My “Pimped Out” Cooler Master HAF 932

As I’ve been testing the Kingston SSD’s out this weekend I also decided to take some pics of my Cooler Master HAF 932, case and give my review of it.  So here goes.  This is what the case looks out of the box (straight from their site):

It’s pretty sleek looking of a case, but what I didn’t like about it, was the nasty gray inside the case, and the fact that everything else was black.  Don’t get me wrong, I like the black outside look, but I decided to add some ‘flair’:

Painting was actually a breeze.  I diasassembled everything and painted only the mesh parts, hard drive bays, and Water Cooler ports.  I also spray painted the inside of the case a matching black of the outside. 

This case looks freaking awesome straight from purchase, but add a little color, and it’s even better.  But this isn’t the real reason why I love this case.  It’s how customizable the case is.  First:

The hard drive bays are quick release.  There’s only two screws that you use to fasten the drives to the bay, and that’s it.  They then just slide right in and fasten.  With 5 HDD bays, there’s plenty to do whatever you want to do with your system. 

Second:

There are up to six 5.25 expansion slots!  And they’re all quick release as well.  This makes installing a DVD-RW a breeze.

Third:

 

CABLE MANAGEMENT!  Although it may not look it (mainly due to all the SATA cables, and HDD mess), the cables are well managed and easy to trace.  Cable Management with the HAF 932 is really easy, as there are built in “loop” to attach zip ties around the cables.  With all of this mess on the back it makes a clean looking case from the other side of the case. 

My final reason why I love the HAF is these massive Guys:

There’s a reason why HAF stands for “High Air Flow,  three 230mm fans and a 120 out the back come stock with the case.  These fans are also designed to maximize cool air flow through the system and hot air out the case.  Here’s a good diagram to show:

 

The front fan is used to cool the hard drives.  The bottom “cool” arrow is the fan coming from the side.  Heat then rises and escape either out the top vent or out the back.  I was also very impressed with the fact that the back vent matched perfectly with the CPU cooler, making a direct air flow for heat from the CPU. 

There you have it.  The HAF 932.  It may be a little outdated as the HAF X has already come out, but if you want a cheaper, and still just as good option, go with the HAF 932. 

Be sure to watch the Super User blog, as I’ll be posting SSD results very soon. 

Unboxing the SSD’s

After a long day at school and work, I came home and awaiting me were the Kingston SSD’s.  I decided to put together a quick unboxing of them:

Here they are in all their glory.  Kingston sent three drives for us to test out.  Here’s a close up of one of them:

 

This kit is the desktop kit, which includes the drive, 2 brackets for mounting screws, SATA power and data cables, and software to clone your drive.  The notebook upgrade kit comes with the drive, an enclosure case (nifty!) and the software as well.

Now lets open it up:

Within the box the cd, drive and cables are packaged very nicely within a sturdy plastic container.  Opening this up and taking out the cd the drive, cables and brackets are revealed:

I took out the drive, as was very surprised as to how light the whole thing was (especially compared to the SCSI drive that came today as well)! 

I took out the contents and here’s the result:

Well that’s about it.  Up next I’ll be testing the drives and comparing them to HDD’s.  Some testing will include:

• Testing a singe drive vs. two in a RAID0 array
• Cloning my netbook drive onto one of the drive and testing differences in performance
• Boot time between a HDD and a SSD (and maybe even a 15000 rpm SCSI drive)
• and many more.

Check out the Super User Blog for more detail testing!

Also right now there’s a great deal for these exact drive: 128 gb for only $125!. 

Me vs Active Directory Round 1

Recently I was asked to be a Sys Admin of a small practice Doctor’s Office locally.  I thought, “Sure, what can be too hard?”  I looked over the previous setup and their current DNS/AD server was… ancient!  It’s running Server 2000 and barely limping along, as it serves as also their Exchange, Fax, and File servers with a single core, less than 4 gigs.  Luckily they have a spare server that currently only serves faxes. 

This morning before I school I decided to head over and upgrade the new server as an Active Directory and DNS server.  Shouldn’t be too hard.  I’ve dealt with AD before and how difficult can it be to setup?  Besides Server 2003 has wizards that make things simple to setup!

I went through the wizard and got everything running.  The server needed to be rebooted and so I did.  Once it booted, it asked for the admin password, which I made sure to remember, and entered it in.  Didn’t work… o_0 Tried again… still nothing.  I was sure that I remembered, how could I fat finger something wrong twice?  I kept trying and trying and trying, until I locked the account out. 

Now I was in a big pickle.  No way to access the server, and the office was about to open… without a fax server which meant no faxes!!!  I was starting to sweat, and finally turned over to my buddies over at ServerFault for some guidance. 

At first I thought that I had set the domain admin password, but then I realize I hadn’t set the admin password but actually a Directory Server Recovery password. 

I tried everything to recover the password, between booting and using ntpassword to reset the password (which doesn’t work).  I tried this nifty guide (still no luck).  After about 4 hours of swearing, praying, pleading, talking to the server, and almost throwing the server out the door, I was no closer than I was when I started. 

Finally,  I came across the answer.  I had to uninstall Active Directory.  I did and everything was restored back to it’s original state. 

I missed all my classes for the day, worked on a server for over 4 hours to only get back to the same spot and no pay (I didn’t feel right charging them for nothing). 

What did I learn? 

• Read through EVERYTHING when installing
• Research, research, research!
• Don’t do anything major IT right before or during office hours
• Sometimes, you’re just wrong. 

Learn from my Fail everyone!

Until next time….