Just joking Aqua.. I love your work <Grin>

It is with extreme pride that i introduce the long awaited FLUFF PRO

Matching Apple's ergonomicity and looks was a really tough task indeed. The G5 case is a true masterpiece of functionality and sober, pleasing looks. All mods that I have seen, including my previous one, were way too inclined toward the PC world, with cables, cuts, holes, screws where they ought not to be.

But how the hell are we going to fit a motherboard in AND keep the original ports?

Let's see!



Here's a very rough initial setup (the hardware used is listed in the signature)
I used the superb Noctua heatsinks and fans to keep the baby cool and silent, and indeed it is.

The biggest problem was to fit the motherboard and the ports. I had to literally take the web apart to find proper small and tight receptacles in order to accommodate all ports without drilling a hole in the beautiful case.



And so I did, and attached the receptacles to internal or external cables on my motherboard. The Gigabyte mobo is superb, as it has all required internal connectors to do a neat job.



Very messy I'm actually planning to build a film-thin circuit to be placed behind the motherboard with all the wiring paths in order to avoid this ugly wire setup.



Here's an internal shot of one of the ethernet ports: goes straight into the mobo's gigabit LAN.

Let's do some magic now! The case has a FW800 port! Whohoo, we want that!

Basically, the FW800 is retro-compatible to FW400 via bilingual cable. Therefore, the FW800 port can be attached to one of the onboard FW400 ports (with half speed) but I wanted a way to keep the possibility to use the port at full speed. Easypeasy, just slap a connector in the middle of the cable, and eventually connect a true FW800 to an internal board!



Here is the receptacle. It was REALLY difficult to find it, therefore I bought on eBay a cheap second hand Sonnet card and happily vandalised it



And here we go with the infamous connector I was talking about earlier:



This baby fits in the onboard FW connector of the board. The other 2 firewire connectors will be attached internally on the motherbard's internal connectors.

Now, the power supply.

I used a superb Enermax Liberty 630W, able to perform in the most stressful situations without fans. I had to take it apart and place it internally in the power supply bay.



It has a nice modular design that allowed me to easily connect all the current and eventual future peripherals in my Mac.



You can also see the fan board. This stuff is really good. It has several sensors and 4 fan connectors. You will have to program the board, and it will work by itself thereafter, no need of a particular OS or whatever. Basically the fans in the case will blow air when, where and how much is needed. Result? Hey is the Mac on or...

Here's the sensor on the chipset...



Here's the one on the GFX Card



The only impossible thing was to add 2x TOSLink connectors. Way too big, would never fet So what do we do? Well, we can add a Digital In and a Digital Out, of course, they will just be Coaxial instead of Optical. No change at all in the sound quality. The connectors are attached internally in the SPDIF connectors.

Here's a first rough shots of the ports. Still some are missing.



It did pay off though...

All ports managed to fit retaining the full functionality!





Time to clean up and assemble the baby.

Here's a shot with the cable duct I used to gather all the vertical cables in the case:



On top of the duct I will later on place 2x 120mm fans independently controlled by the thermo board.

Now, the front panel! I bought the very latest G5 case, which uses a hell of a complicated front panel, here's a shot and my beautifully handwritten diagram





PLEASE NOTE. The board has a proprietary Firewire bus with a proprietary connector. Hence I had to dissolder the FW connector from the board and connect it to an independent cable. Worked well enough

Now a minor thingy, connect the power cable for the drives to the power supply. Piece of cake, cut up the original cable and attached an enermax connector. Voila'!



Also, the Optical drive power cable is designed for an IDE unit, I just added a cascade SATA style connector, and worked very well.



Very well, time now to clean it up, unwrap it and place the cables in a good way, here's the result!



Here's the Fluff Pro in all its beauty:



Some rear shots:







Here's a shot with the plexiglass deflector:



And here's my Fluff, ready for battle <3



I'd like to say a big THANK YOU to Mr. Yeep for lending me his expertise and great mind to make all this come true.

And of course a big thank you to all of you modders, who inspired me and gave me precious ideas for my big project!

Torque