# Server Project



## athughlett (Jan 10, 2011)

I love random/(dumb) projects and have decided to repurpose my old hp proliant dl360 g3 to be a fully functional desktop. This project has its hurdles though. The machine only has two pci-x slots limiting my expansion/upgrades. I have a small list of enhancements necessary to have a full functional desktop.

Video card (the ati rage won't cut it)
Sound
Hard disk space (i don't want to spend $400 on SCSI disks and only get 300GB)
Reduced space
Quieter fans

The last two are easy enough. The first three are the kicker. I want to put an SATA RAID card in one slot leaving me only one slot open. I would rather not have to choose between video or sound. I want both. Any ideas on a possible solution?


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## ChalkBored (Jan 10, 2011)

use a USB audio adapter


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## athughlett (Jan 10, 2011)

brilliant! i hadn't thought of that.


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## wblock@ (Jan 10, 2011)

Remove the guts of the DL360 and stuff a cheap notebook inside.


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## athughlett (Jan 10, 2011)

Not worth the effort?


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## wblock@ (Jan 10, 2011)

Well... I found new PCI Radeon cards with HDMI, which *might* be usable with the radeonhd driver for audio.  But they're $80.  Then add a SATA card, drives.  Just seems like it's not very practical for upgrading an older machine when newer and faster components cost the same or less.

Now if you have access to cheap surplus components, use SCSI drives, a normal PCI video card, and a PCI sound card.  Those should be nearly or completely free.


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## athughlett (Jan 10, 2011)

Well the goal was to buy as little as possible. I'm going to have to get some quieter fans for sure and put it in a smaller box which I have the stuff to do. I might even have a pci graphics card that might fit. I'm not sure it works though. The hard disks I don't mind buying though since they can be changed over to another computer when I decide to do so. So I would like to spend about $100 on non-transferrable items to get this thing in working order as a practical desktop. Plus I think it will be a decent upstage from the Mac G4 MDD I have as a desktop now.


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