Macho Mini

[alpha0ne]

^ Looking forward to seeing the finished build

[MrBean]

Hello Guys,
Thanx for the feedback, as always, appreciated.

Unfortunately, the parcel hasn't arrived, even though I paid over $48 for EMS service from the USA. I can bet my bottom $ it's sitting at AusPost, being delayed here in Melbourne.

Jeesh, sometimes this just riles me, as I have so hoped to have it in time to finish the mod this weekend.

Apologies, I will carry on with finalizing a few other bits and bobs, like soldering a more standard 10-pin Molex to replace the propietary HP one. I got the same footprint Molex male and female pcb connectors and plugs from Mouser some time ago.

They are keyed different tp the original though, and matched pairs.... I could not find the correctly keyed Molex plug to fit the one on the HP SAS cage. A simple mod to do, so I will get that sorted, and start working on the PSU to prepare it to provide power to the SAS-cage.

Keep you all posted

[MrBean]

Hello Everyone,
Ah, bad timing. My pump-heatsink and new Coolgate 140 mm rad has arrived today, was expecting it last Friday.

So, I am off to Singapore tomorrow, and will return home Saturday morning. I will put in a few good hours on the weekend, and will most likely finish the project - please check back for an update on Sunday

[MrBean]

Hello Guys,
Doesn't mean because the rad and pump heatsink was delayed, that I haven't done anything on this mod.

Indeed, I have tackled the worst part, rewiring the SFX PSU.

Before I go on, please heed this warning: If you're not qualified to work with LV and MV devices, don't, please. I am qualified, therefore I can.

With that out of the way, let's proceed.

A while back, I got some very good quality spaghetti-noodles, i.e high-temp, super flexible silicone wire. I prefer to use this in applications that requires better than standard wiring, and thought it might be good to use in this application, not so much for the quality, as for the flexibility.

The 20 AWG works well in a PSU of this capacity, so that was selected.

Herewith a pic of the solder-side of the PSU - take care here, as the pcb is not of the best quality 've seen, and the holes are not plated through, either - shame on you, Silverstone - you can make this to be one of the best SFX units out there, but you take shortcuts with issues like this - would have added at most $2-3 per pcb....



Here is one area I had to modify, as soon as I desoldered the PS_on wire, the track lifted clear of the pcb - if through-plated holes were used, this would not be an issue. Ok, I know I am one of the very few that will actually desolder the old cables, instead of the more common practice of cutting shorter and rejoining the new wires to the 'stubbies', but still....see area in red box in top left hand corner....



As mentioned, I desoldered the old wires, and completely replaced them - a cumbersome job, but worth it for me, as I can properly trim all wires to the correct length, which is essential in keeping things clean and tidy inside the case - plus, using the all-black Turniqy spaghetti noodles, I don't need sleeving et al, nor do I particularly like it, as it hinders flexibility.



and here:



and here with all cables done, and ready to be pinned:



Started pinning the 24-pin ATX connector first:



Making progress...



and finally, that one done:



then, did a quick dirty on the SATA connector, and finished it off:



for reference, I also wired in a new 10-pin connector for the SAS harddrive cage, same as used in the Blackbird case, if you need info on this, I can provide it. I will take picures of this plug once I mount the PSU in the case on the weekend, but here are 2 shots testing the wiring on the system.

I was pretty careful, dry-firing the PSU beforehand, and checking all plugs for correct voltages et al, so no surprises expected, and none received - pardon the mess, but this is merely a test-run:



and a last one here:



Anyway, I have a 24-pin ATX, 4-pin CPU, 10-pin SAS, 5-pin SATA and 2x 4-pin Molex connectors - no need for the PCI-E GFX cables any longer, hence I removed them - would be simple to add if I ever wanted to though, but not needed here...

On Sunday, I will post new pics with everything in place, and you will then have an idea how neat the wiring will look.

Feedback welcome

[MrBean]

G'day Everyone,
Back from my 3-day Singapore trip, and sufficiently recovered to spent a few hours on this mod yesterday evening and today.

Just a quick pic of the completed rewiring of the Silverstone SFX 450 PSU: -for those that remember, I used Turniqy 20-AWG high temp silicone wire to replace the original crappola std wiring - the silicone wire is very flexible, a property I need/love in casemodding:



I have decided that I will not remount it in the original Li-Li 5.25" bay hardware, roughly in the same spot though, but without the bracket:



A quick pic of the new 10-pin cable for the SAS-cage, looking snazzy, hehe:

[MrBean]

I have decided to replace the SR1 with a Coolgate - in hindsight, was not necessary to get a new rad, but, it still have nifty little features over the SR1, like additional ports I can use for draining, filling if I so choose, which I did not end up doing, but no biggie, I have a spare 140mm rad to add to my ever growing stockpile of WC parts

A comparison, SR1 on the left:



and here:

[MrBean]

Next up was permanently mounting the pump - it started its life as an ApogeeDrive ages ago, was never used, and in the first stages, I converted this to a regular DDC pump, and used a temporary mounting.

For the final solution though, I got a heatsink from Koolance, and decided to mount this between the radiator, and the motherboard - this will keep the design compact, maximise space in the case, and allow for super-short tube-runs - nice, I attained all 3 those goals:



Mounting was achieved by drilling and countersinking 2 3mm holes in the side-panel, after carefull measuring of course.......and bolting the pump down - the PMP-400 heatsink kit comes with all the necessary hardware:



for an end-result like this:



Although the mounting is very sturdy, I have the filler port on the top which will further add rigidity to the mounting-setup In the first stage, I pre-empted this step, hence I correctly positioned the fill-port then.

Worked out rather well, with the desired end-result.

Test-fit inside the case, and it fits really well:



One of the very important goals of this setup was a very practical end-result, it had to be easy to assemble/take apart, work on, etc. Full-on eye candy was never the goal, but, with that said, it actually looks pretty much the goods to. Happy with that.

For those that have been following various of my mods over the years, I do not do bling, I like a clean, understated approach.

Next step, note the ultra-fugly wiring in the top-left corner, those for the pump, and the original Li-Li FP switch/LED wiring - this needs to go, and be replaced with the Turniqy stuff, 20-AWG for the pump, and 24-AWG for the FP wiring.

[MrBean]

Pump before:



and new wiring in place, still need to fit the 3-pin fan-connector, as I will not re-use the Molex 4-pin....why, see later....



and another one:



and a quick shot of the new wiring for the FP, still untidy, and not zipped together, but you get the idea - looks a fair bit neater than the original rainbow-special.

[MrBean]

Refitting everything, and cheking out the view:



and a better side-on shot:



and a close-up of the very short tubing-runs, and note, no kinks.....nice....please note there are 2x BP black fittings, I will replace them in due course, for now, they will suffice....



and here, with water in the reservoir, doing the first leak-testing - not that I expect any.....

[MrBean]

One of the nice bits of goodies, and a victim of the Koolance TMS-200 in the HP Blackbird, of my stockpile, is the mCubed bigNG - and even if it is a bit of kit with very dated software, it works really well on Windows 2008 R2, with full functionality, unlike the TMS-200 from Koolance

Well, I decided to do automatic control of the pump, and fans, and in this 1st stage, I fitted one temp-sensor to the rad inlet (metal-temp), and control both the pump and the rad-fan from this one temp-sensor, with different control-curves for each - works really well, and under normal usage, this system is absolutely quiet...



and a few more shots of it, all wired up and controlling the system - at the end, this will also control the chipset fan, as well as the SAS-cage fan, which will be cascaded with the top roof-fan.

I will fit temp-sensor to the SAS-cage and Chipset heatsink too, just not today



a closer shot of the bigNG, as well as tubing:



another one:



and one of the CPU-block, with its fittings - all-in-all, there are only 3x 90-deg elbow fittings in the loop, 2x smooth-raduis ones, this on the CPU, and then 1x 45-deg on the pump-outlet. Even with the pump running at 8V, the system temps are stable, with PRime95 chugging away, with ambients close to 28-deg C today.



And here, 2 parting shots, showing the SAS-cage fit, and nearly ready - I will remove and paint it black next weekend, and hopefully get a nice SAS-controller that will work in this board. The SuperMicor one I have is hanging the system at boot.....not all the time, but 9/10.

Guess I need to contact Portwell and ask what is the go wrt the PCI-e 16x controller, hopefully it will support SAS-controllers.

As this is an industrial-based board, one would hope so.



and

[alpha0ne]

Loving the attention to the small details that make a great build

[MrBean]

Appreciate your feedback, thanx Mate

[MrBean]

A small, but very important update:

A few days ago, I decided to fit the SuperMicro USASLP-S8iR SAS controller to this motherboard - why? Well, a while back, I got it for a nice, cheap price off a fellow OCAU member, and even if it was made for SuperMicro server boards, like my X7DWA-N, meaning all components are on the opposite side of the PCB, I thought it would be well worth the try.

To make a long story short, I had to mod 2 capacitors, by relocating them to the opposite side of the pcb, as they were interfering with the Wade motherboard.

Secondly, I had to trim exactly 6 small fins of the one side of the processor on the SAS controller, as it was hitting the CPU waterblock.

All said and done, slotted the controller in, and nada, no POST beeps. Did a fair bit of testing, and eventually found that I had to disable the Storage OpROM setting under advanced in the BIOS, just to get the motherboard to POST with the controller mounted.

Would still not make it to Windows, even after properly setting JP7 for correct 2x 8PCIE bifurcation.

Well, this is where I am glad that I am buying good quality components from a renowned industrial supplier, like Portwell.

Lodged a support case last night Aussie time, and 3 emails later, tonight had a new BIOS, with first-hand instructions from Portwell's BIOS R&D team. Installed new BIOS, by simply running the included update.bat file, reloaded defaults, and yeay, all good.

Boot into Windows 2008R2, loaded the driver first up, and no issues. Big test was to enter SAS controller ROM, and make sure I can adjust all settings.

Next step is to connect the SAS drive-cage via the mini-port cables, and see if I can see the drives in the SAS ROM, and create Arrays. Then, copy some files in Windows as a start, but I expect no further problems.

Me=very happy, thank you Luson Lu and your team at Portwell, this is what I call Customer Service!!

ps: I will post a few pics of the mods I had to do on the SAS controller, should any of you wish to pursue the same path.

[MrBean]

Now I have to go and find my mini-SAS cables They're packed away somewhere, as soon we will be moving to our new house....but, anyway, a screenie showing the adapter in Windows.

Finally

[MrBean]

Ok, found my cables, great

Below a few steps on my way creating a simple RAID5 array - I have only 4x 74GB SAS drives for now, and a further 8x 146GB SAS drives located in Project Blackbird. So, these will have to do for now, I will hawk-eye Ebay and pick up a few 146GB drives in the near future.

Here are the options the S8iR offers, not bad for a pretty old card - this card, by the way, seems to be an Adaptec 5805....



The next step, having opted for Raid5:



and the system starting to build the array:



and here, done, showing up in the Adaptec Storage Manager - nice, and a big step towards realising this project as a nifty little file-server.

[paulbagz]

Great post-sale support can never be more important!

Glad to hear you got it sorted!

-PB

[MrBean]

Thanx Paul - yes, I am very happy with Portwell's support, and that's probably one of the reasons, that these last number of years, I have ventured away from the likes of DFI/Asus/Gigabyte et al - and started using SuperMicro, BCM, Portwell, Commell, to name a few.

Support is unbelievable.

The only 'enthusiast' systems I still have is my Wife's 4-way SLi eVGA X58, and another eVGA X58 Micro board.

[paulbagz]

Whats the read/write performance like with those SAS in R5?

-PB

[MrBean]

Ok, as promised, a few pics of the SAS controller and mods done to have it work in this setup.

As mentioned earlier, the components on these are soldered on the opposite side to normal PCB layout found in computers, this is some SuperMicro thing.

Here is the board before any changes made, in all its glory - pardon the crappy picture quality though, please....



and here is one indicating the 2 capacitors in need of relocation, as wel as the part of the heatsink I have to modify, as it interferes with the one mounting-bracket on the CPU waterblock...



One indicating those 2 caps moved over to the other side (no pun intended)



and a more clear shot from the backside (or is it frontside) of the pcb...



and here are a few showing 3 of the 6 fins removed - I did not take a photo of al 6 removed, will do so when it's out of the case again - need to make a pci-bracket for it still, will take a pic then, but you get the idea.

Enjoy



and



and a last one....

[defect9]

Epic!

[alpha0ne]

A man with a soldering iron can overcome all obstacles

[MrBean]

Epic!

Thanx

[MrBean]

A man with a soldering iron can overcome all obstacles

Hehe, you have me chuckling here....

[MrBean]

Whats the read/write performance like with those SAS in R5?

-PB

Soz, missed this one

I will run a few tests when I have populated all the slots with drives - from memory, the Blackbird is pretty speedy, but not close to Raid SSD's, for example. This setup is selected more for relaibility (and novelty) than real practical performance though, just to see if it could be done.

I had the spare SAS-cage sitting idle doing nothing.....so it had to be used

[MrBean]

Heya Gents,
Between house-inspections (rental being sold, and soon moving into our own place) life is hectic.

I will continue with this mod in the afternoon, after another house-inspection finishes - I hate these open-door view-days we have, damn.

Anyway, next on the agenda:

1) Finalise the 240VAC power-socket, mod it into the back of the case, and do the cable-run to the front of the PSU.

2) Fit new chipset coolers to the Wade 8011 chipset, and the SAS-controller IOP controller. Rewire the fans on these to be controlled by the bigNG

Years ago, I got 2x Microcool Norhpole XE's, as well as 2x MCX-159-cu's, and any 2 will come in very handy with this step. The other 2 will be used on my HP Blackbird P800 SAS controller chips. NIce, I always knew there had to be a good reason to stockpile these

3) Fit the NTC thermistors to the chipset and IOP controller heatsinks, and wire them to the bigNG

4) Route both 4-lane SAS controller-cables to the S8iR - clean up the wiring in general

5) Wire roof exhaust fan to the bigNG

6) If the weather clears up, spray-paint the SAS-cage to match with the rest of the case/watercooling components

7) Use AutoCAD and design cover-plate for the rear of the SAS-cage

8) Fabricate a PCI-bracket for the SAS-controller

Should post up a few progress-pics by tomorrow afternoon, please check back.