I’ve got a couple of decommissioned Lenovo C30s from work, and they’re surprisingly awesome machines. Dual socket Xeons, up to 256GB ECC DDR3, like 8 SATA ports, mSATA, dual GPU support, USB3, pretty good workstations for being free dumpster scores.
The issue is the cases suck. They are bad quality, bad design, bad in pretty much every way cause Lenovo tried to make them too compact to do anything with. Since I’m just gonna use one for personal stuff and I don’t really care about warranty, I was thinking of doing like Wendell did with that SuperMicro server board and cramming it into a normal ATX style case.
I am comfortable drilling/tapping holes, and I’m pretty sure I’ll have to do at least a few from what I’ve seen of the motherboard, but I would prefer not to do anything too crazy (looking to avoid “oh no, the motherboard is too long, time to angle grind off the hard drive cages”)
Can anyone recommend a case for this? The motherboard is about 14 inches long, but it is normal ATX height all the way across. The standoffs towards the IO shield seem to mostly line up, it’s the ones towards the front of the case that I will probably have to drill myself.
I’d like to spend $100 or less on this case, definitely cannot spend more than $150. I’m not planning on hardline water cooling or anything crazy, just want a decent case that I can toss a GPU and a couple hard drives/SSDs into.
I had a problem with cases that specified EATX compatibility but clearly did not comply with the standard. The nzxt h630 and corsair obsidian 450 and 750 do NOT fit an eatx board.
I ended up with an inwin 707 case that I think was $120 and defiantly not near the quality of the nzxt.
It works, has lots of drive bays but its mediocre at best.
FYI my supermicro eatx was 13", you might double check that.
I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are slightly proprietary. The little notch out of the corner makes me wonder, but I’m no expert and this is the only EATX machine I own (only other server type box I have is a Dell CS24, and I’ve never even considered the motherboard standard in that crazy thing)
Update: Looks like it is not totally standard EATX. It is “based” on the EATX standard, which is probably code for “it’s about the same size give or take an inch, and a couple standoffs will line up.” Thanks Lenovo lol
Alright, cool, I’ll look into that one. How close was the clearance on your motherboard? According to the spec site I linked above my board is 14.01" long.
Out of curiosity did you have any issues with fans on your build? I’ve read a few Lenovo forum threads about aftermarket fans not playing nice with the BIOS on these boards, but I tried a cooler master fan off a CPU cooler I had around (put it in place of one of the Xeon CPU fans) and the system booted fine. Is there some kind of voltage/frequency standard for CPU fans? I’m not opposed to some extra electrical tricks to make fans work, and I have a scope/multimeter if there are tests I can do, just not really sure where to start.
I had some clearance and I’ve done same with supermicro boards but you should make a paper template of the case and your mobo and give it a go that way. usually you can find high res drawings or photos and just scale your paper template to the mobo standoffs you print out in the photo. Then add your boards bits to see if it fits. that is if you can’t find specs or drawings online of the caes(s) you want to try.
I have had to rewire fans but usually its just a pin re-ordering thing. some mobos try to target a specific rpm e.g. 1100 and if they can’t hit it, they open up the fan voltage as high as possible which results in very loud fans. Some of these boards only work with pwm and not dc fans. ymmv.
It says E-ATX but IDK, regular ATX doesn’t seem to have a ton of extra space.
I have heard great things about this case. I own the be quiet! silent base 800.
This looks like a really good option (and incredibly cost effective). I see Corsair made the drive bays part of the PSU shroud. Do the connections on the drives sit perpendicular to the case and go out behind the motherboard? Or do they parallel the case? One of the problems with the OEM case is that the drives are a complete pain to access, so I want to make sure whatever I buy solves that.
I have the windowed version of that case. The two 3.5" mounts are in front of the PSU and oriented with the front of the drives towards the left side panel, and the back towards the right side panel. It’s pretty easy to swap drives because you just need to open the right panel and slide the trays out. There are also 3 SSD mounts on the back of the motherboard tray once you open the right panel.
How hard would it be to add custom standoffs to this case? Do the manufacturer standoffs stick up from the steel at all (meaning I’d have to compensate for length) or is the motherboard tray all the same height like in the 780t?
Hey guys, thank you for all the help! I went to Gigaparts (local PC store) today and they were nice enough to let me bring in the motherboard and mock it up in several cases to see which one I liked best. I ended up settling on the MasterBox 5 because even though I liked the Corsair case, they had the MasterBox in stock for $69. It just so happened that all but the top 3 standoffs lined up on the motherboard, and one of those ended up being over a cutout in the mobo tray so I only ended up having to drill/tap two holes.
The system is mostly functional now with 16GB of RAM and a total 8 Xeon cores (2.7Ghz I think? Idk). I kept the stock CPU coolers since they are quiet and seem to work well. I am going to have to find another PSU because the stock PSU is a proprietary shape, so it won’t fit in an ATX PSU slot at all. I am looking at the Corsair HX750 (the limiting factor is the 12v rail; the stock has 5 12v rails that add up to 85 amps total 12v output) but if anyone has any other suggestions I am open to ideas.
Pictures for your viewing pleasure:
I will probably swap out that Quadro sometime soon but I’m on a budget and that card was in the original system. Might go for a 750Ti or something like that, I don’t do a ton of gaming but I love me some multi-monitor.
It is not only too narrow, it is too tall. If it was only too narrow I’d just fabricobble a sheet metal bracket thing to make it work…but of course it’s wrong in multiple ways…I swear Lenovo was on some serious acid designing these workstations.
