Specs are slightly in flux right now, but basically it’s an HP ML310e Gen 8, with a random HDD cage on top for 4 additional drives, and a bunch of fans zip tied to the front to cool the 6 internal drives. Oh, and a little 7" display stuck to the side which I’ll get a stats readout on soon.

Xeon E3-1220 v3, 32GB ECC RAM, 40TB array, Quadro M2000.

It’s running Unraid and I use it as a media server (Plex, Sonarr, Radarr) as well as a backup for my music and video production, and general stuff (NextCloud, Photoprism).

The machine itself is so stupid and hacked together, built entirely from used parts I got cheap on ebay. It’s probably cost me £300 max, all in.

@[email protected]
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22Y

❤️

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42Y

Nice. A Thermaltake CoreV21 has a LOT of space inside for drives amd other hacks

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22Y

I might move my server to my CoreV21 at the end of the year when I upgrade my desktop. Love the case but it’s a bit large ot have on top of my desk.

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02Y

It is huge. it fills the full volume of an Ikea Kallax opening, I have mine hanging out so wires in back against the wall have some room…plus some airflow. if the Kallax wasn’t against a wall it would slide back all the way. It has plastic feed about 12-15 mm tall (I think) feet are about 3mm too tall so I trimmed them. But on thingverse somebody made a 3d printer model for replacing them.

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22Y

I know lol, I went from a little baby Silverstone itx case to this monstrosity. I love the modularity of it but it’s just so big. I don’t think I’ll go back to itx, it’s honesly a fucking pain, but I’m probably getting a slimmer case.

Avid Amoeba
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2Y

Beautiful. Very respectful fan job. That said, there’s not enough cardboard in your setup. Here’s inspiration:

German The Jackal
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12Y

How is that ghetto lol. Now, I’d understand if you were like me with a crusty ass laptop in the corner of my room 2500km away from me, running some Linux and 4 external hard drives, but Xeon and ghetto?

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62Y

You had me with “Specs are slightly in flux right now”. Beautiful.

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12Y

Untill I read the specs I though you might have built a custom router in there as well with the antennas

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242Y

High quality zip ties with a reasonable amount of the machine actually inside the case. I would say this is above average.

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102Y

Right? The zip ties even have trimmed tails!

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12Y

I’m new to this and I was curious, what’s the screen on the side? Like, what’s it showing and what are you using to do so?

My server is literally a laptop from 2010 running Ubuntu server with some external hard drives and an old cooling pad.

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12Y

I mainly installed the screen as an easy way to see what’s happening during boot, so I don’t have to lug the server into the other room and connect it to a monitor when I make changes to things. I’m planning on setting up a stats readout so it’s useful the rest of the time - things like network status/traffic, disk/cpu utilisation etc.

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222Y

If it’s stupid but it works, it’s not stupid.

bootyberrypancakes
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72Y

I have those same drive cages sitting in my spare parts closet lol. You can jam it into 3x 5.25” bays sideways!

How is the display connected?

ma11en
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142Y

Double sided tape

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62Y

You know it. The second best way to make things attach to things after zip ties.

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62Y

If it works, is safe, and is maintainable, there’s no shame in it. My unraid box has some unorthodox drive mounting too.

Subverb
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122Y

LOL, it has a case. How is that ghetto?

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62Y

Well… Most of it has a case.

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42Y

Doesn’t even have an external psu? Not ghetto enough…

Dandroid
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12Y

I literally just bought a monitor just like this. It just arrived. It’s still in the packaging.

I had my Linux install die on me (due to my own stupidity, but I recovered it), and I needed to move my monitor from my gaming PC into the closet where my server lives. This isn’t the first time I’ve had to do something like that, and I was over it. So mini monitor for $40 it is!

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22Y

This is not remotely ghetto, this is really well done. Sure the fans are a bit wonky but that is one hell of a machine for the money.

Well done!

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12Y

Thanks very much! Yeah it’s kind of endearingly ghetto, but I’m really happy with it.

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22Y

Does anyone have tips on how to source large capacity hard drives on the cheap? I was a silly and didn’t set my storage to be redundant and I’m trying to rectify that.

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32Y

I’ve bought about 600tb from server part deals.

Just got 20tb drives for about 250ish. Higher than what I wanted to pay, however $12.5/TB is good enough for me.

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32Y

I’ve found used SAS drives really cheap. Averaged around £6 per tb.

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12Y

Really now? Whereabouts are you looking for deals like that? Are there any limitations concerning sas drives, other than the different connection? Can they be pooled with SATA drives?

I should probably google all of this haha

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22Y

I just grab them off ebay. SAS drives are almost exclusively used in enterprise servers, so there’s fuck all demand for them on the used market. Buy a cheap PCIe SAS controller card and you’re good to go.

I use Unraid which doesn’t care at all about what types of drives you use, so you can mix and match into one huge array. I have 8x SAS and 2x SATA drives in one array.

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12Y

That’s a lot of good information, thank you!

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