Acer Aspire Z3101

[Hsanctech]

Hello everyone. I have an 

Acer Aspire Z3101-U4062

AMD Athlon II X2 240e / 2.8 GHz
Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9200
4.0 GB / 8.0 GB (max)

I was wanting to completely take the motherboard out of this system and make it into and actual desktop style computer. I really hate how this form factor really limits what u can do. I was wonder what upgrades I can do to it. Mainly the power supply that I can use and a decent but not pricey graphics card. There is a PCIE slot so I would assume that it can take a graphics card. I'm not gone be really worried about clearance since I am removing it from the housing anyways.

[Volvo240]

Well, for a CPU, do not go much more than 95W, so probably a Phenom II X4 960T or similar. You MAY be able to run a lower powered FX chip in it, I am not 100% sure though. For RAM, you can probably do 16GB. My system took to that much RAM quite well. You should be able to also use ECC UDIMMs. I did this and it worked flawlessly. For PSU, any PSU with 20+4 pin and an extra 4 pin for CPU will do. You should be able to run any GPU, but do not put something crazy in it as you are limited by both PCIE Gen 2 and your CPU. Hope this helps!

 

PS I have found that you can put an mATX board in it as is, but you will lose your HDD.