MobileRead Forums - View Single Post

Bob Russell · 05-19-2008, 09:43 AM

Thanks Jon for the information.

It was an agonizing decision process, especially after spending MANY hours looking at your suggested parts, and reading comments and other web sites with info. The idea of being able to use five hard drives was absolutely making me giddy with anticipation.

But in the end, and after discussing with my wife for a sanity check, I ordered the Compaq Presario system because of cost, simplicity and time. It just didn't seem like there was a reason (other than the fun of it) to spend the extra money. The system would have been better, but a bit more costly and not necessary. And more important to my wife, it's additional computer work -- with a home built system she might not see me for weeks after I dive into the office with all the pieces and parts!

Here is the motherboard info...
http://h10061.www1.hp.com/ccsearch/s...ry=motherboard
(I was astounded to see this info on the HP support site, and of course now it means a lot more to me after learning more about these things!)

But now that I'm more familiar and much more enticed by the possibilities after getting your input and some other great info (thanks RWood!) as well, I'm thinking about doing the following with the system. It's my own idea based on just enough knowledge to become dangerous, so I'm wondering if I am crazy or if this is a good idea?

1) Upgrade the power supply from 350W to 450W, and add additional hard drives. There is one open hard drive bay, another empty optical bay, an external 3.5" (for the digital media reader I assume) and 4 SATA controller sockets on the mother board to drive it all. Plus, I can use the existing power supply for another old computer that needs one.

So can't I now add three hard drives if I'm willing and able to remove the card reader?...
* One in the empty hard drive 3.5" bay
* One in the empty optical 5.25" bay (with a bay adapter)
* One in place of the card reader in the 3.5" external bay

A little reading seems to indicate that hard drive max power consumption tends to run around 30W/hard drive on spin up, half that on activity, and almost nothing when idle. So I figure if I beef up the power supply by 100W, I should be good if the fan can ventilate enough. I'm tempted to try leaving the power supply it has, but am afraid of problems if I do that (e.g. if all four drives spin up or are active at the same time and the system melts down or writes bad data).

2) Then after the warranty expires in a year (so I don't have to worry about voiding the warranty), move the whole thing to a new case so I can give better ventilation and more easily upgrade the system incrementally as if it was a custom build to start with. Other than maybe not having the same instruction books or needing different cables, it shouldn't be any harder than building from scratch, should it?

Oddly enough, the incredible flexibility of expanding a home built box with incremental part swapping reminds me of the human body -- urban legend has it that each of us replace our cells (or is it molecules in the cells?) throughout our life periodically, so really the stuff we are made up of is constantly changing, even though we keep our structure and identity. A home built system seems very much like that as you can continue to add on or replace all the bits and even the case over time, yet it's still your "same" computer.

So is this getting me in over my head and likely to cause problems, or are these things a good idea? One person whispered to me that putting it all in a new case is possible, but he didn't exactly go out of his way to say it was a good idea or easy. What do you guys think?

Anyone done this sort of thing before? If it's possible and practical, I think this could catch on with tech types. Or maybe all you guys/gals are already doing such a thing routinely anyway?

05-19-2008, 09:43 AM	#7
Bob Russell Recovering Gadget Addict Posts: 5,381 Karma: 676161 Join Date: May 2004 Location: Pittsburgh, PA Device: iPad	I grabbed the package store deal after all... Thanks Jon for the information. It was an agonizing decision process, especially after spending MANY hours looking at your suggested parts, and reading comments and other web sites with info. The idea of being able to use five hard drives was absolutely making me giddy with anticipation. But in the end, and after discussing with my wife for a sanity check, I ordered the Compaq Presario system because of cost, simplicity and time. It just didn't seem like there was a reason (other than the fun of it) to spend the extra money. The system would have been better, but a bit more costly and not necessary. And more important to my wife, it's additional computer work -- with a home built system she might not see me for weeks after I dive into the office with all the pieces and parts! Here is the motherboard info... http://h10061.www1.hp.com/ccsearch/s...ry=motherboard (I was astounded to see this info on the HP support site, and of course now it means a lot more to me after learning more about these things!) But now that I'm more familiar and much more enticed by the possibilities after getting your input and some other great info (thanks RWood!) as well, I'm thinking about doing the following with the system. It's my own idea based on just enough knowledge to become dangerous, so I'm wondering if I am crazy or if this is a good idea? 1) Upgrade the power supply from 350W to 450W, and add additional hard drives. There is one open hard drive bay, another empty optical bay, an external 3.5" (for the digital media reader I assume) and 4 SATA controller sockets on the mother board to drive it all. Plus, I can use the existing power supply for another old computer that needs one. So can't I now add three hard drives if I'm willing and able to remove the card reader?... * One in the empty hard drive 3.5" bay * One in the empty optical 5.25" bay (with a bay adapter) * One in place of the card reader in the 3.5" external bay A little reading seems to indicate that hard drive max power consumption tends to run around 30W/hard drive on spin up, half that on activity, and almost nothing when idle. So I figure if I beef up the power supply by 100W, I should be good if the fan can ventilate enough. I'm tempted to try leaving the power supply it has, but am afraid of problems if I do that (e.g. if all four drives spin up or are active at the same time and the system melts down or writes bad data). 2) Then after the warranty expires in a year (so I don't have to worry about voiding the warranty), move the whole thing to a new case so I can give better ventilation and more easily upgrade the system incrementally as if it was a custom build to start with. Other than maybe not having the same instruction books or needing different cables, it shouldn't be any harder than building from scratch, should it? Oddly enough, the incredible flexibility of expanding a home built box with incremental part swapping reminds me of the human body -- urban legend has it that each of us replace our cells (or is it molecules in the cells?) throughout our life periodically, so really the stuff we are made up of is constantly changing, even though we keep our structure and identity. A home built system seems very much like that as you can continue to add on or replace all the bits and even the case over time, yet it's still your "same" computer. So is this getting me in over my head and likely to cause problems, or are these things a good idea? One person whispered to me that putting it all in a new case is possible, but he didn't exactly go out of his way to say it was a good idea or easy. What do you guys think? Anyone done this sort of thing before? If it's possible and practical, I think this could catch on with tech types. Or maybe all you guys/gals are already doing such a thing routinely anyway?