THE PIECES OF INFORMATION PRESENT ON THIS PAGE ARE PROVIDED AS IT IS WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY OF SUCCESS. I WOULDN’T TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY FOR ANY DAMAGE OR MISTAKE THAT COULD AFFECT YOUR EQUIPMENT.
! MODIFYING YOUR EQUIPMENT WOULD INEVITABLY VOID ITS WARRANTY !
As I received my brand new C-VRM last week, I was surprised by its size (it’s bigger than the stock VRM), and rapidly realised the new DC-2-DC module would not fit in between the DVD-ROM and the hard-drive.
A few days later, I read Mimram’s post on Cubeowner.com‘s forum about slimline hard-drives and realised I should be able to relocate my C-VRM, despite of the lack of space, since there is a 2.5″ HD in my cube!
Relocating the C-VRM involves obtrusive hacks into the cube. The alumninum frame that holds the DVD-ROM drive must be filed/hacksawed.
Ingredients:
- 1 x Gigadesigns C-VRM.
- 1 x LONG VRM relocation cable.
- 1 x PCI bracket.
- 1 x Cork.
- 1 x Hacksaw and/or a set of small files.
I positioned the C-VRM upside down (with IDC connector up) and the black molex at the bottom. The reason I did this is to get the VRM’s molex as close to the DVD-ROM’s molex as possible. Then I was able to change the orientation of the cube’s DVD and HD power connectors, and have them… both powered.
Lucky me I made my VRM-relocation cable too long when I relocated my stock VRM: with the C-VRM upside down, it requires a longer 30 pin IDC extension cable.
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Once the aluminium frame hacked and the C-VRM placed (I re-used the PCI bracket I used for my stock VRM relocation), one can see that the capacitors of the DC-2-DC board goes in the hard disk ‘area’. Therefore this mod can only be made if you have a slimline or a 2.5″ hardrive in your cube.
The space in between the hardrive and the DVD-ROM is just big enough: the 3 transformers at the back of the C-VRM are in contact with the DVD-ROM. This will have the advantage to cool them down: the DVD-ROM will act as a heat-sink (when not in use!).
To secure the board in place, I recycled a piece of cork! It does a very good job here. It was easy to alter the cork’s shape to make ‘hold’ the C-VRM in place, and you don’t have to worry about shortcuts, since it is not conductive.
The picture above show that the caps of the board invade as much as 3mm in the disk area.
I used the rest of the cork to make the 2.5″ HD stand nicely in the cube.
It took me 3 hours to relocate my C-VRM, but it would have take a lot longer if I had to start from scratch (I recycled my stock VRM holder as well as the IDC extension cable).
The cube runs cooler now: the C-VRM is in the direct air flow, and its transformers are cooled ‘against’ the DVD-ROM.
Since the C-VRM is no longer close the graphic card, it’s also cooler on the other side of the cube! (My GeForce 6200 is 10 degrees celcius cooler).
Relocating the C-VRM is definitely worth doing it, at your own risk of course!
Thank you for your interest.
The challenge here was to have the ATX power-supply put inside the powermac to start at the same time the mini is started (and to stop when the mini stops) and also to get the front LED and buttons of the powermac to work with the mini. Grincheux’s dedicated blog powermacmini.wordpress.com gives all the info you need to do all that so I won’t go too much into details about it.
