Budget storage server

Three more hard drive cages purchased. All fitted snugly, giving me capacity for 18x 3.5" disks, 4x 2.5" disks and 3x 5.25" bays that can fit another 4x 3.5" drives with an adaptor. Not a lot of point in more than that as the 550W supply doesn't have anywhere near enough connectors for it and at full stretch, I could only run 24x disks in an array without needing either an extra expander, a different raid card or bigger expander.

I'm trying to work out whether to replace the windowed side panel with a solid one by buying another metal one from corsair. (pretty cheap at £9.99) I have no need nor want for a window on a server, but could do with a side panel fan to blow cool air across the expansion cards as they are all passively cooler server cards that get quite hot.

I would go with the metal side panel plus fan if it were me. The drive bays will restrict any air you might have been able to get from the from fans too much for them to cool the expansion cards much.
Seeing as this is a server and longevity and up-time are major considerations i would take all additional cooling methods available. Cooler components tend to last longer.

Started work on sorting out the server today. Odd place to start, but I looked at the keyboard as it was utterly filthy and the key action felt almost gritty. It is an antique PS/2 Acer mechanical from roughly 20 years ago. Having pulled all the keycaps off, I found the extent of the dirt. Most, if not all of it originates from the loft where the keyboard has spent the last decade. Incredibly, it still worked perfectly.


Having washed all of the keycaps and cleaned the body of the keyboard. I have also cleaned all of the switches, washed them off then applied some anti-corrosion lubricant. (Kontakt 60, WL then 61) The switches felt massively better.


No idea who made the switches as they are branded as acer. They feel similar to a cherry MX brown/blue.


Finished. Sadly the yellowing of the keycaps couldn't be removed.


On to the case swap. The 750D is quite a bit bigger than the CM690. I put a new 8TB drive in already as that is going to be used as an rsync disk for certain files from the main array.


Deconstructing the 690 was simple enough but the last 6 years in the loft haven't been kind. That green cloth was clean to start. All of the fans and filters are caked in a fine black dust.


The add in cards out. I really should upgrade the RAID controller as it's the oldest item but I can't be bothered finding a replacement.


All the drives now transferred across. Just the PSU and motherboard and fans to put in.

Got the board out quite quickly. This still looks pretty clean considering the black dust caked over most other parts.


Installed with all of the add in cards. I had to swap the position of the RAID controller and the 10Gbe NIC as the SAS cables wouldn't fit around the drive cage. Without changing the controller, I can't fit the 6th cage in. (A good incentive to replace it)


Some of the wiring nightmare dealt with. Those silverstone 4x sata power extensions were a godsend and have made things far neater than I was expecting.


With the SSD installed and power connected. I've been using wire ties instead of cable ties to test out routes before committing to using single use cable ties. I have fitted cable ties and had to cut and replace them too many times. I've also realised that I forgot to connect the power connector to the last drive in the left stack which I'll sort tomorrow. The SATA connector on the SSD is missing as I need to find another cable. I also have the joys of fitting the rest of the fans and figuring out where to connect them.

Had to re-pin a bodged fan as the bodge broke during dismantling. I've already cut the cable where it was splice crimped. It had broken at the barrier strip. (black wire broke off)


Crimped new molex mini-fit Jr pins on


Shoved in the case temporarily to blow cool air directly over the add in cards. Currently the array is rebuilding, adding an additional disk whilst retaining one of the new disks as a hot spare. It's been going for 15 hours and is at 30%. I've ordered some Arctic P14's to replace the old scythe fans as the 120mm's seem to look remarkably small vs the 140mm's.

Arctic P14's fitted to replace the old scythe kama flow 120mms. They seem to shift a hefty quantity of air at full pelt.


I swapped the front intakes out for them as well as the top exhaust.


Just need to "swiss cheese" the side panel so I can fit some fans in that to cool the cards.


Tested the array. I think the RAID controller is starting to become the limiting factor as it's ancient.


Copying the data back onto the array was a bit quicker this time around, although the disks in my desktop were the limiting factor rather than the network. It's nice to be able to run concurrent copies from multiple sources though.

it's a lot of drives I have 3x3tb 250gb ssd for OS and 1tb nvme Corsair 510 for any games I'm currently playing or plan to play and i'm still almost getting full. It's a lot of games I have installed thou i doubt I even have enough life left to even play most of them

Looks like it'll all get plenty of airflow thou and a pretty nice case that one

Thou tip you can use them front bays at the top if you buy the hdd adapters just in case you want to add more drives

KingNosser said:

it's a lot of drives I have 3x3tb 250gb ssd for OS and 1tb nvme Corsair 510 for any games I'm currently playing or plan to play and i'm still almost getting full. It's a lot of games I have installed thou i doubt I even have enough life left to even play most of them

Looks like it'll all get plenty of airflow thou and a pretty nice case that one

Thou tip you can use them front bays at the top if you buy the hdd adapters just in case you want to add more drives

Click to expand...

I used to use the 5.25" bays in the old CM690-II with a pair of Icydock backplanes. Ironically, I've just been taking them apart to try and determine the cause of the one slot failing.

It looks like corrosion of the contacts may have played it's part. Spot which slot is the one that has failed.


Not looking particularly pretty, but most of that is dust stuck to the contact cleaner I sprayed in a month or so ago to see if it was simply a mucky contact.


Having cleaned the PCB, it appears that the pads have corroded around the pins. What's weird is that they aren't soldered. I'm wondering if that was done to try and prevent cracked joints from disk hot swapping.

Seems strange that they wouldn't be soldered tbh, but they would gradually ware if they were i guess, but yep they for sure needed a clean without doubt They don't look so bad afterwards thou guess you just need to test them out and see if it still fails.

Managed to pickup a second solid side panel for the 750D last week so I've made a start on modifying it to fit the 2x 120mm fans for cooling the expansion cards.

So far I've got as far as drilling the 8 mounting holes for the fans. Now I need to figure out how I'm going to make the large 115mm'ish hole for the fans to breathe.


Test fitted a pair of the old scythe fans which fit back on the side great.

I finally tackled the side panel having actually bought the 4.5" hole saw required to create the cut outs for the fans. Not the easiest job but they seem to have come out ok. There are a couple of marks to the black finish, but nothing too obvious.


Fans fitted with silverstone filters


New solid side panel fitted to the reverse


All fitted and running.

WOW, that's a lot of drives!