R&D^
EXAMINING TECHNOLOGY AND PUTTING IT TO USE66 |MAMAMAXIMXIMXIMXIMUUUUMMPPPCC|JAN 2011 |www.maximumpc.com
Our hard drives are mounted to maximize
airfl ow.The only cables external to the motherboard you need are hard drive power and front-fan power.Route all cables before you slide in the PSU,
including SATA cables (shown here) and the
4-pin ATX12V CPU power connector.Setting Up Windows Home Server ‘Vail’
Obtaining the Vail beta is straightforward if
you’re already a Windows Connect user (http://
connect.microsoft .com/WindowsHomeServer).
Otherwise, you’ll need to sign up for an account.
The beta is in the form of a downloadable
ISO, so you’ll need to burn a DVD from the
ISO, or install it onto a USB fl ash memory
drive using the Microsoft Windows 7 DVD-
to-USB tool (http://store.microsoft .com/help/
iso-tool). Since no optical drive is included
in this build, setup was run from an 8GB USB
fl ash memory stick.
The base installation proceeded without
incident, but when the system rebooted
to the WHS desktop to download updates,
a weird problem cropped up. Vail had no
built-in drivers for the Intel gigabit Ethernet
hardware. It did recognize the Atheros Wi-Fi
adapter, but couldn’t log into my home net-
work since security is enabled.Instead of either prompting me for a
password (for Wi-Fi) or prompting me for a
drive (for the gigabit port), the system would
pop up a screen that told me no network
connection was available. The only option
was “Reboot.” If you reboot, you’ll get the
same result—in other words, it’s an infinite
loop! Obviously, this is a bug—but hey, it’s
beta software, right?
The way around this bug is to hit Ctrl-
Alt-Del while the system is looking for a net-
work (but before the “network not found”
dialog pops up). Bring up task manager, kill
the process that’s looking for updates, and
then manually install the driver.
Installing the Connector software for an
individual user is easier than in the original
release of WHS. You no longer need to
copy the app to a CD or USB key, or manu-
ally navigate to the server to downloadYou no longer have to install the WHS Connector
from CD or USB key. It’s just a URL to the server for
download.The PC-Q08 chassis includes a pair of
removable hard drive bays—one supports
four drives, the other, two. The pair of
Western Digital drives slid nicely into the
four-drive bay, with space between them for
airflow. The two-drive bay was left empty,
in case I want to remove it later to install a
GPU. Note that some entry-level GPUs, like
Nvidia’s GTX 430 or AMD’s HD 5450, would
likely still fit with the two-drive bay in
place, but anything longer means removing
that bay.
Once the drives were installed, theremaining cables were attached. The SATA
data and power cables routed to the hard
drives, and the two power supply cables to
the PSU. Then the PSU slides in. Note that
the PSU is something of a tight fit, mainly
due to cable bulk, so I gently bent the PSU
cables as much as possible.
One change I’d make is to switch out the
default 14cm front case fan with something
a little quieter, possibly a Yate Loon low-
speed fan. That would also eliminate the
blue LED built into the default fan, which is
a good thing in my book.
Next up is installing Windows Home
Server—which means temporarily attaching
a keyboard, mouse, and monitor, though the
system will mainly run in headless mode
once we get Vail up and running.