I actually did need to take a hacksaw to a Dell case when the PSU died, because they used a proprietary form factor. It was just removing some of the back panel and it worked fine.
Once upon a time I think they also had custom pinouts on the ATX connector, so just replacing your PSU with a standard one would fry your mobo
They did, I was about to say the same thing! I had to buy an adapter to make it work right. This was like mid to late 2000’s. I work in IT for a company and didn’t want to spend money on a new PC yet so I snagged one from work that was no longer used. It got the job done, but yeah it was crazy to see what they did to make it so you couldn’t swap or change some things inside.
Reminds me of when I made a pc as a media center for my roommates out of old spare pc parts and the box that their xbox360 came in.
Had to turn it on by using a paper clip to short the right two pins, lol.
I test-“built” my first gaming pc with all the parts laying on my bed.
The only computer parts store within cycling distance just put returned parts back on the shelf, so there was about an 80% chance at least one part you bought was dead out of the box.
Later I remembered that that’s possible, and built a gaming rig with all parts mounted openly on the wall behind my desk.
If it’s stupid and it works…
So it isn’t stupid anymore, but they could just find a random full size pc case somewhere and use it instead of this.
It’s an OEM motherboard and it may not be a normal standard. The PSU isn’t normal either so it wouldn’t fit most *ATX cases. Plus, free is free.
OEM mobos suck. Boards from this era of Optiplex are pretty standard apart from the PSU connector, but newer ones have motherboards that go all the way from one side of the chassis to the other, and mount the power button and front panel I/O on the mobo. I don’t even know if they have internal USB headers.
I thought dells aren’t as shitty as the competition, as I have a great experience with a Latitude 5290. I guess I was wrong.
I don’t know why but this has me rolling. Genuinely had to catch my breath.
Happy to know my redneck engineering made you laugh! It was either that or a custom water loop.
Is that some kind of blade server? Doesn’t that make it like not rack with other blades?
That probably worked way better than having it in a thermally constrained environment.
So … you have to remove your CPU cooler to open the case? That does not look very convenient.
Literally thinking outside the box.
