So For many years i’ve had an old RM server sitting under my bench, powered off, gathering dust inside and out. But no more – it’s time for it to either do something or be recycled. So, as a classic hoarder, i’m going to up cycle it rather than let a really good case go to waste.

RM Server Case

So the case is a “RM systembase TX” by Research Machines, which is actually a “Antec SX1040BII Performance Series II SOHO File Server” that’s been rebadged. Originally the spec would have been something like single or dual processors, sub 1GHz, but I can tell you that the RAM was PC6700, all 256MB of it (RM used to include that on the sticker on the back, that remains today). That also would have been top spec at the time. I vaguely remember there also being a a PCI SCSI card for the 18GB hard drives and the tape drive. The case actually supports EATX motherboards, and had 2*3bay removable hard drive caddies (one slot used by mandatory floppy disk drive – LOL), as well as 4*5+1/4in drives, it has (remaining) 3 case fans too.

But, in the past i had already “upgraded” the system. So out with that rubbish… I removed;

• MicroATM mobo with,
• P4 2GHz,
• 2*1GB RAM,
• IDE hard drive,
• IDE CD Drive (left in place but not connected),
• 3 random PCI ‘fast’ ethernet cards

and i had replaced the PSU to something nice too (500w OCTIGEN jobby).

old mobo

old mobo

removable hard drive cage

fans

PSU

and in with the new…. well, 2nd hand but new to me?

• HP xw4600 ATX motherboard,
• 2GB of PC2 6400 RAM,
• Intel Core2Duo processor E6550,
• brand new Arctic, Alpine 11 CPU cooler (with some light filing mod),
• 3 old hard SATA drives
  • 500GB Seagate,
  • 1TB Toshiba,
  • 1TB Western Digital Black,
• EVGA GEFORCE GTX 750Ti (kindly donated to me for folding purposes).

Awesome – so i start some CPU folding using my .deb package from a few posts ago and then i also install lm-sensors by;

sudo apt-get install lm-sensors 
sudo sensors-detect
sensors

Which gives me readings of 29deg for the GPU and 55/56 for the two CPU cores.

loaded CPU temps

So now to install the correct graphics drives and try again with GPU folding. (367.57 driver which now seems to just work from the off, or maybe i just didn’t configure it correctly last time??? probably.) After a restart the sensors command also returns more than just the CPU temps, but now the graphics is missing…. typical. so here’s the sensors data with the VNIDIA X Server Settings showing the temps.

the graphics and sensors data

Right, best leave this for a while to make sure that the CPU heatsink is installed and dissipating correctly then i’ll start the good work on the machine. Time for dinner!