From Newsgroup: uk.comp.homebuilt


I have 2 x N%$L and 2 x Gen8 sitting doing nothing because thy are a but
slow.

Anybody attempted to put something like a Mini-ITX Motherboard or
Raspberry Pi Compute Module in the DVD area to make use of the rather nice case?

I don't think it's practical to try and put a modern mobo in because of proprietary fittings.
--
Jeff Gaines Dorset UK
This is as bad as it can get, but don't bet on it
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From Newsgroup: uk.comp.homebuilt

Jeff Gaines <jgnewsid@outlook.com> wrote:

I have 2 x N%$L and 2 x Gen8 sitting doing nothing because thy are a but slow.

Anybody attempted to put something like a Mini-ITX Motherboard or
Raspberry Pi Compute Module in the DVD area to make use of the rather nice case?

I don't think it's practical to try and put a modern mobo in because of proprietary fittings.

I've occasionally pondered repurposing a Gen7 with a custom mobo with a CM4
or CM5 - with a PCIe switch chip you can get enough PCIe to drive the two
PCIe slots, NVMe and a SATA controller. But the Pis are a bit underpowered
so I just built an AMD box instead.

If you don't mind digging out the angle grinder, there's: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HLF-46Das4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAbyIfv7bEU

Theo
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From Newsgroup: uk.comp.homebuilt

Jeff Gaines wrote:

I have 2 x N%$L

Do you have a ShiftLk key instead of CapsLk ?

and 2 x Gen8 sitting doing nothing because thy are a but slow.

Anybody attempted to put something like a Mini-ITX Motherboard or
Raspberry Pi Compute Module in the DVD area to make use of the rather
nice case?

Would a miniITX motherboard fit in there?

I don't think it's practical to try and put a modern mobo in because of proprietary fittings

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From Newsgroup: uk.comp.homebuilt

I have 2 x N%$L and 2 x Gen8 sitting doing nothing because thy are a
but slow.

The N54Ls should be faster than my N36L and N40L, and I don't find them
slow for home server duty ... but then I don't really push my servers.

Anybody attempted to put something like a Mini-ITX Motherboard or
Raspberry Pi Compute Module in the DVD area to make use of the
rather nice case?

I don't think it's practical to try and put a modern mobo in because
of proprietary fittings.

That's right: The NxxL motherboard is proprietary and you can't really
squeeze in a Mini-ITX board in its place.

If you think the N54L is slow, I suspect you won't like the performance
of a Raspberry Pi either.

It wouldn't be beyond the wit of man to make a carrier board
specifically to fit in an NxxL and take a Pi CM5, but I don't think
anyone has done so. You might try a vanilla Raspberry Pi 5 and a SATA
adaptor like this one:

https://thepihut.com/products/suptronics-x1009-5-port-sata-add-on-for-raspberry-pi-5

I haven't disassembled either of my NxxLs far enough to have a good idea
of how much space would be available if you took out the motherboard
(but left the PSU) ... nor whether such a thing is really possible. It
might be an interesting project, but I'm not sure that the case is
*that* nice.

On the other hand, there's this:

https://hackaday.io/project/194917-drive-bay-n100-mini-pc-hp- microserver-upgrade
--
Cheers,
Daniel.

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From Newsgroup: uk.comp.homebuilt

On 20/09/2026 18:02, Daniel James wrote:

It wouldn't be beyond the wit of man to make a carrier board
specifically to fit in an NxxL and take a Pi CM5, but I don't think
anyone has done so.

... and today I see this:

https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/techie-makes-his-own-motherboard-to-refurbish-15-year-old-hp-proliant-n40l-tower-server-raspberry-pi-cm5-adds-nvme-and-usb-3-0
--
Cheers,
Daniel.
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From Newsgroup: uk.comp.homebuilt

Daniel James <daniel@me.invalid> wrote:

On 20/09/2026 18:02, Daniel James wrote:

It wouldn't be beyond the wit of man to make a carrier board
specifically to fit in an NxxL and take a Pi CM5, but I don't think
anyone has done so.

... and today I see this:

https://www.tomshardware.com/raspberry-pi/techie-makes-his-own-motherboard-to-refurbish-15-year-old-hp-proliant-n40l-tower-server-raspberry-pi-cm5-adds-nvme-and-usb-3-0

Hmm nice, but...

At least with CM5 you get USB 3 onboard, so that's not as bad as CM4 where
it uses the PCIe lane. He says you can use a M.2 to SFF-8087 card to drive
the SATA bays. But still sad those PCIe slots are unusable; perhaps he
could have wired one instead of the M.2?

And without a PCIe switch you have /either/ M.2 /or/ SATA, but not both. I think you could do some frankensteining with an M.2 PCIe switch plus some 'crypto miner' dubious PCIe cables to drive the PCIe slots and maybe an M.2 drive.

But if you want to do Big Storage Things that takes RAM, especially with
ZFS. Even with the current price of RAM, the Pi is somewhat limited.
Although if it's just hosting a few discs without RAID then maybe that's ok.

Another option for the chassis is to dangle the SFF-8087 connector out of
the side and use it as a big disc caddy, with 4x SATA lanes provided from another box. I did ponder doing that with an old laptop - remove the bottom
to access the M.2 slot, fit the above M.2 to SFF-8087 card, then plug in the cable. Either leave the bottom off or cut a hole for the connector. I
didn't think that was mechanically stable enough to use for long term use, though.

Theo
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From Newsgroup: uk.comp.homebuilt

On 19/09/2026 13:30, Jeff Gaines wrote:

I have 2 x N%$L and 2 x Gen8 sitting doing nothing because thy are a but slow.

Anybody attempted to put something like a Mini-ITX Motherboard or
Raspberry Pi Compute Module in the DVD area to make use of the rather
nice case?

I don't think it's practical to try and put a modern mobo in because of proprietary fittings.

I've got a handful of these of varying vintages. Their performance is
adequate but I'm looking at how to upgrade them. They already have 16GB RAM.

The standard backplane has SAS connectors so adding a controller lets me
fit four SAS drives. Just plug the existing cable into the card. In
theory I could plug another four drives in the other socket on that
card. The box copes with 12TB drives. Once I have formatted the drives
via the controller card I can fit them into other unmodified microservers.

A five-bay Orico box plugs into a USB2 socket, slow but reliable. I
haven't tried the Orico box with anything bigger than 10TB drives.

I haven't had any luck with USB3 cards in the PCI-E x 1 slot. Next step
will be to try again after a BIOS upgrade.

I've just bought a second-hand mini-PC that's smaller than an optical
drive and has USB3 and USB-C ports. A boost converter should be able to
power it from the 12V rail.

I have a couple of 4-bay E-SATA boxes. I haven't looked yet to see
whether they are SAS or SATA.

One of the spare Microservers will probably get a 4-port ethernet card
and become a bastion router when I install a web server, which will
either be another Microserver or a Pi.

I have an empty Microserver case and I'm planning to use it to house a
spare ATX power-supply with a boost/buck module to give me 0-30V
variable supply plus fixed 3.3/5/12V ports.

One of the machines will be fitted with a timer so that it wakes up once
a week to take a backup then go back to sleep.
--
Bernard Peek bap@shrdlu.com
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