Windows Home Server Cube

W

widefault

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Dec 18, 2000
Messages
5,137
After finishing my Merom Mini Cube I had temporarily installed the beta of Windows Home Server. I liked it, but that system was supposed to go to my job, and now that I finally got all the bugs out I plan on taking it there.
Since I wanted something to mess with WHS, and I have a lot of parts, and I really liked the way my cube turned out, I had the idea to build myself a nice sister to the cube. It won't have quite the power of the cube, but unlike the cube will support multiple hard drives.

If I was to clone the Merom Cube, I'd need another breadbox. So off to ebay I went and luckily found another just like my original. Got here on April 27th, and is not quite as nice as the first one I had, but will do just fine.

Pics:
whscube01.jpg

whscube02.jpg


That big dent on top is not a concern. I'm shooting for a 9" cube, and that dent is located just past the 9" point. I will also flip the material, the current badly scarred top will become the bottom of the case.

And then the hardware, here are the starting specs:
ECM/Avalue/Evalue ECM-5716 5.25" EBX board
Celeron-M 380, 1.6GHz, 1MB Cache, Dothan Core
MicroCool NorthPole heatsink
512MB Corsair ValueSelect DDR400
Onboard video, audio, dual 10/100 ethernet, compact flash, and even a Cardbus Slot
Promise FastTrak S150 TX2Plus
80GB Seagate SATA
80GB Hitachi SATA
180 watt MicroATX Inwin PSU
drive cooling will be handled by my last 120mm Yate Loon

Once I get everything running(and more cash), I'll probably switch to a 4 port SATA card and 4 larger drives. The FasTrak and 80GB drives are things I already have, so they'll work for now. I'll be building the case with room for 4 drives, and I could squeeze in a few more if I really needed.

Some parts pics, starting with the miscellaneous:
whscube03.jpg


And the 5.25" EBX motherboard:
whscube04.jpg

whscube05.jpg

whscube06.jpg



I've started laying out my cuts on the case. Kind of hoping I can save the part I won't need for another case. I have one of these in my stash of parts, but I'll have to wait until the WHS system is finished.
 
Can you PLEASE put some awesome lighting behind the BREAD word there? Oh how awesome that would be.
 
That part won't survive the weekend, only the main aluminum will get used. The breadbox door will end up with the one from my first mod, collecting dust.
 
Can you name it Bread then? Work bread in there somehow it's my favorite part!
 
No, it won't. If there was a better source of aluminum in this shape, I'd gladly use that instead of a breadbox. Just like the first, this one stinks of old bread, yeast, and mold. Not a pleasant thing to deal with and not something I really wish to use as a theme.

Anybody wants the doors, let me know and you can have the smelly bastards for the cost of shipping. Make your own breadbox system, cuz I won't.
 
widefault said:
No, it won't. If there was a better source of aluminum in this shape, I'd gladly use that instead of a breadbox. Just like the first, this one stinks of old bread, yeast, and mold. Not a pleasant thing to deal with and not something I really wish to use as a theme.

Anybody wants the doors, let me know and you can have the smelly bastards for the cost of shipping. Make your own breadbox system, cuz I won't.
Click to expand...

Fair enough; is this thing going to be almost exactly like your other cube? Because that thing was awesome.

I didn't mean to annoy you with the breadbox thing, the logo was just somehow special to me; it's your case I'm not here to tell you how to make it, just thought it was kinda funny :D
 
Pretty much going to look like a slightly larger version of the Merom Cube. Internal layout will be completely different, somehow need to squeeze in 4 drives, a PSU, and board but still keep it cool.

Now I'm pretty much waiting on some material to make the backplate. I used the internal shelf for the back of the last one, but that piece is too small for my needs on this one. Hopefully I'll have that by next weekend
 
Got my aluminum for the backplate today. I now have four ~12"x16.5" pieces to play with. Thicker stuff, going to have to see how it bends. It'll be used for the backplate, hard drive rack, and as braces on the side.

Even though I still plan on using the EBX board above, I'm wondering if I couldn't just as easily wedge in a Mini-ITX board instead. I'm tempted to put this off and see if I can get an Intel D201GLY, but I have no idea if or when those might show up in the US. I do have an older D845GVSH board, which is Intel's earlier attempt at the low-end developing country market. That one uses a cacheless 1GHz Banias-core Celeron, codename Shelton. Too bad the board is just a hair larger than what I want.
 
widefault said:
Pretty much going to look like a slightly larger version of the Merom Cube. Internal layout will be completely different, somehow need to squeeze in 4 drives, a PSU, and board but still keep it cool.
Click to expand...

What about using some laptop hard drives. There's a seller on egay that sells "lot"s of them and they usually close at about $0.50 per GB. Bit more expensive than desktop drives, but they'd take up less space and use the same interfaces.
 
Since this will end up being a media server, capacity is way more important than size. I could do 2TB for around $550, can't get close to that with laptop drives. And I'm still size restricted by the board itself. It's 5.75" x 8" x 2.5" which pretty much determines what my minimal size can be. Since the breadbox itself is ~9" tall, going to a 9" overall cube gives me enough room to use full size drives and still allow decent cooling. My current design has the board on the bottom, the PSU mounted over the CPU side of the board, and the drives in a hanging cage over the center with enough room for the PCI SATA card to poke up next to the cage.

I'm also trying to keep down the amount I spend on "extras" right now. I don't need any hardware to finish, it's all labor from here. Once done I can look at changing things.
 
Cut and bent the backpanel today, then started layout for PSU, fan, and I/O ports. Also cut and bent my hard drive brackets, will do the layout and drilling on those tomorrow.

The fan hole will be done on Monday, I'll be using a dead 120mm as a template for a router. Did the Merom Cube fan bracket this way as well as a pair of 80mm fan holes in some hard drive cases. Works great.

Got the holes drilled for the PSU, will probably whip out the Dremel tomorrow to cut away the rest of the opening.

And lastly, have the VGA port opening drilled and filed out on the backplate. Started work on the serial port, but it's too late to keep making noise.

If things go well I should have the backplate done by next weekend. Then it'll be a matter of cutting the breadbox down to size, getting the backplate installed, installing the drive rack, wiring, etc.
 
Slowish day. Got the serial port done, both ethernet, and the firewire port but I need to do a tiny bit of filing for a better fit. Also got the holes drilled for mounting the backplate to the main case. Two of those on the bottom also act as mounting points for the board.

I've also run into a problem with my layout. The Promise SATA card I'm starting with is very thin, and when I lined up the board I pushed it as far to the side as I could. As a result, the SATA card is also very close to the edge. The placement will work with this card, but I'm going to have to be very careful if I buy another. I'm actually contemplating a PCI riser, I have the room and it would be a pretty easy addition.

Now the one question I have is do I bother with a hole for the cardbus slot? It would be good for adding an eSATA card or wireless, but WHS doesn't support wireless and I wonder if I'd ever add external drives.

I'll try to get some pics taken tomorrow. It's low priority to really document everything as I'd rather get the system together.
 
And a few pics:

First, test fitting for the ports, can also see the general layout. I need to do a bit more filing, still not quite right.

whscube07.jpg

whscube08.jpg


And a few that show my bad planning. You can see how tight the fit is on the PCI.
whscube09.jpg

whscube10.jpg


And the fan carcass I use as a template. You can also see a slight wear mark from the cutting bit.
whscube11.jpg


Didn't get a chance to cut the fan hole, someone knocked the bearing off the bit and I didn't feel like digging another one up.
 
And some new pics. Got the fan hole routed out, cut the PSU opening, and finished tweaking the port openings. I still need to adjust the PSU mounting holes, and if you look you can see where I messed up when cutting. Accidentally cut out the mounting hole, but the other three are good and the oops is still useable.
whscube12.jpg


View of the back, getting a bit cramped in there.
whscube13.jpg


View of the PSU side, just enough space to stash some cables.
whscube14.jpg


Going to start on the hard drive cage now, it will be mounted right in front of the fan. The fan in the PSU is actually going to blow towards the other fan, right against the side of the hard drive cage, but there'll be a gap that the rear exhaust should be able to pull that air out. We'll see, I can always change the fan in the PSU to the other direction.

I should also start my braces. Two ideas on those. One is to make my sidepanels from the same material I used for the backplate. Plenty stiff, but I'd have to drill or cut them for air intake. The other idea is to do something simple, like a straight 2" piece running front to back. In that case I'd use mesh for the sides. I'm leaning towards the first method.
 
Hard drive cage has been laid out, just need to drill the screw holes and test fit drives. Stuck waiting for the PCI riser card right now, don't want to move ahead much farther until I know I have space for everything.

Once I have the drive cage together and know where the PCI card will end up, then I can start planning on cutting the breadbox. I may go a bit more shallow than the 9" I had originally planned. Looks like I could drop to 8.5", which doesn't seem like it's much worth it but would get me further away from that dent in the first picture.

I've also been contemplating having this one powercoated, at least the curved part of the breadbox. I'll have to see what it looks like when it's cut and mostly together.
 
Started laying out the cuts on the breadbox and sidepanels. Decided to stick with a 9" cube with the backplate and sidepanels set in about 1/8". I've also realised that the breadbox has some waviness to what should be flat panels. As a result, I'm going to have to create some stiffeners to keep them straight. These will also end up being mounting points for the side panels. This leads to a problem, though. I'd use two screws per stiffener, which means I'll have 4 on the front, four on top for the stiffeners, another three on top for the backplate, and another 4 for the hard drive rack. Lot of exposed screw heads, don't like that much. I may try to JB Weld the stiffeners instead, have to bend them up and see how it works on some scraps.
 
Got the PCI riser and a 4 port SATA RAID card. Did a quick mock-up and there is JUST enough room to get the card in without interfering with the drive cage. We're talking 3-4mm from the bottom of the cage, although the cage sides hang lower than the drives will. I'll probably make a bracket to hold the card in place, removed the slot bracket and it's a bit wobbly.

Still haven't gotten around to cutting anything else, been under the weather for the last few days.

I did get a chance to dig through my screw bin and sort out a bunch of beveled screws. I can countersink my screw holes for the drive cage and backpanel, should make things a bit cleaner looking.
 
Slowly getting back to this. Ditched the EBX board and reworked the back panel for a mini-ITX board. I'll be using an Intel Little Valley board and the previous SATA card.

As of now, I'm only going to use two hard drives unless I can figure out how to squeeze all four inside. The ITX board is narrower, so the SATA card would interfere with the original hard drive rack I made. If I use the PCI riser card, it interferes with the ATX power cable. The SATA card has two ports for external drives, so I may just go with two drives and build an external enclosure for the other two.

Nice thing is I was able to modify the original backplate to hold an ATX I/O plate and a low-profile PCI slot opening without any trace of the old EBX board.
 
I've been working on a similiar setup only out of arylic. and I'm using a full size psu. needless to say. its a very tight fit.
 
my only gripe with the Little Valley board is the lack of gigabit :(


though, at that price i cant complain...good looking project so far
 
rayman2k2 said:
my only gripe with the Little Valley board is the lack of gigabit :(


though, at that price i cant complain...good looking project so far
Click to expand...

ya but a mini-itx board for $60~$80 with an onboard celeron 1.33 you really cant complain!
 
I've got more than one problem with the Little Valley, biggest is with the location of the ATX power connector. It's too close to the back of the USB/ethernet ports which means a PicoPSU doesn't fit very well. Mine was rubbing the ports, and that just seemed like a recipe for failure. It's also requires cables to be stretched across the board, which is just dumb.

Also not much of a fan of their CPU heatsink. Too tall and with a lame wire hold down like used on i865/875 northbridges. And I'm not a fan of the single IDE channel. Nor do I like there being silkscreen on the board for SATA and S-video, but no available version with those features.

Other than that, you really can't beat the performance for the money. VIA's going to feel the impact of these hitting the market.
 
widefault said:
I've got more than one problem with the Little Valley, biggest is with the location of the ATX power connector. It's too close to the back of the USB/ethernet ports which means a PicoPSU doesn't fit very well. Mine was rubbing the ports, and that just seemed like a recipe for failure. It's also requires cables to be stretched across the board, which is just dumb.

Also not much of a fan of their CPU heatsink. Too tall and with a lame wire hold down like used on i865/875 northbridges. And I'm not a fan of the single IDE channel. Nor do I like there being silkscreen on the board for SATA and S-video, but no available version with those features.

Other than that, you really can't beat the performance for the money. VIA's going to feel the impact of these hitting the market.
Click to expand...

i agree those are some pretty big design issues... but hopefully they will continue to make ITX boards and address those issues... they did one thing i really like and that is make it an excellent price!!

anyhow, back to the break box ;) :D
 
And a few pics of the reworked pack panel. Just a mock up to see how everything fits. There's tape residue on the back that needs to be removed as well as a few rub marks to take out. Also a few burrs to take off the edges, couldn't see them with the tape on. Decided to build this to fit two drives with the ability to add 2 more through the external connectors on the SATA card.

whs15.jpg

whs16.jpg

whs17.jpg


***************************************************************

Back panel and base plate are temporarily joined with screws and nuts, also got the stand-offs mostly in place. I need to tweak the mounting hole for one of them, ended up 1/16" or so off. Also made my PCI card holder piece. It's actually the bent part of a blank PCI cover plate that was cut, drilled, and filed to fit.

Mocked everything up again, so far so good. Power cable is a bit short, but should work fine since I'm only using two drives now.

whs18.jpg

whs19.jpg

whs20.jpg


****************************************************************

A few new pics, started getting things ready for the main body of the case. Going to be using some Compaq Torx head screws to hold most things together, have a boatload from when I worked in IT.

Anyway, I'm going to get all the parts drilled and set, THEN I'll cut the breadbox down to it's final height. Looks silly now, but should give you a good idea of what's going on. You can also see the the amount of work I have ahead of me to clean the aluiminum.

whs21.jpg

whs22.jpg

whs23.jpg

whs24.jpg

whs25.jpg

whs26.jpg

whs27.jpg


Despite the odd layout for the feet, it's not wobbly. The extra weight of the components should help, too.
 
Changing the motherboard again, but at least this time it doesn't create more work. I had a Pentium-M Mini-ITX system I was trying to sell, but wasn't having much luck. Started playing with the Little Valley more, and found it wasn't playing nice with the RAID card I will be using. Didn't want to boot off of it, and had a tendency to try to boot off the network instead of installed drives. There's also a lack of a floppy port, which makes installing WHS a pain because I need to install a RAID driver.

The new board also has a much more friendly layout, moves the power connector to a spot that doesn't result in the power cable being stretched tight.
 
Don't have one and don't want to spend the cash for one software install. I have plenty of regular floppy drives I can use for that 45 seconds I actually need it.

The new board also has a lot easier BIOS setup, no swapping jumpers just to make one change like on the Little Valley. It also has dual ethernet and an overall better layout. CPU speed is roughly the same, 1.3GHz vs 1.33GHz on the Little Valley. Both are Celerons, although the new board has a 1MB cache Dothan vs. the 512KB on the Yonah core chip in the Little Valley. I'm guessing they'll be pretty close in performance.

I'm also a little happier to have an Intel chipset now. I've had good luck with SIS chipsets in the past, but I'm much more confident and familiar with the i852/855 family.
 
Found some mesh left over from this project that was big enough to cover the top of the cube. Ended up bending it like the bottom to give it a bit more strength. Have the mounting holes drilled, need to get the holes in the brackets drilled and tapped next. After that's done I'll layout and drill for mounting the drives.

Also got the power button installed, using a blue ring Bulgin like I used on the Merom Cube. Probably not going to have a drive activity indicator on this one, the RAID card doesn't have a connector. Anybody know how to get activity from an SATA drive or RAID card without activity LED header?
 
Cut the main body of the case today as well as drilled and tapped for the top mesh. I'm actually near the finish on this. Other than the software install, I just have to sand out the main body of the case. Bad thing is this breadbox has so many deep scratches that it's going to take a lot longer than I have the patience for. I really need a stand-mounted belt sander.
 
And it is complete except for software.

Final Specs:
Celeron M 1.3Ghz, the last of a batch of 25 I bought
Dynatron heatsink
1GB DDR400@266, board can't do 333
Axiomtek i852 chipset Mini-ITX board
2x500GB Maxtor SATA drives
Rosewill SI 3114 RAID card
One blue Yate Loon 120mm fan
2x4" blue cathodes
Inwin/Powerman 180 watt PSU

Again, the main body of the case is made from a vintage aluminum breadbox. I really like the shape. I also used pieces of the breadbox to make some of my brackets. The backplate and base are cut and bent from scraps leftover from a place that puts windows into cases. The mesh on top is left over AC Ryan MeshX from a previous mod. The screws on the top and sides are Torx heads from either HP or Compaq systems I've scrapped out over the years. Finished size is about 9"x9"x9.5" tall. Pulls about 70 watts idling in the BIOS, 75 if the CCs are running.

Oh, the lit fan and cathodes are a first for me. I normally dislike lighting, but this one was looking a little plain. Need something.

Okay, enough, on to the pics.

whs28.jpg


whs29.jpg


whs30.jpg


whs31.jpg


whs32.jpg


whs33.jpg


whs34.jpg


Might look a little cloudy in the pics, combo of the camera, compression, and flash. I did what I could on the finish, but once again it has too many deep scratches and I don't have enough patience. Most isn't noticeable unless you're looking for them.
 
Nice work!

What are the temps you're getting in that case?
 
Hard to tell right now, still don't have an OS installed. I was messing with the RAID card last night, hoping to be able to reflash it to a plain SATA card[1]. Ran for a good hour or more and the air coming out the rear was only slightly warmer than room temp.

I still have a ~6" width piece of breadbox left as well as some more scrap material like I used to make the backpanel and base. Debating if I want to make an extension case for two more drives or a companion mini-ITX system. The expansion case is probably the better idea, never can have too much storage.


[1] Wanted to try out WHS's file copy system. I was not able to reflash, so now I'm planning on putting the 500GB drives in a RAID mirror if WHS doesn't freak out on that.
 
A little update on this.

Been trying to get WHS installed on this hardware and it just isn't cooperating. If I use an IDE drive, it works fine, but it will not install with any of the SATA cards I have on hand. Closest I get is with a Promise card, but it bluescreens on the first reboot during install. Really has issues with SATA cards that have a RAID function. All of these work fine under XP with drives not in a RAID array, so I'm baffled by what causes all the problems with WHS.

Anyway, what to do? By yet another SATA card? Well, I guess, but I wonder what will and won't work. I also wonder what has a low-profile PCI bracket. Last thing I want is to have to make my own. Switch to IDE drives? Eh, no. I have some here, but they're only 250GB drives. That also ends up with the big gaping PCI slot on the back.

I went the expensive route and bought a mini-ITX i945GM board. I have extra memory and a spare Merom, and I know WHS works great on my Merom cube which has the same chipset. Yeah, I'll have to find a way to cover that PCI opening, but I'm hoping I can get the original SATA RAID card working for some external drives. I think if I don't try to boot off of it I may be able to make it work.
 
I've seen some people run into this problem before.... or something similar... Depending on whether its a driver issue or not, You could install WHS onto the IDE drive, install the drivers get a 2nd drive working on the sata controller, then clone the IDe drive to a sata drive. You could also do the same thing using a SATA drive w/a SATA-IDE adapter... Thats if the problem is a windows driver issue...

Does this only happen with the Raid function? or the raid enabled? It shouldnt make a difference if there's raid on it or not, just that its a controller card... I dont recall other versions of XP/2000/2003 having problems with SATA raid controllers... at least recently.... but then again I havent played with Vista or WHS yet....
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top