I am about 1 week away from finishing my custom carbon fiber case. It started about 6 months ago with the goal of building a powerful server in a sff case. It needed to be quiet and also keep cool. This is something that the folks on the sff forum deal with all the time. I was able to get a lot of ideas from this forum and felt that it would be good to share. Perhaps this project might help others with their builds.
The components consists of something a bit different from most of the builds on this forum. I needed to build a sff server that had a lot of high speed ethernet interfaces. It didn't need a discreet graphics card and that opened up some options for cooling and power.
I decided to go with the new supermicro xeon d skylake cpu. this is an embedded cpu with relatively low tdp (100w tdp). It has 16 physical cores and supports QAT for SSL acceleration. This server was designed to be used as a test and measurement tool that is able to generate very high data rates for 5G testing among other types of tests. It uses 128G of ddr4 2666 ram, 1 samsung 970 pro m.2 ssd, 4 x 10G ports (2 x sfp+ and 2 x 10GbaseT) and 4 x 1G plus an ILO port for remote headless management. All of these ports are built into the mb. I can manage this server remotely or if needed connect a keyboard and monitor up for console access. I use various hypervisors including vmware, kvm and openstack as the base os. I then install various VMs depending on the test case.
Because this new xeon d skylake processor uses a socket that is not that common, I needed to custom fabricate some mounting brackets for the noctua nh-L12S cpu cooler. This cooler is able to cool the server pretty good so far and remains relatively quiet. The case was originally design to be 90mm high but during the build wound up being only 85mm. Luckily the cooler still fits with about 2-3 mm of clearance from the top of the case.
The case was designed to be round at 13" in diameter. I wanted to design something a bit different from the normal rectangular box type cases. I also didn't want to have any screws connecting the pieces so it was designed with special magnets where ever possible. This included the solid carbon feet and the top cover. It also included the rear io plate for port access. I wanted it to be seamless but with easy access to all components.
I have been working with Larry from HDPlex for a while trying to get the 160ac/dc combo to work with this new mb. We haven't been successful yet but are still trying to get this combo to work. As a backup, I was able to get the Streacom fanless 240 psu to work. I needed to build a custom bracket to mount over the mb so that the front vandal switch would have enough clearance. Those of you that have gone down this path know that it is all about these little details! It becomes a matter of millimeters for just about every component.
The entire case was custom fabricated using a carbon fiber mold with special gold weave. I worked with a local company called common fibers out of seattle. They have been the main reason that this project has been able to proceed. I originally looked at companies like dragon plate to try and build this case but they didn't want to work with this type of form. I also looked into 3d carbon printing but they didn't have that carbon weave that I was shooting for.
After a lot of funky math, I think the volume would be appox. 7.28 liters. 13" diameter by 85mm (3.35") high. I am working on another project that will be kept to 1U and use a xeon sp 8160 cpu with custom water cooling. That will be 24 cores with dual port 100G nics (really need pci-e 4.0!) all in 1U. The big challenge will be to keep this beast quiet.
I should be able to post detailed pictures of the raptor in about 1 week when it is finished.
Thanks for the tips about posting and uploading images as this is my first try at it for sff forum.
jp
MOD EDIT: Merged multiple posts
The components consists of something a bit different from most of the builds on this forum. I needed to build a sff server that had a lot of high speed ethernet interfaces. It didn't need a discreet graphics card and that opened up some options for cooling and power.
I decided to go with the new supermicro xeon d skylake cpu. this is an embedded cpu with relatively low tdp (100w tdp). It has 16 physical cores and supports QAT for SSL acceleration. This server was designed to be used as a test and measurement tool that is able to generate very high data rates for 5G testing among other types of tests. It uses 128G of ddr4 2666 ram, 1 samsung 970 pro m.2 ssd, 4 x 10G ports (2 x sfp+ and 2 x 10GbaseT) and 4 x 1G plus an ILO port for remote headless management. All of these ports are built into the mb. I can manage this server remotely or if needed connect a keyboard and monitor up for console access. I use various hypervisors including vmware, kvm and openstack as the base os. I then install various VMs depending on the test case.
Because this new xeon d skylake processor uses a socket that is not that common, I needed to custom fabricate some mounting brackets for the noctua nh-L12S cpu cooler. This cooler is able to cool the server pretty good so far and remains relatively quiet. The case was originally design to be 90mm high but during the build wound up being only 85mm. Luckily the cooler still fits with about 2-3 mm of clearance from the top of the case.
The case was designed to be round at 13" in diameter. I wanted to design something a bit different from the normal rectangular box type cases. I also didn't want to have any screws connecting the pieces so it was designed with special magnets where ever possible. This included the solid carbon feet and the top cover. It also included the rear io plate for port access. I wanted it to be seamless but with easy access to all components.
I have been working with Larry from HDPlex for a while trying to get the 160ac/dc combo to work with this new mb. We haven't been successful yet but are still trying to get this combo to work. As a backup, I was able to get the Streacom fanless 240 psu to work. I needed to build a custom bracket to mount over the mb so that the front vandal switch would have enough clearance. Those of you that have gone down this path know that it is all about these little details! It becomes a matter of millimeters for just about every component.
The entire case was custom fabricated using a carbon fiber mold with special gold weave. I worked with a local company called common fibers out of seattle. They have been the main reason that this project has been able to proceed. I originally looked at companies like dragon plate to try and build this case but they didn't want to work with this type of form. I also looked into 3d carbon printing but they didn't have that carbon weave that I was shooting for.
After a lot of funky math, I think the volume would be appox. 7.28 liters. 13" diameter by 85mm (3.35") high. I am working on another project that will be kept to 1U and use a xeon sp 8160 cpu with custom water cooling. That will be 24 cores with dual port 100G nics (really need pci-e 4.0!) all in 1U. The big challenge will be to keep this beast quiet.
I should be able to post detailed pictures of the raptor in about 1 week when it is finished.
Thanks for the tips about posting and uploading images as this is my first try at it for sff forum.
jp
MOD EDIT: Merged multiple posts
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