I'm just providing a little update on this.
I've got my gear and I've assembled it. The heatsink/fan assembley was a bit of a nightmare, and I ended up using a bit of acrylic to adapt the 50mm fan mount of the heatsink to the 80mm fan mount of the fan adaptor. The following picture shows the arrangement with the acrylic adaptor I crafted circled in red:
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/6430/serverxn.jpg
I've managed to assemble the lot, although that fan adaptor arrangement obscured the DC-DC power supply from fitting in the ATX power slot, so I had to buy an ATX cable extender and then use cable ties to prevent the DC-DC power supply from being able to touch anything metallic and shorting. Theres also only just enough clearance for the actual fan cable to slot into its place in the motherboard, and if I want to remove the fan, I actually have to remove the motherboard, then the entire assembley, and take it apart piece by piece.
I've managed to power on and have a fiddle in the BIOS. No fan control as noted, but it does not run at full speed, only 900 RPM, and if that proves to be too loud I believe I can control the fan speed from within Linux so I am not too bothered. The BIOS reports the CPU temp as "low" .. which doesn't mean a lot but at least its not critical, and the cooling arrangement hopefully should be sufficient. Once I've got an operating system on it, I will load test it and then I'll know for sure. Before I do that, I need to make one more physical modification so that the DC input power adaptor is secure, at the moment it is completely loose and I am not happy about that.
I've got my gear and I've assembled it. The heatsink/fan assembley was a bit of a nightmare, and I ended up using a bit of acrylic to adapt the 50mm fan mount of the heatsink to the 80mm fan mount of the fan adaptor. The following picture shows the arrangement with the acrylic adaptor I crafted circled in red:
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/6430/serverxn.jpg
I've managed to assemble the lot, although that fan adaptor arrangement obscured the DC-DC power supply from fitting in the ATX power slot, so I had to buy an ATX cable extender and then use cable ties to prevent the DC-DC power supply from being able to touch anything metallic and shorting. Theres also only just enough clearance for the actual fan cable to slot into its place in the motherboard, and if I want to remove the fan, I actually have to remove the motherboard, then the entire assembley, and take it apart piece by piece.
I've managed to power on and have a fiddle in the BIOS. No fan control as noted, but it does not run at full speed, only 900 RPM, and if that proves to be too loud I believe I can control the fan speed from within Linux so I am not too bothered. The BIOS reports the CPU temp as "low" .. which doesn't mean a lot but at least its not critical, and the cooling arrangement hopefully should be sufficient. Once I've got an operating system on it, I will load test it and then I'll know for sure. Before I do that, I need to make one more physical modification so that the DC input power adaptor is secure, at the moment it is completely loose and I am not happy about that.