tomorrow the new cpu arrives Hopefully the board and the cpu both work
well i got bored so i made another computer
its a very basic little mod that has turned out to be a lot of fun
parts.
motherboard. msi 7301 / n1996 / cuda
cpu . pentium D
2 gig kingston ram DDR2
nvidia 7300gs silent
all that is left to do is put the plastics back on and mount a drive
First things first stripped the plastics off and flatted off any protrusions in the bottom of the case.
the dell gx280 motherboard does not use standoffs.
Instead the case has raised metal slides that allow the original motherboard to slide into place and clip in
next i took the msi board and dropped it in just to sight things up
As you can see in the above picture the back panel has some very distinct markings thanks to that Multi coloured sticky label. the case actually has no Io shield cut out it is instead purpose machined to fit the specific board used.
but thanks to those very distinct markings there was no need to use a tape measure once.
the only thing that made it slightly tricky to cut the io shield was only having a angle grinder at my disposal as i swapped my dremel for boxing gloves
in this photo it is still a bit messy nothing is finalised but it is up and running .
the GX280 uses a a drum fan on top of a heat sink with No induction ....... as u can see in the picture below
this original setup is no good for me needs for several reasons but first and foremost the heat sink is made for a bracket that would never fit the msi board i will be using. But more of that later
the original power supply i have but is faulty and also would not fit due to inconsistencies with the msi board . It is also a low powered psu and i wanted something with a bit more kick so i took one from my other MDD mod and started to think about how to get this in .
Below you can see the original DELL supply insides i thought it was worth showing as it is nice looking inside
it also yielded a fan with a nice blade design but no good for re-use in its current state. I have intentions for this old psu and its bits to go into a custom made amp .
the Case However i have used
on choosing where to put the new psu i got to work.
the original DELL motherboard has its ram slots set quite far back to allow for the drive bays
The msi board does not.
So to avoid all other components it needed to sit in the front left corner of the case on the top side
This is how the case is setup standard in its original form (borrowed this pic from google)
now i had fit my new purpose 500w PSU i needed to port the power socket and switch to the back.
Which as you know is just a simple case of extending the leads usually.
On looking at the sockets of the dell psu and my one i decided to do something the easy way for once
seeing as i had gave myself a 1 day limit to complete this mod .
below you can see the two sockets
well here's the thing... if i use the 3 pin socket from the dell PSU i already have a back panel piece to fit instead of making one. But more than that i can make utilize the original slide tray system to make it easy to remove. The case on its rail slide is to large to acustom the new motherboard and all that space used would be redundant . so i cut away what was not needed
the only other thing to do was cut a hole for the power switch on the already existing back panel
a load of soldering and then insulate the wires. so i came up with this below
u can see the double strand power feed in the second picture i only did this as i felt the gage they had used from the manufacturer was wrong
. that white u can see is a thick insulated plastic i used to prevent the risk of any shorting.
the first time i soldered the power switch on i did it on the wrong side of the case
the socket i needed to mod a bit concerning its earthing circuit but after that is was just a simple extension and solder and fitting it all in place. slides in and out now
next i wanted to add induction which is something this case was never blessed with from day 1 .
I played with various arrangements and set ups and decided on 2x 50mm fans they are actually the two side intakes from the G4 MDD'S which will be great once i have added a voltage regulator to the fan set up. they work well at the moment but i would like to turn them down a bit
i cut a section out of the front to give these two fans more room to breathe as they will be covered once again by the plastics .
In the third picture you can see a mok up and the psu through the old drive bays ( now intake vents )
the intake vents will be covered by a shield i will make later
The reason i placed the fans on the inside was to avoid re-shaping or having to mod the plastics in order to stick to my one day project deadline.
Because of this i had to move my psu back 3mm to allow the extra space for the fans that sit directly infront of it
and finally with the board in and up and running
i did not make my self set deadline of 1 day as i realised i did not have a drive to use
.
i will sacrifice a IDE raid drive from a p35 build. Also i forgot to rewire the front panel switch and started watching Excalibur
Hopefully i can get snow leopard running on this 945 chipset and pentiumD we will see how it goes
i might even do something fancy to the cosmetics at some point.
i will defo make a cooler for it .
what i call a slingshot cooler of my own devise mwuahahaha
.
well this took up a bit of waiting time anyway and was a fun project .
i would recommend these old dell cases for a bit of fun you can get them for peanuts. dell package things well in terms of structure from what i have seen in some of there other works
OH I MUST ADD THIS !!!! the metal inner case is made by foxcon the plastics are made in china ...
somewhere out there is a man who designed the most elaborate
over complicated integral fittings for that little silver button that says dell on it
i take my hat off to you uknown man. it is a piece of art you thought no one would ever see
i really want some nice black paint for my main MDD project i think black with metal flake sprayed on the inside of the panels would look great with the chrome trim this case has or may have.
To be honest the g4 case has already been 3 fully functional different set ups i did previously and i have experimented with it so much at times it became more of a salvage job rather than a straight forward mod.
there are only so many times you can sharpen the same pencil
But it has not finished evolving yet. I have a new vision for it so it is about to all change again