I'm going to be traveling a lot in the next few years, and want to have a copy of my home servers photos and family video with me, plus all the software and support documentation I have collected over the years. So I picked up this small mini-itx case to start the build. The rest of the parts are what I have on hand.
Case is a Lian-Li aluminum case that takes a standard ATX power supply and mini itx board. I have the black case.
MB is the Gigabyte Super4 GA-H61N-USB3 Desktop Motherboard - Intel H61 Express Chipset - Socket H2 LGA-1155. Supports a lot of cpu and has usb 3.0, hdmi right on back of the board and plenty of high wattage USB 2 ports.
Processor is the Intel Celeron G540 at 2.5.
Memory is 4 GB of Crucial DDR3 1600.
Drives are two 1 TB WD10JPVXSP 2.5" drives. (WD Blue line). Will mount two stacked or side by side in place of the case's single 3.5" drive mount.
Power Supply is a CoolerMaster 350 watt Elite PSU
OS is WHS 11 and Stablebit Drivepool.
Not sure if there will be an optical drive or if the optical drive space will be used for two more 2/5" drives.
Right now I have all the parts, just need to sit down and assemble it. The case looks nice, and being aluminum, its light and should dissipate heat well. There are no fans in the case other than the PSU. It relies on the PSU and convection to dissipate heat. If it needs help, a pair of 40 mm fans mounted on the grill over the PSU should help.
The 2.5 drives are so silent, I see no problem with noise screwing them directly to the base of the case. Plus direct contact with the case is like having a huge aluminum heat sink, and being at the bottom of the case, heat rises keeping them in a cool zone. I read where rubber hdd insulators are common in aluminum cases w/3.5" drives, but I think the 2.5" drives won't need them (I hope!)
The big problem with this MB is it has only 2 sata ports. But it does have on an onboard USB3 20-pin port, so I should be able to find a USB3 to Sata II cable, or add a Sata card to the PCI Express x16 slot. But for now, its just two 1 TB drives. And this means an external hdd to backup the OS onto.
All parts are new, no refurbs or used parts. Total cost in hardware (excluding the case) is $313.48 usd, making this a fairly expensive build, but smaller = higher price. The board was rather expensive at $71.13, but good ITX boards are much more than M-ATX boards. And the 2.5" drives are more than 3.5" . But such is the cost of smaller. A regular mini ATX case build would be much less, but it would still be in a bulky mini tower case. I want something that will fit on my desktop and not take up much space.
This will be my first mini server build, so any comments or suggestions are welcome!
Thanks,
Mark.