The Build

Since there is nothing out of the ordinary with this build (like installing an SSD where it isn’t designed to be installed) there is nothing over the top to consider or modify.  Installation is just like building a PC, install all your components and get ready for the OS install.

I think the most exciting aspect of this build was getting the box with 10 x 4TB Hitachi HDD’s.

The hard drive cage in the TJ04B is designed for 8 drives and the included heatsinks and unique positioning of the cage will keep my drives cool.  This cage is installed directly in front of two side mounted 120mm fans (1 factory installed).  Unfortunately, the case is not designed for hot swapping drives.  It was between building a storage server in a tower chassis and maintaining some sense of normalcy in my home, or building a 4U rackmount storage…

With the incredible amount of room for cable management in the TJ04, it is easy to keep most PSU cables hidden.  Not only does this make things look better, it helps to keep wires from potentially getting caught up in your CPU cooling fan.  After installing the motherboard, RAM, CPU, and PSU; I added a second 120mm cooling fan for the HDD cage.  The SSD will be installed in the SSD drive cage.

Having the 4-in-3 hard drive cage allows us to install the two additional hard drives we will need for this build with room for two more later on.  The included cooling fan ensures that air will flow over the drives consistently.

 

Connecting the cables for the last two HDDs that will utilize the motherboard SATA connections.  The Asus P5E3 Premium will allow us to connect up to 6 additional HDDs bringing our total up to 14.  The unfortunate aspect of this is that the motherboard does not support SATA 6.0GB/s.  However, we will quickly hit the theoretical limit of the Gigabit Ethernet connection before we hit the hard drive bandwidth limits.

The finished Product