Hi All,
I am after a bit of advice, since the cpu in the NL54 is not upgradable, would a standard matx board fit? I guess none of the port openinigs will line up, but I can cut those out.
Any ideas are welcome
It seems like it’s too much trouble than it’s worth.
But you could probably cut out the metal sheet at the back. To make it look good it will take a lot of effort. You need to cut the metal and then file and deburr it so there are no sharp edges. Then you’ll be left with an open rectangular hole in the case that will mess up the airflow. So you’ll need to 3d print a cover or cover it with manually cut plastic piece.
Then you will probably have problems with PSU. Does old PSU have enough power budget for the new motherboard?
Original board seems to only have the 24 ATX pins and no additional power connect for the CPU. Some motherboards can work without using additional connector, but not all.
Also you’ll have to make custom harness for the power/reset buttons and their LEDs.
Not idea whether those holes are standard mATX.
Personally I don’t think it’s worth salvaging this case unless you continue to use it with all stock parts.
In anything you could very likely fit a SBC in there however the breakout cable for the SATA drives will be an issue. Perhaps a RK3568 or a RK3588 board + a SATA controller could be an alternative, if the motherboard connector is a standard ATX you can use a breakout board to get 12V like this one 24/20pin Computer ATX Power Supply Breakout Board Module | Railwayscenics.
An mATX board will absolutely not fit, but an mITX motherboard is the same width as the stock motherboard (and slightly less depth), but none of the mounting screw holes line up:
While I support the whole reduce / reuse / recycle approach…
… have you considered maybe getting a Node 304 or an SC-4004 case?
SC-4004 is very similar to gen 7 in layout, but a bit shorter, due to not having an external 5.25" bay.
Thank you all for the advice, I have decided that it is not worth it.
I have managed to get a free Dell T330 server, so I may just move unraid to it and leve it at that.
Once again thanks all.