Modifying my Corsair C70 to fit my EE-ATX server motherboard

[suchamoneypit]

I built a home server months ago to use for various stuff. The problem was the form factor of the motherboard. It could only align on two standoffs in one corner. I had it in a HAF932 with its back panel off and on its side and with HDDs taped to the case. Not exactly Ideal or pretty. I recently sold my gaming PC, besides its C70 case. I went on a mission to add custom standoff locations to the C70 to support the special EE-ATX board I had.

 

This is what it looked like before

Before I go into details, the finished build and setup(specs in my signature):

 

 

First step was drilling out the old standoffs on the case. The C70 had built-in standoffs so they had to be removed. I did this by simply drilling into the sheet metal from the backside.

 

Next I confirmed the CADD drawing I had made and was using as a template was right. (perfect fit)

 

I then had a method for adding in support posts. I would use a screw with a plastic tube cut to size, along with washers to help spread weight around the holes and a nut to secure it. Not the best, but it looks fine and worked great. I found single pieces of the plastic tubes the board would sit on to be too short, so I taped them together with red tape and sanded them down to the correct height (pictured later)

 

I then placed the screw assembly, and hot glued them to secure. I added 5 standoffs and two standoffs could be left from the original layout.

 

Next I laid out the board, and secured it with the washers. The board was held firmly in place and my main concern, the weight of the CPU heat sinks at the top, was gone.

 

Next I built the PC, it looks suprisingly good cable management wise considering the ONLY cable management port I was left with was on the bottom as the EE-ATX board is quite large and over-extends over E-ATX and it was a non-modular PSU.

 

 

I now have a desktop PC with 16 cores, 32 threads, 72GB of RAM, a GTX770, and 3 monitors worth of work space. Using my laptop a lot, my server now doubles as a awesome and powerful work space for stuff like CADD and high-end gaming and with plenty of storage for files. With some older NVIDIA drivers and the addition of a sound-card, and some settings changes, I can even run games and audio even though i'm on a server motherboard and Windows Server 2016.