parts only when they were on sale over the past few months I never got to take a pic with all parts laying out together so here it is............
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Next is the newest parts Ive received............
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Followed by temporarily fitting everything together to test temps and just that everything works in general. (please ignore wiring mess, it will not be like this in the end)
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Next I loaded Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit on the Patriot flash drive and fired her up.
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Out the gate she posted fine and bios showed the cpu and changed the hard drive settings to AHCI (thanks again silent-circuit! I will have more questions about that shortly)
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Windows installed insanely fast. Not sure how long but I went to the bathroom and came back and it was done. Saweet!

Now since I had her all fired up I thought "Why not play with unlocking cores and overclocking" Just for shits and giggles so I shut her down flipped core unlocker switch on the mobo and started her back up. At the Asus launch screen I briefly saw text that read something along the lines of "All 4 cores activated" Looks promising! Windows started and I ran the software that came with the Asus board to overclock. It ran some test and out pooped..........
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Now I was concerned about temps and stability as this will be an always on 24/7 media server / seed box / HTPC and I had undervolted all the 120mm fans to 7v for lower noise levels. So I fired up the Asus pc probe software and prime95, running on Small FFTs and Round of checking on. Here are the results after 8 hours of testing with no errors at around 7 pm last night..............
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Everything was looking great to me so we went out at and I left prime95 running. I got home around 2:45 A.M and checked again and all was still running perfect so that was about 16 hours of prime95 without an error or hiccup so I went to bed leaving it running to hit that 24 hour mark before I was ready to call it stable. I woke this morning to the log in screen. :confused: I dont know if something happened or if by leaving windows update to default settings that it updated and rebooted at 3 A.M or if Norton scanned and updated in the night or what happened.

I have a few questions I need help with..............


In the bios under "Sata Configuration" it only gives me the options below.......
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1: I want the ssd to only hold OS and not my media files and for it to be on AHCI but if I turn on AHCI it turns it on for the sata drives 1-4. If I set all six sata drives to raid is it going to make my ssd part of the pool? Do I need to buy a separate controller for the ssd or a separate controller for the raid drives or can I make it work with what I currently have?

2: What do you guys think happened with prime95? Did windows update install and reboot or Norton or did something crash between 16-24 hours and make it reboot? Should I run prime95 again or is it stable enough after 16 hours with temps never above 48C?

3: Should I leave it overclocked to 3856.2 MHz and all four cores unlocked or should I knock it back down to 2 cores and run stock? Ive read forums with people complaining about video trasncoding with weaker cpu's and I plan to stream video to up to 5 networked tv's with this pc as well as seeding and d/l 24/7 and eventually running the HDMI out to my home theater for a HTPC.

4: If I do need to order a separate card to control raid of the five 2 TB hard drives going in here. What do you guys recommend. Or should I let the board handle the raid and order a card to control the ssd? (I was hoping to avoid adding any pci cards to avoid blocking airflow across the mobo but if I have to I will)

Thanks again guys and sorry for my very outdated and confused knowledge of raid settings and overclocking and just what I need to do in general.:)
 
Looks like the way the controllers are split up (4 drives on the internal, 2 on a secondary like a Marvell chip or something) with that board yes, you will run in to the issue you were talking about. It's worth trying to create a 5 disk array and leave the SSD connected but outside the array, but I suspect it will not let you do that. Your best option is probably to pick up something like a Dell PERC5/i or 6/i. They're not dirt cheap but they're real hardware RAID and that's worth a lot, performance-wise. I'd leave the SSD connected to the board, the RAID card handling the disks only.

With multiple outgoing streams it's probably best to leave the cores unlocked but I'd back the OC off to drop power draw and heat output a little, given this is going to be an always on type machine.

Sorry I didn't see the update sooner! Looking solid.
 
With multiple outgoing streams it's probably best to leave the cores unlocked but I'd back the OC off to drop power draw and heat output a little, given this is going to be an always on type machine.

very solid advice. it'll be quieter, and cheaper. the cores will help a lot but you'll see minimal difference between 3.8GHz and a much more mellow 3GHz. looks like a sweet mod, cant wait to see some more hacking and cutting. :)
 
Thanks guys! Sorry I haven't responded sooner, been slammed at the office lately but I appreciate all the help.:)

wow man can't even tell that I owned that case once

good job
Thanks again for an awesome case bro! It doesnt look all that different but I have always liked the look of that case and jumped at the chance to build something with it so thanks again. As crazy as it may be I am actually looking for something a little smaller. More of a HTPC footprint with all my current hardware but it would truly have to be perfect for me to abandon the rouge case at this point.+

Looks like the way the controllers are split up (4 drives on the internal, 2 on a secondary like a Marvell chip or something) with that board yes, you will run in to the issue you were talking about. It's worth trying to create a 5 disk array and leave the SSD connected but outside the array, but I suspect it will not let you do that. Your best option is probably to pick up something like a Dell PERC5/i or 6/i. They're not dirt cheap but they're real hardware RAID and that's worth a lot, performance-wise. I'd leave the SSD connected to the board, the RAID card handling the disks only.

With multiple outgoing streams it's probably best to leave the cores unlocked but I'd back the OC off to drop power draw and heat output a little, given this is going to be an always on type machine.

Sorry I didn't see the update sooner! Looking solid.
No worries, this build has and will be for a while more of a "want" than a "need" so I have just taken my time with it. I did take your advice and dropped it back to 3.2GHz and left the 4 cores unlocked. Its running stable and handles streaming 1080P content to all tv's at once without a problem. I actually found the solution to my raid problems here a couple weeks back in the Data Storage Systems forums.......
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1592331
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Turns out I just needed to reinstall windows with raid enabled on all drives in bios and once it rebooted it opened into the raid bios and let me select what drives went into raid and what to leave as a single disk in AHCI mode. As always it was just user error on my part trying to set it up and lack of experience with it all. Thanks again for all the help.

very solid advice. it'll be quieter, and cheaper. the cores will help a lot but you'll see minimal difference between 3.8GHz and a much more mellow 3GHz. looks like a sweet mod, cant wait to see some more hacking and cutting. :)
:D More hacking coming soon I promise. I still plan to chop the sides and the top up and fill them in with smoke black plexi glass as well as finishing up the front slim dvd drive slot and a few other little ideas Ive been considering lately.

New parts YAY!.......

For anyone counting I am now up to 8 120mm fans inside this case hahaha. Aside from the 2 PWM fans they are all undervolted to run silent and still push a mountain of air at very low noise level.
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Ordered a Ceton quad cable card tv tuner as well and it shipped today! I will have to pick up a cable card from work tomorrow to get everything ready in anticipation. I have officially gone way over board and even further over budget with this purchase but oh well chit happens and I wanted it lol.
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The ultimate DVR :cool:
As with anything half way done I couldnt help but hook it up to a tv temporarily and give it a good testing. It's final resting place will be on a shelf directly behind the wall with the TV on it in the pics below. Located down in my basement.........
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+I'm in love so far......
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Also been looking for a few options for controlling the system from anywhere in the house and while my logitech 890 works perfectly, I still needed a keyboard and mouse so I found the perfect solution in the form of an IPAD app called Hippo Remote. Works on my IPAD as well as the wifes ipod touch and both our iphones. Gave me everything I wanted over wifi so no need for RF or bluetooth dongles or ir repeaters. Perfect so far!+
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+
I really like WMC's UI but the codec support blows but I'm pretty much stuck with it because of the ceton infini tv 4 only works with WMC 7.
Thanks again guys!
Also spring has sprung in the south so chances of me spending much time on this in the next few months is very slim.+
Here are a couple pics from last weekend for chits and giggles and a partial excuse as to why this build is taking so long............
p1010798.jpg

p1010796y.jpg

catfishf.jpg

P.S. This has turned into the never ending project and more of a biography than a worklog but oh well its all part of the build process :rolleyes:
 
Just a short update. Been crazy busy lately and spending a lot of time reading on thegreen button about the ceton card but all is up and running. Just need to run the cables under the floor and I'm almost done. Oh yea besides cosmetic stuff, slim dvd drive cut out, cable sleeving, etc.

35' HDMI
p4250938.jpg


35' USB
p4250940.jpg


35' Toslink
p4250936.jpg


Ceton card (the red card kinda screwed up my whole blue on black theme, oh well)
p4250931.jpg


Remote sensor (using logitech harmony remote not the Roswell)
p4250948.jpg


MyMovies ipad remote
imagefgo.jpg


MyMovies ipad catalog
imagedv.jpg


And lastly a youtube video of the setup in action with the ceton infinitv 4 and MyMovies for ipad as well as the logitech harmony 890 control.
http://youtu.be/RVvSFLTxlCk


Is there a way to embed youtube videos into the forum post or is a link the best way here?

Thanks
 
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I suspect there's some kind of middleware out there that'll on-the-fly transcode so WMC will play everything. At least, I'd imagine so given the prevalence of such things for the PS3 / Xbox 360 etc.

No, no way to embed youtube here.
 
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