Project: Odin

Project: Odin is a quick side project really rather than a true mod though it is a complete build. I've been itching to try out WHS Vail Preview for some time now and wanted a system that would be capable of running the full release. I had a number of components lying around depreciating and a Black Friday sales budget of $300 CND. This system is fully built already and I will be doing my best not to mod or spend more money on it for quite some time. That being said it was a lot of fun to build and so without further ado I bring you...ODIN!

The pile of components laid out in my workspace (the case was too big to get in the group shot).

The RAM and PSU were the components I had sitting around from previous upgrades, everything else was on SALE!:D

The case is a very basic Cooler Master Elite 310 but it does the trick for this build and was less than $20.

First thing to do is sleeve the wires for the front switches and lights as they are my biggest pet peeve in a case.

Cable sleeved, now for a shot of the interior. As you can see there aren't any frills with this case, though it looks as if certain parts may be shared with higher model cases such as the holes for toolless mounting clips.

Time to sleeve the wire on the only case fan in the build. Yes, there is only one case fan going into the build...for now at least.

While there is room for another 120mm fan in the front, I won't really need it until I expand the drives in the future.

One of the biggest appeals for this build was the chance to get to do something new and build an AMD based system. I've long run Intel-Nvidia systems and worked on a wide variety of Intel-based platforms but have never built or worked on an AMD. Canada Computers was having a great sale on AMDs for the first 5 per store and so I managed to pick up an Athlon II X3 445.

The first thing I noticed is the square heat sink, very different from Intel's round. The second is that I have another cable to sleeve.

Now onto the motherboard that will run this show, an Asus M4A785-M. A well featured AM2+ board that means I can use my DDR2 RAM and the X3 445. Also it has Gigabit LAN and 6 SATA2 ports which is very useful since this will be used as a home server.

I found that using the provided retaining bracket made for a much more secure seeming installation then the small push-pin system the Intel heat sinks use. Also it gave me an opportunity to do some more cable management by routing the fan cable under the retaining clip and very carefully putting a zip-tie between the bracket and the mobo. This was a very tense task as I wanted to be very careful not to damage anything and in the end I didn't. Now the fan cable is held very cleanly out of the way and will never end up in the fan blades (few things scarier than the sound a cable in a fan makes when it comes from inside your case:eek: not that it's ever happened to me:whistler:).

RAM installed, zip-tie trimmed and ready to go into the case.

Time to clean out the power supply! The before situation was too graphic to photograph and so I only have a photo after I blew it out with compressed air. It's still a little dusty (not as bad as the photo looks though) and when I next have my air compressor set up I will thouroughly clean it out. I also took the time to remove and tie back some assorted wires that were supposed to connect the PSU to a front monitoring panel which I never had.

Now the motherboard and PSU are installed and it's starting to look like a computer.

Until next time,
TheMainMan

So the final installment of this worklog begins with a close-up of the cable management along the bottom edge of the motherboard. Part of the reason I chose not to sleeve the USB and audio headers to match everything else was that they fit nicely in the space provided between the motherboard and backplane. The mobo came with two black SATA cables but the one without a 90 degree end wouldn't fit inside the case. Thankfully I had a spare 90 degree in red which is why one cable is sleeved and the other isn't.

The biggest issue with this case that I had was that the drive tower mounting holes would have oriented the hdd connectors away from the motherboard. In order to have the connectors close to the motherboard I had to put only one screw. Since screws only go in one side of the drive to begin with this setup is not one I'm terribly happy with.

You can see how far back the drive is in order to make this work.

With both 1.5TB Western Digital Green drives installed this project is almost complete.

The cable management situation on the back side, not a whole lot of cables as there isn't a ton of stuff in this build.

Now for some exterior glory shots of the build to finish things off.

The window and front of the case came protected by plastic so the finish was well preserved until I was done building.

I find it's odd to see a case with all of the PCI covers still in place.

I didn't want to mar the nice reflective finish on the front of the case so I put the stickers on the back.

With the stickers the build part finished and all I had to do was install Windows Home Server Vail Public Refresh (can't wait till it's just called WHS2). This turned out to be a lot harder than the build as my first install was bad. So bad in fact that I thought I was running on P2-P3 gen hardware. It could not do anything without hanging so I re-installed and now it's running well. Can't say much about using the preview until I can get the system off campus to set up Web Access as my University blocks servers on the outgoing ports.

Well, that's it. Someday I'm sure I'll redo the insides of the case, sound deaden, and paint but that won't be for a long while.

Thanks for reading,
TheMainMan

looks good! :)

EDIT: did you cut that side window yourself or is that stock?

^stock, sharp build tho

@ billygoat333, diluzio91
Thanks for the comments. I have to give credit that most of the skills used in this build I've learned by lurking on this forum.

The window is indeed stock and I must say I don't think I would have cut that shape if I was custom making it. The grey colour of the drive tower just doesn't fit with the rest of the exterior. Not a big deal since this is a server and won't really be viewed a lot.