Cramming a 2.5" SSD into a Thin Client

Overview

In this hands-on upgrade project, I show you how to install a full 2.5-inch SSD into a compact Dell Wyse thin client. This modern quad-core AMD APU-based thin client came with only a tiny 16GB MLC SATA module, but with some creative cable routing and careful placement, we can fit a proper 240GB SSD inside. Perfect for anyone looking to breathe new life into these capable little machines for retro gaming, Windows XP builds, or compact Linux boxes.

Key Moments

• Disassembling the Dell Wyse thin client and examining the quad-core AMD GX-415GA APU
• Discovering the tight space constraints and planning the SSD installation
• Using a SATA extension cable to route the full-size SSD into the chassis
• Creative cable management to avoid the speaker module and memory heat
• Testing the installation in the BIOS and loading Windows XP
• Final results: A fully passive, fanless system with 240GB of storage

Full Transcript (Edited)

Hey there YouTube, in this video I’m going to show you how we’re going to cram this SSD into this thin client. Notice how the SSD itself is pretty big. We’re going to use this and we’re also going to have to fit this extension cable in there. So yeah, let’s get started. I’m going to tear this apart and show you how it’s done.

Okay, so I’ve gone ahead and taken off the screws that I need to take off to get into this. As you can see here, the little cover in the back has three screws and this chassis piece right here has five. It opens up like this, you go back, and then you have to take off the speaker. That’s it. So I’m going to put this aside over there.

Here you can see that this is a slightly more modern thin client than I normally have shown on the channel. This one has a quad-core AMD APU and four gigs of DDR3 RAM. As you can see there, I believe you can go up to eight gigs but I haven’t tried that yet. Right here we have the solid state drive. This unit has a 16 gig SATA MLC SATA module, and it lets you use any standard SATA drive in there. But as you can see, there is very little space in here. It’s very, very narrow - it’s like two fingers wide. So we have to cram our solid state drive in there.

As you can see here, this is the solid state drive that I’m going to be using. It’s a 240 gig SATA SSD and it barely fits in there. This is a plastic case so that’s nice. There’s very little chance that it’ll short things out. Even then, the cable will be sandwiched so there’s very little room in there for the SATA drive but it does fit. We’ll be able to make it work.

Looking at some other things in here, you can see that there is a PCI Express slot right there. I’ve seen these models with a built-in Wi-Fi adapter that is plugged into that slot. I’m not sure if we can put in one of those NVMe drives or M.2 drives in there. Maybe something for me to try in a future video.

I also have, I believe that’s a USB header over there, so you could also get creative with that. There are some other headers here which I don’t know much about. I believe this one right here is a custom power cable that goes with this other SATA port, but I haven’t been able to find the adapter that fits there. This is another header that I’m not sure what’s all about. So yeah, a lot of unknowns in this little machine, but it is a pretty fast one.

Like I said, it’s a quad-core and it has a DisplayPort, DVI-I so that means I can do VGA here, and I can also do VGA out of the DisplayPort. It has two USB 3.0 ports, those blue ones, two USB 2.0 there, and a gigabit Ethernet port. In the front you have two more USB 2.0 ports and a headphone jack or speaker output. It’s a nice little package.

The nice thing is that once we put this 240 gig SSD in there, you can pretty much run any operating system that you’d like. In this case I’m going to be loading Windows XP, but you can run Windows 10, you can run maybe even Windows 11, I’m not sure about that. Pretty much anything. Also makes a great little Linux box. And notice that there are no fans in there, so it’s fully passive.

All right, so what I’m going to do now is I’m going to take apart the built-in solid state drive here. Put the screw to the side, then this comes out like that. It’s a little bit difficult to do it one-handed because I’m holding the camera with the other one, but you can see here it just slides out. Come on little guy, come on, come on out. I need two hands. All right, there you go. All right, so yeah, this is the 16 gig MLC SATA module by Apacer.

Now what we’re going to do is we’re going to take this guy and stick it in there. Let me see which way it goes. I think it goes like this. All right, so that’s in there and I’m going to turn this around like this. I’m going to wedge the cable in there and I am going to connect the other end to the SATA drive. Let me do that. There you go, connect that. So now I’m going to go ahead and twist this around and get it nice and neat in there and show you what it looks like.

All right, so what I’ve done is I’ve used the space that is over here on this side to kind of hold the folded up wiring. As you can see here, it will work. You can see that once I put the cover on it will close off correctly. Like I said, this is a plastic case so that’s going to be okay. I also had to leave this area open because the speaker module goes there and I didn’t want to accidentally damage that or anything. So although there’s plenty of space on top of the memory module, that all gets really warm. I didn’t want to… It doesn’t get really warm but it’s better to just have the wiring here where the drive is. It all fits there anyway.

So let me go ahead and put that cover on and then we’ll wrap it up and I’ll load Windows afterwards. So I ended up flipping the SSD so that you can see the logo through the grille here. As you can see, it’s fully closed and the SSD is sitting nice and flat against the chassis. I’ve gone ahead and installed the screws, and now all I have to do is stick in the cover like that and slide it forward. I’m gonna wrap up by putting these three screws in there. You can ignore that screw, that’s the one that was holding the SATA module. But you can see here these three right here and I’m done. So I’m gonna put those in, set up a monitor here, and load up Windows.

Okay, so here I am in my little pop-up workbench and I’ve plugged in a monitor to the machine as well as this keyboard and trackball. As you can see here, we have the AMD SLC system on chip with the integrated HD 8330 video adapter running at 1.5 gigahertz. That’s a quad-core APU and I got the four gigs of RAM. Then here you can see that in the SATA port zero I have the 240 gig SSD. So it worked! It’s detected and it’s inside the little case.

So what I’m going to do now is I am going to image that drive with the copy of Windows XP that I plan to use. You can see here the BIOS is a very basic BIOS. It just lets you set up SATA mode, boot from USB, power management, whether the computer turns on automatically after a power failure or not. Lets you set a BIOS password and it lets you do a boot order. Notice that you can do cloud desktop, CDs, SATA ports, USB hard drives, floppy drives, and regular LAN boot. For now I am going to make it so that I can boot from a USB drive and I will use my little flash drive here to image it. So let me do that and then I’ll show you the machine running.

And here we are. So I’ve gone ahead and installed Windows as you saw, and the 240 gig hard drive is fully detected. As you can see here, I’m only using 2.7 gigs and there’s 237 gigs left over. Here you see that it’s a SATA 6 gigabit per second interface. Over here you see a little bit more information about the actual computer. Like I said, it’s four cores, it’s an AMD GX-415GA, that’s like an APU. It’s an AMD FX unlocked CPU according to this, but that might be the core itself. Inside of that there is an ATI Radeon HD 8330.

So this is actually a pretty good machine for some 3D gaming in Windows XP games because that GPU is pretty good for something that is fully passive. That means that there are no fans, no moving parts in here. So if you want to play some 3D games without any noise, this is a good option. Like I said, there’s a four gigabyte DDR3 memory module in there.

If you like this kind of stuff, be sure to like the video and leave me a comment if you have any suggestions of what I can do with this machine or if you’d like me to try something else. Also please subscribe so you can see other future videos or check out my other videos in my playlists. I have videos about retro computers, cars, a bunch of things that I do. Mostly lately has been computers but every once in a while I show some of my car related stuff. So yeah, hope you enjoyed it. Let me know and until next time, bye.