Recently, at-least within the last year Dell has made headlines for not honoring their extended warranty on many Optiplex GX280 model computers. As a result, The university of Texas Sued the shit out of them and won. W00T Texas! Everyone else it seems has been throwing thier old GX280s out and buying something else. Ive got 10+ on my office this instant.
Looking around the interweb, I've yet to find any good listings of case mods the the GX280 despite a flurry of people asking. Well why would you mod that hunk a junk anyhow? You cant overclock it, and its too old to be pimpin'. Still, for a free computer, the dual core running at 3.2 GHz, 4 RAM slots up to 4GB its a decent computer for the broke ass college kid.
If you own a GX280 You know why it sucks. For everyone else, here's why:
1. The power supply rear panel only accepts a limited number of dell approved atx power supplies.
2.The case is easy to open up, but its practicaly impossible to add anything to. outside of tossing in a floppy, cdrom or harddrive, your prolly out of luck.
3. the ventilation is the power supply, and the CPU fan.
4. The front panel has 2 usb and audio, which would be awesome, but on all of mine at least, they are angled down so I cant see where I'm plugging anything into.
5. The case just looks lame. Srsly, it never looked cool ever.
6. This might just be me, but it seems like all the stuff on my computer I want to use, is in the back. So I set that side facing me. Then its always troublesome to reach around and fumble for the on switch.
So all this is what prompted my case mod.
the first thing I did was rip all that stupid plastic crap off. I like the bare metal look a whole lot better than the gray on gray tones of the standard dell optiplex gx280 case.
next, I had to bust out the dremel grinder. I bet if anyone owned a real grinder, that would work way better, but I only have a dremel.
With the grinder I cut out a rectangular section below the hole in the case where the power cord plugs into. I could have also cut out the stupid mesh thats back there, but I left it.
I used my cool master 460 and a marker to figure out and mark where to cut, and make it fit.
Next, I cut a 1" by 2" rectangle out of the top rear of the case near the back panel so I could mount the front panel there. I really wanted to keep the USB and audio plugs, but it started to be too much work to keep them. The internal cables are troublesome to work on, and I just didnt feel like re wiring them to make them longer. What was happening, was opening the case with the front panel mounted in the rear, the panel cable would rip out every time I opened the case. After staring at the USB / audio panel PCB long enough, I found I could just cut most of that stuff out, and still be able to use the power button. Oh well, live and learn. I coverd the remaining PCB with hot glue to insulate it. and glued the power button interface to the edges of the hole I had created.
So, just for everyones knowledge, I am all done with floppy drives, zip disks, and CD-ROMS. I'm just not interested in those things any more. This means I have 6 drive bays for a computer I'm only ever going to use 2 drives in. The CD-ROM Drive though on this case also provides structural integrity so I couldn't just remove it. The Floppy and hard drive bays though, those where basically pop riveted into the case. with a 1/4" drill I drilled out the corresponding rivets, and slid out the drive bays, leaving the CD-ROM Drive bays. To mount my hard drive, I used a bay extender.
Now I have a bit more room in the case. So now I want to get some air flow. The Mother board only has Dell's non-standard case fan sockets, soo...
I took a case fan 80mm? and traced the spot I wanted it to go on the front. The panel removed left a hole almost big enough to place the fan. I just used the grinder to cut out the parts in my way. Then I drilled where I marked the holes for the case fan. This case fan had a pre-installed gaurd witch I prolly cant remove without destroying, so I'm putting it outside the case. I think it looks bad ass.
So then I had this gapping hole where the drive bays were. I took an old CD-ROM case and ground out a panel from that to fill the hole. Then I sanded, and taped the front cover, clumsily cut out the Primal star symbol with a dull razor, and pealed out the excess, then spray painted it black.
(This is intended to be a prototype for future case mods in this series. Yeah, I realize its not perfect.)
So, Does anyone else out There have a Dell Optiplex GX280 case mod? Send me photos or links, id love to see them!
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