Modding the ESPRIMO D588 to Fit a Dual-Slot Graphics Card

The GeForce GTX 1660 is a full-size PCI board that occupies two slots. While the D588 supports full-size cards, its PCIe x16 slot only has physical clearance for a single-slot card. To get around this, I could either look for a riser board to shift the PCI slot sideways—though I'm worried about cutting and hacking one together causing wiring issues—or I could remove the interfering ports. Since I want to do this without spending extra money, I chose the latter approach.

I started by taking the motherboard out of the case. It has a pretty interesting design where the motherboard sits on a large metal plate that you can slide right out.

The ports that need to go because they're in the way are the RJ45 LAN port, the dual USB 3.0 ports, and the PS/2 keyboard/mouse port right next to them. Seriously, why does this board still have ports from 20 or 30 years ago?

The RJ45 port is essential for gigabit networking since I'm using this as a gaming rig, so I'll rewire it after ripping it out. As for the USB 3.0 ports, while it would be nice to have them, there are plenty of other USB slots available, so I don't really need to bother rewiring those.

Using a soldering iron and a desoldering pump that I've had since my student days, I started by melting and soaking up the solder.

Once I had cleared most of the solder, I used a solder sucker to carefully pull the pins out one by one.

These tools were given to me by a senior student when I was in grad school. Thanks!

I successfully removed the PS/2 ports first—good practice since I wouldn't have minded if I broke those.

Next, I managed to pull out both the RJ45 and USB ports. It was quite a grueling job. I've seen combined LAN and USB connector blocks like this at client sites in the past, but they looked impossible to take apart. I tried peeling back the shielding, but sure enough, the plastic housing couldn't be disassembled, meaning I couldn't simply reuse the RJ45 port. Furthermore, this RJ45 terminal is quite unusual, with an unprecedented number of pins. While Ethernet normally uses 8 wires, this one seemed to have 5 + 5 for a total of 10 signal lines—I wonder what the extra two are for? Plus, there are 2 LEDs to indicate signal connection status, requiring another 2+2 wires. That means I'm going to have to manually bridge a total of 14 wires in mid-air.

By removing these two types of ports, it looks like I'll finally be able to connect a dual-slot graphics card without any clearance issues.

Next up, I need to modify the chassis where the ports exit. I drilled out the pinned joints to take them apart, and spent some time bending and cutting away metal with wire cutters.

I went through a lot of trial and error putting it together, but I guess this will do.

I initially thought about keeping the vertical metal bracket for structural rigidity, but it was just getting in the way, so I ripped it out. A crappy PC like this doesn't need extra structural strength anyway.

Time to modify the riser card area. I lined up the slot section, and it looks like this is going to work out.

It's finally done! I successfully cleared the slot obstruction and modified the metal casing where the ports come out. Honestly, even among tech-savvy PC builders, not many would attempt a job like this. It's only because I'm used to tinkering with cars and doing all sorts of DIY projects that I was able to pull this off. (Humble brag)

Not quite finished yet—next up is the power supply.