The Phoenix Arises

If you’ve been following my blog for any length of time, you will remember when I posted that my old frontend died on me.  A little more recently, I shared the death of my HD server/development system. 

Today, thanks to Autoboy, I am pleased to announce that I once again have my old frontend system running again.  He was able to provide me with a motherboard that is identical to the one that was originally in there, except that his powers up!  However, this time around, after the death of my HD server I have decided to re-purpose this system into my new HD server.

With this re-purpose comes some changes.  Firstly, I decided to go with this change because my original system was still using IDE drives and I have a stack of SATA drives looking for a home.  Currently, in the rebuild I am using 1x250GB IDE drive that is holding all of my legacy recordings (stuff from the old system), 2x250GB SATA drives, 1x160GB SATA and 1x120GB SATA.  So in total, I now have just over 1TB of storage in this system, which is a nice upgrade from the 250GB that was in the old build.  I am actually pondering leaving off the two smaller SATA drives for now since they don’t add that much space to the total and I’m not in immediate need.  This would allow me to add larger drives later on as needed (maybe a couple of 2TB WD drives?).

The problem that I’m currently having with this rebuild is that the frontend was originally built in an NSK2400, which is the older brother to the Antec Fusion series.  If you take a look at this case, you will notice that it is built for 2 internal hard drives.  I could add another into the DVD bay with adapters that I have from long ago, but that still leaves me with 3 drives.  I intend to have 5 in this system.  I hate to do it but I may have to get a new case.  I really like the NSK2400 though.  It was a great, quiet system.  I was amazed when I put this in place of my old setup exactly how much quieter it is (or how much louder my old system was).  My main server is built in an Antec P180 and it’s worked great for me.  Maybe I’ll look into something similar.  We’ll see.  Feel free to leave a recommendation in the forums.  For now I’ll leave it in the current case with the top off and the drives hanging out.

So the new build is as follows:

  • CPU: AMD 3800 X2
  • Mobo: MSI K8NGM2-FID
  • RAM: 2x512MB
  • Hard Drives: see above
  • Video: onboard
  • Audio: onboard
  • Case: Antec NSK-2400
  • PSU: 380W – came with case

Thanks for taking the time to read through this.  As mentioned above, if you have any suggestions for a decent but inexpensive case for this system, please drop me a line in the forums.  Other comments are also welcome!

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