Software program engineer Liam Jackson has penned a information to bringing an outdated Hewlett-Packard N36L/N40L/N54L ProLiant MicroServer bang up-to-date — by shoving an Intel N100-based mini-PC in its 5.25″ drive bay, changing the inventory motherboard fully.
“The HP N54L MicroServer (and the N36L/N40L) is a superb stable chassis with 4 toolless drive bays, a key operated entrance door, optical drive bay, and ageing AMD Turion II Neo CPU,” Jackson explains. “Nonetheless, the CPU does not likely sustain within the days of gigabit broadband and operating a number of Docker containers.”
What do you do when your HP MicroServer wants an improve? Shove an entire new PC in its drive bay. (📷: Liam Jackson)
“It additionally has the unlucky characteristic of simply powering off if it overheats,” Jackson continues. “This has earned it the family nickname of ‘the saddest server.’ For the reason that CPU is soldered and the the motherboard is non-standard, one other strategy to improve this in any other case stable unit was wanted to maintain it from changing into simply extra ewaste.”
With no simple strategy to mount a contemporary motherboard the place the unique lives, Jackson set about in search of different locations to place a alternative — and noticed the typically-unused 5.25″ drive bay a the highest of the case. A 3D-printed adapter accepted an off-the-shelf mini-PC based mostly round Intel’s N100 CPU, a significant improve from the AMD Turion II that initially shipped within the MicroServer, and slotted it dwelling on the high of the case.
“Hooking up the four-bay HDD cage within the N54L was surprisingly simple,” Jackson provides. “It connects to the unique motherboard by way of a mini-SAS [Serial Attached SCSI] (SFF-8087) connector. This connector spec can carry 4 lanes of SATA, so cables to separate mini-SAS to 4 SATA ports are widespread and is mainly all this HDD cage does. All that was wanted was to put in a £14 [around $18] M.2 card into the mini-PC’s M.2 NVMe slot, join up the drive cage to the mini-SAS port, and Unraid recognised the drives right away!”
A 3D-printed bracket with a coupler brings one of many mini-PC’s Ethernet ports to the rear of the MicroServer case. (📷: Liam Jackson)
The mini-PC, and a brand new case fan, are each powered from the prevailing MicroServer energy provide — now operating continually utilizing what Jackson calls the “ATX ‘paperclip trick,'” during which two pins of the ATX cable are completely shorted to ship a relentless power-on sign.
“Total this venture was very profitable,” Jackson concludes, “and never solely is the server now a lot quicker (it might probably saturate my gigabit hyperlink on downloads, whereas it was restricted to round 25% earlier than) and decrease energy, warmth appears significantly better too and it saved the MicroServer chassis and PSU from changing into waste.”
The complete venture write-up is offered on Hackaday.io, whereas Jackson has revealed the STL recordsdata for the PC adapter bracket on Printables underneath a public area license.
