IBM Aptiva Sleeper

ZachLennie · May 31, 2021

So a while back I acquired this old IBM Aptiva from 1995. Originally it came with a Pentium 1 CPU running at I think 166 MHz.

I think its a really cool case design and the chassis is way overbuilt in true IBM fashion. The outer shell and front face plate slide forward and reveal the inner chassis.

Here we have a view of the original internal setup of the Aptiva. It uses a riser board to get 8 expansion slots in a relatively short case.

The original back panel is very much not standard ATX.

I went ahead and removed all of the original electronics so it was down to the bare chassis. From here I marked out all the parts that I wanted to cut.

After some fun shop time and some work with the grinder I had the entire rear panel removed, along with the bottom part of the front panel.

I fabricated a new back panel from a new bit of sheet metal. The lines are a little rough in places but not too bad for a part that doesn't get seen very often.

It took forever and has given me the push to start working on my DIY CNC machine again so this sort of thing will be easier in the future.

I painted the back panel along with the rest of the case, and installed some 3D printed fan grilles. I think using grey filament would have been nicer,

but blue is what I had on hand so its what I use.

I installed the new motherboard, an Asrock B450 mATX board. I went with a Ryzen 3600 for the CPU and 16gb of memory for now. Pretend

that the graphics card is new and fancy instead of the old GT430 I had installed for testing in this picture.

Here it is with the front cover on again and the original Pentium CPU in front for scale. Overall I am very happy with how the project turned out. Unlike many older

computer cases it has great airflow so thermals have been awesome so far.