mATX case does not have to be limiting

[Zap]

Just finished upgrading my buddy Zman's computer. It is in a mATX case that is 7" wide, 14" tall, 17" deep.

mATX case (I think Foxconn)
Aspire 550W power supply (36A on +12v)
MSI mATX motherboard (K8M800 chipset socket 754)
two 512MB sticks Kingston HyperX
Athlon 64 3400+ CPU
Geforce 6800GT
floppy drive
16X DVDR
1.52 TERABYTES STORAGE
- two 160GB SATA in RAID0
- two 300GB SATA
- three 200GB ATA133

This system looks like a plain Jane office computer...
Front of computer.

...but inside lurks a beast.
Screenshot of disk space, CPU speed, video card info.

Lurid picture of the guts.
Inside of computer, FDD/DVDR/3xHDD in the normal drive bays, 2xHDD bolted to bottom, 2xHDD bolted to side panel.

Exterior evidence of where drives are bolted on.
Side/bottom of system, see the metal screw heads indicating where drives are bolted on.

I cleaned up cabling as much as I could - pic of inside showed all cabling attached. Zman was wanting another HDD installed, but I couldn't figure out where to fit another one without doing something drastic or blocking airflow. Closest I can figure out would be to attach some straps from the front to the back of the case, right above the video card, and bolt a drive to that, but haven't gotten around to that yet.

 

[Remedy]

Very nice cable management you have there. A+ I think CasgeEdge makes that chassis. Or CaseEdge is the Chassis division of Foxconn.

2 Questions.

First, With all that storage, how and where do you back it up? Tape, NAS, REV.

Second, With the HD attach to the side panel, shouldn't the Metal lid(opposite, top of the HD PCB) come in contact with the side panel to transfer the heat of the HD to the side panel? By, that, I mean. The side panel should assorb the heat and dissipate into the air on the outside?

What kind of temp readings are you getting indside the chassis? From all the devices.

Anyways, props. Nice sh!t.

 

[Zap]

Don't know about temps. I put system together for a friend. He has a DVDR, but he doesn't really back up stuff - just rapes other computers at LANs for videos, music.

Yes, the hard drives on the bottom and on the side panel are directly bolted to an exterior panel so there should be some cooling effect.

 

[Jeff7]

Looks like that thing could accept a long RAID 5 card from Promise - S150 SX4 perhaps. Hook 4 identical drives up for some high speed, redundant goodness. Or go with the cheaper SX4000/4060 and use PATA drives instead.

Quite impressive specs there though.


Download Everest, and have a look at the Storage -> SMART section, and look at the hard drive temperatures, if they're reported. The hard drives don't appear to be squished together though, so it shouldn't be too bad.