Quote:
Originally Posted by Gregg Bell
I've added RAM and a hard drive and a DVD tray, that sort of stuff. Nothing beyond that, though. But as long as it doesn't involve soldering or something like that, I don't see what's so hard about most things. (Esp. with Youtube videos and helpful people like you and Red.  ) |
That's precisely the sort of stuff I've done here.
On the old Dell SFF box, I upgraded RAM to the 8GB that was the max the machine would take, and added an SSD as boot drive and a video card for better 3D performance.
On the HP, I didn't need to add RAM as it came with 8GB, thought I can expand it to 32GB if needed. I didn't reuse the video card from the Dell either, as the Intel HD2000 graphics provided better performance and kept life simpler.
I did have to do a little fiddling. I only had a few SATA drive ports, so I stole the one used by the onboard DVD and used it for the SSD. That required getting a Y-adapter for the power lead because the power connector for the DVD wouldn't work with the SSD, but splitting an HD power line into two would. There was enough room in the SFF case to fit stuff.
The other recent upgrade was adding USB3, because the HP came with USB2 on the motherboard. I found a USB3 PCI-e card that wuld plug into an unused mini-PCI-e slot that provided two rear USB3 slots. (It could have an optional lead that could connect to front slots to make them USB3 too, but I didn't bother. An external USB3 drive enclosure plugs into onew read USB3 slot, and a 4 port USB3 hub plugs into the other. Works fine. I am seeing USB3 flash drives at the price I was paying for USB2 versions, and am slowly converting. (I have an assortment of flash drives that are used for archival storage where raw speed of access isn't a major concern, so no hurry.)
I still have an empty slot where I can plug in a better video card, but I'm not a gamer and don't really need the capability.
No soldering has been required by anything I've done on these or earlier machines, but some ingenuity in realizing some things
could be done has proven useful.
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Dennis