Building the Perfect PC

Final Words

Plan to devote a weekend to building and configuring the SOHO server. Actual assembly takes only an hour or two; the rest of the time will be occupied with installing and configuring the server operating system.

Installing software

Well, we thought the system was complete and ready to go. We were wrong. Almost every time we build a system without a floppy drive—as Intel and Microsoft keep telling us to do—that decision bites us in the butt. This time was no exception. As it turned out, we needed a floppy drive not just once, but twice—once to update the BIOS, and a second time to install the RAID drivers during the OS install.

Note

To download RAID drivers, visit the Intel web site and search for S875WP1. When you locate the main page for the motherboard, click on the link for drivers. Specify the OS for which you need drivers and download the appropriate ones. For Linux, the driver you want is the Promise PDC20319 SATA RAID Driver for Red Hat Linux 8.0, filename RH8_RAID_PROMISE.EXE.

Most people would probably just install an $8 floppy disk drive and have done with it. Not us. We’re ornery. We weren’t about to mess up our prettily dressed cables and stick an obsolete piece of technology into our shiny new server. Not us. No way.

So we did what we usually do. We popped the side panel, laid the floppy disk drive on top of the case, and connected the data cable and power cable just long enough to get done what we needed to do. Once we’d updated the BIOS and fed the Promise PDC20319 SATA RAID Driver to Red Hat Linux 8.0 setup, we shut down the system, disconnected the floppy drive, and put the side panel back on.

The good news is that the server works flawlessly with Red Hat Linux 8.0, and that’s what we’re running on it right now. The bad news is that RH8 is an aging and unsupported distribution, and as we wrote this Intel did not provide drivers for any later version.

We were deciding what to do when we were run over by the oncoming Deadline Train, so we didn’t have time to explore the many possibilities. Intel may update their drivers. We may be able to use the Intel RH8 drivers with a later version. Promise provides Linux drivers, although they warn that those drivers are for use only with unmodified products supplied directly by Promise, and not with embedded controllers supplied by motherboard manufacturers. Still, they may work. Finally, there may be other distributions that support the S875WP1 natively. We’re confident everything will work out. If not, we can always install Windows.

Possible future upgrades

Although we like our SOHO server overall, this is one seriously loud system. You won’t want it sitting on your desk. You won’t want it sitting under your desk. In fact, you may not want it in the same room with you. It’s loud enough to be noticeable from across the room, and to intrude on normal conversation from a few feet away.

That’s not Intel’s fault. This is a server system, intended to sit in a server closet. As is proper when designing a server case, Intel gave great weight to system cooling and little consideration to noise level. And boy, does this system have good cooling. In the final stages of assembly, we had the server lying on its side on a table with a book two or three feet away. The rear case fan was blowing directly toward the book, and the book’s pages were flipping in the breeze. After running the system for several hours, we found that the exhaust air was only a few degrees warmer than ambient, which is an excellent indication of good airflow and good cooling.

Still, we wish the server were a bit quieter. We may at some point replace the power supply with an Antec EPS12V TruePower unit, which should reduce the noise level significantly. We may also replace the rear case fan and the hard drive cooling fan with quieter units. Finally, the CPU cooler fan probably contributes more noise than any other component. We’ll probably replace the HSF unit with a low-noise third-party unit.

For updated component recommendations, commentary, and other new material, visit http://www.hardwareguys.com/guides/soho-server.html.