With the motherboard prepped, it was time to open the case. The left side door has an easy-open latch, and once it’s open more than about 45 degrees, lifts right off its hinges. The right door doesn’t come off as easily. First I had to remove the decorative inset panel, and then unscrew the three screws securing the door to the rear of the motherboard tray (image D). After that, the door swung open and lifted from its hinges exactly like the left one.
The stock Blackbird shipped with a modular PSU, but we had to have a special PSU made to power our dual-CPU, quad-GPU Dream Machine, and that PSU was, alas, nonmodular. To install it, I removed the PSU bracket from the bottom‑rear of the case and attached the PSU to it (image E), then installed it into the case, pulling the cables through the PSU cover and out of the chassis.
Once the PSU was in place it was time to install the motherboard. Since the case was last used for an EATX motherboard, I did have to move some standoffs into ATX configuration. I placed the case on its side and installed the I/O shield, then the motherboard. After returning the case to its upright position, I routed the 24-pin and 8-pin ATX motherboard power cables behind the motherboard to their connectors and marveled again at how forward-thinking the Blackbird’s design was (image F).
While I was at it, I took the opportunity to connect the leads for the pop-out top panel connectors: HD_AUDIO, USB 2.0, and the multicard readers (image G). No front-panel USB 3.0 here, though the rear-panel ports still work. And though the top panel has a FireWire connector, the motherboard doesn’t, so I hid the FireWire cable behind the motherboard tray. I also connected the 12cm hard drive bay fan and front-panel connectors.
The Blackbird came with a custom SATA backplane behind its five hotswap 3.5-inch drive bays, which can (in HP’s infinite wisdom) be powered by one SATA power connector, two 4-pin Molex connectors, or one custom 10-pin power connector, which ain’t exactly prevalent. Since the PSU we had built for the 2008 Dream Machine does have the 10-pin cable, I used that, and it was only later that I realized I could have used a less bulky modular power supply instead. Oh well! I routed the 10-pin cable above the hotswap bays and attached it to the backplane (image H).
Since the backplane is just a pass-through and we’ve established that the age of your SATA cables doesn’t matter (bit.ly/tY4rRm), it’ll support 6Gb/s SATA drives—ideally.
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