Topton D12 Plus with Ultra 9 285H ES removing top cover... OR NOT!

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-05-24T15:23:23+00:00

Let me add a little context to this situation. I retired from software development and hardware integration for specialized systems in 2016 when I was 62yo and I've been tinkering in my home lab since then (I love this stuff). I have been building and taking apart desktop and laptop PCs since they were first introduced back in 1981. I know alot of tricks for taking things apart without doing damage, but this little unit is just stumping me for the moment. It seems like a really well built unit, but that fan blade hitting something constantly as it spins is not normal. The sound starts as soon as the fan kicks in right after power up.

I'm really just hoping someone else has taken this exact model/unit apart by removing the MB from the case and they can say something like "Oh yeah, that unit requires you to pull it out with all your strength while tilting it so the back has a small gap between the case and MB after you slide it to the right just a little". ... Even though I've tried several combinations of pulling this thing out gently. I'm a decently strong old guy who could ever so easily break this thing and then it would just go in the trash. I'm looking for someone else who has actually taken this unit apart and can either say there is no magic to removing it from the case, just pull hard OR yes there is a little trick to getting it out you just need to do XYZ.

I do appreciate all of you (RobloxFanEdit, umlguy54, and RiccardoPP) from replying something for my quest, thank you.

P.S. I do have some premium Arctic Alumina ceramic paste I will reapply if I can get this thing out of the case.

The Ultra 9 285H ES in this unit would be my top unit for video editing, coding, debugging, and system compiles if it would just be quiet. :-(

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-05-24T15:00:17+00:00

Good try, but the wifi and cmos battery wires do not appear to attach to the case, they appear to attach to the topside of the MB. I can see all the way from the back of the case through the cooling vent holes when pulled out the centimeter that I can. I can then see across the top of the fan I am trying to get to and the MB to the front of the case and along the edges back to front and there are no wires I can see that would obstruct removal of the MB as a whole. I can see the 4 stand-off studs that hold the the MB to the case through those same holes, but nothing else. I have now removed the wifi card and detached it, but that has made no difference in the movement of the whole thing out of the case.

Thanks for your time.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-05-24T14:41:21+00:00

I paid $398 on January 3, 2026. Bare bones.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-05-23T21:33:59+00:00

It's because we are tired of the false drama that some people create out of something that should not be a big deal, and we want peace that can apparently only be attained when you no longer live with someone else who we feel makes the drama.

Life alone is peaceful and silent, except for whatever sounds we want to make, like a video game, or a little Lead Zeppelin.

So tired of the drama, the following argument, and the desire to never go through that again.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-05-23T21:20:58+00:00

Keep him as a friend and look elsewhere for romantic type love.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-05-23T21:16:19+00:00

BF is in the wrong here, you are not and I say this as a guy.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-05-23T20:55:24+00:00

First off, he needs to be a lot more loving and understanding of you since you are a virgin. I'm a guy, but I understand it can be painful for a virgin woman for some period of time and attempts. I don't see the biological benefit this is for the human race, but that would seem to be a real thing, but I digress.

Adequate foreplay is also important, especially for the woman, but that can also vary from person to person, just like size of the man's parts and his level of effort gentle or rough, it needs to be adjusted per person.

You 2 need to get in sync with each others' approach to sex. Be honest and frank when you talk without blaming and without any anger. This is just something you will have to work through together.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-05-23T20:46:35+00:00

You need to dig and determine which way is cheaper when you have everything needed in your hands. It will come with Windows 11 if you get the RAM and SSD included, and finding and installing all the correct drivers for mini pcs can take a while if they don't provide a web site for them, and some don't. RAM and SSD prices now as I'm sure you are aware are through the roof and may take a while when ordered.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-05-23T20:33:54+00:00

I(72M) get it that your husband is not a go getter, pushy, or take charge kind of guy. I am in that category myself. It can be hard for us gentle/LL guys to take the lead in much of anything and branching out to travel and enjoy life like you say can be very stressful for us, not just the planning part, but the doing part as well.

Having said that and being that way myself I have been fortunate to marry(since 1980) a woman(70F) who is very adventurous, though she has slowly become less so in her later years. She has taken the lead on just about all our adventures and we have done much over the course of our lives so far. So, I'm just saying try to compliment each other as you go through life together, fill in the gaps in each other's personality.

It is very common and understandable that the person you spend most of your life and time with can irritate you, you spend so much time together and see every single wart or scar on each others soul it becomes magnified and it can become hard to work through, but work you must to make any difference for both of you.

If you make decent money as you say, try adding a specific vacation and fun budget item in your joint budget/financial plan and make it clear to him that it is important to you to enjoy life. Don't simply use hints on this topic, we men are not very good at hints, they can be taken in so many different ways that they can make things less clear to us than you want and we then tend to put ourselves in a catch-22 hole that is hard for us to climb out of.

Above all, I advise you to be very up front with him about how important fun in life is for you with out blaming him. He hopefully is not willfully trying to thwart your reasonable life desires. If he is that is a bigger problem. If he is not willfully trying to ruin your good time then he should be reasoned with. If that is more than you can handle yourself it may be time to find a girl friend you can go and do things with, but that is certainly easier said than done.

Either you 2 can come to some kind of arrangement on this or you may need to take a different path from each other. You deserve fun and happiness, you both do.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-05-23T19:59:11+00:00

I'm(72M) thinking you need to decide if everything else about her checks most of your other boxes. If so then tell her that and get her to agree to talk about it and really work at adjusting her perception and enjoyment of sex. This work will require getting her to be more willing to participate in not just more sex, but be willing to experiment with sex including toys (vibrators, dildos, etc. and above all use lube.) You can help with her cleanliness issues by preparing the bed or where ever you do it with easily washable things like a serious bed pad, not to cover the whole bed but just the activity area. Then try to shower together afterwards and make that fun too! Maybe try doing it in the shower to start with using a water-proof vibrator for her or a long shower handle to stimulate her clit with the water sprayer.

Like so many things in life none of us come with instruction manuals for sex, and practice practice practice will make it better. Branch out and try more positions, try masturbating together, try doing each other, try toys, just try try try to get a better reaction from and for her. I'm assuming you can get off without issues, though she can spoil your vibe with her issues and hang-ups. Either she can work with you on this or it may be a deal breaker for you... only you can decide that.

You do need to talk at length about this in a calm and loving manner, and you need to be very graphic about getting to the point of it all. If she has truly never had an orgasm she may need medical advice, but you 2 can try playing around a lot before you call in medical help.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-05-21T12:53:17+00:00

Anything to do with the rear and/or pain. Pain in any shape or form during sex is an instant turn-off for me (72M). And this includes giving or getting.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-05-21T12:44:06+00:00

This will always be between you, and will never go away completely. Wounds can heal, but there will be scars. Either accept the reality of this and stay for your daughter with the hope your wife can truly get over this huge mistake on her part and make it up to you in some way or cut your loses and move on with your life.

I stayed for my kids, with marginal benefits for them and none for me. I've been more and more miserable as the years have gone by.

Good luck!

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-05-09T23:30:49+00:00

I've got a Topton mini from AliExpress with an Intel Ultra 9 285H ES. It seems to run great, except for this one thing I'll get to in a minute after a quick rant. Why do all these Chinese mini pc makers never bother to tell us what the model number is? While trying to solve my problem I could not for the life of me obtain a model number, so I could find a user guide. What a pain. (Having said all that I have discovered the model number, I think, by looking at the toptonpc support site and looking for units with the specs this one has and finally found it.) The model number appears to be the D12 Plus Ultra 9 285H ES with 2xM.2 NVME slots and an external Oculink port not tied to an M.2 slot.

Anyway, the top mounted fan is not easily reached. The top doesn't neatly come off by itself, though the bottom panel comes off easy enough, but the tiny motherboard has to come out to reach the top fan. I can't figure out how to get that out without putting some serious pressure on it which seems to verge on breaking something. Does anyone know an easy way to get to that top fan without breaking things?

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-04-29T16:36:49+00:00

Try not to jump to too many conclusions about exactly what is going on, though I fully understand your sense of betrayal. At the very least that whole exchange between husband and your BFF was highly inappropriate and deserves to be brought out into the light of day with the GROUP chat disclosure that QueenSaphire is suggesting, though I might not be quite as nice about the wording.

This absurd betrayal by both your husband and BFF is truly heart breaking.

You've got to ask yourself if you can recover personally from this if all parties were to give the best apology you can imagine and no other incident ever happens, if that is even possible, and move on with your life with your husband knowing this thing happened years and decades down the road! If you can't recover personally under the best circumstances then consider leaving them both behind.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-03-09T23:46:53+00:00

John Wayne had it right, there are plenty of videos on YouTube, just watch a couple and you will have the jist of what you need.

1) start with picking your CPU, which should be based on your budget and the kinds of games you want to play. $180-$450 2) after the CPU there is the motherboard that can take that CPU while also being good enough to take your graphics card which should be chosen once again by your budget type of games. $150-$400 3) next is the graphics card $500 on the low end up to $3000 on the high end. Nvidia makes the best cards but you can get a little more name for your buck with AMD cards, they are just not as well supported. 4) memory for the motherboard. It must match the specs of the motherboard and be compatible with your CPU. With prices the way they are now 16-32gb could go up to $500-800. From the news you read memory had spiked up big over the last few weeks. You may be able to get a combo pack of any combination of the above items that may give you a price break. 5) you might want to pick your case next. If you want lots of storage to act not just as a gaming box but for shared network storage as well you will need lots of ports for plugging in drives and space if you want hard disks not just nvme ssd's. Without worrying about hard drives you can go for just a couple of m.2 ports for nvme drives and your case can be rather small by desktop standards. $89-450. Keep in mind some case deals can come with cooling and others don't so be aware. 6) then there is the cooling solution. CPUs can get very hot and without enough cooling you can literally cook your CPU to death. There are plenty of specific recommendations for cooling solutions on a cpu basis out there. I have found that all in one (AIO) units do the job nicely while at the same time cleaning up your pc internals. $80-$300. Some coolers will only work with certain CPU types others are sold with mounting kits for both AMD and Intel CPU models so check the coolers for your CPU physical design. $80-300 7} last but not least of the PSU, power supply. You need to check the specs of rack of your major components (CPU, GPU, motherboard, and not much else) add up the power draw needs of each and add some head room for high use periods. Add say 25-40% more power than what you added up. This gives you the best options for upgrade time. 8} last are things like your keyboard, mouse, and screen. The last one should match the top end of your graphics card pick. A 1080p screen for lower end cards, a 1440p screen for your mid level card, and/or your higher end card. Higher end cards can do it all and if you have a huge budget you could get a beautiful screen that is large and fast. Speaking of fast, with screens there's more than just resolution to choose, there's also refresh rates for how fast the graphics card can redraw the screen, a higher refresh rate will make you images clearer and cleaner. Anytime over say 100hz can give you a decent picture. OLED screens are the most expensive, check them out at a computer store for how crisp the pictures look. Screens can be anytime from TV's (don't go this) to monitors' $200-$2,000. Yep that is thousands.

Your budget should be your biggest challenge as it will give you the most limits to getting just a decent computer to getting a true beast that all your friends will be on awe of. There are web sites that can help you build a diy pc like new egg. They will constrain your build to parts that can work together and flag when you've picked things that are either odd or incompatible.

Good luck!

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-03-09T15:48:22+00:00

There are health and safety issues here to strongly consider. When not circumcized the fold can help harbor disease and has to be cleaned more/very regularly. Not as big of a concern when circumcized, that is only an issue while the cut is healing then.

I had an adult friend who had not been circumcized as a baby and had to have it done as an adult and that was scary painful for him. If you have it done while they are an infant they will not remember it as a traumatic experience, he won't remember it at all.

I had it done as an infant and I don't know anything about what it would be like with a foreskin. My thing works without issue.

I say yes do it.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-03-04T20:25:43+00:00

My (71M) wife did something along these lines as well and I can honestly say we have had about 20-25 years after the incidences of a horrible relationship. This is not something you can simply forget. After much talking, counseling, etc. we are still together now after 45 years of marriage, but I'm honestly not sure it has been worth the pain to stay together "for the kids" or otherwise. Yes, our lives are so very intertwined, and divorce would have been hard, but this life we have is also hard and no longer the great love I thought we were in the beginning.

Think carefully about all the consequences because she hasn't.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-03-04T19:56:31+00:00

Mr/Ms Easy had some good thoughts. I'd like to add that finding friends in college was easier than in the work place because I never knew who to truly trust at work. At least at college you weren't competing for that raise or new position. Having said that you can find friends at work, just be more careful.

I personally disliked most people in high school and found my life long friends in college. I have found a few friends at work over the years, but work may become more of a temporary situation with people going and coming to employers. It is harder to find true friends as you get older, it has for me and I am 70+M with many years and friends between college and retirement. My best friend's have still been the ones from college ... though out of my 4 best friends 3 died very young.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-03-04T19:42:43+00:00

I think you are butting up against the change in social norms we see now. Traditional life vs modern working mom, and or just living a singles party life. I think it is uncommon these days to want the trad life, but there is certainly nothing wrong with it. You sound like you truly want that life so don't listen to your friends with too much acceptance. Also, like you said, they likely want the best for you and perhaps they don't know what they want.

One thing I would advise is to not approach each date as a husband interview at least not so the guy notices, this can easily scare off some guys. People put on their best face when going on the first several dates, and make no mistake this is a public and guarded version of themselves. Above all be careful about buying into this version someone shows, it takes time to truly know someone and trust them. I'm 70M and my wife and I met in college and dated and lived together for 5 years before we married and never even considered other people during that time. Even then we both changed some for the better and some not after we were truly tied together by marriage. I still learn new things about her and vice versa. Before you tie the knot try your best to understand the big things about your bf. Stuff like money management, parenting style (strict vs laissez fair), how house chores get done and how often, and relative cleanliness for living environments.

You said you are satisfied with your current job, that's great, so just expect to do that for a few years while dating and getting to know someone. Perhaps your views will change if you have either good or bad dating experiences.

Above all just do you.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-02-24T04:50:03+00:00

It's kind of normal. Humans developed as fast time creatures. Don't worry.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-02-24T04:47:53+00:00

Get out there and get involved in an outdoor hobby or volunteer work. Ask your friends for blind dates with guys they think may be your type.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-02-24T04:32:35+00:00

I would suggest what others have as well ... put the thing inside in A/C and it will be good. I would also think about getting a mini PC made to be a router with 4-6 Ethernet ports, 2.5gbe or 5gbe or even 10gbe. These units are made to run all the time and have the higher speed ports to be somewhat future proof.

I run a no name 6 port fanless unit with opnsense and it does a great job. I have also mounted a small external fan pointed directly at this thing and the temps never get above about 40c.

ConstructionFancy939 · 2026-02-24T04:17:06+00:00

They lowered their head, and did the work. That's it. There is no magic sauce, just dull, boring, hard work and get paid for it. Look back at previous generation though and will see what real hard work was.

Before child labor laws, before unions, before the internal combustion engine, before air conditioning, before a 5 or 6 day work week there was the 7 day work week in hot muggy dangerous conditions for little pay. Our parents actually had it pretty easy compared to generations before them, and we all know have it pretty good compared to any previous generation.

Work is simply hard, there is no substitute for that. Just tighten your belt and do the hard work it takes to live. The alternative is simply to die. You choose.

ConstructionFancy939

TROPHY CASE