Computer Setup

Thought it was a robot hand. My bad.

I'm pretty sure there is a sub for that...
[EDIT]: meaning misinterpreted thumbnails, though I'm sure you could find a sub for robotic hands, too.

The first post of that coolcomputersetups is spot on.

It's even got a thumb!

That's what cued me into it

Any tips for setting up freenas? (i have a old laptop with a 250GB hdd and cloud storage..)

You make me want to be the person I am capable of being.

Freenas is dead easy. Run it on a pen drive so you can use the whole of the HDDs. Probably not worth using ZFS with only 250GB of memory storage.

Yes, I was being a dumbass.

Sarcasm is lost on me :(

Clearly - I wasn't being sarcastic! It was a silly mistake on my part, especially since ZFS is so dependant on RAM.

Dont try freenas/zfs unless you laptop has ecc memory.

4GB DDR2...yeah i have excess..

The most expensive high tech piece on this build? Piece of wood.

Nice bit of wood though.

Care to share the specs on that price of wood?

Pine, 285mm x 18mm. Cut it to length. Nice to work with really.

Isn't 750W a bit overkill? Any idea how much you're actually pulling?

If you're running FreeNas on a pen drive, it does seem somewhat OTT...

I CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BALL

I was fucking waiting for some one to say that :D

He said that it was made from parts he had laying around, I doubt he picked up a 750 watt psu for a headless NAS build.

Yeah, 750w is WAY over the top! Like I said, that was what I had around, so I used it in the build.

He says he had the parts laying around so it's a moot point.

Very keen to know this, or how much it would require.

300W max. 20W per HDD, 100 - 150W total for low CPU usage motherboard, CPU, built in GPU, etc.

So if this was on permanently, 24 hours a day, would it be a relatively constant 300W usage, or would that only be only in very limited times.

Psu units don't consume their power rating, but instead it shows the total amount of dc power they can provide. They are usually the most efficient at around half their rating converting ac to dc. Your psu must be able to provide the max power your system should request, and shouldn't be run near its max constantly. You risk heat damage and it's inefficient. It's 20w max for hdd. If they aren't being accessed, then they consume a lot less. Same with CPUs, gpus, etc.

Even 300 seems high. I use an 850 for 670 SLI, i5-2500k at 4.5 GHz, 1 SSD, 1 DVD burner, 9 HDDs, and 2 other PCIe components.

It looks awesome man! I love these wallmounted rigs.

I'm going to paint the timber white. Keep it classy.

Like I said, 8gb was what I had around. Also using ZFS file system is fairly memory hungry, so why not!

I really want to do something like this as well. I imagine it would be fine hanging upside down? Also what tools did you need? Did you need any particular screws?

Have a go! when designing it, consider which way you want to mount it and build it to suit. That's the fun in doing a custom build, you can make it work for you.

They'll likely tell you to drill a hole in between the hd array and the motherboard and then snake the cables through there.

Haha, your comment made me laugh, because they are a little obsessed with cable hiding

Are the drives just mounted with screws from the back of the wood? I'd worry about them sagging and falling off. Otherwise, this looks super clean. I like it!

Yeah, the drives are mounted with 3 screws from the back side (2.5" has two). I was really after the floating look. I Was concerned that they would be unstable, but they seem to be super solid. It is certainly something that I will be keeping a very close eye on.

I would just take a piece of sheet metal and drill holes according to where the drive holes line up, and then they are all hooked together with screws.

He could also just get large washers.

I'd be more worried about the threading on the screws failing first. There's a whole quarter inch of leverage at most between the pivot point and the screwholes on an HDD (yes, I just measured). With a 2-3 lb drive exerting a bending moment 2 inches or so out, that's an incredible amount of shear force on the threads. HDD screws are not designed to support the weight of the HDD. They just secure the screws in place which in turn only prevent lateral translation of the drive.

They are fine. There is a very slim chance that it will fail. Also, being soft timber, when I do the screws up it compresses the timber a little bit and removes the moment.

He purposely wants them wall mounted, I just gave him an option to a better way of doing so without changing his entire build.

Could you take a picture of the back? I'd like to do something similar and I'd like to see how it looks.

Same here I'm still not picturing how the screws from the rear are working.

When you have a set up like this, how do you reset/turn on the device? Do you have to install a simple button on the pins on the MB to get it to do these functions? Or does it simply cut on when you hit the power supply?

I just use a common blade screw driver to short the power pins. Once it is on everything (restarts etc.) are managed through the console!

In a world where we build these monster rigs that boot in under 20 seconds, why would you keep your machine always on? Enable wake on lan, forward packets, leave your machine off otherwise. And then you can use an App like PC Monitor to send the magic packet to boot your machine safely. So much in the way of automation and networking these days you can take advantage of, why bother staying on all the time. You could even use a script or program from an alternate computer to send the WOL packet.

Aren't you supposed to have the motherboard screwed into metal for grounding reasons?

It should be fine as the PSU will ground it.

Only so long as the power feed to the psu is grounded

How are you grounding your MoBo? Are you grounding your MoBo? Or are you just mounting it onto the wood with some stand off screws?

If the PSU is grounded, Isn't the motherboard grounded?

Yes, if the motherboard is properly designed.

Many motherboards in the mid-90's had insulated stand-offs that the motherboard mounted to. The motherboard was not meant to be grounded that way at all. I haven't seen one of those in a long time.

The whole thing will be grounded through the PSU. I'm from AUS, so everything is earthed through the power!

I wanted to make a wall mounted PC for a while now. I already have a LAMP/Ftp server running at my house. I'm going to start this project when I get home tonight thanks for the inspiration.

No worries! This only took me about 3 hrs from start to finish! Have fun with the work!

This may be a stupid question, but what are the advantages to not using a case? I thought cases helped direct airflow to cool all the things in the box a little.

They do, but for something simple like a fileserver that's not going to be running hard it'll do fine.

I'm more concerned about dust. The components are apart enough that heat wouldn't be so much on issue, but my god dust would get everywhere on that thing in my bedroom

Fashion mainly. I'm not very fashionable. temps will be fine, drives will radiate the heat and the PSU and MOBO/CPU have plenty of cooling for the load that the system will be under.

This may be off topic but can someone tell me why we are wall mounting PCs these days?

Art. It's either new and well-lit/shiny, or it's old and interesting in it's antiquity.

Good measure? No reason not to? I don't really know, to be honest.

You might want to put the hard drives in a seperate cage that you can mount to the board, that way it will far less of a pain in the ass to swap HDDs in and out when they fail. Plus it comes with a fan.

This thing only took me about 3 hrs start to finish to put together. It would only take <10mins to change a drive out. Not a big problem to me really! Also, aesthetics are of concern to me in the build.

Obvious question, Why not flat stack the HDDs instead of the perpendicular arrangement ?

That would be so loud. The design means you'd want it to be seen, the noise level means you'd want it somewhere completely out of earshot. I don't know how the two would be compatible.

What about this makes it so inherently loud? It's not like the CPU fan should ever be running above idle

The bare drives spinning and clicking out in the open. In addition, the board might make things worse and amplify the sound.

It's effectively silent. FreeNAS is very low on CPU usage under my typical loading conditions and with the PSU that I used being so far over what would be required, power wise, the fan rarely be above idle.

Silent? Spinning drives are very loud.

NB, I have industrial deafness. So, no worries for me!

I guess not. It would drive me bananas though.

Just curious, but how do you keep the dust off of open cases?

What happens when you need to replace a drive?

How stable is the hdd? i feel like mountin on one side like that with all of them spinning u would have some weird vibration. I hope they don't fall :\

I'm curious as to how you mounted the Hard Drives in that position. I've been building something similar for a MAME cab that I have, and would love to copy that look.

Would you be able to show pictures of the back mounting?

That power supply looks huge for a 750W... Why didn't you go with something much smaller, say a 450 or 500W?

I want one too. But ecc ram is quite expensive :/

Has Gigabyte improved their PCI slot buses in the blue board series yet? Last 50 or so GA-G31M-GS2L (and similar) boards I have messed with it was a common problem, that and the NICs. I won't buy Gigabyte because of my past experience with them. If they did let me know. I'll go out and buy a few for my servers.

I had a very similar server mounted on my wall years ago. I used a light switch to turn it on and off. It was very cool.

Very nice, but why such a large PSU, 750watt a bit off a over kill imho.

He said it was all parts he had lying around, apart from the wood.

Shaped like hand because. pr0n file server. ;)

The server would look really cool with some LED strips wrapped around the rim of the plank.

That's pretty neat I've been meaning to do something similar but haven't had the chance. The only thing is that you may want to find a way to brace those drives on the other side too, they're going to make a non trivial amount of torque plus the vibration might be a problem.

I have the exact same black wardrobe as you. Ikea much?

What are these type of things used for?

How exactly do you set up file server like that and how does it operate?

How are you gonna plug USB's and stuff like that in when the jacks are facing the HDD's?

Would something like this generate a lot of heat? I'd like to wall mount something like t his in my room but I couldn't bear the office being any hotter!

Why do you want to display a loud, ugly motherboard on the wall?

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

Do you have a raging clue? I know I do... Lets go thith way guyz!

Its unique and different... and doesn't break rules I - V.

It's also not a gaming setup.

Awesome, now I know what to do with my old rig!

Curious how it would look like on the wall, keep us updated OP!

Depending on where you live you might want to think about corrosion. (I live in a very humid area and leaving a motherboard like that will make it rust

There is not a lot of iron in modern computers, so rust will not be an issue.

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