Home server in desk drawer

Those interested in the details of manufacturing the device in the picture - please, under cat.

I love to mess with old iron. Not so long ago, from a classmate, I passed the computer to P IV. Everyone is good, except without a hard drive and noisy. Well, and since the need for a server is long overdue, the only obstacle was the location problem: if there is enough space for one system unit on the desktop, then two - they won’t fit anywhere. The solution was found as simple as unexpected. I took an under-used computer desk drawer under the server. See a pair of LEDs sticking out on the right side of the bottom drawer? These are indicators, buttons for turning on and restarting the server. Here he is in all its glory: Manufacturing tricks in order.





First of all, I took apart the box and pulled out the bottom - it does not carry a functional load, and ventilation of the motherboard lying on the bottom would be worse. The thought immediately appeared: what if you put it in the same grooves in which the bottom was fixed?
In its pure form, this idea could not be realized: the board hung slightly and could fall out. Therefore, a Y-shaped plastic corner was inserted into the grooves, and in it, in turn, the motherboard. The corners made it possible to gently but firmly fix the board into the groove. It was inserted, naturally, in a half-opened box, after which it was clamped.



There was only one hard drive at hand: 2.5 "SATA from the deceased laptop. I didn’t have access to any extra IDEs. I had to solve two problems with the hard drive: how to fix it and how to connect it - the motherboard does not have a SATA controller, only an IDE. The
second question was not difficult: an additional IDE-SATA controller was purchased , which I am quite pleased with. (In the background, you can also see the magnificent blue backlight of the transparent Zalman. :-) To attach the hard drive, I used native w aluminum frame of the laptop by attaching it with screws behind the ears to the side wall of the box. Most of all the hassle I delivered power supply.





The first idea was (in order to save space and reduce the number of moving elements) to fix on the back wall the board from the PSU without a case and cooler. The idea was extremely unsuccessful: not only did all this look, to put it mildly, not quite aesthetically; So also the temperature of the motherboard dangled around 35 degrees, and the speed of the processor cooler fluctuated around 3500 RPM.
Therefore, the power supply, taken as a replacement (the old one was giving out unstable voltage, I had to refuse it) I hung on the back wall of the box unassembled. For me it was a big question, in which place of the box, in what position and how to fix the power supply. In the end, I hung it ... On two screws and one paper clip. Close-up half-clips with removed power supply:





The mount is surprisingly reliable. In this embodiment, the power supply is shielded from the motherboard with its aluminum case. In addition, it is suspended so that no ventilation hole is closed (the block wall adjacent to the rear side of the box is solid), and hot air is discharged mainly back to the table.
As a result, in the new configuration, the temperature does not rise above 22 degrees in a closed box, and the cooler speed is above 2600 RPM. It works very quietly, only the power supply is audible, which I didn’t get any service for.
The noise problem, by the way, was finally solved almost by itself: I replaced the processor cooler, and the rattling cooler of the old power supply disappeared along with it. (How to put a new cooler on the box radiator of the 478th socket, given that nothing is already sold on the 478 - a separate conversation, if anything - please contact, I found a beautiful solution.)

Actually, everything about the assembly.

On board the machine carries Debian Lenny; no peripherals are connected to the server, only the power cord and LAN cable. All management is through SSH. The machine will also be on the network. Status monitoring is carried out through the lm-sensors package: it provides data on voltage, temperature, and cooler rpm.
The machine is purged with three coolers: 92mm retractable transparent cooler with backlight, 92mm processor and 80mm power supply cooler. The first and third purge the space of the box from the front wall to the back.
The purpose of the machine is Web, FTP, SVN, MySQL server 24/7. By the way, full-size pictures for the post are loaded as an experiment from him. (If they are not loaded, it means that either the server or the channel went under the habraeffect, hehe.)
From what else can be done:
1) Display indicators and buttons on the front panel of the box. It is done simply simple, but I do not need it.
2) Insert the cooler into the front wall. I have not yet figured out how to do it beautifully, so the ventilation is weak.
3) Fix the wires on the walls of the box.
And his cooler very beautifully illuminates the floor under the table in the dark. ;-)
For the piece of iron - the motherboard and the percent - thanks to my classmate Phil , (not yet) present at Habr, for help in preparing the post - to the kottt habrayuzer
PS Naturally, the computer turned out like this, because it was this iron that was at hand. There would be other components, there would be a different design.
But that's another story.

Upd: the computer was updated, but it does not deserve a separate article on Habré. Description here , put another motherboard of a different form factor.