Episode: 3935
Title: HPR3935: Server build retrospective
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3935/hpr3935.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-25 17:36:43

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This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3935 for Friday the 1st of September 2023.
Today's show is entitled, Server Build Retrospective.
It is hosted by Daniel Person and is about 10 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
The summary is, Daniel Person goes through his experience of building his first server.
Hello Hacker's and welcome to another podcast with Daniel and I'm going to talk about a bunch
of different subjects and I'm doing like chat GPT. I'm really good at creating a bunch of
words without any real knowledge behind them. But the topics that I'm going to talk about are
pretty random and I'm going to split them up. And we are back and we are now talking about my
server build. So this semester or this holiday where I had four weeks off, I actually had more
work done than when I actually were working. I usually have like three or four things that I
look into when I'm working and now that I was actually free and off I put down a list of 10
things that I needed to accomplish during my vacation. And I think it's very healthy for me
to do stuff and figure things out and so on. I really think that is fun. I like to work.
I like to figure things out. So one of the things that I wanted to do was build a server.
So I currently have a bunch of small servers. I running a bunch of these kind of micro mini tiny
PCs and those were pretty well and they are just one unit so you put in a disk in them and then
plug them in and you can run a bunch of stuff in them. But the problem I have now is the buying
two and a half inches of disk drives is not really the best options. The three and a half inches
I have more space per dollars so they are more cost effective and therefore I wanted to build
a bigger server. So what I did I figured out a server build with one of these kind of cast
chassis that could fit in my rack but wasn't that deep. So I found a really shallow racked
shallow server that I can install and it took a mini ITX and it only ran 200 watts power supply
and so on. So I thought it was a pretty good choice. I also bought a bunch of brackets for fans
and I bought some nother fans and I was really planning out later on figure out what kind of
hardware I wanted to put in it. And then I was at my friend's house and he had just upgraded one of
his kids computers and he had mini ITX board just laying around and he didn't really need it.
So mini ITX board. So it's a lot larger than it actually would fit in here and it also had
big fan on it on the processor and so on but everything was included except for a drive perhaps.
So I took that home I put it into the computer I realized that it fits but having the hard drives
there will be hard it doesn't really fit well but I thought that having it up and running just as
thing in the meantime and figuring out how to work with the chassis could be a fun thing. So I
put that in and then I looked at these kind of brackets for the fans and I realized that
these brackets that they sell for like ten bucks at this shop is for server fans. Those thick
big fans that do slide into these ones. So they were built for those and the noxia fans
are really thin but noxia saved me there because they have these kind of plastic or rubbery
things that you can throw through them and I could actually put it through the grill at the end
of the chassis and get it mounted in the chassis as well so that worked out just fine. So now I had
the motherboard put in and I also put in the noxia fans. So now I wanted to plug in the
power supply and there was the next hurdle because on the motherboard you have a 24 pin
power connector and a 4 pin power connector and the funny part is that the 200 watts power supply
it had a 20 pin plus an 8 pin so it was not compatible at all but after I looking around a lot
I found this retailer from I think Taiwan that sold these kind of 8 pin to 4 pins connector
so and I read up on it and it's pretty much an 8 pin is two sides of the connector so you could
go from 8 to 2 4 without any problems you could put an 8 into a 4 if you just put it in the right
place and they are actually notched in a way so you can't really force it in in the correct way
but it was other components at the end of the connector so I couldn't really get it in without
having this kind of a bridge and then I was looking at the 24 pins and was thinking okay how
can I use a 20 pins in a 24 pin so I read up on that as well and the extra 4 pins there
is just a 12 volt connector extra for the board so you could connect and 20 pin to a 24 pin
as long as you don't use the full power of the CPU and so I wanted to try that out I haven't
really got the first connector yet so I tried to get the other one in and I realized that cable
was too short now I have bought an extension cable to the server as well in order to get that
connector so there is a bunch of things that is in the mail waiting to be shipped out to me in order
to get my server built up and running so what I have learned from this experience is that I need
to figure out what kind of cables actually come with the mounting hardware and also figure out
what kind of motherboard is actually supported and probably use those kind of things instead of
going with these kind of odd choices and another thing was also that the front panel connector
was just one large brick with a bunch of connectors in it but it isn't really that bad because those are
just like on-off switches and like leds and so on the worst thing you can do is actually burn out
led on the front panel so I'm not really worried about that but there were no pins that really
matched that connector but I could push it in over one of the front panel connector pins it was
fewer pins than it was in that connector but I think they are pretty much stabilized where they
are placed so I hope that it will work so that's another thing I need to figure out if I actually
can get the front panel connector to work or if I need to just bridge a pin or something like
that to get the server up and running but I don't really need the extra leds I don't really need a power
power button or anything like that it's not that important because the server will pretty much
be on 24-7 but it would be nice to get those working as well and I think in the future I will
replace this motherboard with an ITX Mini instead so I actually have the right kind of board for
this kind of chassis but looking that up on AliExpress or something like that and figuring out
a correct CPU that works with a right board and then finding a static solution for the cooling
so I can't really have a thin one with a fan because then you will have a fan that lies against the
lid of the board so you pretty much need to just have a cooling solution without a fan so that is
something I need to figure out as well so there is a bunch of things to think about when it comes
to building server chassis so maybe next time when I buy a server I might look at the pre-built
because it's a lot of work and I have built a lot of computers in my life but usually it's just
plug and pray you just pick some components that you know works together and then you put it into
a chassis and you have a lot of space to put it in but when it comes to these one new servers
your space constrained and then everything becomes a lot more complicated but that's the fun part
as well if it was easy it would be as fun I think so I have a lot of think about and if you have
any comments please leave them and I will read them later
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