This HTPC/server project became a necessity a couple months ago when my existing home server started showing signs of wear. The old server had become too slow and too limited in capacity. The plan was to build new and combine my existing HTPC into the same enclosure. Where to go, where to go? Oh I know, LEGO!

The project had two goals. The first, obviously, was to look cool. The second was to have enough room for both the new server as well as my existing HTPC. Both PC’s would be mini ITX sized (17cm x 17cm) and my entertainment bench cubbyhole (where the server would end up sitting) was 18cm high. Perfect, I thought; the motherboards could be positioned vertically to fit within the space.

For reference, here are the various sizes of motherboards on the market.

The concept for the server/HTPC enclosure was an 18cm square box that would contain all the parts. This included two mini ITX motherboards, their respective drives, their power supplies, and a cooling fan. A tall order to fit inside an 18cm cube.

The server would have an ASRock c2550d4i motherboard powered by an Intel Avoton C2550 Quad-Core processor, with 16GB of memory and three 4TB WD Red HDD’s. I chose the processor because of its high-powered performance and its low power consumption: only 20 watts under full load.

ASRock c2550d4i motherboard for new server

In terms of software, the server would run the FreeNAS OS and the HDD’s would be configured in a ZFS array. Three drives would be run in a ZFS-1 array, and a stretch goal of four drives (space permitting) would allow a ZFS-2 array. The ZFS-2 configuration provides double redundancy or failure protection for two HDD’s, where the ZFS-1 would only provide protection for one HDD. Let’s see how much space we have and decide on the configuration later.

The HTPC would be a carryover from my previous XBMC project, which included an SSD.

XBMC project case

XBMC project hardware

And the power supplies would be PicoPSU, which were the slimmest-profile bricks I could find. While the PicoPSU is a standard brick power supply that has an ITX-style power harness, it didn’t come any bigger than 160W.  By my calculations, the server would consume no more than 140W under full load and the HTPC would consumer no more than 70-80W under full load, so I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.

PicoPSU power supply

—Part I: Building the Enclosure—

Once I knew my hardware specs, it was time to design my enclosure with Lego. I chose a 25cm x 25cm LEGO base-plate for the foundation of my structure.

The first Lego configuration had the four drives stacked on top of each other (left in photo) and the motherboards standing on their side (right in photo). The remaining space (at front of photo) was reserved for the two power supplies and cables.

This concept was abandoned early on as the tower structure for the drives had no stability and could not handle the weight of three HDD’s and one SSD.

The second iteration of the enclosure saw the drives arranged vertically (right of photo), the motherboards standing on their sides (left of photo), and the power supplies stacked in the remaining space (back of photo).

At this point, I made a decision to add another HDD to the server so that I would have at total of four 4TB HDDs. Since space within the enclosure was at a premium, I decided to mount the power supplies externally to make room.

The final concept for the enclosure had a similar configuration as before, with the drives aligned vertically on half of my plaftorm and the motherboards perpendicular to the drives. This allowed me to have four HDD’s, one SSD, two motherboards AND a cooling fan built into the front wall of the case (back of photo).

This concept was built up to this point where the parts could be test fitted. Not wanting to spend another evening ripping apart the previous night’s work, we made sure all the hardware would fit. And sure enough, it did!

We needed to mount the motherboards to back-plates so that they could be mounted into the enclosure. As seen in the photo above, the mounted motherboards would slide into their respective grooves, and the space would be cooled by the fan mounted on the front. And as we had some spare LEGO, we dressed up the motherboard back-plates.

Next up was to mount the drives. Knowing that the HTPC’s SSD was smaller than the server’s HDD’s, we made its compartment smaller. It would be mounted in the first slot followed by the 4 HDD’s.

Here she is, all wired up and running:

—Part II: Configuring the Server (Coming Soon)—

I picked up a new keyboard and mouse today to replace my aging, noisy, and rather small (for my hands) Razer units.

New: Func KN-460, Funch MS-3

Old: Razer Blackwidow, Razer Spectre

Lets start with the Func KB-460. Even though this board is about 2x the cost of the Razer, it feels like a luxury item. The board is coated in a soft touch rubber material, the keys sit atop a beautiful red underlay, and the red backlit keys really set it off. This board used Cherry MX Red mechanical keys, which mean very little noise, a moderate key weight, and a nice precision. The board is also a tad bigger than the Razer, which is nice. The Razer by contrast, used a cheap hard plastic material to cover the board, the keys were too small for me, there was no premium features like the red underlay or backlit keys, and it used the Cherry MX Blue keys which are loud, harder to press, and just too springy (if that’s a word) for my liking.

Here’s the Func with its Cherry MX Red Keys. You can even see the back-light LED above the key and can also make out the red underlay to the board:

Here’s the Razer with its Cherry MX Blue Keys:

Next, the Func MS-3 (again almost 2x the cost of the Razer Spectre) feels like a luxury item. The mouse is much bigger, making for a more comfortable and ergonomic feel. It also has 10 buttons placed around the mouse which can be programmed to do whatever you desire. The mouse also has back-light keys, which makes for an easy target if ever you forget where a specific button is.

Here’s a side-by-side of the Func (left) and Razer (right)

Overall, I would highly recommend both of these accessories!

Here’s a quick video showing the difference in sound between the two boards:

Last night I sold my GTX 770 and upgraded to the GTX 780. The recent price drops helped my decision. That and the performance gains, which can be summed up nicely by the GeForce Experience settings. The screen shot below shows the before (Current) and after (Optimized) setting. I should stay around 60 FPS in the below game (Battlefield 4), but I will gain back the anti-aliasing, some texture details, and some mesh detail that I had lost when making the jump from Battlefield 3 to 4 (Battlefield 4 being a much more graphically demanding game).

The 780 uses the same “Kepler” architecture as the 770, but basically doubles the die size to 7.1B transistors (vs. 3.5B on the 770). The 780 also adds 1GB of VRAM bringing the total to 3GB. The extra kick of VRAM is likely where the anti-aliasing performance comes from. And the doubling of die size is what’s giving us the raw horse power to gain back the texture/mesh details.

History Lesson -> About 2 years ago now Nvidia released the GTX 680. This was the first card built on the Kepler architecture and, like the 770, had a die size of 3.5B transistors. The 680 was rated with a 195W TDP and preformed great at the time. Fast forward 1 year to the summer of 2013, and it was time for Nvidia’s yearly product refresh. With no new architecture until 2014, the solution was to put the 680 on steroids. Same die size, faster clocks – hence the 770’s new TDP of 230W. This move however, would not be enough to stave off the competition, and more importantly would allow that competition to overtake Nvidia’s “fastest GPU” crown. So with the 770 now slotting into Nvidia’s #2 position, the new #1 would need to gain performance. To do this Nvidia doubled the 770’s die size, gaining performance in numbers. Interestingly enough, despite the 780’s larger foot print, both the 770 and 780 consumer roughly the same amount of power (~250W). Gaining performance in numbers rather than by clock speed increases proves to be more efficient.