Home server in the drawer

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

I love messing around with old iron. Not so long ago from a classmate I perepal comp on P IV. All good, except without a hard drive and noisy. Well, since the need for a server has matured for a long time, the only obstacle is the location problem: if there is enough space for one system unit on the desktop, then two will not fit anywhere.

The solution was found as simple as it was unexpected. I took under the server a little-used box on a computer desk. See a pair of LEDs protruding from the right side of the bottom drawer? These are indicators, power-on and server restart buttons. Here it is in all its glory:

The tricks of production in order.

First of all, I disassembled the box and pulled the bottom out of it - it does not carry the functional load, and the ventilation of the motherboard lying on the bottom would be worse. A thought immediately appeared: what if we put it in the same grooves in which the bottom was attached?
In pure form, this idea could not be realized: the board was slightly loose and could fall out. Therefore, a Y-shaped plastic corner was inserted into the grooves, and the motherboard, in turn, was already inserted into it.

Corners allowed to gently but firmly secure the board in the groove. It was inserted, naturally, into a half-opened box, after which it was clamped.

There was only one hard disk at hand: 2.5 "SATA from a dead laptop. I didn’t have any unnecessary IDEs from me or my closest friends. Accordingly, two issues needed to be solved about the hard drive: how to fix and how to connect - The motherboard does not have a SATA controller, only IDE.
The second question was solved easily: an additional IDE-SATA controller was purchased, which I am quite pleased with. (In the background you can also see the magnificent blue backlighting of the transparent Zalman. :-)

To attach the hard drive, I used a native aluminum basket from a laptop, attaching it with screws for the ears to the side wall of the box.

')
Most of the time I got the power supply.
The first idea was (in order to save space and reduce the number of moving elements) to fix on the rear wall of the board from the power supply unit without the case and cooler. The idea turned out to be extremely unsuccessful: not only did all this look, to put it mildly, not quite aesthetically pleasing; So also the temperature of the motherboard was around 35 degrees, and the revolutions of the CPU cooler fluctuated around 3500 RPM.
Therefore, the power supply unit taken for replacement (the old one gave 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 clip.

Floor clips close-up with the power supply removed:

The mount is surprisingly reliable. In this embodiment, the power supply is shielded from the motherboard with its aluminum housing. In addition, it is suspended so that not a single ventilation hole is closed (the block wall adjacent to the back side of the box is solid), and the hot air is mainly thrown 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 speed of the cooler is above 2600 RPM. It works very quietly, only the power supply is audible, until I could not reach my hands.
The problem of noise, by the way, was finally resolved almost by itself: I replaced the processor cooler, and the rattling cooler of the old power supply disappeared along with it. (How to install a new cooler on the box heatsink of the 478th socket, considering that nothing is already on sale at 478 - a separate conversation, if that - contact me, I found a beautiful solution.)

Actually, about the assembly - everything.

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

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