Saturday, June 22, 2013

Need more space for hard drives or solid state drives?

 ORICO PCI25-2SORICO PCI25-2S
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA1DS0FR8898&Tpk=ORICO%20PCI25-2S

I can't believe I hadn't seen these until just recently, it's a 2.5" drive mount that fits in an extra expansion card slot. I've got a Cooler Master Elite 360 case which fits perfectly in my home theater setup, but it doesn't have nearly enough space for all the SATA connectors my motherboard has. This worked just perfectly for adding a SSD to my setup without sacrificing my 2 TB drive. I have the second slot empty for now but it feels like it might be sturdy enough to hold the weight of a conventional 2.5" hard drive as well.

Works even better in my Cooler Master case because the power supply is mounted right behind the expansion slots so the cables don't even have to stretch that far. It's a shame the Elite 360 got such a bad reputation for doing this, it's honestly not a problem if you find the right video card (my Zotac GeForce GTX 660 AMP 2GB fits with room to spare).

BONUS:
Power on your pc using a remote control (or Logitech Harmony)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999191

The Antec Mult-Station Basic Internal IR receiver was another item that worked perfectly for my Cooler Master case, it was somewhat of a hassle to set up (there's a special 24 pin motherboard power connector cable with a tiny cord that supplies power to the unit) but it's certainly worth it once everything is up and running.

There are other options like the Wesena IR receiver (http://shop.perfecthometheater.com/IR-receiver-IR-receiver.htm) that supposedly works just using the power switch connector on your motherboard, but no matter what I tried it just would not work with my setup. I ended up having to return it for a refund, minus a 15% "restocking" fee...