For the time being there are only 5 drives installed, two fewer than my old file server. I’ve deliberately left plenty of room for expansion though. One PCI slot has been used (for the video card), leaving two PCI-e 16x slots, two PCI-e 1x slots and two PCI slots empty. There’s plenty of free drive bays, and I’m trying to source another 6×3.5″ drive cage which will fit into the space above the PSU.

With the extra cage, there should be enough room to fit up to fifteen hard drives fairly comfortably, although I doubt I’ll ever use that many at once. Ten is more realistic. I’ll be installing two more 1TB drives in a few weeks, and from there I’ll just add more drives when I need more space/redundancy.

From the (albeit limited) testing I’ve done so far, performance seems to be a bit better than the old server, so I’m fairly happy with the result.

A quick test run with the stock (low profile) Intel heatsink/fan installed showed less than stellar cooling performance. Core temp was reporting 80°c+ while running 4 threads of prime95 (small fft test) and that was running at stock clocks/voltage. The only other suitable cooler I had available was a Thermaltake Big Typhoon, which, although not the greatest 775 heatsink, got the temperatures back under control. I was able to overclock it to 3.45ghz (430×8) at 1.275v but decided for long term use to settle on 3.2ghz (400×8) at 1.25v.

It’s currently running nicely with XP installed, although it’s only able to see 3GB. I will eventually install Vista 64 bit on it, but for the moment I’m hesitant as I had some issues with the sound card running Vista 32 bit.