Built when Netflix first took away password sharing. Thanks for the heads up Netflix! Would not want to start this project now 😂

Edit: adding temp and specs


I9 11900k Z590I Vision D ITX mobo 64gb memory The 16x lane is bifurcated to run: Intel a310 & Lsi 9305 16e into a hp dl380
Drives are 10x 14 tb wdd in raidz1, 6 256gb sata ssds in a pair of 3 wide mirrors for special vdev metadata, a 512gb nvme for read cache, and a 64gb optane for slog
All that storage these days would require a morgage
For those worried about temps. The cpu never goes past the 80s when being ran hard, and drive temps are comfortably in the 40s

Oh, and if anyone is curious on specs. This is my old gaming rig but it’s: I9 11900k Z590I Vision D ITX mobo 64gb memory The 16x lane is bifurcated to run: Intel a310 & Lsi 9305 16e into a hp dl380
A little bit of airflow can make a huge difference. If it works it works. I think the doubters have just never experimented.
You left in your IP no0b! Now I’m gonna pwn your server with my super hacker skillz xoxoxoxo
P.S. That’s is one hell of a setup! I am surprised how well ventilated it is
I just sent a ddos attack to his ip. In an unrelated event my doorbell camera has stopped working?
Means you got the wrong ip…the correct one is 127.0.0.1
127.0.0.1 sweet 127.0.0.1

Bet it’s quiet as fuck tho
Super quiet, and had been running non stop for over a year no with no problems 😊 also that i9 runs super hot. When it was in my lil gaming rig it was always running up near 90. So retiring to the server had been much more gentle on it, lol
Always in 90s? Did you remember the thermal paste on reinstall? Lol
It just had a very undersized cooler at the time (pics of case are hiding here somewhere lol). It would idle normally, but load put it near throttle. Moved to the 9800x3d though in the same case and that performs like a dream
And it isn’t thermally throttling? If not, that’s awesome. Have you ever taken a sound meter with a spectrum analyzer and seen if there’s any frequencies you can try to kill?
With the big tower cooler it now has in the server it barely touches 80c under load. As for sound, I can take a recording when I get home later this week if anyone’s are still interested
The reason I bring that up, is I have a little knowledge in acoustics and just wondered if your pc was putting out more lower frequency noise than that wood is realistically able to absorb. So, not personally interested, as all projects like this are case by case (ha, no pun intended), and moreso just if you wanted to fiddle with it more, like adding a piece of slate or sheet of rubber to the exterior or something.
I’m CURIOUS what it sounds like, but I doubt a phone recording or speaker is gonna be worth much to satisfy my dirty nerdy needs.
what is that “thing” on top of the desktop chassis? a wifi antenna?
The one I have that looks like that is bluetooth.
not op, but yeah looks like. my old gaming tower is about to get debian installed and go on perma server duty, and the onboard wifi has an antenna like this, which may let me leave it in the garage.
Oof, do NOT run a server over WIFI. If plain old Ethernet is not an option, get something like this which, no, is not cheap but will offer a MUCH better experience.
Wifi is just there as a backup. Everything is hardwired
That is way too expensive.
I got a white, flat Ethernet cable and stuck it to the bottom of the baseboard using a very thin double-sided tape. Totally invisible and super cheap.
The cable: https://a.co/d/09GMOz5k The tape: https://a.co/d/0hhCrXHP
I mean, that’s why I specified only if Ethernet was not an option.
Brother I been doing this for 30 years. One size never fits all.
And I’ve been doing it for over 40. WIFI may be acceptable for certain applications, but it’s never the best solution.
And I’m nearby for moral support! Yay doing stuff for decades woo!
Perfect is the enemy of good (enough).
WiFi is never the best solution? Are you fucking stupid?
Well, I’m not the one planning to host a server over WIFI, so…
I have a 2 story house (plus basement). I use Moca 2.5. House was built with coax to every room for cable TV. Everything that need high data use (tvs, gaming consoles, pc) gets hardwired. Everything else is on the two mesh routers.
Just remember to put a MOCA filter on the line coming into your house from the street. Or disconnect it entirely, if you’re not using the cable connection. Otherwise you’ll be sending all your Internet traffic straight out the cable line to all of your neighbors.
That works too.
How are the temps?
*hella
If it’s just a media server that spends 99.5% of its life idling, temps might not actually be that bad.
They usually do transcoding when you watch a movie or so. Depending on hardware that may heat it up a bit. I guess if it would have heating problems then OP would have resolved that already though.
All of those hard drives will produce quite a bit of heat just sitting idle.
They won’t really produce any heat if they sleep properly. Also that should help them last quite a bit longer.
But enclosed in a box without much airflow and those temps are going to creep up over time. And take even longer to cool down. Hopefully there’s fans in the bottom or side. Because one exhaust is not great for even just the heat from those hard drives.
I think the best way to handle airflow out is to have a turn or two on the intake/exhausts for the noise to get trapped. I personally just put mine in my basement though. That limits the sound pretty well.
I personally built a server house a couple hundred feet away from my mansion.
I’d also put mine in the basement, but I live in a flat.
Yes
Yeah, seems a second fan would help with air flow into/out of the case. Depending on how air tight everything is when it’s closed.
There are actuality two fans. There’s an intake on the bottom full cold air, and the top is exhaust. I posted temps if you wanna see how it is at full tilt
Makes sense, looks like a good build then.
Thanks! Has been alot of fun playing with
Added them in another comment, but I’ll put them here to. This is while I have plex and frigate running with tdarr rencoding 8 files into av1 at a time

I assume that’s all sound proofing. How well does it work? And like the other commenter asked, I’m curious how it affects the temperature
The sound proofing helps a ton. This sits in my living room and I can barely hear it. There’s also a second fan hiding on the bottom for intake, while the top is just exhaust. Keeps temps nice and cool
That looks like the Fractal Define 6 case which already has built in soundproofing. I have mine on a desk doing the exact same job with even more drives and I don’t even hear it from a couple feet away.
Edit: actually not a Define 6 after looking closer. Mine doesn’t have those weird latches on the side panels despite otherwise looking identical.
Yeah its one of the ones that I think went off the define 6 design, I’ve got a Corsair case with a similar design/layout but no latches, I had to do a closer look too.
It’s a really old corsair case I picked up for free. It’s also packed with noctua fans 😂
Picked this one up for $20!
Packed with no-name fans, which I ended up pulling. My media cabinet below the TV has a PC and some other gear, so I have a temp sensor and fan controller hooked up to those no-names now right in there. Works great!
Oh sweet! It’s such a great case. $20 is a bargin
how it affects the temperature
positively… 🔥
Oi. I had mine in my hall closet, looks a lot like yours, including the Noctua cooler and stack of hard drives. In spite of adding a vent to the top of the closet door, and a big gap at the floor it still got too hot. I ended up moving it to the spare bedroom.
You gotta do push pull. There’s another fan on the bottom of the cabinet pulling in fresh, while all the hot air is directed up and out. Tennis are more stable then my gaming rig sitting 5 feet away in the open air.
What part of the world calls temperatures “tennis”? Sounds like something the Aussies would come up with
My dang autocorrect last night refused to use the word temps 😂 caught it on most of my replies, but it slipped past a few times
Hahah. Excellent.
You used it so many times that I was sure its some weird slang word somewhere. It is now, I’ve tagged you as “tennis”!
I shall now my known as Sir Hamknight of Tennis 😂❤️🎾
Indeed good Sir!
I don’t get this setup. First you install a lot of sound proofing, then you install one fan that has to run near light speed to keep that computer cool.
I have an intake on the bottom pulling cold air, and the top is for exhaust. Both are 3000 rpm fans and together keep the tennis real low. I added the current tennis in a comment while it’s running full tilt
Are the fans quiet too?
They are! I also have a small sheet of foam on the wall behind the cabinet too to catch any sound leaking out, so all I get is a small hum
See if you can find a Monsterlabo case. They went out of business, but their fanless cases are all heatsink so zero noise.
I picked up the itx model and overspecd the power supply so that the power supply fan never turns on either.

That’s crazy! That would be such a fun system to play with for a silent transcoding setup. Thanks for sharing 😊
The only negative is with the case installed, you don’t know if it is powering on when you hit the button, because there is no fan noise or HDD noise (I used SSDs). So you have to peek in the top vent to see if mobo lights flicker. 😀
Is there high tennis?
Lol. I mistyped tennis so many times 😂
I very much agree with you - I would use more fans on the outside enclosure, possibly behind more barriers so the sound is never direct (it has to bounce off walls before getting out). Eg a vent cover on the outside or simply vents mounted inside the case (not directly on the outside hole).
(Possibly also keeping the positive pressure inside the enclosure for dust control.)However there might be an argument about HDD noise that is fairly particular to the drive models.
Maybe op just doesn’t like noisy HDDs & isn’t that bothered by fans (I centrally am more bothered by enterprise HDD noise than the noise of quality fans), so the solution is HDD-noise oriented (and I think it works in that regard).(And yes, I do pick my HDDs by noise too.)
I think even just installing an intake would do wonders for this setup. A hole cut with a filter would be good, an additional fan directing air at the bottom would be even better. I’m assuming this PC case has some kind of intake / exhaust. Right now it’s prob just recirculating its own air. That single fan on the prob isn’t doing that much.
The intake is probably in the bottom.
This guy got it! Love you man
Yea exactly I mean for the outer case prob needs its own intake
We just have the file server in another room and use a mini itx pc slaved to the tv as a player with a bequiet psu
I hate the sound of Disk Drives spinning up and clicking
They remind me of a coffee machine
If you can hear it, it’s most likely working. Or at least that’s what I’ve convinced myself after listening to them spinning up for the past 15 years.
Bruh your gonna need a blower so loud it totally obliterates that sound protection.
The whole setup is really quiet actually! The cabinet has an intake fan hiding on the bottom, while the top fan is just exhaust. Then all the fans in the system are built for front to top exhaust. I posted temps while the system is running full tilt of you were curious
What OS are you running?
I’m currently running truenas on it. Simple and free
Had to check if this was the memes category.
Posted temps and specs if you were curious 😉 guessing you didn’t think I had more fans in the cabinet
Here’s mine : )

Oooo, cute mini system! I’ve always wanted to start a cluster with tiny towers like that
Damn, you have enough HDDs to host the whole netflix there.
Theres currently 110 tb of usable space. Got a bunch of 14tb drives when you could shuck them for 150 each
Good lord, 114!
And here I thought I was doing something at 10-20 TB.
You go!
Oh man, treat those drives well. The last 18TB drive I bought a few years back went up $500 in price!
Very cool, I have a similar set up and I can advice you that it will overheat if you close that cabinet
Not if there were a second fan hiding in there 😉
Excellent heat retention! Doubles as a stove top
There’s actually two fans built into the cabinet! Pulls more fresh air then if it were outside of it. 😎❄️
For anybody not doing generative AI with it and not running massive loads on it, if you’re going to use an old gaming PC as a home server, at least replace the graphics card with a cheap one with no fans or use the integrated graphics on your CPU (something I believe pretty much all consumer CPUs of the last two decades have) and underclock the CPU if you don’t need full processing power since even small reductions in clock speed can significantly reduce the maximum temperature.
I thought so too, but turns out not all of the CPUs have onboard graphics and the HDMI port on my motherboard was a lie. Although the graphics card does help with transcoding.
I know for sure Intel server CPUs (for example, Xeons) don’t have integrated graphics and somebody else mentioned that many Ryzen CPUs don’t either.
That said, I’m not sure if they need integrated graphics to have hardware decoding for certain video codecs (though it makes sense that those things come together). Personally when I was looking into buying a mini-PC to transform into a media server for my living room, I made sure to check in the CPU specs if it had both integrated graphics (as it’s connected to my TV) and hardware decoding for the most recent codecs (I ended up going for a mini-PC with an N100 processor, since it has all that plus its power consumption is pretty low with a TDP of 6W so I can leave it always on as it also doubles as homeserver).
or use the integrated graphics on your CPU (something I believe pretty much all consumer CPUs of the last two decades have)
many ryzen CPUs don’t have integrated graphics. I think it might have become baseline from just ryzen 6000? but plenty of very still good chips were released before that. I wouldn’t trade them for an intel.
and underclock the CPU if you don’t need full processing power
underclock and undervolt
underclock and undervolt
If I’m not mistake only hobbyist level motherboards let you control the voltages and if one knows enough to get one of those they probably don’t need the advice I gave.
Also it’s hard to end up with a non-working or unstable configuration with underclocking, whilst it’s pretty easy to do so with undervoltage.
That said, for those who know what they’re doing, your suggestion definitely delivers lowers temperatures than underclocking alone though at the risk of a less stable system (which can be ameliorated with proper stress testing).
I posted specs and temps if you were curious 😊
The CPU usage looks high, mines usually around 3% per core. 🤔
What app are you using to see that chart, looks like mobile?
It’s in the middle of rencoding my library, should finish at some point and return to low usage
That makes sense then. Thought it was avg usage
Yea it’s mobile. Away from home for a bit 😅
What app though?
Oh! Just the stock webpage
Oh duh, I see the IP
I want to point out that for a media server, OP’s GPU is excellent.
Sparkle ARC cards are the way to go for sure. The fans are a pain in the ass on Linux, though. They like to start and stop a lot.
I actually have a Mini-PC with an N100 CPU and no dedicated GPU as media server and it uses very little CPU (less than 20%) whilst playing 1080p video even with a torrent server over a wireguard VPN running on the background.
You don’t really need much CPU or GPU for playing or streaming videos from compress video files as long as you have hardware decoding on either processing unit (just make sure it implements all the way up to the AV1 coded).
You only need lots of CPU or GPU power if the codec you’re decoding from or encoding to is not implemented in hardware since in that case it will use software decoding or encoding so it’s down to raw CPU or GPU power.
In fact if all you want is a media server that solution I have is probably one of the best ones, mainly because it uses very little power (tops at 25W, usually much less) and runs silent, which is why I can have it in my living room using it as a media player connected to my TV, and with a wireless remote people can’t really tell it’s a PC since it just looks and works like a store bought media player rather than one I put together myself.
However that option means buying new stuff, and I can see the value in using old hardware if you have it around, plus the old hardware will still likely be more powerful so you can also use it for more demanding stuff or just more stuff at the same time, which is why I didn’t suggest it and instead just suggested some tweaks to make that old hardware consume less and make less noise.














