Hi,
Until now I was using a LackRack at home and I wanted to switch to a more compact steel rack with only rack mountable devices. In the LackRack I was using a classic ATX tower with 3 Supermicro 5 hot-swap bays. The major issue with rack mountable servers is the depth, so I checked if short depth server cases with only hot-swap bays exist. I found the Rackable Systems S3012 which is 39cm deep, perfect for a studio rack like a Samson SRK8.
I found a S3012 on eBay for 160€, and resold the mainboard, CPU and RAM (Opteron). The S3012 case has 2 problems: the mainboard backplate is directly cut for the original mainboard, and cooling is limited to 3 80mm fans.
A friend offered me to modify the case to fit 120mm fans, an SFX PSU and the mainboard. I ordered a watercooling 360mm fan grill to fix the fans and keep the case rigid.
First, he made a drawing with the dimensions to prepare the cutting.
Then he drew the cutting areas directly on the case.
After cutting
Then he drilled the holes for the fans and PSU mounting.
Watercooling grill cutting
With fans and PSU mounted
Inside the case
After the backplate support cutting
Backplate cutting
With the backplate mounted on the server
On my side, I wanted to keep the LCD screen mounted on the case, but the screen is powered with a specific connector plugged on the "always-on" 5V ATX output of the PSU. So I managed to solder the connector on an ATX extension cable.
The backplanes are powered with a specific 4 pins connectors, I also managed to solder the connectors to Molex connectors.
Now let's assemble the server
Mounting the mainboard
Backplane mounted
The server config:
Hope you liked it!
Until now I was using a LackRack at home and I wanted to switch to a more compact steel rack with only rack mountable devices. In the LackRack I was using a classic ATX tower with 3 Supermicro 5 hot-swap bays. The major issue with rack mountable servers is the depth, so I checked if short depth server cases with only hot-swap bays exist. I found the Rackable Systems S3012 which is 39cm deep, perfect for a studio rack like a Samson SRK8.
I found a S3012 on eBay for 160€, and resold the mainboard, CPU and RAM (Opteron). The S3012 case has 2 problems: the mainboard backplate is directly cut for the original mainboard, and cooling is limited to 3 80mm fans.
A friend offered me to modify the case to fit 120mm fans, an SFX PSU and the mainboard. I ordered a watercooling 360mm fan grill to fix the fans and keep the case rigid.
First, he made a drawing with the dimensions to prepare the cutting.
Then he drew the cutting areas directly on the case.
After cutting
Then he drilled the holes for the fans and PSU mounting.
Watercooling grill cutting
With fans and PSU mounted
Inside the case
After the backplate support cutting
Backplate cutting
With the backplate mounted on the server
On my side, I wanted to keep the LCD screen mounted on the case, but the screen is powered with a specific connector plugged on the "always-on" 5V ATX output of the PSU. So I managed to solder the connector on an ATX extension cable.
The backplanes are powered with a specific 4 pins connectors, I also managed to solder the connectors to Molex connectors.
Now let's assemble the server
Mounting the mainboard
Backplane mounted
The server config:
- Supermicro X10SDV-4C-7TP4F (Intel Xeon D-1518, 2 SFP+, 16 SATA/SAS port with LSI 2116)
- bequiet! SFX-L Power 600W
- 12 2TB hard drives (mixed between WD Green, Blue and Hitachi 7200RPM)
- 2x2TB 2.5" Seagate
- 2x240GB SanDisk SSD
Hope you liked it!