Post Removal

A couple days ago I cleaned the NES case, as it had built up dust over the years and survived some sort of liquid spill.  Note to future self: Don’t clean with 99.9% rubbing alcohol when you have bare hands and a cut on your finger.

Inside the NES case there were quite a few screw posts for mounting the various boards.  But I’m going to need this space to pack everything in, so they had to go.

Of course, a Dremel is the easiest way to do this.  But I didn’t have a Dremel.  So of course, I had to get one! (Yay for projects).  The Dremel will come in handy for making holes in the case for the rest of the project.

Dremel!

And remember, always wear eye protection and lung protection when using a Dremel.  The More You Know.  Using the Dremel, it was easy to remove the posts (and chip a few things off other stuff too).  Here’s before and after of two of the posts:

Dremel Before+After

This is my first time using a Dremel.  As you can see, my later work after I got the hang of it is better than my first one:

Dremel Better

After removing all the posts, I used regular old sandpaper to smooth off the rough edges.  Here’s the NES bottom with much more space available than before, shown next to my previous picture of it:

NES CleanExtra Posts Removed

In four days (on Wednesday) I get all the parts (motherboard, processor, hard drive, RAM, and power supply) to start playing around with stuff.  First thing I will probably look at is changing the Windows 7 startup screen.

I read up on cooling, and found a few cases of people using the same i5 processor I’m getting with the stock cooler and no case fans  (in a Mini-ITX case).  They had no troubles.  So, I only got a couple of fans a spent a couple extra dollars to get quiet ones.  I got a larger 60mm intake fan that is only 8db, and 2 smaller 40mm exhaust fans at 14db each.  Bottom line, you won’t be able to hear them once you get more than a couple feet away.  They should be sufficient to keep fresh air flowing through the case.  I will be measuring the cooling performance, and can always add more fans if needed, but shouldn’t need to based on other people’s reports.


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