SmallNetBuilder

Inside Details

The first question many of you have is whether you can replace the 640 GB WD Caviar Blue SATA drive with something larger. And others may wonder if the 1 GB of memory is upgradeable. So let's go inside. One of the side covers comes off easily by removing the two screws you saw in Figure 3 and sliding the cover rearward. This will reveal the view shown in Figure 4 and two more screws to remove.

Figure 4: LX195 with side cover removed

After the screws are removed, you just flip up the panel, which is held in place with a single plastic latch, and behold the LX195's innards (Figure 5). The fan and hard drive are readily accessible and cabled for easy replacement.

Figure 5: LX195 inside

Figure 6 is a closeup of the board, with the Atom 230 CPU under the smallest heatsink. The SMSC SCH5127 is a "super I/O" device that provides assorted input and output functions and you can see a single Elpida 1 GB PC2 6400 DDRII 666 DIMM that is easily replaceable. The Intel device that isn't covered by a heatsink is an Intel 82801GR ICH7R Southbridge, which handles PCI, PCIe, USB, audio and SATA duties.

Figure 6: LX195 board

I couldn't find the Ethernet device, nor was I sure of what was under the large heatsink. So I fired up Windows Remote Desktop Connection, entered the 195's IP address (you won't find the 195 by browsing for servers) and logged in as user administrator and with the admin password I entered during initial setup. I then launched Device Manager and took the screenshot shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7: LX195 Device manager

This reveals the device under the big heatsink as an Intel 82945G Northbridge, which handles graphics and memory management. You can also see the network adapter ID'd as a Marvell "Yukon" 88E8071 PCI-e based gigabit device. A check of its device properties showed support for 4 and 9K jumbo frames. But the Windows Home Server Console does not provide access to enabling jumbo frames, nor any other network adapter properties, for that matter.

Updated 5/13/2009: Changing RAM and drive will not void warranty.

So the answer to the expansion question is that both RAM and disk are relatively easy to replace.if you are willing to void your warranty by opening the case and doing a full system install using the Server Recovery DVD that comes with the LX. HP says that "upgrading RAM and/or the hard drive will not void the warranty as long as the user does not damage the unit in the process". For the RAM upgrade, HP recommends a max of 2 GB.