COMPLETELY Overhauling This Old HP Server [Part 1]

[@matt123337]

I'm hoping he replaces that HP logo with the Hardware Haven logo in part 2, it would look 🔥

[@otter-pro]

Great idea. he has 3d printer so with semi-clear PLA, he could print a nice HH logo.

[@thenono1]

the second he removed it I thought (and hoped) that was the plan hahaa

[@KeithHanlan]

That rogue wire is exactly the sort of clumsy mistake I would make. My response would not likely have been as calm. Koodos for pressing on.

[@LouisGiliberto]

Same - every time I work on computers I invent new swear words. 😕

[@nickwort123]

I normally just fast forward through ads, but I didn’t this time and I gotta say, that mic is genuinely impressive

[@HardwareHaven]

It's super cool! And it seems like there's a great team over there as well.

[@rhydonify]

thats good for you but i still fast forward that shit lol :D

[@oscarfiala2104]

It helps to know, that hw-heaven is picky about his ads. Some KZbinrs will promote the most random garbage. But he puts effort into trying it out and Making sure it’s not a waste of money.

[@rhydonify]

@@oscarfiala2104 don't know about that one lol

[@PoeLemic]

Actually, I went and looked, thinking about buying one. But, the price is just outside of my budget for what it is. I teach, so money is always tight.

[@Volgin.]

Please don't keep us waiting! This project has so much potential that I just can't wait to see whats coming

[@Cjb-nuc9extremegamer]

12:55 My heart stopped when he said VRMS.

[@HardwareHaven]

Lol... RIP

[@DIYDaveOK]

So much potential!! As far as self-destucting things, we've all been there: I replaced a broken LCD panel in a friend's laptop, had it all end and was securing the bezel, but squeezed too hard.... and cracked it. Had to order another screen but got it fixed. Awesome looking project!

[@diamondsword243]

Currently looks amazing! The amount of patience you have for these projects is insane

[@jimmyscott5144]

Honestly I love that you show some/all your mistakes. Makes me feel not as bad when I mess my stuff up

[@MrMunkyMeat]

This is a neat little project. Like a sleeper NAS/Media server. I have been looking at some of the mini pc's myself lately to test as a streaming setup. Gonna have to keep up on this project as it is giving me ideas for a "Stream Module" kind of thing. I had been kicking around the idea of using one of the Vevor desktop racks but this looks like it would be a cleaner build.

[@ChristopherHailey]

This is a great project and a great video that covers pretty much every topic in home server world. Brave and helpful for you to show the fails and recoveries from paint issues and magic smoke releases. This shows what you can do with some parts, thought, determination, and a grinder. I got a lot of useful info here including some ATX power ideas. BTW The ad worked well, good sponsor because it's not something you cover but is of interest to many of your viewers. I'm sure the sponsor will be happy because you covered the product features without annoying the viewers by giving a useful and amusing product ad.

[@TheDesertsweeper]

The N54L Gen 7 was a beast in it's day. Officially only supported 8GB but you could get it to work with 16GB of ECC RAM. And of course the Optical slot could house a 5th 3.5" drive. There is an internal USB port you can boot off if that's your thing. You could use an HBA in the PCIe slot and get true RAID. And there is an eSATA connector out back for further expansion. I used to mod the hell out of them. I still have a bunch sitting on a shelf gathering dust. The AMD CPU was the one thing you could not upgrade sadly.

[@f4r__]

Oh man, dropping the freshly painted case, zapping the board, now this feels like a project I could do too lmao. Looking forward to part 2.

[@giannistsolebas6962]

How do you manage to get all these things done? You're the definition of patience.

[@HardwareHaven]

I spend way too much time on silly projects... that's how lol

[@audigex]

I still use my Gen7 micro server as my NAS/home server. There’s genuinely never been anything that does the same job for even double the price

[@PoeLemic]

Very good project. Really liked how you applied your ingenuity to refurbishing this box and really making Something that has quite a statement. Because you created it all yourself.

[@MayankJairaj]

11:00 xy3606 buck converter spotted, there was a time when i had 15 of those

[@electrofreak0]

Somebody get this man a Gamer's Nexus soldering mat to keep his space clean and grounded safely.

[@thebristolbruiser]

Don’t support that greasy haired scumbag.

[@cease70]

Every time I watch one of your videos I think "I wish I could do that." from either a creativity standpoint, a know-how standpoint (I have no idea how to solder and know nothing about capacitors or electrical current) or from a hardware access standpoint lol. Keep the excellent content coming!

[@ThatRandomDude914]

Voltage: Volts Current: Amps Power: V x A Higher the voltage, the more it hurts if you touch it. That’s about all you need to know

[@Spreadie]

I just bought one of these, two weeks ago - it arrived on the morning we left for a two week cruise - going to fit a ITX MoDT 12th Gen board and a 6x2.5" dock in the 5.25" bay. 10 bays total, with three m.2 drives. Looking forward to ripping into it. I'm sacrificing one of the rear slots to squeeze in a standard ITX board.

[@kenshiromilesvt.7037]

I will chime in on the Mod Mic discussion. They have really good customer service. They got back to me within a week and I was able to buy a replacement receiver for my wireless mod mic that I bought second hand without a receiver. It was a really good price to $25 or something... Super impressed with them tbh

[@razorgcy]

I'd paint the Bluray drive in white as well tbh, esp to hide the LG logo and stuff

[@famitory]

it might be worth trying to replace that resistor (and check around for other crispy critters in the area). some topologies for building power management can "look like" a short to ground when they're not powered, and you might only need to change out a few exploded passives to save the board.

[@PTSeTe]

Yup, might as well go all in now, the parts should not be very expensive, the difficulty to soldering them back will though😂 But that's good and interesting content

[@kevinhu196]

the attention to detail this project was given is simply amazing

[@R_Sahasrad]

"Some PCs were harmed" 🤣🙏

[@deechvogt1589]

Thanks for sharing both your successes and failures. Can't wait to see the final result!

[@timmiller1103]

I feel your pain about dropping the case. Did it a few weeks ago on a small itx build. Got done spraying a nice metallic blue and the case came off the hanger. Ooops :/

[@idontatalya242]

Yessss...case modding a-la 1999...rotary tool and spaaaarks 🥰

[@pship855]

I have three N54L Gen 7 machines - all still going strong 😊

[@qyuzu-watch-account]

Those vids are definitely stepping up in quality every time! Congratulations and good luck 🎉

[@JamieBainbridge]

Really cool project. I love to see old useful boxes given a new lease on life. I have a spare NUC8, makes me wonder what I could do with it 🤔

[@betag24cn]

the worst part of work in a hp server is open it and discover that everything is hp inside 😂

[@Francois_L_7933]

The trick with the open shoe grinder is to properly mark your lines with a visible pen, properly anchor the piece to the workbench (it can throw stuff away) and slowly start cutting well above the line. Once most of the metal is removed, you use the side of the disk to slowly eat-away at the rest of the metal until you reach the mark.

[@Okofo2]

By chance, I have this exact HP server too that I didn't know what to do with. This video is very inspiring :)

[@Skungalunga]

I always like to see people acknowledge mistakes as we're all human, and we learn from them. Nobody was born knowing everything.

[@leok4007]

love these kinda videos! looking forward to part 2

[@balex96]

Love videos like this, it gives inspiration for my next project.

[@ThorstenSO]

Nice, man. You put in a lot of work into it. The white door is really nice. Make the optical drive white as well. The old hp Server is my 2.5 Gb/s (backup) NAS. Best regards.

[@Movies4118]

I had one same HP Server back in 2015-2016. Threw it away after the motherboard got fried for reason. At the time, felt like the internals were all proprietary and I wouldn't be able to repurpose it for anything. After seeing your video, now regret throwing it away.

[@craigprocter1232]

I have 3x HPn36l microservers that have been in use for 13 years. I recently decided to upgrade the ''main NAS'' to an Intel n100 based system (aliexpress motherboard with 12X SATA ports on board, 2x 1Gbe, 16GB DDR4 RAM in a Jonsbro N3 case) so I could consolidate data and possibly decommission the older NASes.

[@theWSt]

Niiiiice! 😎 Really looking forward to part two! Great job, super cool that you spend so much afford on this content! 👍

[@Trainguyrom]

I see now that it's a two partner to pay for the replacement mainboard and definitely not due to the sheer anount of time invested😉 Cool project! I look forward to part 2!

[@_marcioeric]

Being honest... I love this type of projects! Really looking foward into it

[@TheQuickSilver101]

This was pretty awesome. I'm really looking forward to part 2!

[@Ekz0rcyst]

Thanks for video. Good luck with project!

[@cameronfrye5514]

Sometimes components do get sacrificed in the name of modding... "It wasn't my incompetence that led to the death of this thing, more so just my negligence" - 10/11/2024 That phrase is absolutely going into the repository.. thank you for sharing!

[@LiLBitsDK]

thank you, I appreciate you making this style of videos, very entertaining and inspiring!

[@alpine7840]

I cannot tell you how much that I love and look forward to your videos!

[@Elia__M]

What’ve you done! Now I absolutely need this mic for no reason 😶

[@leangxd]

waiting for the second part you can also make a separate video repurposing the old motherboard that u took out of that old machine

[@Bouipi]

love it, i wish i could downsize my home server but with stuff in it, i don't think i can

[@mikecondo]

Very excited to see how this pans out!

[@djlalorocks]

You are giving me ideas. Love to see the end result

[@Thewickedjon]

this is a monster of a project brother

[@dktol56]

@HardwareHaven Can you provide (in part 2) more detail about ensuring a common ground between the mini-pc and the external PSU for the SATA HD storage? I think I'm running into grounding problems when powering 4 external SATA hard drives from an external ATX PSU. The drives are talking to an HP Elitedesk 800 G4 Mini using an M.2 ASM1064 SATA adapter board with an SFF-8087 to 4 X SATA breakout cable - likely the same board and cable appearing in your part 1 video. For more than 2 drives, I see SATA bus/reset error messages, so maybe noise from improper grounding.

[@gustavinus]

Mic ad was good. Would be better if you 3D printed a head mount for it to use it in the garage though. Killing that MOBO was painful. Made me cry

[@abunk8691]

Had a good laugh with that stray wire causing that SMD to blow up since you got footage of it with the flying spark. Then I felt the dread of accidentally killing hardware. I got reminded of my most expensive accidental killing of hardware on a Lenovo Yoga laptop where the I broke the ram slot. Damn ram slots were so fragile I immediately broke one side trying to get the ram stick out and caused more damage trying to superglue to ram slot clips back which ended up causing damage to the surrounding area of the board and the laptop never worked again. I felt some vindication years alter when I learned that there's others on the Internet whose experienced the crappy build quality of those Yoga laptops, but damn it was still about 600USD lost on that mistake alone.

[@Polo4413]

I have one of these running with synology dsm and i could not be happier!

[@scottbradley4012]

I want to do something similar with my HP media smart server…. I have been keeping it just for this kind of project. Your video is good, but do you have a discord or other presentation where you go a little more in depth on some of the technical decisions you made? I am really curious how you used a desktop PSU to power a nuc that normally uses a barrel Jack. Looking forward to part two.

[@Flargenyargen]

That's a very cool project. Can't wait to see it finished!

[@Mao-CR]

Now that’s a project! Nice work

[@phucnguyen0110]

Happy Friday with another Colten video!

[@truevulgarian]

This is my first visit to your channel but your interesting project has me hooked. +1 sub I love little projects and this one is looking very nice. Do you plan on doing anything with the 4 drives? I suppose you could make a super-duper fault-tolerant media center, but it could probably do a lot more. Maybe an automated backup solution? (That's what I want to create.)

[@VictorFrost]

Awesome build so far! Can't wait for the next part!

[@danielfisher1515]

Really like where this is going!

[@macphile]

What a fun project! Do you think you'll share your board tray model when you're done?

[@StressedRuby]

i can't wait to see the end of this awesome project

[@spitefulwar]

Whaaa... I just bought a 2.5 NIC for my ORIGINAL Gen7 Microserver...(which still can run truenas core perfectly fine).

[@ratland9989]

Which 2.5nic did you buy ?

[@spitefulwar]

@@ratland9989 a generic Intel I225-V one

[@robertjung8929]

i did a similar rebuild of my N40L gen7 micro server. but used a laptop motherboard with a 1135G7 i5 , same mini sas adapter from aliexpress , but i had to use a USB3 2.5G ethernet dongle for connectivity as my board had no ethernet (but has a wifi soldered on). but yours look much better so far ;)

[@johnscabintech]

awesome video :) I have now confirmed I'm not the only one to make costly mistakes. Storm trooper case got to love that. I used to have one of these servers which I sold last year, so wish I had kept it well.... lets wait for part 2 before I say that. Honest video and while it has a sponsor its a good one (just not for me but I'm sure alot of people will buy one). Can't wait for part 2

[@kylesparrow9564]

Great work! Looks amazing! You should totally swap out the HP logo for your Hardware Haven logo though. :-)

[@mx2004mx]

11:50 completely ignoring the sparks

[@ChrisCebelenski]

Great idea to throw the NUC insides into the case - not as new as the N100 but it's probably more powerful.

[@jackipiegg]

6:17 According to the spec sheet, that nuc can work on 12V no problems. Beats doing this janky stuff of dual power supplies which is a nono if you can avoid it. For future projects, 12V to 19V boost modules exists, just get one that has a huge heatsink and proper power rating and you're good.

[@stuckndema]

So ready to see how this turns out!!

[@oddball_the_blue]

Oooooooooooh. I've got one of these still looking like a Borg Cube (Bork Qube?) running a full raid HBA card for SAS drives, dual ethernet card and a SSD running off the SATA port that DVD drive was in.

[@jaydaytoday3548]

I build my nas with a coolermaster 130 with a 3d printed hdd cage and you'll have room for 4 hdds maybe more if your creative and you can use a regular power supply and a regular mini itx board.

[@mikedoth]

Ditch the jig saw and get a oscillating tool. So useful for all sorts of things.

[@philippemarcelgrohmann1225]

If the second board looks identical in the damaged area, i would desolder the burned smd-piece and measure the value in resistance. Then keep it seperate for later. If the value makes sense i would then buy a new smd-resistor and solder it on the damaged board. If it works great, if not the you still got a working board.

[@tnaxpw]

I'm looking forward for part 2, and in the meantime I'll put my N36L into a wardrobe instead of trying to sell ot for next to nothing.

[@jonathanchevallier7046]

Cool project. Thank you.

[@yourpcmd]

I have a lot of computer “stuff” and a couple NUC’s if you’re interested in doing projects with them. Perhaps drop them to you next time I and the wife are in OKC visiting our daughter which is every couple of weeks.

[@codeman99-dev]

8:12 missed chance to pop the mic onto your glasses! What a product placement though. Very top notch.

[@Yandarval]

Or clip to the peak of his hat. Or make a makeshift stand.

[@bluesirius1]

looking nice! can't wait for part 2

[@Philipp-23062]

I wanted to buy this System too, but it was to expensive for me. When i was shopping for one, i saw that some people used the 5,25" Bay to install a Hotswap Drive Bay. Maybe that is a Idea for your System too? Would be very Interessting. I really like this Project!

[@lyletaylor3728]

That's a fun little project. I have an old small HP PC that I inherited that I might try to do something similar with sometime. :) What is that little monitor you use on your bench? I think it would be useful to have something similar but haven't looked into them yet.

[@edru]

Get yourself a silicone mat to work on :D

[@HardwareHaven]

I probably should haha

[@Yandarval]

This should be interesting. I will hold off any comments until this project is fully completed. As I have serveral N54L's and an N40L. All modded in various ways.

[@Monarchias]

12:32 That is why I never, I mean never work on a motherboard laying on a hard surface, like a wooden desktop! No way! Always put on top of a plain paper box, or put a thick cotton towel on the desk! For me the reason mainly was, I scratched a nice and shiny wooden desktop once with a motherboard. The mobo was OK, but the scratch remained visible on the desk! Of course I realized I could hurt the pins or something as well, but luckily I learnt from a scratch, not from a spark! :)

[@DustinKleiboer]

Send that broken NUC to a Microelectronics repair channel near you!

[@Skudster13]

Server Restomod. Awesome!

[@greenprotag]

I am curious if maybe something like a late panda or other x86 board might fair better, but I suppose none of them have enough PCIE for this kind of project... But I love the work you are doing with Old NUCs. Looking forward to the next one.

[@SickyWys]

waiting for to long! i love your content!!!

[@sokoloft3]

Hey long shot but I'd love to buy that damaged nuc board. I have a n3700 that runs debian 11. That 11th gen would be a huge upgrade. Ideally it didn't damage the cpu/pch. It should be a pretty straight forward repair. I do micro-soldering/laptop repair.

[@diabeticnomad]

Embrace the jank! The mic is great! 💜

[@muninm1]

If it could be of any help there is a guy on a french forum which made the swap with a regular m-itx motherboard. Perhaps I could translate the "how to" he made for you. Impatient to see the following. Your video are allways awesome.

[@AWIRE_onpc]

I really want to see the DL360! Its sooo awesome!

[@matthewfghjkl]

In the description you put the the SAS adapter in twice instead of the 5V relay. Could you please update it? I need one for a similar project!

[@HardwareHaven]

FIXED. Sorry!

[@matthewfghjkl]

​@@HardwareHaventhank you, and great video!

[@ceefusjenkins2281]

We have all randomly shorted and RIP'd a board. Just gotta keep on going. The black drive triggers my OCD though..

[@JohnSmith-iu8cj]

You can avoid the bread board by using solid copper wire in one end of those wires.

[@marthinus.x]

Niiiice! Keen for part 2!