Building a Server Part 2 - More Changes to Plan

I made a few decisions after going to Micro Center that changed the plan quite a bit.

Case

Instead of server mounting, which I think would take a ridiculous amount of space on my rack, I thought about getting a NAS case.

I looked at the Jonsobo N2 (on Amazon too) and the Jonsobo N3 (also on Amazon too). These seemed really cool, but there were a few problems. First, both were pretty expensive (> $100), but the real deal breaker was the use of a SFX power supply. I already had a pretty good one from Micro Center, but it was ATX. I didn’t want to bother to research SFX power supplies, because a) from the admittedly low amount of research (looking at one corsair model), they seemed much more expensive then just an ATX one, and b) pure laziness. The next case that I saw people on reddit recommend was the Fractal Node 304, a classic. After scrolling through a few reddit threads, and watching a few videos on it, namely this and this, I was hooked. It looked minimalistic, decently small, elegant, and supported ATX PSUs. Best of all, it was only ~$100 on B&H Photo and similar on Newegg. I eventually found this deal on B&H that was refurbished, but saved $20. This seemed like a decent way to save money with not many tradeoffs, so I went for it. There was also really fast shipping somehow as well, which is a plus.

Motherboard

The plan for the motherboard hadn’t changed at Micro Center, but when I got home to track the order, it showed canceled. This was odd, because I hadn’t canceled it. That’s when I got the the product page, and it showed “canceled.” Well, I figured that I would have to go way overbudget, because the only other motherboards that were on pcpartpicker with good enough specs were ~$200, and I had designed the rest of the build on a $130 motherboard. As a sort of last hope, I did a quick search on Newegg with all the filters that I wanted, like pcie 5, DDR5, 2 M.2 slots, and most importantly <$150. Suprisingly, there was one result, a Z690 motherboard, which was also $140. It was open box and no returns, but YOLO, so I sent it.

Cooler

My friend commented that the 14th gen Intel boards get pretty hot, and asked what cooler I was going to use. With some benchmarks, it seemed that the AXP 90, even the full (copper) version, was not going to be enough. Since my case was a ton bigger, I just picked up the OG, the Thermalright Peerless Assassin 120 SE. It was $35, and very good.

Case arrives

Fast forward to when my case arrives, and I look at the manual. I see the page below: ![[IMG_7995.jpg]] Note the “CPU Cooler height.” The Assassin, however, is 155mm tall: I could do it, but that would require removing one drive caddy. I didn’t want that limitation, so I started hunting for AIO’s and LP coolers. The case supports up to 140mm x 140mm radiators, but apparently those are really uncommon and 120mm x 120mm radiators probably won’t cut it. After a bit of digging, I found the Thermalright AXP 120. It seemed to perform better than most other coolers and I prayed that it would fit in the mobo.

This was written a long time after the events, so sorry about that. I will write new posts as fast as I am able.