Hello!
Still on my server buildin journey, but I acquired a Dell Insperon 3670. The board says it’s atx but everything I’m readin says it’s a proprietary board, and thus can’t be easily moved. My issue is I have 2 12tb HDDs I wanna shove in it without and available cradles. I have a different case was some free slots but my other concern is the psu, its also theirs and the board requires an adapter to be used with other hardware, I believe. I wanna run Minecraft and Valheim off this thing and have a GeForce 1050 I can cram in there to help, how should I figure how much power I have available to do this?
Thanks again y’all’s!
Unfortunately Dell pulls some shit with their PCs. Their boards are usually almost standard as @catloaf points out. I had a Dell Optiplex 990 that had a board advertised at ATX… but a few of the mount points were a few centimeters off. I thought I might be able to make do without a few mounting screws until I realized the cooler was actually designed to hold the board in place and would not be transferrable. I thought about getting a new cooler but the board was designed so the CPU was too near the edge of the case to fit most standard coolers. Not sure if they do this on purpose to make their parts ecosystem essentially closed or if there is some cost benefit reason but it blows either way.
It looks like it might actually be almost ATX. Just eyeballing it, it looks like about half the screw holes are in the right position. However, that means a different case might have standoffs in the wrong position. You’d need to remove them or cover them with electrical tape or something. But even after that, the front panel ports are on the same board, and may not fit.
But in any case (no pun intended), it looks like that case doesn’t have any real drive bays. At best, you can tuck one in front of the PSU, and stick the other anywhere it’ll fit.
It looks like you’ll be pushing the limits of the PSU, too. Newegg’s calculator suggests you’ll be over 400 W, and the best one you can get in that model is 365 W.
Dell publishes the specs, just look them up at Dell.com/support. Punch in your service tag and it’ll tell you everything you need to know. Well, mostly.
You’ll need to lookup the Dell part number for the PSU to find its specific capabilities (number of 12v buses for example). Looks like it came with a 365w unit, so you may get lucky.
I don’t see moving the board as being realistic. You can’t really do that in any case-they’re all designed to mount a certain way, and branded boxes are even tighter. But that PC is a mini tower, so there’s little reason why you wouldn’t be able to put in whatever you want - more drives, etc.
You should be able to find drive cradles on ebay. Or just mount them however you can. I’ve gone as far as gluing a drive to the case with Goop (a rubbery adhesive). Cradles just make it easy and consistent.