Building a Haswell nas

[flysolo]

Bitfenix prodigy case
Asrock z87e mini-itx
Core i7-4770T low voltage
GTX 670 2GB DirectCU mini

So.. my plan is to get rid of the synology diskstation and the windows home server I'm running today and replace it with this new machine. If it was only going to function as a NAS/simple server the Haswell board/cpu + gpu would be overkill(small understatement) but I also want to do some gaming and some work.

What do you think about trying to do one machine for everything?

Cpu cooling? It's the brand new 1150 socket but should work with 1155. On the last pc i built i only put a small heatsink but that was many many years ago, think it was a pentium2..

 

[pvolcko]

What diskstation you getting rid of? Might be interested in taking it off your hands when the time comes.

So long as you aren't trying to do some heavy load game while serving up HD streams to other devices in the house, you should be fine using one for everything.

 

[flysolo]

The DiskStation is a DS211. It was just a temporary solution after my last server crashed.

This is my first attempt at cooling the cpu. Pretty obscene

 

[Tony]

That is about the same size cooler that I'm running on my i7 960. Looks really large on an itx though. I'm running a full size ATX lol.

As for doing gaming, I dont' think this one will do it. Gaming is all about memory and graphics. Unless you are going to run an external graphics card, you may find your FPS is down a lot.

No matter, good luck with the build.

 

[flysolo]

I'm really a console guy when it comes to gaming so it's not the main thing but I hope it will run some games ok.

Ram is 16GB ddr3 1866mhz, should be plenty right?

Graphics card is asus geforce gtx 670 2gb direct cu mini... don't know much about it. But it fits in the case

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The cooler was going to fit but I wanted room for other stuff. This is what it looks like now

 

[Tony]

Puttin' her under water, nice. Can't wait to see some benchmarks on this one.

 

[flysolo]

Water is nice and the fans are very silent. Do you make the fans blow air into the box or suck it out? I have one fan in the bottom with a filter so I'm thinking this should be intake and everything else should suck air out?

Yesterday I got rid of my wired gb network, the board has built in AC wifi and I got the new Asus AC router, wireless at 1.4gb/s * Don't know if it's possible to reach those speeds in real life

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Tony, what do you use for benchmarking?

 

[Tony]

On your fans, you want to equal them out. You really dont' want positive pressure or negative pressure. Some say either of those are good, but I try to keep it equal.

And I have the Asus AC router, and it's awesome! Expensive, but awesome. The power is only turned half way up, and my daughter was able to connect to my network from 3 houses down. And this is country houses, so it's more like 5 in a neighborhood. And that is with the power only about half way up. It's great.

My primary that I used to use was Prime95 and MEM-Test. There are others, and I'm sure they are newer and better, but those two worked for me.

 

[flysolo]

wow thats cool! Been really happy with my old netgear wnr3500l but it was getting old and it was time to upgrade and the asus router looks great.

Pretty expensive like you say, only reason I can get this stuff is because my work gave me like a bonus that i can take out in computer stuff. They pay for the new computer, router and i also decided to get a MS Surface RT The smallest version but it's perfect for my needs

 

[Tony]

Yup, you will like this setup. And with teh small footprint, you can set that sucker under your TV with a wireless keyboard and mouse and do everything right from teh couch lol.