Frankensteining an Aspire AX 1420G

ArugulaZ

Reputable
Sep 16, 2014
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Howdy, folks! I had a question about a computer and I thought this would be the right place to ask.

I bought an Acer Aspire AX 1420G from a yard sale, and it's a surprisingly good computer for the money I paid. A quad-core processor, four gigs of RAM, one terabyte hard drive, and Windows 7, all for twenty bucks? Yeah, I can't complain.

However, there's just one problem. The slimline case the computer came in doesn't afford much room for expansion. It's stuck with a proprietary 220W power supply and can only accept costly low profile graphics cards. I've been thinking about taking the motherboard out of its original case and putting it into a different one, but I'm not sure if this is feasible, or even wise to attempt. Would it be worth the effort to transfer the hardware to another case? I'm a little worried that I'm going to connect the motherboard improperly and burn out the CPU, or do some other irreversible damage.

I've done computer repairs in the past- adding RAM, removing cards, and even replacing a motherboard in one instance- but never anything this involved. Is there anything I should know before I proceed?
 
Solution
Sounds like a good plan. As long as the motherboard is a standard form factor it should work fine. Generally they stick to the ATX cabling specifications if not the form factor for the supply.

It looks like a standard ITX (Mini-ATX) board, so any ATX compatible case can handle it. I recommend MicroATX (uATX) so that you can put in a dual slot (or more) video card in the single PCIe slot.

Eximo

Titan
Ambassador
Sounds like a good plan. As long as the motherboard is a standard form factor it should work fine. Generally they stick to the ATX cabling specifications if not the form factor for the supply.

It looks like a standard ITX (Mini-ATX) board, so any ATX compatible case can handle it. I recommend MicroATX (uATX) so that you can put in a dual slot (or more) video card in the single PCIe slot.
 
Solution