[Scratch] Project: Crimson Server Desk Module

[Luciel]

Hi Guys,

 

I´m currently only a couple of days away from finishing APASF (which hasn´t had any updates in months due to work and life in general getting in the way) but that should be done real soon, a lot of more has gone in to it but I´m saving it for one big final update.

 

Anyhow enough on that.

 

This new project has many "new" things for me.

 

1: It´s the first project I actually plan for an extended period of time. APASF, Fallout Cause SP, PS2 Corset, etc where all simply ideas I had in my head and they just developed as I did the projects. On APASF, having such major modifications to the case I realised how important it was that certain things I should plan out ahead to save me trouble later on when certain things didn´t work out the way I would´ve liked them to.

 

2: Even though I´ve done quite a few casemods, improved my paint effects skills tenfold and learned a lot, I felt it´s time I did my first scratch build. The reason I had never done one before is merely because I like to have a "canvas" if you will to work on, therefore prefering to do casemods. In this case (no pun intended) however it´s different as the following project is meant for my room, as an extension of my desk and I´ll get in to the details further down the text. That said, I do expect this project to be relatively simply in design, work put in to it and final look, being my first scratch build, I don´t feel comftable overdoing it in design and details as I tend to do with casemods.

 

3: It´s the first time I do a project which I intend to use myself rather than just doing it for the fun of it (and having my everyday pc on the side)

 

So, a lot of "new" aspects to this project and a lot of potential things that could go wrong but the fact is, this project is essentially an experiment, if I enjoy doing it and would like to improve my skills with wood I wil most definately do more in the future, with the final idea being a wood take on my APASF project on a much larger scale (you would´ve though everyone would be sick of steampunk by now but hey!)

 

Right! Now thats all out of the way...

 

...let´s start with a bit about the concept of this project. The idea is simple. In my "mancave" I have one desk that´s long enough for my 3 screens and my PC and next to it, on the left, is an extension "desk" or "module" mostly for aesthetical reasons, it fills up the side of the room nicely and adds more space to store stuff in, place crap on top, etc.and next to it there´s another piece that´s only for storage.

 

So, under this "desk-module-thingie" is my bin and my server. It´s one of those servers that we use for media streaming around the house (2 floors with 3 rooms and the lounge with TVs in all of them), downloading over night (our connection is rather crappy at only 3mb, so big downloads happen over night), music streaming and general storage. It´s one of those where we put all the old hard drives that are kind of small for today´s main PCs but still work perfectly and would be a shame not to use them, so for example, there´s a 160Gb in there, a 250, 2x 500 and 1x750Gb.

 

Unfortunately lately the server has been failing, a couple of the sata ports don´t work all the time (the HDDs are fine though), the motherboard´s ethernet stopped working a long time ago, so it has an added pci card for that and in summer it gets very hot due to poor ventilation. Yes I could add more fans or even liquid cooling, but you have to understand it´s a pc with all the old hardware inside that only has a sharing purpose so, spending money on upgrades just to extend it´s life a bit doesn´t seem right. It´s an old M2N ASUS Motherboard with an AMD X2 3400+ and in summer, the poor thing suffers (we get up to 45c on a hot summer day in the south of Spain, so the CPU easilly reaches 70-85c). and the hard drives... wow.... yes. I´ve also never liked the fact of having the server on the floor, it gets very dusty, dirty and generally ugly. But I don´t really have space on the desk plus, it´s kind of ugly so don´t really want it up there.

 

Here´s a picture of the current desk-module-thingie with the server (and bin, of course) under it.

 

 

The concept of the project is to replace this desk-module-thingie unit with one that will match the desk on the right and storage unit on the left as this one does. This new unit will have the same height, width and depth but the actual "box" will be deeper using all the space between the top and the metal legs (which I will be re-using from the current unit in order to match the style of the rest). The surface will have nothing on it as it will be partial glass/acrylic (depending on what seems like the best idea) and 200mm fans with filters in strategic possitions (one above all the hard drives and the other I haven´t decided yet (as in I know where it will go but not what to put under it). The reason for this fans being on top is because there´s no breathing space on either side of the desk nor the back, and I didn´t want them on the front. Within the "desk-module-thingie" will be the server, that is, same hard drives but new hardware, that´s right, I´ve decided to retire this server for good.

 

By doing this I hope to integrate the server and by doing so, keeping the same style of furniture within my room and adding a stylish surface with the server in it and solving once and for all, it´s heat issues, dust issues, etc.

 

Yes, I know, we´ve all seen a lot of desk mods, and some of them are trully great and amazing, BUT! has anyone ever seen a desk-module-thingie-mod before?! Didn´t think so.

 

Let´s start then.

 

I went out and bought the screws, drill bit and a new tool for my collection, basically some of the stuff I´ll need to do this.

 

 

As I said before, I´ve actually been planning this for a while and checking out loads of projects from several moders out there, to see how they worked the wood, problems they encountered, etc. By doing some research I encountered my first issue. The fact of how expensive good wood is. Don´t get me wrong, I have no trouble paying whatever I need to pay if it means I´ll be happy with the result, be it hardware, tools, materials, you name it. But! being my first wood experience I figured it would be criminal to get good wood and potentially screw it up and have to get more, and essentially not do it justice, so. I took the desk-module-thingie apart and saw that it was made of plywood, which was surprising as I always though plywood was weak and not sturdy yet this thing is rock-solid, so figured, well, I could do it with plywood as long as I can find something as good or better than this. Went down to my local wood warehouse and in deed, I found some stuff that´s actually a lot better, and they even offered to give it a "wood-look" finish, it also happened to be cheap enough so I went for it.

 

Now, I have some pictures of the wood itself, which I had them cut to the right sizes (obviously, measured everything up weeks ago in preparation for this) but they are in the camera which I don´t have right now (the first picture I put earlier in this thread is done with my phone and so are the other three you will see before this post is over, so I will add the others later on and everything from then on will be done with the camera I normally use.

 

 

(Future edit: Insert wood pictures here).

 

 

The front openings I can do (and did) myself, for the switches, optical drive, sound card bay unit and fan controller but the top I really needed a CNC machine to do the grooves nicely, which is where the glass/acrylic will fit on and since I needed to do that, might as well get the CNC machine to also do the fan holes (which are quite specific as you will see). So, went back to the wood place and they did have a CNC machine there, sat down with the computer guy (never thought I´d say that in my life), and we went through the CNC program with the measurements and all that. Now. normally I´m against having someone else do a part, no matter how small, of my project, but I don´t think I had no choice here. Anyhow, I´m really happy on how it turned out, so I put all the pieces of the "box" togueter (no legs yet, obviously), without screws, just to see how it would look so I could show a couple of pictures, so here goes.

 

First, with the back off:

 

 

And with it on:

 

 

Now I know it´s obvious I did the front holes myself as they are not perfect, it was weird cutting wood compared to metal which is what I´m used to and I think I may just need to use just a bit of filler in order to get it spotless, but you know, not bad for my first time right?

 

There´s another piece of wood within that structure that you don´t notice but I have to tell you about it because it is important. It´s a fake base. It´s where everything will be mounted on and what not. so you may ask, why a second base for that? Simple. between that base and the real base, there´s about 2cm of empty space, the purpose of that is the following. On the fake base all kinds of holes will be done to pass through cables, connections and all sorts of other stuff that will be stored in that space between the fake base and the real base, for the simple reason of Cleanness, no cables, better air flow, looks muchs nicer, specially since you´re going to be able to see the inside from the top.

 

Of course this makes it somewhat complicated if I need to change a part, add cables whatever once everything is finished, so, in order to that, easilly, the next item in the list is to cut a square of the true base and mount it back on it´s place in the form of a trapdoor. So, you can´t see it but it´s there for when I need to access cables or do some tinkering from underneath.

 

In terms of hardware, the last pieces I needed arrived today:

 

 

So the complete list is the following, basic stuff mostly:

 

Asus P8B75-M LX Plus

Intel Dual Core G645 2.9Ghz

2x Kingston HyperX Blu DDR3 1333 PC3-10666 4GB (1x4GB) CL9

Liteon IHAS120 CD/DVD SATA

Asus U3S6 PCI-E which adds 2 more USB3 ports and 2 more SATA 6gbps ports.

Conceptronic PCI which adds 2 more SATA2 ports and one IDE port (I have one old 500gb IDE hdd that I didn´t want to waste).

Sharkoon Media Reader 2.5" (for the front).

Kingston SSDNow V300 60GB for the OS.

NOX Hummer M 650W 80+

2x Lamptron Vandal Resistant Switches (red iluminated)

Lamptron FC9

A few NZXT sleeved LED cables (again, red ilumination).

2x Cooler Master 200mm fans (again, red ilumination) which where used to measure exactly the cuts on the top where they will be fitted.

 

Sorry but no water cooling in this one for now, might change my mind, depends on what kind of space I have left once I´ve decided where everything´s going to go.

 

Aside from that list, I bought a ton of cables and all sorts of bits and pieces a couple of weeks ago, including fan black fan filters which will look perfect in order to make the surface as clean as possible.

 

And well, that´s about it for today. I hope I have another update for you guys soon, hopefully next week as I am pretty packed this week and I do want to get APASF done and done.

 

Cheers!

 

PS: About the name, while it may look like it has to do with the red lighting it will have, it doesn´t really as the desk is mostly black. It´s actually because at my place we call the old server "Crimson" due to it´s red details, the fact it´s in my red room and the fact it gets stupidly hot in summer, almost expecting it to be red hot so I kind of wanted to keep the "pet" name and that´s the why

Edited April 14, 2014 by Luciel

[tom1]

Hi bro, welcome back

[Luciel]

Cheers Tom1!! It´s good to be able to have some time now to visit forums

 

On a side note, while sorting out the workshop I found a little something I had completely forgotten about, a rather old but fully functional via itx system, with a 1ghz via cpu and 1gb of ram, if I remember correctly it´s power needs are rather low, so, I have to make some measurements but if I could also fit this in here and add a switch inside as well, I could use that for overnight downloading, set up rsync between both so when both are on (i.e. in the morning) all downloaded stuff will automatically be copied on to the main server.

 

I´m also debating raid solutions for the main server, considering all drives are of different sizes I´m wondering what I could do, mostly so I don´t see so many drives in windows or linux (haven´t chosen yet what I´ll use) specially since I plan to add even more drives (having 11 sata ports and all), any suggestions are more than welcomed! Jbod came to mind but of course that means if one drive is lost, the whole thing is screwed so... no.

[tom1]

planning system which windows version you have chosen?

[Luciel]

I haven´t decided yet, currently on the server I use W7, but if linux offers me more software raid flexibility I may go with that (either one is fine as I use ubuntu daily for work).

[tom1]

I think that windows OS is your best choice otherwise FreeNas

[Luciel]

FreeNAS? What is it (aside from the obvious nas software?)

[tom1]

FreeNAS 8 | Storage For Open Source

 

http://www.xtremehardware.com/forum/f162/guida_al_nas_home_made_con_freenas-32936/

 

Let me know what you think on this

[Luciel]

Will have a look at it after lunch and get back to you on this

[tom1]

Perfect

[Luciel]

Right so I downloaded it, loaded it into vmware on the server, had a play around with it and while I think it´s fantastic for a NAS, I think I would sooner rather than later find out it limits me, so I think if I don´t find a better solution I could stick with it, but I rather try something else.

[tom1]

Ok bro . It' better try it then no do it

[Luciel]

Definately!

 

As it turns out I had some time today to work on this so, update!

 

My original idea was to fill the "T" with 6mm glass, however I´ve been recommended by several people in that area not to do so because aparently cutting one single glass piece in this shape would not be very sturdy so instead I went with plexy. I have several bits and pieces of it in the workshop but unfortunately non that are 6mm so instead of having to go out and buy a new 6mm piece, I found some 1mm and 5mm so figured I´d cut those two to size and use it instead (no sense to waste decent material!) Have in mind that the final look will have all those wood-colour parts painted so it will all match.

 

Unfortunately I didn´t get my camera back today as I thought I would so, phone pictures again, sorry about that.

 

So first I cut the 1mm to size:

 

 

And here we go:

 

 

There´s some sanding needed for a perfect fit though:

 

 

Perfect! it was a pain to do though, 1mm is somewhat fragile and it´s very easy to over-sand the sides.

 

I also found that I already had one of these cutting tools so no need for the one I bought, I´ll be taking it back tomorrow as this old one works just fine, plus I am fan of bosch for power tools but they are always so expensive. Anyhow, started on the 5mm piece, this is much easier to work with.

 

 

 

Just need to do the round borders now and hopefully I´m done with that by tomorrow. The plan is to aply a smoked effect vynil between both pieces as I´m really liking the smoked look, so I will go out and see if I can find some tomorrow. After that, I will paint the parts of the plexy that sit on the standoffs black as opposed to painting the surface of the standoff black in order to get a perfectly smooth look.

 

On a side note, brought up the small via itx pc from the workshop and I´ve started taking it apart and will check if it still works shortly. But it´s definately looking promising! I still have to do some calculations taking in to account the lenght of both motherboards, the psu and the pico psu to make sure I can fit all the backplates properly (i.e. if there´s enough space) in to the back of the desk.

 

 

 

Here are the specs:

VIA Embedded - VB7001

 

I´ll update when I make the calculations and check if this thing still lives!

[Le085]

All people making their own NAS!

Me too! But I'll buy the case, unfortunately I've neither 1/10 of your skills :(

[Gianluca92]

nice i follow this project

[Luciel]

hey guys, just like to clarify that this is not a NAS but a server, the NAS concept came from Tom1´s idea of using FreeNAS as the OS

[Le085]

Yes, sorry Luciel. Mine also will be a sort of server. I think I'll put use a Linux distribution and put Owncloud running on it to backup large amount of data from remote, as additional cloud space to the too small dropbox. I plan to put it near the television and to install the XMBC player.

Ok I'll stop to be Off Topic now!

[Luciel]

Actually sounds like a very interestin config!

[tom1]

nice start , but he never considered the plywood a good wood for modding IMHO

[One1ros]

Welcome back, James!

Thank you for sharing with us your excellent mods!

[Luciel]

Thanks guys, oh I completely agree with mdf not being the ideal material for mods but as I said in the first post I didn´t want to risk buying good wood and wasting it if things didn´t work out being my first scratch mod and wood mod.

[tom1]

Alright

[Luciel]

Little update today

 

This morning I finished the plexy and I have to say, it couldn´t fit any better or tighter. Originally I was debating wether I should screw it or glue it down or simply leave it alone but, considering how tight it fits, it´s not going to vibrate or go anywhere so, it´s perfect, hell it wasn´t easy taking it out again (as I will be painting the wood).

 

 

And just so you can see how it could look like minus the paint and filters.

 

 

Hopefully I can play around with the VIA mobo this evening and do the calculations I needed to do as yesterday it was pretty much instant K.O, needed to catch up with sleep!

 

PS: I also aplied the slight smoked tint vynil to the 5mm plexy on the underside (so it´s between both pieces). The guy from the vynil shop did say that I may encounter issues since plastic contracts and expands with heat and then cold (on/off server) but I may get lucky since the temps aren´t that much and it´s between two pieces. I took the risk as it wasn´t expensive and worst comes to worst, I´ll take the vynil off and aply some smoked lacquer instead. Unfortunately I took no pictures and you don´t see it because the plexy´s top layer protection is still on, no sense taking that off until the end to prevent it from getting dirty.

[tom1]

Perfect fans Integration

[Luciel]

In deed, I was really aiming for that