how to upgrade my case only??

RKeaton

Baseband Member
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I recently got a good deal on a nice little pc, an HP media center. It has a dual core athlon processor, 250gig hard drive, dual layer burners, etc. Only one problem - the case is so small that to open it up and try to add/change anything is nearly impossible. Everything is so tightly packed in there. Adding two sticks of ram was like doing dental surgery.

So my question is how easy/difficult would it be to just buy a nice big case and swap everything out of this one and into the big one? Bear in mind my knowlegdge level is pretty low on this. I've never built a computer or assembled/disassembled one.

Would it be wise to do it myself (carefully) or should I have an expert do it for me?

And I'm presuming that it isn't a problem to make such a change, am I right? Does changing the case have any other effects or will all this "HP" stuff work just the same in any case? Ha, 'in any case'...


Thanks in advance

Rob
 
my advice is as you take it apart to move it into a new case take carefull notes on how it is hooked up(hdd connected to ide cable 1, and write a "1" on it with a sharpie). even take a few pictures if you are nervous. andno the case has no effect on the hardware thats in it.

another thought occured to me, if the rig is very small it is prolly a micro ATX. just remember that when buying a new case. most ATX mid or full towers have holes for micros but i'm sure a few don't and it would suck if you happened to get one.
 
nah, getting a new case wouldn't effect the hp stuff. just find a nice looking case on newegg, unscrew your powersupply and motherboard, and relocate them into the new case. it's a very easy procedure. plugging all the cords to the power supply back into the motherboard would probably take the most time. so before you decide to make this transplant i would suggest browsing online or studying a couple of manuals to get the jist of things in a computer. theres nothing worse than a dead computer due to the case.
 
Yes, it could effect everything bigtime. Like Logan said, what you have might be MicroATX, in which if you bought a new ATX case, the motherboard wouldn't even align correctly.
 
MarxSoccer said:
Yes, it could effect everything bigtime. Like Logan said, what you have might be MicroATX, in which if you bought a new ATX case, the motherboard wouldn't even align correctly.
Almost every ATX case has screws for mATX motherboards. Im not sure how easy it would be to take the powersupply out of the HP and put it in a different computer though.
 
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