A 3D-printed 1U server

After realizing that a 1 unit tall 19″ server hardware would fit diagonally on my larger 400x400mm 3D-printer, I just had to make something. For that something I happened to have unused hardware laying around. The result was a shallow 1U server case to house a raspberry pi and a 3.5″ HDD, along with all the other necessary components. Currently this server is running as StorJ storage node with a 10TB HDD.

Here’s the end result as it currently is.

A list of all the components for this build
– 3D-printed case parts and a bracket for the HDD
– A raspberry pi
– 3.5″ HDD
– 12V and 4A power supply
– USB interface pcb for the HDD from an external enclosure
– Short ethernet patch cable
– An ethernet coupler
– A usb power supply made for a car
– 12V 40mm fan
– USB cables
– 5mm LEDs for the front if you want
– Some wires
– Screws for the HDD, zipties, double sided tape and mounting points

3D-printed files can be found here:

Printed parts

There’s four parts to the case. Front part, back part, hdd bracket and a top cover.

Preparation

The power brick is held in place with some double sided tape. HDD attaches to its bracket with common PC case screws or thumbscrews.

Wiring

The wiring is pretty simple and easy to assemble. The 12V power supply is just split out for the HDD, the fan and the usb power supply for the Pi. Using those ziptie mountpoints with double sided tape I was able to secure everything in place and somewhat manage the wires too.

I thought about adding some sort of a mounting plate for the Pi too, but decided not to as the Pi is held in place pretty well with all the cables. Also not having a mounting plate for this Pi allows for very easy drop-in upgrade to another platform if need be.

HDD LEDs

The final touch for this project was to add power and hdd activity leds to the front of the case. I had a ready wiring thingy with two leds from a long time ago when I first started to experiment with a first gen raspberry pi. Those leds got a new life here. Not really a necessary upgrade but one that makes the whole thing look and feel a lot more of a complete project. Adds a little bit of life to it.

Summary

A fun hardware project to build over a weekend after everything is printed. Rather straight forward to put together and didn’t run into too much problems with the initial design. The Pi doesn’t run that much things now but as a dedicated single hdd server it’s fine. I can see this be used as an offsite backup node on in a smaller scale setup even as a local file server too, but maybe you’d want to have something more powerful than a Raspberry Pi 3 in that case.