Software program engineer Liam Jackson has penned a information to bringing an outdated Hewlett-Packard N36L/N40L/N54L ProLiant MicroServer bang up-to-date — by shoving an Intel N100-based mini-PC in its 5.25″ drive bay, changing the inventory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 completely.
“The HP N54L MicroServer (and the N36L/N40L) is a good 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 a complete 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 approach to improve this in any other case stable unit was wanted to maintain it from turning into simply extra ewaste.”
With no simple approach to mount a contemporary motherboard the place the unique lives, Jackson set about searching for 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 serious improve from the AMD Turion II that initially shipped within the MicroServer, and slotted it residence 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 frequent and is principally 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 immediately!”
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,'” through which two pins of the ATX cable are completely shorted to ship a relentless power-on sign.
“Total this challenge was very profitable,” Jackson concludes, “and never solely is the server now a lot quicker (it could actually saturate my gigabit hyperlink on downloads, whereas it was restricted to round 25% earlier than) and decrease energy, warmth appears a lot better too and it saved the MicroServer chassis and PSU from turning into waste.”
The total challenge write-up is obtainable on Hackaday.io, whereas Jackson has revealed the STL recordsdata for the PC adapter bracket on Printables beneath a public area license.