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    Luciel is offline
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    [Scratch] Project: Crimson Server Desk Module (Update: 14-04-14)

    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
    Last edited by Luciel; April 14th, 2014 at 09:35 PM.


 

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