If you're wanting to do something similar, I have 3D models in the comments, and you can pick up some great deals on components or an entire system over at jawa.link/HHAug24!
I have been following your channel since almost the beginning starting with the Budget home server couple years ago and have always appreciated your creative thinking - be it the ultimate router that you built (and still seem to be using) or the many builds you have repurposed for other uses. This one might be your best yet and your creativity is a testament to your channel's growth. Reminds me a bit of the early days of Kyle @Bitwit. Keep up the great work. And the creativity. 👍
@@HardwareHaven I got a question why not modify your hard drive caddy to use hotswap bays? then you wouldn't have to mess with the back plain of the cables and it adds a lil more flare with the cool functionality of the drives being more easily removable.
@@HardwareHavenit definitely does lol. I’ve been toying with the idea of designing a very basic SATA backplane with the only purpose of passing the physical through. Probably sometime around the end of the year xD
Would be so cool to have each HDD have their own LED strip so you could identify drives easily if you ever need to swap out! Or use the RGB to easily see what the case temps are (red = too hot, orange = hot, yellow = warm, green = ok) So many possibilities!
Shouldn't be too difficult if you have the headers/controller for it. There's a script that you can run on arduiono for music reactive rgb soo there's that.
Hey lol - Miranda here from Blue Ghost Technology - thanks for highlighting (and buying!) my A2000 listing, I honestly didn't even notice it was you when I shipped it out! If you need more, I do have a couple more, most of them have full profile brackets but you can buy or 3D print LP ones if needed.
Okay, those card shrouds look subtle and functional. I like this idea very much. THIS BUILD WAS SUPER COOL....even With having enough RGB to make a unicorn-nyancat jealous.
My main server is in a "Gaming" case from 2004, from one of the first PCs I ever built and sold. It was an office build but the customer saw a previous gaming build I did and liked the case. 20 years later I'm doing a large scale WiFi job for the same customer and he mentions the PC is in the pole barn set to get scrapped. PC was pristine and still booted. The case has lots of drive bays, and full ATX. So I removed the old AMD Geode NX 1750 and it now houses a 16 core /32 Thread V4 Xeon, used a floppy bay adapter to add USB 2.0 and 3.1 front IO.
@@HardwareHaven I showed this video to someone. He then commissioned me to build him a RGB filled first server/NAS, in a gaming case, with an AIO. Not sure if I should thank you for the business, or curse you for what I am about to build.
@@HardwareHaven I just finished the hardware, still have to set up his plex, Ollama LLM, and a few other services. It looks better than I thought, so Thanks!.
dang! Those PCIe shrouds are nice! As you were showing off the gray ones I was like "wow he made a NIC look like an external hard drive". I think in the end it looks great and I especially like how you designed the ability to add lighting into your custom shrouds and hard drive bays. I still think @TechnoTim would be proud of this one!
Love this one. I just started working on 'pimping my ride' for my server. It's super fun; and doesn't even look like an old HP anymore after all the upgrades.
I'm honestly surprised the top of the case could hold the weight of six drives. If you extended the cage so it also sat on the floor of the case it would have room for more drives! Losing the one fan probably wouldn't matter.
Back in the early 2000's, we used to spray paint our cards to make them blend-in better 🙄 All the stupid things we used to do to make our beige boxes look snazzier. Along with slicing the IDE cables to make them round and other things.
This looks 10x better than I thought it would when I clicked the video. It's so clean, and manages to look like a sleek gaming PC! My NAS is in a normal case that has a glass side panel and I've been pondering whether to just put RGB fans in it for the heck of it. It definitely would not look this good though!
THIS is an absolutely beautiful PC System. You don't think others would want something like this? Hell yea we would. You should sell the drive bays. for those of us that dont have 3D printers... yet. You went from building a server, to doing outside the box case modification. And it looks quite like a gaming pc. This is genius. I want one Now, something I would have done. The shrouds would have the Hardware Haven logo and words lit up. That would make it much more, ummm, eye candy(ish).
Great video as usual. Best thing about servers are that they're just computers, so making a home server look cool versus being a boring, albeit practical, corporate design is A-okay. I don't have a 3D printer, but if I did, this would be a dope project to follow.
Mom, mom this nas is so beautiful This is one heck of concept art, imagine in a few years, gamers having rgb nas for stream P.s more rgb equal more transcoding
Who cares if it’s “practical” or not. That build was definitely cool af. Adding those LED strips with the custom diffuser you printed was awesome! Black motherboard was definitely a good choice. You have black from the HDDs anyways, so it wouldn’t have been a purely aesthetic build regardless.
I think I would've used one of the spare fans up top for exhaust, otherwise it's a slick looking system! Just because a server is kind of a "bland, function > Form" device doesn't mean you can't do something like this to make it more fun! Put it on a local 10gb switc with your gaming tower, and boot up a VM, have your steam gaming library centrally located, instead of needing tons of storage in your device.
13:33 Looking at the test fit makes it very obvious why a drive caddy would be a good idea. 1. Access to screws on the motherboard side of cage. 2. Plugging in cables is going to be fun with the fan directly behind the cage.
Hot-set inserts to make things a bit more secure/rugged..... And this is basically the base setup for a "TRON-style NAS/VM Server"...... and I'm all for it.... sadly, "Servers belong in a rack" and no one makes RGB Friendly Rackmount cases.... yet. ;) Cool build and very handy drive mount setup.... Technically easily expandable too if you wanted to go with a taller case for more drives....
21:50 I love it. There is nothing wrong with coming up with an idea and following through on it. It is your lab/office create what makes you happy. 🙂 I have a NAZ with four 4 TB WD Yellow drives running RAID 10 in an old discarded CoolerMaster PC case that has many drive bays it is a sleeper for sure but I like it.
Sometimes it's about the journey, not the destination. I love a good project where I tinker, prototype, revise, and find the final form in the end. Good video.
Amazing build!! And I envy your CAD skills, even if you don't think highly of them yourself. I recently discovered your channel (I don't remember what I searched for) and RUclips's been suggesting your videos to me ever since. I can't complain about that because not only is the content great, the production quality is too! I'm now subscribed 😉
I have an idea for the lighting on your shrouds: If you have a router (the woodworking kind), use that to write words into the side of the shroud that faces the window - NETWORK on the nic, STORAGE on the SAS/SATA card.. etc. If you couldn't 3D print the words into it, that is.
As someone who is limited on space I love this idea. I have a Phanteks P600s that has a spot for an ATX motherboard and another for Mini itx. My thought was a gaming pc with a mini itx promox server all in one case. Love you hard drive cage idea!
Stealth server! I was wondering what direction you were going with this and I'm really impressed. It looks great (if you like that sort of look) and the fact that it's also serviceable is icing on the cake. Thank you!
I have a very similar case, the corsair 2500x, wich is a really nice case... except that cable management and the drive cage have been a nightmare to work with, wich is why this video is perfect for me. By modeling and printing a similar bay for all my SSD's, i might be able to solve the issues i've had working with this case. Thank you so much for this video
This server really isn't my aesthetic either, but it has a certain charm to it. Really cool project overall. It's always fun to watch someone come up with an idea and problem-solve their way to completion.
you would be surprised, it looks awesome man. You could have extended the drive cage to the bottom of the case that way u can store more drives and not worry about the strain on the top. Really loved this project.
2:30 bro, I have an nzxt H7 that I wanted to use for an extra server but it lacks storage options. I was only looking at the bottom of the visible part of the case. Never considered the real estate at the top. Creating a disk cage for the top of the rack is a fantastic idea. You’re a legend. Now it’s time to talk my wife into a 3d printer!
That HDD design is perfect. I have a Lian Li that has been my Jellyfin/Jellyseerr for about a year now and I was trying to think of ways to put more HDDs into it. Thank you for the 3D files!
This was a fun different kind of project, thinking outside of the box so to speak. The shrouds for the cards with fans could actually be a practical use for cases that don't have the super high airflow like a server chassis. Good fun project that still has useful info.
Dude. I love it. Build is fantastic and is exactly what homelabbing is about. It doesn't need to be for anything other than you learning and inspiring others! Wonderful video as always, but one of my favorites.
Quite a slick build for a NAS. I might have gone a little further and added a white honeycomb mesh (or something similar) to cover the backs of the HDDs just to white-wash them a little more, but still allow for air flow. Sadly, I think you've inspired me to rebuild my NAS with some RGB.
Giving the fact that these modern fish tank cases have so much open space for air flow, that this hard drive cage turned out to be a great idea to fill in the otherwise unused empty space. And those shrouds you made for the add-in cards look amazing. But I was thinking that a mesh grill to cover the hard drives would help with the aesthetics a bit. I know a lot of people are not a fan of the RGB, but the idea here was to combine the looks of the modern stereotypical "gamer" PC, with the power and functionality of a home server. I think you nailed it! Nice work.
I also build my unraid „iso“ server in a define 7 and went the gamery route with custom watercooling and rgb and it blends really nicely into my gaming setup so i really enjoy watching yours ❤️❤️
My old gaming rig is now serving as my server. Using my old GTX1080 for transcoding and my Ryzen 1700 (in eco mode) in a Corsair Air 240 case. Way overkill for a file server running just 8 containers but I do have the server crunching for World Community Grid so it's not a complete waste of computing power. I wouldn't mind a bit more room for drives but it was cheap because I already had the hardware. No RGB though...nice build.
I love it when functional things also look good. I am still someone who prioritizes function above all else, but once all the functional needs are adequately met, who doesn’t like a little bling on top once in a while?
Dope build!! I might actually go for this one instead of the 10inch rack that i was planning to use, i would also double the HDDs capacity to get more storage space 💃
This is my favorite video on your channel! It's cool to see such creativity! The finished product looks amazing, too. Makes me want to buy a 3D printer and try this out myself.
i love the build, the one thing i would have done different was us white heat shrink tube instead of painting it white. I would love that you do other types of builds like this every so often. especially with your 3D printing. Maybe do a RGB custom pi rack build
To be honest just the idea of modding a case to hold more hard drives is an absolute game changer for a home lab, you would save so much money and room and in my opinion showing off what you brought helps deal with the cost of having a home lab
I really don't see why server cases and hardware can't look "jazzed" up with a few RGB Leds. I love the accessory card shrouds. Well done on this build!
Great job on all this! I have my gaming pc near my plain Jane Rosewill rack case for my server. All I did on that was add two led strips behind the mesh grill 👍🏼
That is a beautiful looking server and the PCI card covers are awesome... with and without the RGB they look practical to mount a fan, less jank than zip ties.
This is sooo cool.... I agree that most of us would prob never personally have something like this, but this looks great and opens the door for other projects and a bunch of possibilities... thanks for the video.
Love the PCIe shroud idea, my NAS/home server is very much built for looks (theme build) so this will really help cover up some of the more server looking parts, keep up the awesome content
So clean and nice! The only way it would look cleaner is with back to front Mobo, and those fancy magnetic connected fans. This is the most sensible use of those PCI-e expansions slots on the mobo for the average person
Please do more like this! This is awesome I love the creativity and as a new person into 3d modeling it’s nice to see you combine both the new ways to learn + making enjoyable content. Great work can’t wait to see more!!!
A practical use of LED's in a server would be to indicate temperature and load. Have some LED strips on the drive cage to indicate drive activity, others to indicate CPU and memory utilization, everything flashing red when temperature goes too high.
I always was wondering why servers are so boring. They typically cost a lot. For many reasons they don’t need all that fancy stuff, but why it cannot be some special white version with LED? Really like this video and the way how you feel it.
Personal preference here, no RGB unless used for a information purpose. Like: CPU heat/load. Network connection status/flow/throughput. Disk drive status. VM status (different colours for different configs, or OS type's. Keyboard color indicating what user/access rights you got in your current terminal. There is a lot of ways to enhance your local hardware config using these RGB strips. Other things are actually custom cables. Amazing things can be done with a custom glass panel to. Maybe 3D print a motherboard cover with cooling channel/guiding lanes, in white of course. Anyhow great video. 👾💨🛸
I had very seriously considered trying to setup a Pi Pico or something to control the lights and base the output on some sort of parameters like RAID status or uptime. It just got away from me and I needed to just get the video wrapped up. I felt like where it ended was still satisfying to me. Appreciate the comment!
You did a great job there! you should be proud of that! Bravo, Colton. Now you just need white Mobo with a 3950x, 5950x or a 7950x in it for some proper firepower with a stack of RAM. Yup the Wattage will be higher but there's plenty of cooling for it
So that looks really nice. I would have modeled a clip-on perforated panel to cover the HDDs but that is just me. 3D printing can go a long way to MOD PCs. Before daisy-chained fans were a thing I used 3d printing to create panels for the wires to go under that clip onto the fans so the wires were all consolidated. I also used it to change how my RAM looks and replace the stock shroud on my GPU. You can do a lot with 3d Printing.
I'm with you, not a massive fan of rainbow sick, I did it years ago, Intel i7 920 era, before it was the rage, but I do think this build looks real nice. I think it worked out for the best you couldn't get a white motherboard, with so many black hard drives, the black motherboard balances it well. I like that you're honest about being a 3D printing noob and lacking confidence in your skills, it makes getting into 3D more appealing. And I think the PCIe card shrouds look great.
Браво Маэстро! Кажется Вы нашли отличный способ строительства домашних серверов в новых корпусах предназначенных для игровых систем! Судя по свободному месту под напечатанной корзиной для HDD, её можно сделать ощутимо больше.
That black mb and ram work really well with hard drives. Nice contrast and looks really good with lightning imho. Even though im not a fan of RGB, i gotta admit, this looks pretty dang cool. Great work!
I love the shrouds! And those LED + diffusers look particularly sweet! Nice job Also if you wanted to hard on hiding the MOBO without spraying it, you could cover it with a custom cut acrylic panel or similar
The acer homeserver you had in the last two videos was already ascetic engouth for me. Also you should try to get into some selfhosted cloudgaming like craft computing.
This is the greatest video you have made to date. I have a "gamer" server with an EATX dual Xeon Supermicro motherboard on an old 2008'ish velocity micro case. I may have to make a video around it since it needs a new paint job!
If you're wanting to do something similar, I have 3D models in the comments, and you can pick up some great deals on components or an entire system over at jawa.link/HHAug24!
I have been following your channel since almost the beginning starting with the Budget home server couple years ago and have always appreciated your creative thinking - be it the ultimate router that you built (and still seem to be using) or the many builds you have repurposed for other uses. This one might be your best yet and your creativity is a testament to your channel's growth. Reminds me a bit of the early days of Kyle @Bitwit. Keep up the great work. And the creativity. 👍
JAWA IS A MASSIVE W
Your thingyverse link doesn’t work can you possibly fix?
Dayum. Jawa looks cool AF but USA only... 😢
Sick server build! Thanks for sharing!
+10 watts for RGB
+1000 hp for proxmox
More RGB more Gbps🎉
+10% Speed Booster - Permanent
@@terrydaktyllus1320 35% Speed Debuff - Whilst Windows Is Equipped
🔥
Ah 3D printing and the whole "a dozen prototypes", it happens every time!
That’s how engineering works, right..? 😅
@@HardwareHaven I got a question why not modify your hard drive caddy to use hotswap bays? then you wouldn't have to mess with the back plain of the cables and it adds a lil more flare with the cool functionality of the drives being more easily removable.
I just tell everyone I'm "fully utilizing my tools by performing an iterative design process," and it's suddenly engineering!
The tangential relationship with 3d printing here and on Jeff's channel is always interesting
@@HardwareHavenit definitely does lol. I’ve been toying with the idea of designing a very basic SATA backplane with the only purpose of passing the physical through. Probably sometime around the end of the year xD
Would be so cool to have each HDD have their own LED strip so you could identify drives easily if you ever need to swap out! Or use the RGB to easily see what the case temps are (red = too hot, orange = hot, yellow = warm, green = ok)
So many possibilities!
Would be sick!
Shouldn't be too difficult if you have the headers/controller for it. There's a script that you can run on arduiono for music reactive rgb soo there's that.
Dayum, that RGB tho on this server, every kiddo want it now to save "Linux ISO's" and "homework" for foreseeable future. Great video as always.
Hahaha thanks
What more would you need a home server for besides torrenting Linux ISOs and storing "homework"!?
@@kekistanifreedomfighter4197 Self hosting a game server, home assistant, photo libraries, VPNs, development projects, cloud storage, etc..
@@HardwareHavensounds like valuable space that could be used for more "Linux ISOs"
@@HardwareHavenhe was making a joke about gaming on it
Hey lol - Miranda here from Blue Ghost Technology - thanks for highlighting (and buying!) my A2000 listing, I honestly didn't even notice it was you when I shipped it out!
If you need more, I do have a couple more, most of them have full profile brackets but you can buy or 3D print LP ones if needed.
Yo! Glad you caught the video haha. I think I’m good, so I’ll save those for other peeps.
Okay, those card shrouds look subtle and functional. I like this idea very much.
THIS BUILD WAS SUPER COOL....even With having enough RGB to make a unicorn-nyancat jealous.
😂😂😂 glad you like it
So frickin dope!!!!! I built my truenas server in a gaming case and I DO NOT regret it. Love your idea and how awesome it looks.
Thanks! Hope it's still running well for you
"who would want this?" *Stares in techno Tim*
Hahahaha
Me also
My main server is in a "Gaming" case from 2004, from one of the first PCs I ever built and sold. It was an office build but the customer saw a previous gaming build I did and liked the case. 20 years later I'm doing a large scale WiFi job for the same customer and he mentions the PC is in the pole barn set to get scrapped. PC was pristine and still booted. The case has lots of drive bays, and full ATX. So I removed the old AMD Geode NX 1750 and it now houses a 16 core /32 Thread V4 Xeon, used a floppy bay adapter to add USB 2.0 and 3.1 front IO.
Nice haha!
@@HardwareHaven I showed this video to someone. He then commissioned me to build him a RGB filled first server/NAS, in a gaming case, with an AIO. Not sure if I should thank you for the business, or curse you for what I am about to build.
@@JordosTechShack hahahahaha
sorry/you're welcome I guess
@@HardwareHaven I just finished the hardware, still have to set up his plex, Ollama LLM, and a few other services. It looks better than I thought, so Thanks!.
Don’t sell yourself short on your 3D printing talents. These are the conversions that companies should be implementing.
dang! Those PCIe shrouds are nice! As you were showing off the gray ones I was like "wow he made a NIC look like an external hard drive". I think in the end it looks great and I especially like how you designed the ability to add lighting into your custom shrouds and hard drive bays. I still think @TechnoTim would be proud of this one!
I sure hope he is… I need the Tim approval
Love this one.
I just started working on 'pimping my ride' for my server. It's super fun; and doesn't even look like an old HP anymore after all the upgrades.
I'm honestly surprised the top of the case could hold the weight of six drives. If you extended the cage so it also sat on the floor of the case it would have room for more drives! Losing the one fan probably wouldn't matter.
I was surprised at how sturdy it was honestly. Shoutout Antec haha
Back in the early 2000's, we used to spray paint our cards to make them blend-in better 🙄
All the stupid things we used to do to make our beige boxes look snazzier. Along with slicing the IDE cables to make them round and other things.
Now I feel like beige is cool haha
Could you pls stop mentioning sliced ide cables. I feel old now. 😅
Did u have those round UV active ide cables back then? This was the real shit. 😂
15:20 my heart just aged 10 years in less than 5 seconds
Hahaha good
This looks 10x better than I thought it would when I clicked the video. It's so clean, and manages to look like a sleek gaming PC! My NAS is in a normal case that has a glass side panel and I've been pondering whether to just put RGB fans in it for the heck of it. It definitely would not look this good though!
It looks 10x better that I expected haha
THIS is an absolutely beautiful PC System. You don't think others would want something like this? Hell yea we would. You should sell the drive bays. for those of us that dont have 3D printers... yet. You went from building a server, to doing outside the box case modification. And it looks quite like a gaming pc. This is genius. I want one
Now, something I would have done. The shrouds would have the Hardware Haven logo and words lit up. That would make it much more, ummm, eye candy(ish).
Great video as usual. Best thing about servers are that they're just computers, so making a home server look cool versus being a boring, albeit practical, corporate design is A-okay. I don't have a 3D printer, but if I did, this would be a dope project to follow.
Mom, mom this nas is so beautiful
This is one heck of concept art, imagine in a few years, gamers having rgb nas for stream
P.s more rgb equal more transcoding
Oh duh... clearly.
I think techno tim would be proud
I sure hope so
Definitely Techno Tim vibes going on with this build. Just needed some bubbly water with it.
Who cares if it’s “practical” or not. That build was definitely cool af. Adding those LED strips with the custom diffuser you printed was awesome! Black motherboard was definitely a good choice. You have black from the HDDs anyways, so it wouldn’t have been a purely aesthetic build regardless.
Just finished up printing two 6 drive bays with slide in caddies for my NAS on my three deltas. Next is an ITX case. Nice job.
I think I would've used one of the spare fans up top for exhaust, otherwise it's a slick looking system! Just because a server is kind of a "bland, function > Form" device doesn't mean you can't do something like this to make it more fun! Put it on a local 10gb switc with your gaming tower, and boot up a VM, have your steam gaming library centrally located, instead of needing tons of storage in your device.
13:33 Looking at the test fit makes it very obvious why a drive caddy would be a good idea.
1. Access to screws on the motherboard side of cage.
2. Plugging in cables is going to be fun with the fan directly behind the cage.
Hot-set inserts to make things a bit more secure/rugged.....
And this is basically the base setup for a "TRON-style NAS/VM Server"...... and I'm all for it.... sadly, "Servers belong in a rack" and no one makes RGB Friendly Rackmount cases.... yet. ;)
Cool build and very handy drive mount setup.... Technically easily expandable too if you wanted to go with a taller case for more drives....
21:50 I love it. There is nothing wrong with coming up with an idea and following through on it. It is your lab/office create what makes you happy. 🙂
I have a NAZ with four 4 TB WD Yellow drives running RAID 10 in an old discarded CoolerMaster PC case that has many drive bays it is a sleeper for sure but I like it.
Sometimes it's about the journey, not the destination. I love a good project where I tinker, prototype, revise, and find the final form in the end. Good video.
I like the black motherboard, the contrast makes it work.
"I don't imagine anyone would be in the market for a server like this one"....well you might want to roll the statement back. That is awesome!!
Amazing build!! And I envy your CAD skills, even if you don't think highly of them yourself.
I recently discovered your channel (I don't remember what I searched for) and RUclips's been suggesting your videos to me ever since. I can't complain about that because not only is the content great, the production quality is too! I'm now subscribed 😉
I LOVE what you managed to do with this! The custom shrouds and drive cage are such great implementations of 3d printing.
I have an idea for the lighting on your shrouds: If you have a router (the woodworking kind), use that to write words into the side of the shroud that faces the window - NETWORK on the nic, STORAGE on the SAS/SATA card.. etc. If you couldn't 3D print the words into it, that is.
Honestly really sick build. I thought the case and the drive storage worked incredibly well together. Good work & keep it up!
The card shrouds, the RGB, the fishtank style case! 11/10 build and probably one my favorite of your videos
As someone who is limited on space I love this idea. I have a Phanteks P600s that has a spot for an ATX motherboard and another for Mini itx. My thought was a gaming pc with a mini itx promox server all in one case. Love you hard drive cage idea!
Stealth server! I was wondering what direction you were going with this and I'm really impressed. It looks great (if you like that sort of look) and the fact that it's also serviceable is icing on the cake. Thank you!
I have a very similar case, the corsair 2500x, wich is a really nice case... except that cable management and the drive cage have been a nightmare to work with, wich is why this video is perfect for me. By modeling and printing a similar bay for all my SSD's, i might be able to solve the issues i've had working with this case. Thank you so much for this video
I'm not an RGB fan, but that's a sweet server! That drive bay is something you should market!!
*Thanks for the video!*
This server really isn't my aesthetic either, but it has a certain charm to it. Really cool project overall. It's always fun to watch someone come up with an idea and problem-solve their way to completion.
That turned out so good! My first server is a gaming rig I retired because it couldn't do the fps I wanted but still had more than enough life in it.
you would be surprised, it looks awesome man. You could have extended the drive cage to the bottom of the case that way u can store more drives and not worry about the strain on the top.
Really loved this project.
2:30 bro, I have an nzxt H7 that I wanted to use for an extra server but it lacks storage options. I was only looking at the bottom of the visible part of the case. Never considered the real estate at the top. Creating a disk cage for the top of the rack is a fantastic idea.
You’re a legend.
Now it’s time to talk my wife into a 3d printer!
That HDD design is perfect. I have a Lian Li that has been my Jellyfin/Jellyseerr for about a year now and I was trying to think of ways to put more HDDs into it. Thank you for the 3D files!
This was a fun different kind of project, thinking outside of the box so to speak. The shrouds for the cards with fans could actually be a practical use for cases that don't have the super high airflow like a server chassis. Good fun project that still has useful info.
Dude. I love it. Build is fantastic and is exactly what homelabbing is about. It doesn't need to be for anything other than you learning and inspiring others! Wonderful video as always, but one of my favorites.
20:42 .. I'd take this over a plain server any day! This looks so good. Great job, man!
Thanks!
Looks great, love the fact you actually 3d printed your own parts to fit the specifications.👍
Nice lightning build, love it.
Thanks Kristof!
Quite a slick build for a NAS. I might have gone a little further and added a white honeycomb mesh (or something similar) to cover the backs of the HDDs just to white-wash them a little more, but still allow for air flow. Sadly, I think you've inspired me to rebuild my NAS with some RGB.
Giving the fact that these modern fish tank cases have so much open space for air flow, that this hard drive cage turned out to be a great idea to fill in the otherwise unused empty space. And those shrouds you made for the add-in cards look amazing. But I was thinking that a mesh grill to cover the hard drives would help with the aesthetics a bit. I know a lot of people are not a fan of the RGB, but the idea here was to combine the looks of the modern stereotypical "gamer" PC, with the power and functionality of a home server. I think you nailed it! Nice work.
This looks GREAT! The poly-carb light diffusion looks better than the original strip diffusers.
I also build my unraid „iso“ server in a define 7 and went the gamery route with custom watercooling and rgb and it blends really nicely into my gaming setup so i really enjoy watching yours ❤️❤️
My old gaming rig is now serving as my server. Using my old GTX1080 for transcoding and my Ryzen 1700 (in eco mode) in a Corsair Air 240 case. Way overkill for a file server running just 8 containers but I do have the server crunching for World Community Grid so it's not a complete waste of computing power. I wouldn't mind a bit more room for drives but it was cheap because I already had the hardware. No RGB though...nice build.
I love it when functional things also look good. I am still someone who prioritizes function above all else, but once all the functional needs are adequately met, who doesn’t like a little bling on top once in a while?
Dope build!! I might actually go for this one instead of the 10inch rack that i was planning to use, i would also double the HDDs capacity to get more storage space 💃
This is my favorite video on your channel! It's cool to see such creativity! The finished product looks amazing, too. Makes me want to buy a 3D printer and try this out myself.
i love the build, the one thing i would have done different was us white heat shrink tube instead of painting it white. I would love that you do other types of builds like this every so often. especially with your 3D printing. Maybe do a RGB custom pi rack build
If you're worried about warping the case, you could always remove the first bottom fan and have the drive cage go all the way from top to bottom
My backup plan was just to flip it and have it connected to the bottom
this may be my favorite video you've ever done. great job!
Glad you liked it!
Love the top mounted hard drive cage. Definitely putting the side fans to good use. I actually wish those would be an official case component.
To be honest just the idea of modding a case to hold more hard drives is an absolute game changer for a home lab, you would save so much money and room and in my opinion showing off what you brought helps deal with the cost of having a home lab
That final product turned out really clean, well done! I haven't gotten into 3D printing yet but I'm sure it's super useful for homelab stuff.
It’s been super useful for lots of things!
One of the best custom pc build videos I've seen in years! Elements of old school pc mods hits the nostalgia notes!
I really don't see why server cases and hardware can't look "jazzed" up with a few RGB Leds. I love the accessory card shrouds. Well done on this build!
Great job on all this! I have my gaming pc near my plain Jane Rosewill rack case for my server. All I did on that was add two led strips behind the mesh grill 👍🏼
I think it'll be good to add a backplane for HDDs
That is a beautiful looking server and the PCI card covers are awesome... with and without the RGB they look practical to mount a fan, less jank than zip ties.
Yeah they turned out exactly as I had hoped they would. (Much better than I though they actually would 😅)
This is sooo cool.... I agree that most of us would prob never personally have something like this, but this looks great and opens the door for other projects and a bunch of possibilities... thanks for the video.
This might be one of my favorite videos from you! I think it looks incredible and now have something new on my to-do wish list!
Nice build ! All that function AND form as well.
This was awesome. Love seeing the design iteration. And the J2C glam-tage.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Love the PCIe shroud idea, my NAS/home server is very much built for looks (theme build) so this will really help cover up some of the more server looking parts, keep up the awesome content
Nice!
WOW!!! I am amazed how good the project looks at the end of the video. You have cool ideas and great skills!
So clean and nice! The only way it would look cleaner is with back to front Mobo, and those fancy magnetic connected fans.
This is the most sensible use of those PCI-e expansions slots on the mobo for the average person
That is clean AF! The nicest server i have ever seen! Now do that in an 19 inch server rack so i can get some ideas for my serverrack. 😛
Nice job!
Please do more like this! This is awesome I love the creativity and as a new person into 3d modeling it’s nice to see you combine both the new ways to learn + making enjoyable content. Great work can’t wait to see more!!!
Thanks! I appreciate the kind words. I do plan to implement more things like what I did in this video in future projects.
A practical use of LED's in a server would be to indicate temperature and load. Have some LED strips on the drive cage to indicate drive activity, others to indicate CPU and memory utilization, everything flashing red when temperature goes too high.
I had the idea to run the LEDs off of a Pico or something and do something similar to that. Just don’t have the time to dedicate to it haha
I always was wondering why servers are so boring. They typically cost a lot. For many reasons they don’t need all that fancy stuff, but why it cannot be some special white version with LED? Really like this video and the way how you feel it.
Personal preference here,
no RGB unless used for a information purpose.
Like:
CPU heat/load.
Network connection status/flow/throughput.
Disk drive status.
VM status (different colours for different configs, or OS type's.
Keyboard color indicating what user/access rights you got in your current terminal.
There is a lot of ways to enhance your local hardware config using these RGB strips.
Other things are actually custom cables.
Amazing things can be done with a custom glass panel to.
Maybe 3D print a motherboard cover with cooling channel/guiding lanes,
in white of course.
Anyhow great video.
👾💨🛸
I had very seriously considered trying to setup a Pi Pico or something to control the lights and base the output on some sort of parameters like RAID status or uptime. It just got away from me and I needed to just get the video wrapped up. I felt like where it ended was still satisfying to me. Appreciate the comment!
That’s awesome! I really like the RGB illuminated PCI-E device shrouds. Really cool!
Really glad you added the custom led lighting, icing on the cake! Those polycarbonate covers came out really nice!
You did a great job there! you should be proud of that! Bravo, Colton. Now you just need white Mobo with a 3950x, 5950x or a 7950x in it for some proper firepower with a stack of RAM. Yup the Wattage will be higher but there's plenty of cooling for it
This goes super well with my motives. I love gaming but I also love servers so seeing this video really made my heart light up
So that looks really nice. I would have modeled a clip-on perforated panel to cover the HDDs but that is just me. 3D printing can go a long way to MOD PCs. Before daisy-chained fans were a thing I used 3d printing to create panels for the wires to go under that clip onto the fans so the wires were all consolidated. I also used it to change how my RAM looks and replace the stock shroud on my GPU. You can do a lot with 3d Printing.
I'm with you, not a massive fan of rainbow sick, I did it years ago, Intel i7 920 era, before it was the rage, but I do think this build looks real nice. I think it worked out for the best you couldn't get a white motherboard, with so many black hard drives, the black motherboard balances it well.
I like that you're honest about being a 3D printing noob and lacking confidence in your skills, it makes getting into 3D more appealing. And I think the PCIe card shrouds look great.
Yeah, I think the hard drives made a big difference in the end. And thanks for the feedback! Glad to hear it
Браво Маэстро!
Кажется Вы нашли отличный способ строительства домашних серверов в новых корпусах предназначенных для игровых систем!
Судя по свободному месту под напечатанной корзиной для HDD, её можно сделать ощутимо больше.
That black mb and ram work really well with hard drives. Nice contrast and looks really good with lightning imho. Even though im not a fan of RGB, i gotta admit, this looks pretty dang cool. Great work!
Love it, looks sick. You did a great job. My file server is an old customized antec dragon case full of drives.
Nice passion project build. I'm sure you're right some Twich streamer would love to have it.
Wow. Great work! Really went the extra mile with those LED inlays!
I love the shrouds! And those LED + diffusers look particularly sweet! Nice job
Also if you wanted to hard on hiding the MOBO without spraying it, you could cover it with a custom cut acrylic panel or similar
Thanks for the tips!
The acer homeserver you had in the last two videos was already ascetic engouth for me. Also you should try to get into some selfhosted cloudgaming like craft computing.
Great job on the 3d shrouds. They look really good. Really like how you combined3d printing with computers.
Fantastic build, not crazy about RGB, but this was so well done!
Dude! That looks awesome! Definitely something you'd see on Jawa! The only thing missing is RGB memory! 😉
This is great! I build a Overkill NAS in the same case but have been regretting the choice because of lack of space for HDD's.
Servers don't have a boring look
They have a clean and direct forward look.
As a bonus, they are better organized
I didn't expect, it'll turn like that Man!! u did a really great Job, KEEP UP!!
This is the greatest video you have made to date. I have a "gamer" server with an EATX dual Xeon Supermicro motherboard on an old 2008'ish velocity micro case. I may have to make a video around it since it needs a new paint job!
Thanks! It was definitely fun to make