Building Top Dawg 2 - Spring 2021
OK - before you get
started and wonder why I'm rambling on without showing any pictures - they're at
the bottom.
This project came
about as a result of the fans in Top Dawg running upwards of 6000rpm because of
the CPU was taxed by some issues stemming from the AMD Radeon drivers following
an update. I have 2 screens, and one was using the on-board Radeon video,
governed by the AMD mobo drivers. After some research, I found the
solution: blow away the AMD/Radeon drivers, use an AMD clean-up utility in safe
mode, then reload the mobo drivers - problem solved... for about a week until
the next Microsoft update fouled it all up again. After a couple weeks of
lather, rinse, repeat of blowing away and reinstalling mobo drivers, I looked
over at my wife's awesome World of Warcraft machine I'd recently built...
sitting there chewing through WoW at full-rez and not even warming up enough to
bring the fans up from idle. I decided, "I want that on my desktop, too."
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The system specs: iStarUSA 3U Stylish Rackmount
Server Chassis (D-300-PFS)
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How it happened:
So, I started
loading up the cart at Newegg with the same stuff I put into her machine, until
I got to the case. I built her new machine because despite how cool it
looked, the mATX case was just not allowing enough airflow inside, and I'd long
since removed the cool cover I'd modded so it would have 'some' kind of airflow.
Since my case was a desktop mATX case shoved into the old CD/DVD slot-rack in
the monitor riser of my desk, I decided to come up with a different solution.
Since the height is only 5 1/2", I picked out a 3U rack mount server case, which
should slide into the space nicely, and have plenty of front-to-rear airflow...
I don't know why I didn't think of that years ago (probably because servers are
Sofa King loud! I'm thinking that using the same fans and mobo fan
controller settings her machine uses, should keep mine nice and quiet, too.
I got the parts in within a week,
and when I opened up the case box, I was blown away at how big it looked, but
then realized it's really no bigger than her ATX mid-tower, and is actually a
few inches thinner if I were to stand it on its side next to the ATX case.
Cool!
I kicked off the build effort on a Saturday morning by taking the whole case
apart - removed the plastic front panel doors (not going to use them, anyway)
and pulled the panel off. Then, I removed the 5.25" drive chassis and
bracket from back in the power supply area to see exactly what was going to fit
where.
First things first - remove the key lock for the front doors... Check. Harvest a cool power switch from an old Raspberry Pi box (I have another one I haven't done anything with), and splice the power LED leads into the power LED of the front panel (both will be lit when the machine is on), then plug in the power leads from the momentary rocker power switch (left it in-place on the panel to avoid having another 'hole'). It fit perfectly and looks awesome... really cleaned up the look of the front panel, as well.
Then I discovered the ATX power supply is too big for the location I had originally intended for it, but this case had a spot for it up front opposite of the 5.25" component stack bracket, with a bracket for mounting as well - Bonus! Once I decided that's where it's gonna live, I set about making a mid-ship bulkhead/fan bracket out of some small hole perforated sheet metal I'd picked up for the WoW case (and never used). It took a few hours to measure everything and cut it out with a Dremel, and then bent the edges using the slot between the stringer and pickets of the gate to my back yard - Hey, whatever works, right?! Then, I broke out a 4" hole saw and punched out some holes for the two 120mm fans I pulled out of the WoW case (replaced with some red LED fans). I also made a slot for the leads coming off the power supply and one for the rest of the cabling to run to the front half of the case. Turned out pretty nice, and I thought about painting it with some black engine enamel, but since the rest of the case's interior was bare metal, I left it bare metal as well.
That was pretty much everything I needed to fabricate for this project, and it fit in there perfectly without having to hard mount it by drilling some new holes for fasteners - that would come in handy during assembly, as I had to remove and reinstall it a few times to get everything stuffed in there.
The motherboard back plane came out and made things easy to install the mobo to just drop in already loaded up, but it was a bit tighter fit slipping it into place than I thought it would've been, given how big this case was (thanks to the mid-ship bulkhead I'd made). Once I got the mobo in, then it was a big challenge to run the wiring to keep it neat, as well as out of the way for air circulation. I think I burned through about 75% of a small bag of zip ties getting everything nailed down. It's still more congested in there than I would've liked, but 3U server cases are not all that much bigger than ATX mid-towers, but definitely a bit thinner by a few inches, and a bit bigger than micro ATX cases for sure. The 'thinner' part reared its ugly head when the cool ASUS GeForce GTX 750 Ti video cards I wanted to re-use from the old computers were about a half-inch too tall for the case. Well, bummer... I just ordered a couple GeForce GT 710 low profile cards to fix that, and they showed up a week later.
After finishing up tidying the cables I could, I had to put the project aside for a few days until after the new video cards showed up. Once they did, I decided to plug in a monitor, keyboard, and mouse and load Win10. It went pretty quickly and everything was going well, until I came up to loading the chipset drivers. Well... my CD/DVD-RW are still in-use in the main computer, and I'm using it part-time for teleworking, so I can't exactly take it apart for THAT. So, I just went to the ASUS website and downloaded new drivers - done. Now, all that's left is to shut down TopDawg1 (TD1) to harvest the hard drives, CD/DVD-RW, and AeroCool front USB panel.
Once I shut down TD1 and pulled the components needed to transfer into this box (TopDawg2, or TD2, things went well, but lots more cabling to tidy up and more potential for air flow restriction came about. I managed to get the cables nailed down with more zip ties and kept everything out of the fan with some creative placement. Finally, after the better part of a whole Saturday afternoon, it's all together!
The next challenge was to fit that behemoth into the slot of my computer desk under the monitor riser. The slot was originally a built-in CD rack, but I decided years ago to slide the original TD1 mATX desktop 'pizza box' case into the space. Since this one is quite a bit deeper, there was a risk of it not being able to slide all the way back into the space. Well, the tape measure said it would be close, and I was pleasantly surprised when it slide all the way in with the front panel ending up right up against the front panel of the monitor riser - SCORE!!
Plugged it all in, fired it up, and everything's working AWESOME!! 6 seconds from cold metal to desktop... and QUIET! I'm happy and relieved that it all went together relatively well, after several changes of plan and changes along the way - this sucker should run for quite awhile before needing another upgrade.
Build pics:
Click on any of the thumbnails for larger pictures.
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Decided to give up on the weenie little ATX cases this time. Not going for a super-duper case mod, either - unless you count fitting up a rack mount server case, that is. Here's the picture of the case I saw on Newegg.com when I picked it out. |
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Had to put the power supply up front. Fortunately, the HDD bracket in
the case can accommodate. |
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After swapping the fan in the PSU to pull air out thru the top (rather than push into it), there's still plenty of space for that air to move. |
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Here's the bulkhead I spent all day making. Only burned thru 2 Dremel
cut-off wheels and didn't cut myself - Win-Win! |
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Bulkhead installed - I just hope the backside of the CD/DVD-RW doesn't
want to occupy the same space! |
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Front panel back on - just gotta stuff the rest of the gear in and fire
it up now. |
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The one problem with designing on the fly: The 2 identical GPUs I was
planning on re-using fit just fine in a standard ATX case... not so much
in a 3U rack mount server case (3/8" too tall for the top cover). Got a
couple new low profile GIGABYTE GeForce GT 710s on the way (dual screen,
not SLI). I'll press on with populating the case, just the same. |
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Out with the old... this is how tightly packed a Micro ATX motherboard was in the mATX case. No wonder it ran a tad warm. This is the OLD system, BTW. |
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Ready to shove it all back into the desk. I don't know if I'm going to have enough room to stuff the whole thing in. |
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Piece o' cake - I'd planned on making a new set of trim pieces to slip in there, anyway - looks like it'll fit right up against the front panel perfectly. Gotta clean the keyboard, too (nothing like a new phone camera to show you how gross your keyboard can get). |
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All back together - now, just gotta clean up the mess. It's really not as bad as it looks... or has been - gotta move some stuff around to swap computers when they're actually part of the desk, after all. |
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I decided to toss the front doors back on - I thought I wouldn't want
them (blocking access to the CD/DVD-RW and AeroCool Multimedia Front
Panel), but oddly enough, they actually helped cool down the interior
temperatures... which was weird, but Hey - they designed to work better
with the doors than without. Besides, I haven't had to crack use
anything behind the door since I got it fired up, anyway.. |
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I
figured I'd go ahead and clean the keyboard before anybody give me crap
about it. There - all better now. |
