Okay, so let's start...
All good things comes in packages, so it didn't take long before I got started unwrapping and looking at the stuff.


First up; the case. A cheap, stable & solid miditower case, with included 120mm fan mounted in back.


The screws bundled with the case.


All fresh unmounted hardware. The motherboard is going to be switched later on due to lack of 45nm CPU support.

The price of the Solid State Discs is now so cheap, that I decided to get one for the system drive.

2,5" 64GB flash with 175/100 MB/s (r/w) in the specs.

To ensure a stable and cool system, you'll need a good airflow.

An extra 120mm fan to mount in front of case, should do the trick + fair cooling of HDD & SSD.


A 3pin fan, bundled with 3pin to 4pin molex converter and 4 screws for mounting.

A semi-front view.


Fan mounted in case. As you can see, the case have support for both 80, 90 and 120mm fans.


A nice little plastic mount for on/off and reset button. Power LED is mounted in a circle around the power botton.


Fan viewed from the inside of the case.


Rear fan, as mounted from factory. It is also a 3pin, with a 4pin molex converter included.
Enough of my fans, let's move on to the PSU.

A 400W Dezen PSU with a charging and data USB on the back, and a male molex.
What you should use that for is unknown for me. Also, it didn't even come with power cable.


Specs image.


Back of PSU, with USB and molex.


Ampere usage on the diferent power lines.


PSU installed successfully in the case.


Another view of the PSU.

And now on to mounting the drives. Starting out with the SSD.

The SSD and a 2.5" to 3.5" converter for mounting in a 3.5" frame.
I had this before getting the hardware, in case of this situation.


More SSD. Now mounted in brackets. However, at this point I didn't know it was the wrong way, and I had way too much trouble fitting the screws right (which came with the brackets), that I didn't care to unmount and re-apply. (Problems isn't related to the products, but rather my bad experience with those type of mounting positions).


Top view (including my thumb)


And the DVD drive is mounted.


Look, sata.

Let's get the good stuff and the computer heart on the menu.

The motherboard. Incompatible with the CPU (45nm tech, same socket however), but I didn't know, so kept on building.


Any person installing ram in a motherboard should know this per default.


Back panel. PS/2, eSata, VGA, Parallel, Firewire, USB Gigabit network adapter and sound.

Now look at the CPU.

45nm, Core 2 Duo @ 2,66GHz, Intel Boxed.


And unboxed. Mostly fan and heatsink.


CPU (E7300)


Bottom of CPU cooler, showing of the thermal paste.


CPU mounted on motherboard


First time I ever mounted an Intel Socket 775 cooler it took me more than 30 minutes.
This time it took less than 2.


Semi side shot viewing the height of the heatsink.

No computer without RAM.

Kingston HyberX DDR2-800 ram 2x 2GB blocks, motherboard supports 8GB, so have 2 free sockets if I ever should upgrade (which I will, but more about that later)


Free look into the ram.


RAM mounted. Used 'secondary' slots for some reason I forgot.

Preparing motherboard mount in case.

So have to install the motherboard 'slotcard'.


The SSD, as it will be installed. As you see it's upside down.


I had a COM port lying around, so installed that too...


HDD and SSD mounted in front frames.


PSU, HDD, SSD and COM installed.


Case with motherboard & Ram installed

But it doesn't work without...

...power cables. So installed that too.


Like my mess?


I gave it some strips, so it's fine enough for me...


Combine this image with the next, and you will get 3D!


Combine this image with the previous, and you will get 3D!


Case closed.


Back of case with full installation (first edition)


My working area before cleanup


Another/more view of workspace.


Cleaned up. I bought a 3-plug power cord because I will need one soon. Ground included.

The next chapter; the fix

More hardware, and server upgrade. I got another motherboard supporting Core 2 45nm CPUs after a bios update.


Semi-unpacked and from sideview.


The new hardware: 160GB HDD (western digital), 2x 2GB DDR2-800 and the SE of the previous motherboard.


Motherboard and it containments. Note that there's only 1 sata cable.


Removed the old (1st) motherboard from the case, and made it ready for switching.


CPU mounted on the SE board, together with 2 of the DDR2 blocks.


Mounted the other 2 DDR2 blocks


The 'old' case, mounted the old HDD in it.

And back again.

The new motherboard with the 'old' CPU (Celeron 1.7GHz).

What happens between here and the next image is, that I'm updating the bios on the SE board.


Re-mounting the Celeron CPU on the v1 board.


A look into the small server.


And another look.


Change of perspective...


Unmounted motherboard and boxes they came in.


Motherboard mounted and cables installed.


Another view. I think it's supporting 3D stereogram with the previous image.


Installing Windows Server 2008 (on a max 800x600 monitor =] ).


Same place as before, now with perspective...


And a picture of my switch, router (Which have some problems for some reason), monitor, 2 servers and cables.


View from the side with another 5 servers.


Servers behind the front row. The DC is located here.


A full overview of my 'server space'. I've managed to clean it a little, plus the beers are gone.

© Copyright Peter Emil Henriksen (RMLR) - all rights reserved.
All typos are free of charge.