If you need assistance, please send an email to forum at 4hv dot org. To ensure your email is not marked as spam, please include the phrase "4hv help" in the subject line. You can also find assistance via IRC, at irc.shadowworld.net, room #hvcomm.
Support 4hv.org!
Donate:
4hv.org is hosted on a dedicated server. Unfortunately, this server costs and we rely on the help of site members to keep 4hv.org running. Please consider donating. We will place your name on the thanks list and you'll be helping to keep 4hv.org alive and free for everyone. Members whose names appear in red bold have donated recently. Green bold denotes those who have recently donated to keep the server carbon neutral.
Special Thanks To:
Aaron Holmes
Aaron Wheeler
Adam Horden
Alan Scrimgeour
Andre
Andrew Haynes
Anonymous000
asabase
Austin Weil
barney
Barry
Bert Hickman
Bill Kukowski
Blitzorn
Brandon Paradelas
Bruce Bowling
BubeeMike
Byong Park
Cesiumsponge
Chris F.
Chris Hooper
Corey Worthington
Derek Woodroffe
Dalus
Dan Strother
Daniel Davis
Daniel Uhrenholt
datasheetarchive
Dave Billington
Dave Marshall
David F.
Dennis Rogers
drelectrix
Dr. John Gudenas
Dr. Spark
E.TexasTesla
eastvoltresearch
Eirik Taylor
Erik Dyakov
Erlend^SE
Finn Hammer
Firebug24k
GalliumMan
Gary Peterson
George Slade
GhostNull
Gordon Mcknight
Graham Armitage
Grant
GreySoul
Henry H
IamSmooth
In memory of Leo Powning
Jacob Cash
James Howells
James Pawson
Jeff Greenfield
Jeff Thomas
Jesse Frost
Jim Mitchell
jlr134
Joe Mastroianni
John Forcina
John Oberg
John Willcutt
Jon Newcomb
klugesmith
Leslie Wright
Lutz Hoffman
Mads Barnkob
Martin King
Mats Karlsson
Matt Gibson
Matthew Guidry
mbd
Michael D'Angelo
Mikkel
mileswaldron
mister_rf
Neil Foster
Nick de Smith
Nick Soroka
nicklenorp
Nik
Norman Stanley
Patrick Coleman
Paul Brodie
Paul Jordan
Paul Montgomery
Ped
Peter Krogen
Peter Terren
PhilGood
Richard Feldman
Robert Bush
Royce Bailey
Scott Fusare
Scott Newman
smiffy
Stella
Steven Busic
Steve Conner
Steve Jones
Steve Ward
Sulaiman
Thomas Coyle
Thomas A. Wallace
Thomas W
Timo
Torch
Ulf Jonsson
vasil
Vaxian
vladi mazzilli
wastehl
Weston
William Kim
William N.
William Stehl
Wesley Venis
The aforementioned have contributed financially to the continuing triumph of 4hv.org. They are deserving of my most heartfelt thanks.
Registered Member #902
Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: North Texas
Posts: 1040
Sooo... my desktop and all of its accessories are getting hard to manage and cool, and I'm only going to be adding more capabilities over time. I also am looking to start using 19" equipment racks more often to organize (I already have plenty of rackmount equipment due to my security group and small business).
In light of this, I'm thinking about taking my full tower and mounting the guts in a 4u rackmount chassis, and pack a lot of the stuff into a 19" rack.
The rack will have a dedicated 6u of space for Radiators, 200mm each. This will allow larger, slower moving fans which reduces noise while maintaining airflow. The Graphics cards will eventually be swapped out for water units to get my friggin slots back, but that is down the road. But with this in mind, I have some extra pump ports through a splitter.
I have settled on a musician's rack case, after looking at various options based on Steve's post. I ended up with a mixer case that has about 10u of top "mixer space" at an angle, and 10u of vertical space.
case will contain the following: 4u server chassis for computer VESA mount for a monitor a 2u 24 port Patch Panel for breaking out the computer connections to the top panel a network switch (currently a 16 port 10/100 but I'm looking for a good deal on a layer 3 unit so I can get more experience with them and use it for my security group training). 6u space for radiators 1u Isobar surge protector Power Distribution Unit a fiber optic media converter (I had one lying around). custom drive bay mounts for 19" rack (I want to install some more 5.25" goodies) and possibly a few other goodies.
TODOs: - wire PDU to top panel - modify monitor mount to allow tilting and height adjustment - cut metal for 200mm radiator mounts - fabricate spacers for 4u server chassis to raise it higher - make and install rubber seals to isolate compartments for cooling efficiency. - install rubber mounting components to reduce noise - create temperature curve plots for fan/pump speeds and map with noise to determine optimum settings for environment - fabricate bay 19" drive bay mounts. - make locking system for case - wire audio connections to top panel (kinda annoying there are no straight cables or jacks for what I need, so I'll have to craft some)
Got started on the build, and I'm liking where it's going. Ended up using a Musician's road case for the rack since I can take it with me to LAN parties (my desktop tends to be the game server and I provide networking hardware).
Also had some extra networking hardware lying around so wen ahead and threw them in. Even managed to build a monitor onto the system. I get the 4u computer chassis tomorrow if it arrives on time, and then all that's left is ordering the radiators and cut some metal mounts to finish the build.
The computer mounts on top, going down vertically into the case. The radiators will go in the vertical panel above the networking gear. The computer chassis forms a natural set of compartments in the road case, which means that the radiators and PC have separate air flow which will be good for efficiency. The case opens in the back though the photos don't show it.
And yes, that is a fiber optic media converter zip-ties to the switch... I had a couple of them, as well as a bajillion SC-terminated patch cables, lying around so I grabbed a few keystones and installed it. Also there is a patch panel on the top that brings out the connectors on the back of the PC chassis (three HDMI monitors in my standard setup plus a fourth if I choose since I have an extra USB adapter from an old laptop, and the top monitor runs on VGA). The last HDMI port is actually an input for my capture card. Also getting some USB 3.0 key stones and some other goodies.
What started as a simple desire to keep things cool and quiet has turned into me constructing a beast that can take just about anything I can throw at it (literally!). Overkill? Possibly, but then again I have been known to use electronics in a ballistic environment and run several VMs on my personal machines at once.
Will work for our security group simulating an entire competition network (Domain controllers, web servers, mail servers, workstations, etc), record my HDTV, and survive my long car trips for work readily... oh, and play a few games
Mounted the Quick Disconnects for the watercooling loop, making use of a couple of small accessory screw holes as pilots for a step bit.
Components of the my computer mounted in the new chassis.
Radiator hoses attached.
Chassis mounted onto case. You may notice the addition of a covered switch in the top right of the patch panel. I'm going to add some power controls for the whole system. A key switch, and the one visible will control the Power Distribution Unit. I am going to make the front cover of the case lockable, with vents not unlike what homes have for A/C to ensure the radiator gets air. If I use it for my security group training we will want the network units to be locked since some less experienced members try to change things without asking and have taken down the school's engineering network before.
Temporarily using a single fan radiator passively to make sure other componets such as graphics cards are getting enough airflow. This little rad is doing a surprisingly good job running passive. Idling around 45C, runs in mid-high 50's under moderate load. Can't wait to see what the 200mm rads will do.
I ended up trying a Dry Ice cooling scheme for the hell of it, and kept a close eye on the temps as I ran Prime95 to make sure the water didn't freeze... but I didn't anticipate the pump slowing down suddenly via PWM as the system got cooler to be more "energy efficient." So yup, you guessed it - The water lines froze! jumped from the teens to 90+ degrees C in just under 5 seconds which made me hit the panic button (already had my finger on the button since I knew it would happen eventually). No damage done, and my computer SCRAMs when the temp gets to 95 (has happened before actually). Condensation was not an issue since I used very thick and good insulating hoses.
Dry Ice on the radiator.
Water Temperature down to under 6 degrees C
Spikes from Dry Ice subliming its way through the radiator
Switched back to the 220mm Fan, which is ultra-quiet (even quieter than the Dry Ice).
Thoughts? Has anyone gone this route for a home setup before? I'm trying to make things more efficient as I put more stress on my components and have space constraints.
-Jimmy
P.S: current system specs
Asus P9x79 Pro Motherboard Intel i7-3820 64 GB of Patriot 1600 RAM (48 GB is used as a RAM Disk) COrsair 650W PSU (will be upgrading this in the build to at least an 800W, maybe more depending on what I can fit in the chassis)
Hard Drives: 120 GB OCZ Agility III SSD (OS) 4x 1 TB Hitachi Deskstar HDDs in RAID 5 (programs, media) 60 GB OCZ Agility II SSD (scratch disk) 4 TB Hitachi Deskstar HDD (backups)
PCIe slots: EVGA GTS 450 GPU (main) EVGA GT 510 (extra monitors) Ceton InfiniTV quad CableCard tuner (which is starting to overheat and shuts itself off as a precaution) Avvermedia HDMI Capture Interface Asus Xonar XD 7.1 channel 24bit/192kHz analog audio interface.
Extras: LG Blu-Ray re-writer EZ hot swap bay for backup drive Uninterruptible Power Supply (floor unit, will get a rackmount unit if I go through with this build and migrate the current one to the router location). ---------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------
Registered Member #65
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155
I prefer 16x 2TB server grade SATA drives in a cheap JBOD mode in RAID1:
If you place your server in a remote room, a SSD offers negligible advantage with the lower fan noise. When you have 64GB of ECC server ram available for linux+zcache a dual 6 core i7 setup usually does fine for VM instance performance. And backing up over gigabit to a secondary offline quad every so often may be acceptable depending on how much new data is added.
IIRC Openfiler has quite a few interesting options, and should support deduplication raidz:
A VPN appliance is usually pointless unless you have numerous clients connecting at once.
Anyone who can't take 30 seconds to shutdown a server node is gambling on hot-swap related hardware problems.
Also, a home rack is a waste of money given the general lack of space constraints means an industrial metal shelve will hold any piece of equipment..
Registered Member #902
Joined: Sun Jul 15 2007, 08:17PM
Location: North Texas
Posts: 1040
Carbon_Rod wrote ...
I prefer 16x 2TB server grade SATA drives in a cheap JBOD mode in RAID1:
If you place your server in a remote room, a SSD offers negligible advantage with the lower fan noise. When you have 64GB of ECC server ram available for linux+zcache a dual 6 core i7 setup usually does fine for VM instance performance. And backing up over gigabit to a secondary offline quad every so often may be acceptable depending on how much new data is added.
IIRC Openfiler has quite a few interesting options, and should support deduplication raidz:
A VPN appliance is usually pointless unless you have numerous clients connecting at once.
Anyone who can't take 30 seconds to shutdown a server node is gambling on hot-swap related hardware problems.
Also, a home rack is a waste of money given the general lack of space constraints means an industrial metal shelve will hold any piece of equipment..
Best of luck, Rod
Carbon Rod, this isn't a server. It's my Personal machine. And I'm stuck with Windows 7 on it due to the DRM requirements for the quad CableCard tuner and the Time Warner Cable going into my apartment
The VPN device is actually used because my school blocks just about everything, including ports I need for work. On top of that I'm trying to get experience working with Cisco devices as part of my security group training. As well I found an, err, loophole in the way "home media sharing" is used by some cable providers for streaming to android devices that I've wanted to play with hehe.
As for the rack, the other reason besides organizing it is that I can expand my cooling radiators' size, allowing for larger and slower moving fans to reduce noise, and keep things cool. I will be water cooling the graphics card at some point too so I can get some freaking slots back in my system, so I'm leaving a capped fork in the loop. Since this machine is in my bedroom noise is a concern, as it does not shut off since it runs the media center across the wall, which is used by other people randomly on top of recording TV at just about any hour.
@Steve
The usage of the rack in your first photo is essentially what I'm going for. I'm actually considering switching to pro-audio road cases and using a couple of them so I can still take the machine with me to LAN parties hehe. Just separate the cooling from the main unit and using Quick Disconnects in the water cooling loop.
Registered Member #65
Joined: Thu Feb 09 2006, 06:43AM
Location:
Posts: 1155
Server fans can be louder than a hairdryer, but an over-sized desktop liquid cooled kit is usually tolerable.
In the local system, we have several licensed Win7 instances running inside kvm on some of the cores. One can forward the USB & PCI interface into the emulation guest OS. Additionally, one usually uses a NFS driver inside win7 to transparently mount the SAN interface.
Unix/BSD/Linux people usually purge or hibernate the local guest OS session when not active, and keep the persistent user data on the storage units.
@Steve "Maybe you could move all your junk into the cloud?" Nice one.... I even winced.... I assumed you meant the blimp based technology... with cow-bell based Wifi wave guides. LOL
This site is powered by e107, which is released under the GNU GPL License. All work on this site, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5 License. By submitting any information to this site, you agree that anything submitted will be so licensed. Please read our Disclaimer and Policies page for information on your rights and responsibilities regarding this site.
Home 19 inch equipment rack...
