New server PC case - GTR GM8007 ATX
Last Saturday, I bought a GTR GM8007 PC case to replace my old case which was also from GTR. I decided to change the case due to the old case being too small: Firstly, the old case was too small to fit more hard drives. Secondly, the thermal performance of the GPU was limited.
The changing process was tedious. I had to unplug all the power cables and SATA cables, unscrew the motherboard, GPU, power supply, SSDs and HDDs and fans, then remove everything. Next, I had to install everything into the new case. It wasn’t as easy as I thought. Problems arose as some screw holes in the new case wasn’t large enough to fit the screws in, so I had to forcibly drill a bigger screw in to enlarge it.
But now that the changing process had been done, I’m gladly satisfied with the result. I fitted two hot-swappable hard drive bays into the 5.25-inch bays that were supposed to fit DVD drives. Now I can simply plug different hard disks into the bay and be able to read or write data on it without using an external USB hard drive adapter.
The thermal performance of the system also improved greatly. With the installation of more intake fans and a better exhaust design, the temperature of the hard drives dropped from over 40 degrees C to around mid 30s, which will hopefully prolong the life of the hard drives. The temperature of the GPU also dropped significantly. With an undervolt setting of 1920MHz@875mV, when the GPU is under full load, the power consumption is around 130W which heated to more than 70 degrees C in the old case. With the new much more spacious case, the temperature is only around 60 degrees C which I’m very satisfied with.
