{"id":354,"date":"2010-10-27T10:08:12","date_gmt":"2010-10-27T10:08:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poojanwagh.opalstacked.com\/techblog\/desk\/my-windows-home-server-atom-d510-build\/"},"modified":"2010-10-27T12:36:51","modified_gmt":"2010-10-27T12:36:51","slug":"my-windows-home-server-atom-d510-build","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tech.poojanblog.com\/blog\/desk\/my-windows-home-server-atom-d510-build\/","title":{"rendered":"My Windows Home Server Atom D525 Build"},"content":{"rendered":"

My portwell machine finally died. No idea what\u2019s wrong with it. It was never super-reliable to begin with. It would shut down randomly (I presumed due to a flaky power connector\u2014but now I \u2018m not so sure). Anyway, I decided to go ahead and build my own Atom D510 PC. This would not normally make much sense financially. I am an MSDN member, and get the OS for free (and I\u2019d use FreeBSD\/FreeNAS otherwise). But, to be honest, I did it just because I wanted to, not because it optimizes any specific cost or performance metric.<\/p>\n

What follows is a photo diary of how I built this machine, including two external hard drives that I stuck inside the computer case (to save space).<\/p>\n

I started with this Gigabyte D525 motherboard\/CPU combo<\/a> (NewEgg used to have it cheaper, but now Amazon has it for the same price<\/a> with free shipping; I paired it with 4GB of DDR3<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\"Atom<\/a>\"Atom<\/a><\/p>\n

The reason I picked this motherboard is that it has the dual-core D525, and it has a total of 4 SATA connections. Two are on the Intel chipset and one is on a Gigabyte chipset.<\/p>\n

I picked up this case for about $20 on Amazon (it\u2019s now $30)<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Atom<\/a>\"Atom<\/a><\/p>\n

This was the perfect case, because it was cheap. It didn\u2019t come with a fan, but I don\u2019t need one due to the Atom\u2019s low power draw. (The Gigabyte does have a CPU fan on it, and connectors for a system fan if you want one.) <\/p>\n

The case included a bunch of extra screws, including standoffs; here\u2019s the motherboard sitting on the standoffs:<\/p>\n

\"Atom<\/a><\/p>\n

I also bought this reasonably-priced efficient power supply (now out of stock)<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Atom<\/a>\"Atom<\/a><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t want to over-size the supply, since the power efficiency tends to drop as the power increases (unless you need the extra power). If it had been available for cheaper, I\u2019d go with a 180W rather than the 250W. This was the cheapest 80-PLUS power supply I could find.<\/p>\n

One hitch between the motherboard and case was that the case\u2019s cut-outs for ports (USB, PS\/2 keyboard\/mouse, VGA) didn\u2019t line up correctly:<\/p>\n

\"Atom<\/a><\/p>\n

Luckily, the Gigabyte also came with its own cut-out that fit perfectly in the case (the case\u2019s cut-out was removable):<\/p>\n

\"Atom<\/a><\/p>\n

Some reviewers complained that the power supply\u2019s cables were too short. They were just perfect for my use:<\/p>\n

\"Atom<\/a><\/p>\n

I stashed a couple internal (IDE+SATA) hard drives within the case. I also bought a couple SATA to eSATA cables, and stuck a couple external SATA hard drives within the case (just sitting loosely) to save space:<\/p>\n

\"Atom<\/a><\/p>\n

Windows Home Server \u201cVail\u201d runs pretty smoothly on this machine. I did, in the end, buy another 1 TB hard drive to replace one of the 250 GB hard drives I had in there. I\u2019m very happy with the way this machine turned out.<\/p>\n

More pictures:<\/p>\n

\"Atom<\/a>\"Atom<\/a>\"Atom<\/a>\"Atom<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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Like<\/a><\/div>\n
Unlike<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My portwell machine finally died. No idea what\u2019s wrong with it. It was never super-reliable to begin with. It would shut down randomly (I presumed due to a flaky power connector\u2014but now I \u2018m not so sure). Anyway, I decided to go ahead and build my own Atom D510 PC. This would not normally make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[125,98,117,120,118,121,119,124,122,123],"class_list":["post-354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-desk","tag-80-plus","tag-atom","tag-d525","tag-ddr3","tag-gigabyte","tag-nas","tag-sata","tag-vail","tag-whs","tag-windows-home-server"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech.poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech.poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech.poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech.poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech.poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tech.poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355,"href":"https:\/\/tech.poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354\/revisions\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tech.poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech.poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tech.poojanblog.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}