The Works

First of all, let's see what powers this machine.

The PSU has the following specs: 3,3v: 20A; 5v:30A; 12v:12A, and totals at 300W. This doesn't seem much but keep in mind this system probably isn't going to have power hungry graphic cards. And with a maximum limit of 8 hard disks it actually makes sense. 350W would have given a little bit more headroom but any less-extreme setup won't consume more then 300W. It was able to power my dual Xeon 2Ghz with 5 disks, one of them SCSI without a hitch.



On the inside of the PSU we found a pot meter. It can be spotted quite easily on the picture, in the bottom right corner. Easy if the 12v line is a bit off, but that's just the “overclocker” in me talking.



The PSU, shown when installed. I love a bit of space between the PSU and the case, excellent place to tuck unwanted cables away. The D-300 also has a removable motherboard plate, however it's quite useless because the screws that are needed to keep it in place are...under the motherboard. It's possible it wasn't designed as a removable plate but only as a steadier base to mount the motherboard on. No documentation about this came with the case. In fact, no documentation whatsoever.



Testing will be done with a server setup, and server setups are not always ATX. We managed to fit an E-ATX Intel server board in the D-300. Sure it's cramped and way out of spec but it is feasible none the less. We had to sacrifice one of the floppy spaces to make it work. A floppy drive can still be installed in the left cage, but a hard disk won't fit. In the right cage, either one of them can still be used.

The motherboard goes about 5cm under the disks, so removing the cages will a bit more difficult.



The right part fully filled up with disks. 636Gb of storage in three hard disks. The bottom one is a 10.000rpm SCSI drive, to generate a bit of extra heat and provide fast file access.



It's a tight fit between the right lower disk and the E-ATX motherboard, but it works. This way you can install 7 hard disk drives in the D-300. Three in each of the 5,25" sets and one instead of a floppy drive. With an ATX motherboard it can hold a maximum of 8 drives.



Now onto the real works. PSU cooling is provided by this generic, low rpm Adda fan.



For the case itself, I-Star opted for a 60mm YS-Tech fan. According to This YS. Tech doc (pdf) it's rated for 4200rpm and 25CFM. And additional 60mm fan can be installed next to it.




The Thermal Test

DUR0N’s P4 Xeon Test Setup
CPU	2x Intel P4 Xeon 2.0Ghz with 1U Thermaltake heatsinks
Mainboard	Intel SHG2
Memory	2*512Mb Infineon PC2700 REG ECC
HDD's	2x 300Gb WD SATA 2x 200Gb Seagate SATA 36gb 10.000rpm Seagate Cheetah
Second 60mm fan	Coolermaster high performance 60mm 0.35A

It is clear an extra 60mm fan would bring some improvement in the test, but the housing is perfectly capable of handling the heat with only one case fan.