Quick 'n dirty mod: ATX board in an ITX case.

[Just.Oblivious]

Three years ago I made a little ITX-based storage server. It was based on an AMD E-350 board with four 3TB WD Red drives, all fitted inside this Cooler Master Elite 120 enclosure. I've always wanted to do some light virtualization on this server, but the dual core CPU that I had was just too damn slow to do this.

 

Recently I upgraded my own desktop, this left me with an Asrock 970 Extreme3 motherboard (with an AMD FX-6100 CPU and 16 GB's of DDR3 memory installed). That got me thinking: this hardware would almost triple the performance of my little server.

 

Only one slight problem: fitting an ATX board inside a case designed for mini ITX. I didn't want to buy an ATX case (it wouldn't have been able to fit on my little server shelf). So I started to investigate modding the CM Elite 120.

 

A quick look at the dimensions of the board and the case revealed that It could be done, so I grabbed my tools and went ahead with it.

 

 

First I stripped down the case. After doing that I made a paper template of the board with all the mounting holes marked.

 

Once satisfied with the position I drilled the holes and threaded in some standoffs.

 

 

Board and front intake fan mounted in place. Fortunately there is enough horizontal clearance for that humongous Scythe Mugen cooler.

 

 

Top view, it all fits.

 

 

I designed and 3D printed a custom drive mount solution. It's a simple design aimed at printing speed, a fancier mount with more supports would've taken forever to print.

 

First I wanted to reuse the original metal drive cage, but unfortunately It only holds three drives and it wouldn't have been able to fit above the board with the fourth drive on top.

 

 

Drive mounts in place. It's surprisingly rigid with little to no flex in all directions.

 

 

I bolted the PSU to the back of the case using the original PSU bracket. With a low profile CPU cooler I might have been able to mount it in its original location.

 

The PSU also acts as an exhaust fan by drawing in air through the large cutouts in the back of the case and blowing it out the side.

 

 

Other side. Everything is packed in nicely.

 

 

Completed system back on its little shelf.

 

I used an angle grinder to make a cutout in the side panel for the I/O shield (not shown).

 

 

Final result.

[samcool55]

Looks good! I also love the fact there's a bunch of hardware on the side of the shelf

[Agent32277]

Very nice!

[Just.Oblivious]

Just now, samcool55 said:

Looks good! I also love the fact there's a bunch of hardware on the side of the shelf

Thanks. Luke's networking wall video inspired me to mount it this way, this corner of the garage is kind of the networking hub for the whole house.

 

Here is a better shot of it (from before the modded server):

 

It's all powered by a UPS down on the floor.

 

Future upgrades include a managed PoE switch to power the two Ubiquiti Access Points, and maybe a small patch panel to make things a little cleaner.

[JobbelsNL]

20 minutes ago, Just.Oblivious said:

Three years ago I made a little ITX-based storage server. It was based on an AMD E-350 board with four 3TB WD Red drives, all fitted inside this Cooler Master Elite 120 enclosure. I've always wanted to do some light virtualization on this server, but the dual core CPU that I had was just too damn slow to do this.

 

Recently I upgraded my own desktop, this left me with an Asrock 970 Extreme3 motherboard (with an AMD FX-6100 CPU and 16 GB's of DDR3 memory installed). That got me thinking: this hardware would almost triple the performance of my little server.

 

Only one slight problem: fitting an ATX board inside a case designed for mini ITX. I didn't want to buy an ATX case (it wouldn't have been able to fit on my little server shelf). So I started to investigate modding the CM Elite 120.

 

A quick look at the dimensions of the board and the case revealed that It could be done, so I grabbed my tools and went ahead with it.

 

 

First I stripped down the case. After doing that I made a paper template of the board with all the mounting holes marked.

 

Once satisfied with the position I drilled the holes and threaded in some standoffs.

 

 

Board and front intake fan mounted in place. Fortunately there is enough horizontal clearance for that humongous Scythe Mugen cooler.

 

 

Top view, it all fits.

 

 

I designed and 3D printed a custom drive mount solution. It's a simple design aimed at printing speed, a fancier mount with more supports would've taken forever to print.

 

First I wanted to reuse the original metal drive cage, but unfortunately It only holds three drives and it wouldn't have been able to fit above the board with the fourth drive on top.

 

 

Drive mounts in place. It's surprisingly rigid with little to no flex in all directions.

 

 

I bolted the PSU to the back of the case using the original PSU bracket. With a low profile CPU cooler I might have been able to mount it in its original location.

 

The PSU also acts as an exhaust fan by drawing in air through the large cutouts in the back of the case and blowing it out the side.

 

 

Other side. Everything is packed in nicely.

 

 

Completed system back on its little shelf.

 

I used an angle grinder to make a cutout in the side panel for the I/O shield (not shown).

 

 

Final result.

Gewoon geweldig

[samcool55]

4 minutes ago, Just.Oblivious said:

Thanks. Luke's networking wall video inspired me to mount it this way, this corner of the garage is kind of the networking hub for the whole house.

 

Here is a better shot of it (from before the modded server):

-snip-

 

It's all powered by a UPS down on the floor.

 

Future upgrades include a managed PoE switch to power the two Ubiquiti Access Points, and maybe a small patch panel to make things a little cleaner.

ziet er fantastisch uit.

 

About the ubiquiti stuff, how good does it actually work? I've heard good things about it but i've never seen someone actually use it at home for example.

[RollinLower]

ziet er awesome uit! ook geweldig dat het ATX boord ongeveer de hele case in beslag neemt

 

case manufacturers, take notes please.

[Bananasplit_00]

thats pretty cool

[ProjectBox153]

Wow, looks really good. It’s a lot better than what I would have been able to do. 

[Just.Oblivious]

32 minutes ago, samcool55 said:

ziet er fantastisch uit.

 

About the ubiquiti stuff, how good does it actually work? I've heard good things about it but i've never seen someone actually use it at home for example.

Dankjewel

 

The Ubiquiti stuff performs extremely well. Wireless performance is excellent, it's all very easy to manage and monitor from the UniFi controller (that's also running on the storage serer).

 

My current setup has two Ubiquiti UniFi AP AC Lite's in it, together with a three port USG (UniFi Security Gateway). This Christmas I'm hoping to get a nice UniFi PoE switch 

 

As a networking guru I was a little disappointed by the software of the USG, it doesn't quite have the features and monitoring capabilities that I expected it to have (some advanced features require diving into the CLI and fiddling around with Json files). The UniFi integration and the DPI features somewhat make up for that though.