EDIT:
Late November 2009, after the pc had been in work for 2 years I felt it was time for some serious renewing.. Clean some dust, cut some plastic, bend some metal, cut and solder some wires, replace some parts and get more storage.

This new version is found on page 2, posted Wed Mar 17, 2010 and later.
New pics up Sep 22, 2010.


After several weeks of reading, planning, thinking, buying, driving, waiting, lapping, cutting, drilling, bleeding, soldering and lots of blood, sweat and tears I can finally present my new workstation and file-server. It's not yet completed, but here's an preview. It's V.0.8Beta. The previous Betas was a closed invitational only

The parts so far:
Antec P182 with 2 Tricool fans
Corsair HX620W
Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, rev 1.1
Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, stepping G0, Lapped
Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme, Lapped, with Coin
Arctic Silver 5
Gainward GeForce 8500 GT 512 MB
BenQ DW1640
Samsung Spinpoint T133 HD401LJ
Nexus D12SL-12 BW * 2
Noctua NF-S12-1200 * 2
Akasa AK-FC-06SL
+ 2 components I'm still waiting for.

Enough talk, here is some pictures to start with, but I'm not a photographer.. More will follow.

2 pictures of the front with different lightning.


Inside:


No problem to get the panel back on:

Very pretty,

What two parts are you still waiting for? And did you run into any major troubles while building?

How have you made the intake front grill?

Luca

Thank you. No, nothing I would call problem, but lot of research of what parts to use and planning how to do it.

Here's a preview of one of the main part missing:




I didn't know what to use for the grill, but planned to go to Ikea and buy a office trashcan or something like that when I remembered that I had some old hifi speakers in the basement. It's the speakers front

It's actually no screws or anything that holds it now, It's very solid, but maybe I will use some screws later.

That's a very nice mod.
Did you not install the DVD drive all the way in on purpose?

smart thing with the DVDRW actually, as the overhang from the case is like 3/4"...

Thanks!
Yes, it's on purpose, the tray is more accessable in the front and it makes some more room inside.

I was able to finish V. 1.0 yesterday!
The main colors inside are now blue, red and black. Hate the yellow Gigabyte E-Sata cables..

Changelog:
Installed the Giabyte E-Sata cables, but sleeved black
The cables for the Usb ports on the back also black
Removed the AC'97 plug from the front-audio cable

The pc looks like it's finished, but I have more planned. Stay tuned!

Version 2.0 !

Added:
8 Samsung 500 GB Sata
Promise Supertrak EX8350, Sata Raid.

The Samsung 400 GB will be for the OS and the 8 500GB in Raid6.

First are 2 pictures of the modification behind the top fan.

Then a pre v. 2.0 picture with all the harddrives installed. The lenghts of the powercables and the numbers of connectors was just perfect! I had to add only one custommade powercable. Without the Sata cables installed you can hardly see that there are 9 harddrives!

Last some pictures of version 2.0. The pc is much nicer in real life, blame the camera and the person behind the camera..

I still have som details to finish and 2 small modifications so there will be an v. 2.5 or v. 3.0

Btw, thank you for this great forum and inspiration like the projects from Wibla, The.Jackal, Konnetikut, falcon26 etc

I welcome any comments, what do you think?





Pre V. 2.0


Version 2.0

Looks good, very clean considering. I gave up on my P180 when I got more than 6 drives. Getting all the SATA connections to look clean is a real PITA.

Very clean setup.
Thanks

what temps are you getting?

That's VERY nice for the number of drives you have in there.

I've been finishing v. 3.0. More on that later, if you want to see..

First I installed Xp and after several hours of formating and updating Xp with all the hotfixes, drivers and rebooting I downloaded a file from a manufactores official website what contained a virus! So all the hours for nothing. Have a antivirus program, but better safe than sorry so will format and reinstall everthing.. Argh..

Ran Prime95 with 4 cores for 50 minutes, stock clocking, temps are 46 - 43 - 43 - 43 Cº. Every core fluctates 1-2 degrees.

Nice!

very nice cabling!

Version 3.0 and supposedly the final version is finished! I bought the first parts for this pc 27. august and I'm more than ready to put the pc to work.

My workstation and fileserver:


Changelog from v. 2.0:
Added 8 Leds in the front for each Raid-HD.
Connected the Rpm-wire for the 3 fans controlled by the fancontroller to its separate fanheader on the motherboard.

Then all the final parts are:
Case: Antec P182
Power: Corsair HX620W
Mainboard: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4, rev 1.1
Ram: 2 x 1GB Corsair TWIN2X2048-6400C4
Cpu: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600, stepping G0, Lapped
Cooler: Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme, Lapped, with Coin
Thermal paste: Arctic Silver 5
Graphics: Gainward GeForce 8500 GT 512MB Fanless
Dvd +- RW: BenQ DW1640
HD for OS: Samsung Spinpoint T133 HD401LJ 400GB
Raidcontroller: Promise SuperTrak EX8350
HD for Raid6: 8 x Spinpoint T166 HD501LJ 500GB
Fan, Cpu and front top: 2 x Nexus D12SL-12 BW
Fan, front center and bottom: 2 x Noctua NF-S12-1200
Fan, back and top exhaust: 2 x Antec Tricool
Fancontroller: Akasa AK-FC-06SL
Other parts: Cable ties, leds, ledholders, resistors, wires, solder, metalgrill, fanheader connectors, shrinktubes etc and if I did not tell you, lots of cable ties..

I have because of the Raidcontroller and its Ram bought a UPS, Powerware 5110 1000VA.

Frontpicture with custom fan, leds and fancontroller:


I have spent much time testing different Leds and resistors to get the Leds not to bright. It's very nice, but of course it's no real practical use I guess.


Inside, very few differences from v. 2.0. Just added 3 fanheaders and the cable for the Leds from the Raid-controller. Don't forget that there's lots of cables, E-Sata, Usb, Sata, power, audio, cable for leds, fans etc.


Again many cables and cable ties, but the panel is no problem to get back on:


Able to check the fans Rpm


I'm extremely happy with the pc. Have not been able to test it so much yet, but for me it's very fast and quiet. And heavy..
I have not overclocked it and will probably not yet. I just need a very stable pc, the Quad is already a overkill for my use. It will mostly be controlled by Remote Desktop.
Btw, it took approx 32 hours to initialize the Raid6 and then several hours to format the 3TB drive..

As always, I love to get some comments and feel free to ask any questions.

I was taking a fast look through this thread as I'm going to bed soon. But what I saw from it, it was among the cleanest cable management I'd ever seen especially the red s-ata cables! Why do you use 8 harddrives? and what do you think of the buzz whining acpects of the hx620?

Very nice rig! like your hd suspension almost looks cleaner then the Solo!

Thanks! Why 8 drives for the Raid? Well.. File-server, more harddrives, more storage. Easy.

So far I have not noticed any buzz from the Psu.

No more comments or questions about my rig that probably weights 1 metric tonn?

It looks good The plastic fan covers serve no good purpose though!

Panter- did you mount a fan at the front of the P182, at the bottom? I mean in front of the lower hard drive cage, presumably, blowing across the 4 drives mounted at the bottom.

I'm building a rig with a P182, it's going to have 4 drives and I've been going back and forth as to how to lay them into the P182....all four at the bottom, 2 in the bottom, 2 in the middle...some number in 5.25 bays... etc.

Curious if you added a fan at the front of the 182 to compliment the fan that lives in between that bay and the PSU assuming such a mounting is possible without really going nuts with the Dremel

My first batch of parts should arrive tomorrow...

Luminair, "plastic fan covers"? Do you mean the 2 doors in the front?

jedimaster1138, there is no fan in front of the lower hard drive cage, just the one in between. I saw it maybe could be possible to fit a fan in front, but I did not try or gave it very much attention. I guess the closed "tunnell" with the fan and the Psu-fan will create a good airflow.

Good luck with your new parts.

question, whats that thing you used to mount your hdd in the 5.25" bays? I have 1 IDE hdd but I want to move it away because I think its blocking airflow for my video card. So its either ditch the drive or move it up.

PS, your post was the first post I saw in this forum and it inspired me to run my cables behind my case too ahah. Considering if I should cut holes in the case too. Only stupid thing is that my seasonic s12 power cable is too short so I can't run it behind the case.

Can you com do my cables?

How did you manage to do the LED's? Did you use the pinouts from the RAID card, and just build your own LED circuitry?

zorrt, it's O-rings plumbers use. 75 mm. I think it's not used in new installations anymore, but plumbers kan order them for repair of old systems.
It's very stable and others have uses this for years without the rubber to break.

Nice to think I inspired someone. I got much of my inspiration from other prosject at this forum.

Turas, sure. Just pay me well..

Nick Geraedts, I made a custom cable with a connector attached to the Led pins on the Raid card. Actually very easy, but I spent some time to built the connector and test the cable. The hardest part was to find the correct leds and resistors so the leds did not shine to bright.

Would that happen to be the black sleeved cable running under the RAID card? I was thinking of doing something similar with my setup, but haven't got around to it yet.

No, that's the front audio cable.
I will try to to take a picture, but it's not much to see..

I thought it was something like that. I'll have a look around for something like that around. Thanks!