For those who have been following this blog for a long time now, you have probably learned I am a bit of a tech nerd. I don’t post about it often. But I have a Raspberry Pi, multiple different desktop computers (one mac, one windows, a few linux), I have my own server, two tablets, one laptop, and five phones.
You may ask, ‘How does one afford sso much techery? Do you ever eat or just spend your money on gizmos?’
A lot of this stuff is accumulated over the years. My tablet is from 2016, One of my phones is from 2015. I still have a computer I built in 2013!
And, in fact, it is that computer that prompted this little post.
Some backstory
This case is getting a bit old. Originally the case I used for the build I constructed to do some freelance work for a company out of New York City. That was bad in March of 2013. This case has been through a lot. It helped me code a bunch of stuff for 2U Inc. I made my demo reel, that eventually got me a job at WDAM, on it. And I used it to forecast a slew of bad weather for seven years in Mississippi. I even kicked out the first Karrie Meter map on it.
But it was time for a change.
And I wanted to swap over to something smaller that I could tuck under a desk or out of the way, if needed. Since this wasn’t my “main rig” anymore, there is no reason to have a ‘cool’ case. Plus, the case is, well, old. The plastic is starting to get that tacky feeling. And I know there are a few ways to fix that. Rubbing alcohol, for one, can remove the layer of petroleum that forms on the surface of older soft plastics as the chemical bonds decay.
But this was about giving some new life to an old friend. In two ways.
The new case
I decided to go with a Cooler Master Elite 130. It is a smaller case that is easy to fit in tight spots and has plenty of airflow to help keep the computer cool.
The new case was a Mini-ITX case just like the Orange BitFenix case. But the difference was the Orange case was a Mini-ITX case with space. This new case is a Mini-ITX case, period. But, the process was going to be pretty straight-forward, simply pull everything out of the Orange case and put it in the Black case. Simple!
Except it wasn’t.
The process
See, there are a few things that happen when you own a computer that is about eight years old.
1. The processor fan was actually half unclipped
2. The thermal paste on the processor had dried up
3. The interior of the Orange case was very – very – dusty
Add to that, the cables inside the case were a ‘rats nest’ because I’d added hard drive over the years and not taken the time to run the cables with any semblance of organization.
I was determined to get the entire wap done in about two hours, so I popped on some Star Trek and got to work on a Friday night (this is how cool I am, I spend my Friday nights alone, at home, playing with computer parts).
I checked the clock after working for a while, it was around 10pm, It had been three hours. I was almost done… removing everything from the Orange case.
If you aren’t a tech person and you’re thinking, “How much can be in there?” you’re not crazy. There isn’t much, really. But I was trying to take my time noting how things were connected to make things easier to rebuild it later.
So I woke up early Saturday morning with some enthusiasm thinking I could quickly finish taking things apart, and then – because I’d been so meticulous – very quickly rebuild the computer in the new case.
And I got the motherboard, graphics card, and remaining hard drives laid out pretty quickly for the re-build.
When I removed the motherboard, though, I noticed that the processor fan was loose. I’d noticed recently that the computer had been running “hot” with idle temperatures in the 50C range and I’d been hearing the processor fan running at higher RPMs, but didn’t think anything of it. I just figured the room was warm.
Now I know! The fan tasked with keeping the processor cool was loose! On top of that, when I removed the fan, the thermal paste was dried up and crusty. It looked like what’s left when you have melted cheese in a cast iron skillet.
Not great.
So, I cleaned it up, and re-applied some thermal paste. And reattached, firmly, the processor fan. The nice thing about the Orange case is that there were three additional fans in the case to help with keeping things cool, for this very situation.
I also took some time to use some canned air to blow out the cooling wins on the processor heatsink. I did the same with the graphics card, too.
And I started my reassembly.
At first, I was taking my time trying to handle cable management well and putting everything in its place. But I realized after about 15 minutes that this new case was much – much! – smaller than my old one.
No matter how much I tried to stay organized, there just wasn’t enough space. So eventually my nice zip-tied cable management looked like spaghetti.
Rebuilding this thing ended up taking an additional two hours. It turned out that the power supply has way more cables than I need now. As I have shrunk my Hard Drive need from four to two. And my fan needs from five to two. By the time I got everything in its place, it was ugly.
I couldn’t sleep at night knowing the inside of my case looked like this, so I went through and tried to organize things as best I could, but it still wasn’t “pretty” by any means. This Mini-ITX case is really living up to its name.
But it looks fine when the lid is on.
The good news is that with some new thermal paste and a fan that is fully connected now, the computer is humming along just fine in its new home. Idling in the mid-to-upper 30C range.
A two-fer!
When I was looking at this case online, not knowing if I was going to like this case or not, I decided to buy two of these… Because that is a good idea.
Why buy two? Well, my server has been living in a case that is way, way, way too big for its needs.
My server is an ASRock J5005-ITX board. I was lucky to get one when I did, because they are no longer available anywhere. These little guys awesome workhorses. I love this little thing. It isn’t some big, fancy, and expensive piece of technology, either. It is a quad-core Intel Celeron processor that is embedded in the board with a passive (no fan) cooling system. I coupled it with 8GB of RAM and two hard drives.
It can rip DVDs decently, it houses all my music, and runs my Karrie Meter maps. Sometimes simultaneously!
But I wanted to put it in a smaller case, because I wanted to be able to set it in a closet and forget about it, as I can remotely log into it as needed.
This disassemble-reassemble process was much. Since there were only four parts, moving this one from the old tower to the new case was pretty easy. I just unplugged and unscrewed things in one case and plugged them in and screwed them into the new case.
And just like in Office Space, when I turned the server back on, everything turned into a disaster.
At first it wouldn’t even boot. Then it would boot, but it didn’t recognize the DVD player. Then it would boot and couldn’t access the internet. Then it wouldn’t boot again. Then it would boot and freeze.
And I recalled having a similar problem when I first put the server together, but I couldn’t put my singer on how I fixed it and what the issue actually was.
Was it the DVD-ROM?
Was it bad RAM?
Was it the boot order?
I was racking my brain… and close to giving up. Google, in this case, was no help. Since they only made so many of these little boards, there is very little help on the web. So when things break with these little boards, you’re on your own.
And “on my own” was getting close to “computer thrown” in this case.
I tried swapping cables back-and-forth, changing boot orders back-and-forth, and changing boot options back-and-forth. It was about an hour or flip-flopping settings.
Finally, I stumbled across the fix by plugging in the DVD-ROM drive to the first SATA port. Everything else is after. For whatever reason that worked. And it booted up, had internet, the whole nine yards! So, I didn’t ask any questions.
The result
Not bad, actually. I went from two floor-standing cases to two desk-sitting cases.
While I will miss my BitFenix orange case with my Beavers logo on the front, I will not miss the generic-inherited-from-my-girlfriends-old-computer black case.
Both of the new cases are also a bit quieter with newer fans that run at low decibel levels with higher efficiency.
It has given me new motivation to build a new computer, with very quiet fans and in a larger-ish case, to see if I can make a power PC that you can’t hear over a whisper.
