Z640 motherboard removal

[Spicerka1990]

Hello, I recently purchased a z640 workstation for a project and have been trying to transfer the motherboard to another chassis. I have removed every visible screw yet cannot get the motherboard to come out. Am I missing the step? Is there perhaps a screw under a heat sink? I’m about at my wit’s end with this.

[SDH]

Been there, done that, did not like that.

Those HP engineers are crafty folks. See attached picture below. The black bar with the slim green strip along its top needs to be rotated 90 degrees to give enough room for the motherboard to be slid to the right and then lifted up and out. Same concept for the Z620 workstations.

The two cables plugged into the bottom right black plastic fan holder are doing nothing... that is just how HP engineers figured out to not have them flopping around inside the case. Those two cables are for PCIe supplemental power if needed.

That removable black plastic cover to the left below the processor is where the second processor's mini-motherboard plugs in if you chose to add another processor.

[DGroves]

swapping the motherboard to a different case is not a simple task as HP has a non standard wiring layout on the workstations

you will need to reuse the HP USB cable

same for the power on cable/button

the z640 power supply is not ATX compatible (although adapters exist)

the motherboards rear I/O ports has no known compatible available backplate

the motherboard is not fully ATX compatible in size or board mounting holes

can the above be worked around?

it really depends on your skill level, and in my opinion this is not a beginners or intermediate level project

 I actually found someone selling rear z820 compatible backplates i've only been looking for over 8 years for this and now no longer have a need for them!

[Spicerka1990]

Luckily for my purposes the backplate is not necessary. I did my research and bought the proper adapters to use a standard atx psu. Case fans will be handled by a hub and luckily there is a power button as part of the rear I/o.