[SOLVED] Cooler modding/swap on a Dell PowerEdge 860 / PowerEdge R200 1U server

[Zoltan Kandi]

Good day to y'all in your favourite timezone

Complete newbie here asking for some advice on cooler replacement on a PE860 / PE R200 server.

I managed to buy two of these beauties in a liquidation sale CHEAP. Both come with a Xeon X3220, 8 GB RAM and 2x 300GB SAS HDD, good enough specs for some good old-fashioned home lab tinkering.

Problem is, these b&&%*tches are LOUD. But you already know that. They have this fancy dual blower fan that makes my wife leave the premises when spinning up. There's good in that as well, but that's another story.

There's an enormous copper heatsink on the CPU, which is in an LGA775 socket.

So I thought to replace the blower fan/heatsink with a standard CoolerMaster LGA775 heatsink/fan combo and I decided I was OK with modding/cutting the cover if the cooling wouldn't fit underneath.

BUT. Obviously, the mounting points of the original heatsink and the standard LGA775 heatsink aren't the same, physically and geometrically. Honestly, why would the be?

There's one solution I could think of right away: piggybacking the LGA775 fan onto the original copper heatsink with some minor cutting on the case cover which is, if not optimal, still doable.

However, I think I would prefer trying mounting the CoolerMaster first - if I could figure out how to fit and fasten it on the CPU.

Step two would be experimenting with a low-profile low-cost watercooling solution such as

https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Darkflas...8HG6ZWYJ/ref=pd_sbs_147_4/257-0769180-2825857
or
https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Alseye-Water-Cooling-System-Intel/dp/B08C5FY2ZM/ref=sr_1_14

that might even fit under the cover. This comes with a PWM fan and some Intel holding plates as well so with some luck it will be a snap-on.

May I have your thoughts on this please? Any constructive suggestions besides throwing the servers away would be more than welcome.

 

[kanewolf]

Usually the problems in 1U servers is that the factory fans are tied in tightly with the motherboard. You need to search for other people that have been successful with a cooling swap on that specific server.

 

[Zoltan Kandi]

Usually the problems in 1U servers is that the factory fans are tied in tightly with the motherboard. You need to search for other people that have been successful with a cooling swap on that specific server.

Thanks for your reply. At this point I haven't found anyone with an oplossing on these specific servers. Hence the need in some non-conform solution. There are some videos on the tube tackling a similar issue on other 1U Dell servers, but those have standard axial case fans that can easily be replaced with silent ones.
The essence of the problem I'm trying to tackle is: how to mount a stock LGA775 cooler on this non-stock MoBo with the four mounting points this MoBo is equipped with, while keeping the casing intact is not a direct requirement and therefore I can give free rein to my angle grinder

 

[kanewolf]

1U servers aren't worth effort for home use, IMO. I don't buy them for datacenter use if I can avoid it. When you consider that your X3220 is a quad core CPU with 1066Mhz memory. You can replace them with an $80 silent system -- https://www.newegg.com/asrock-j4105m-micro-atx/p/N82E16813157807
There is just no justification for them to not go to the recycler.