PC Modding

Supermicro SC822I-400RC 2U Server case with 400w PSU
AMD Athlon XP 1600+ (1.4GHz) Processor
Thermaltake Slim Volcano 8 SE Heatsink
Soyo K7v EM-PRO Motherboard (with integrated Video, LAN, Audio)

768 MB PC133 Crucial RAM (1x 256, 1x 512)
Adaptec SCSI RAID 2100s controller
2x Quantum Atlas II U-160 10,000rpm 18gb SCSI drives in RAID-1
Quantum Atlas II U-160 10,000rpm 9gb SCSI drive
Quantum Atlas V 10kII 10,000rpm U160 80gb SCSI Drive
Slimline 56x CD-ROM

August 27, 2004 - I can't believe that Plague has been churning away for a year, hosting Rainwalk.net! In a totally unintentional celebration of that event, I've replaced the storage on this drive with something a bit more modern, replacing the LVD-80 drives with Ultra-160 drives and adding a ton more storage. I've also taken the opportunity to ditch Windows Server 2000 and replaced it with Windows Server 2003.

Currently the drives are set up with two 18 gig drives in RAID-1 storing the main system files, applications and data, a 9 gig drive to hold the Windows 2003 CD-ROM image, the swap file and temp directories. The last 80 gig drive will be used purely for storage and ftp access for replaceable data like patches and other sharable data.

There's still a ton of work to be done to get this server back where it was before the upgrade, but it should shake itself out over the next couple of days.

August 4, 2003 - I took a few pictures while I was setting up Plague in its new 2U case:

	The box it came in. Big. Brown. Expensive.
	The front. Room for six hard drives, a slimline CD-ROM, a 3.5" floppy and a single external 5-1/4" bay.
	The back. Plenty of exhaust venting for airflow over the motherboard.
	The insides. the four 80mm fans are screwless mounted in special brackets that allow drive cables to pass between them.
	The drive cages removed. Removing them requires removing screws from strange places. Swapping out failed drives is going to be a pain.
	Two drives in the bay. Screw holes in the brackets allow for two drives mounted with plenty of airflow between them or three drives snugged up tight.
	Drives mounted and cables. Not much room but careful cable management allows for good airflow.
	The final product. Cramped! The power supply cable barely reached the power header on the motherboard and required some serious stretching to make it reach. The riser card placement gave the SCSI RAID card barely enough room to plug in the top mounted cable. Screwing in the card into the bracket required really jamming the cable top into the side of the case to make it fit.

I have mixed feelings about this case. I knew it was going to be tight since it was a 2U case, but the lengths of the power cables and LED leads weren't the greatest. I imagine that these lengths would be perfect for any supermicro board, but make it hard to work with other hardware.

As far as cooling goes, the four 80mm fans really move some serious air. Holding your hand in front of the drive bezels, you can really feel the air getting drawn in and over the hot-running SCSI drives. Unfortunately, this same hot air is then drawn into the heatsink and then forced back and out of the case. My average CPU temp sits at 40C in normal usage with system temperatures hovering around 28C. Not the greatest temperatures, but the system is running one of the hottest running processors known, and isn't overclocked, making it more resistant to higher temperatures.

August 1, 2003 - Plague has been converted and reborn as a dedicated server for Rainwalk.net and is now located in a rack graciously donated to the cause by At-Link in their facilities at 365 Main. It isn't a modded box per se, but it's one of my computers so it deserves a page of its own.

Pics to come shortly.

May 12, 2003 - In another attempt to appease my modding urge, I've redone Plague again, this time adding the "ghetto array" from the old Headcrash setup to this box. Basically, I wanted to see if I could stuff four 10,000 rpm SCSI drives into a space designed for two while maintaining tolerable case temperatures.

What I ended up doing was purchasing four wood reinforcing strip from Home Depot and doing a little bit of trimming and clipping to the case to make it fit properly.

Then I drilled two holes in the front of the case for a 120mm and an 80mm fan. The two fans blowing at 7v are sufficient enough to keep the case at ambient without sounding like a vacuum cleaner. Unfortunately, the ball-bearings on the 10k drives whine like madmen.

Here are some pics from the project:

March 24, 2003 - Plague got a facelift over the weekend, becoming a shiny new Windows XP Professional box with the old ASUS 8200 Pure GeForce3 card from Earthquake to make it a better gaming rig. It still moves pretty well for a four year old computer and the GeForce upgrade will keep it alive just that much longer.

April 2, 2002 - I got antsy and decided to make Plague all EIDE and make Locust an all SCSI machine. My reasoning behind this is that the P3V4X has an ATA-100 interface and the mobo in Locust, the P5A, only has an interface capable of 33mbps. The 2940 SCSI Card will bring that up to 40mbps and give it multi read/write capability.

So now, Plague has dual 20GB HDs (one system and one swapper) and we'll see how Locust turns out.

November 28, 2001 - Finally got Plague put back together, after gutting it for parts for Earthquake. It's going to be a game PC for others to play on my LAN when they come over for beers and such. Plus I need a Win9x PC around for various knickknacks I have loading around that won't run under WinNT or W2kPro.

I'm thinking of building a low-profile wood case for Plague so that I can sit it on my desk. With four machines and two monitors crammed under there it's getting a bit crowded. I hope to put two on my desk and free up some room. Or something.

Background - This is a machine that I bought about four years ago and have been upgrading steadily ever since. Many of its original components have found their way into my other boxes. It was called T&G until I bought my wife a new Dell Inspiron Laptop, making this workstation entirely mine (she got the laptop because I couldn't stop tweaking our "shared" T&G, and she'd get miffed when everything had changed on her yet again.)

Originally purchased from Computer Rage on Telegraph Ave. in Berkeley, CA. It was originally a PII 350MHz on an Asus P2B mobo with a Diamond Viper 330 video card, 2GB HD, and 64 megs of RAM.