I'd like to re-purpose a HP Compaq 8300 Small form factor as a gaming pc.

[Top Shelf]

Now, The HP Compaq 8300, yes the small one, has caught my eye recently and i think it has a whole lot of potential if you look at it as an i7 3770, 8 gb of DDR3 memory and a motherboard with a PCI-E 16x slot that all costs a total of $200 AUD. The issue here would be whether i can get those components into another case that can support a full sized GPU. I understand the limitations of the case and the Power Supply that come with the original system, So i suppose what i need to know is, can i get that motherboard into a conventional PC case? or does it use some bizarre mounting system where the IO and the GPU mounting brackets wouldn't line up?

I'd really appreciate some pointers from anyone who owns a HP Compaq 8300 small form factor or maybe even somebody who has taken one apart for just this reason. Thank you.

 

[k1114]

Quite a few big hurdles. The mobo is btx form factor so won't find any cases. The psu connector is non standard. I haven't seen btx since core 2. This is an odd one, it even has parallel and serial ports which I haven't seen since then either. You're going to have to do quite a bit of modding to get this done for a psu, case and gpu upgrade. Then you might even run into the bios not accepting gpus.

And remember, have fun with it!

 

[bytespec]

Quite a few big hurdles. The mobo is btx form factor so won't find any cases. The psu connector is non standard. I haven't seen btx since core 2. This is an odd one, it even has parallel and serial ports which I haven't seen since then either. You're going to have to do quite a bit of modding to get this done for a psu, case and gpu upgrade. Then you might even run into the bios not accepting gpus.

And remember, have fun with it!

This isn't correct, the size is mATX and all but one of the standoffs screw in. I've just installed my new 8300 i5 mobo into a nice little corsair atx case so that I can use an old 1060. Just figure out the pinouts for the front panel I/O and power/reset n ur good to go. I'll update when I finish editing my video for this transfer.

This video was what I watched when I ran down the street to microcenter to pick up an openbox case. worked like he said, even tho his i5 2400s was paired with a slightly different model MOBO, it was the same size.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHQE_Har6io&t=0s