So I got an awesome deal on craiglist for this motherboard and I don’t have a case that is standard, I do have a desktop optiplex 960, so I am asking are dell optiplex cases able to fit an atx motherboard, and if they can do any mounting holes line up? I have a friend with a dremel, vacuum and power drill with tapping bits however I wanna see if I can get a quick fix.
edit 1: after checking the wikipedia page on motherboards I think that my case is mATX, however a bunch of space is unused at the top, so I think that I can just mcgaiver it in their and then just use front panel connections and jimmy through a vga cable (yes I know, I am a teenager on a budget, some of my monitors are older than I am)
edit 2: the mobo is definately matx, sizing shouldn’t be an issue
According to the pics I am seeing, it shows that model is a BTX motherboard. The coastline (rear motherboard connectors like LAN, USB and whatnot) are to the right of the PCI-E slots as you look at it from the rear of the case with the motherboard laying flat. The CPU socket spun 45 degrees is another indicator. If this is in fact a BTX case, then it would not be easy to convert it to fit any ATX boards.
I have come across this conclusion as well, however is there a way to shove it in where I can just run cables out of a patch in the 5 1/2 inch bays? I just want to have it be an effective box, can it serve in that capacity?
I have done something kinda similar using an old VCR as a case. I stuffed a motherboard in there and used plastic standoffs that had collected in my box of computer crap. I ended up gluing a few pennies to the bottoms of the standoffs to make sufficient clearance under the board. I figured out where it needed to go and then glued the bottom of the standoff/penny stack in place.
I just looked at the link you posted and that is a full size ATX board. I saw 3 different case sizes for that Optiplex 960, but it’s going to be hard to make any of them work. You won’t be able to have the PSU inside the case with that beast of a motherboard crammed in an mATX case unless you do even more hacking on the case. At that point it would be less work to create something from scraps than to disassemble and reassemble a backwards BTX box.
Speaking of boxes, you might seriously be better off using a cardboard box than trying to shoehorn that thing into your case. This Is My Budweiser Box Case that wasn’t pretty but did it’s job. I have also run computers on top of magazines, plywood, or in the box they came in. It’s perfectly fine until you can hunt down another case on the street that better suits your motherboard.
2 Likes
^^^ I also suggest using whatever, like a chunk of plywood.
I have the one inbetween desktop and sff, I think it’s MD or some shit, either way I just want to have the power button, but I wouldn’t mind to just use plywood and paper clips, I also know a place which is kind of like a blast from the past with computers from the early 2000s, and a shit ton a porn on VHS, so I think I could get a case along with some more improperly wiped IDE drives, so yeah
Yeah you can repurpose the buttons and LEDs and front panel connectors to use. Even if they are just hanging out in the air for the moment. That VCR I did was a rare complete build. I hacked it apart and soldered to it to get the VCR power button to turn it on and the power and record lights for motherboard power and HDD.
My computer right now is mounted on an old case side panel, bent and hooked over a piece of wood screwed into the VESA mount on my TV. A single wingnut holds it in place. I have the power/reset buttons plus LEDs flopped out the side, but I set BIOS to turn on when power turns on, same with my TV, so I just flip the power strip on and everything comes up.
You should see the Socket 775 heatsink + 2x6 block of wood + 120mm fan mounted on a Socket 1150 motherboard!
That sound like something I might do, however I have the problem of dells plug is just one 16 pin propietary unified connector, so what I might do is try to find a wiring diagram and take some of the cables I have lying around from an arduino kit I never use and that could work
If the pin spacing is the same you can just cut it apart. If you use a needle or something you can get the pins inside the connectors to slide out, and rearrange them as needed. You don’t really need reset or HDD LED, so you can cut it up however you need it to fit your new board.
That’s the thing, the connector doesn’t seem like anything I have seen before, I think I am going to need to test, I could just have the paper clip, however it’s more about the quality, that being said a classy solution of wiring up one of those flush buttons with the stainless steel I could pick up at Lowes, but I don’t want to buy anything so that seems like the answer