I think I finally put to bed my lingering concern about the main board supports. I was worried that the main board may not be properly supported when the cards are fitted, or that the supports were there for some reason I hadn't thought of.

I dismantled the G68J and re-assembled it without any of the brackets. That's easier said than done, by the way. G68 is a pig to strip and rebuild; the 861 is much easier.

In this unit, the mainboard is supported at the top by the longitudinal card supports, and at the bottom by three small metal angle brackets. These are quite sufficient to keep the board in place, and there's nothing to stop you holding the board anyway. You need to be static-grounded of course, but then you can't "assemble" the G68 from the outside, in the same way that you can change boards on the 861.

[Linked Image from i270.photobucket.com]

With the brackets out of the way, there are no real problems fitting any of the large linear supplies, and there's enough room round the sides to access mounting brackets round the outside of the supply. I can't say how much that helps fitting. The picture above is the 105W supply, and the 75W supply takes less space than that. The only issue is running the input and output leads, and giving the fan enough space.

On this G68J, the end of the main board was unsupported, but then there aren't any video boards to fit at that end. For the G68ADV etc, the fourth bracket could stay in place, and provide the necessary support. For controllers that don't have the small metal brackets at the bottom of the main board, the plastic brackets could be cut short, so there's only on screw mount at the bottom. That's an irreversible mod, but nothing to worry about.

This removes the doubt about the final question I wanted answering, and I'm happy about what to do with all versions of the G68.

Nick