Archive for category The PCs That Kevin Built

So times are tough (nay, they are shit!) in the economy and my mate Kevin Rudd is riding his stallion to the rescue of the average Australian citizen. While I don’t agree the policy of dishing out money to everyone necessarily…I’m sure as hell not going to send my cheque back. Instead I’m going to be a good citizen and “stimulate the economy” and spend it on myself; well actually, my computers.

I have had some plans for both my desktop and my server for quite some time, but they have always just been dreams. At best they are significant upgrades to the systems, but in reality they are a complete embellishment in technological gluttony. So this is a great time to final satisfy my urges for complete and utter technological excess. Below lie my plans for each of my rigs:

Desktop (Gaming Rig)

• NEW – Silverstone TJ-07BW (Black w/ Window)
• NEW – Silverstone Front Intake Fan
• NEW – Scythe Fan Controllers
• NEW – Internal Lighting – 2x 30cm UV Tubes
• Swap in e7300 CPU from Server rig
• Convert HDDS to RAID 0

I have always wanted this Silverstone case; it’s “sex on stilts”! I even bought my current case because it had a lot of features that were similar to the SS. But alas, it was just never going to measure up and some features of my current case are just starting to get annoying, namely the door.  I also want to dabble in water cooling (hopefully later in the year) and this case will give the perfect framework to make a tasty WC setup. I would move all my hard drives (will be 4) into the front intake fan, which takes up 3x 5-1/2″ slots and holds 4 drives and an intake fan. This would free up the bottom compartment to fit in a 360 radiator and I could even put in a 240 as well and have dual loops which would be very cool. At the moment though I will run the drives down in the bottom compartment allowing the add on front intake fan to provide more cool air to the CPU and GPU in it’s current air cooling guise.

Before I move any of my gear into it though, I will be fully disassembling it and painting all the silver components and framework inside black. Probably matte black, but satin black also might be an option as it has a little bit of shine but not a full on gloss. From there it will just be a matter of putting everything in, pimping the cabling and maybe swapping out some fans (if my current fans are better) as well as getting my “rice boy” on and putting in some lighting with a switch to turn the light system on and off. Plus install some front panel analog fan controllers, which will eventually get hooked up to the WC system, but for now will operate the case/hdd/cpu/gpu fans.

Server (Media Server, XXIV  Server, File Server, DNS/DHCP/Traffic Controller/RDP/FTP Server)

• NEW – 3x Western Digital Caviar Black 640GB HDDS in Raid 5
• Swap in Q6600 CPU from Gaming rig
• Install VMware ESXi
• Re-Install Windows Server 2003 w/ Exchange 2003 or Windows Small Business Server 2003

In the beginning, this server was to learn Windows Server 2003 on as well as acting as the main XXIV server on our VPN (to run Quickbooks, pricing spreadsheets etc.). But now it sees a lot of use as a media server using TVersity for streaming to my PS3 as well as being primary DHCP & DNS server, Print Server, Remote Desktop and Bandwidth Control.

I want to start using it as a file server for all my backups and storage. It currently only has 1x 160 GB HDD which just isn’t going to cut it for a proper file server set up. So I will be slotting in 3×640 GB Drives (although might get some slower speed, larger capacity ones, maybe 1TBs) and run them in Raid 5. This will give me a large amount of space, high speed (striped) and has redundancy, so if one drive fails I won’t lose all data. Minor problem is that the little Antec Minuet  Mini HTPC case I have the server running in, doesn’t have room for 3 HDDs. In fact I think it is only designed to hold one…it does have a 3.5″ floppy bay though so I should be able to get one in there very easily, even if I have to drill some mounting holes a bit further back from the front panel. I will be mountain the final drive on the inside of the left side panel, which I will have to mod myself. Should be pretty easy, drill 4 holes and put some silicon washers in to reduce any vibrations. Once that is all done, it should be a sweet little unit! I will also get a simple 3-way switch dummy PCI card to control the top exhaust fan which currently has no external speed control (you have to take the side panel off to access the switch). I run it on low, but it is always nice to easily be able to crank the fan up on a hot day to keep everything running cool.

I will also be (attempting?) installing VMWare ESXi to run the server as a virtual server. This will mean I can run a bunch of different virtual machines on the one unit which are all confined to their own little sandbox, so I can muck around with Linux etc while still having the Windows server purring away along side it. Thus the move for my quad core processor from the gaming rig into this (although it probably doesn’t need it!). The e7300 has a slightly higher clock speed than the Q6600 and should be the same or slightly better performance for gaming, so it makes sense to swap these CPUs.

More to come on what exactly I’m purchasing and the master plans as well as progress reports as I break stuff along the way.