All the modding for this project is done The pieces that are left are all direct drop ins. There is a possible issue with the heat sinks and memory raiser card but I will not know for sure until they arrive which could be tomorrow. Lets start with the rear fan mod. The rear fan assembly consisted of a fan and a housing unit that is part of the memory cage. There is also an exhaust port on the rear of the case that detaches and the housing fits over the exhaust port for an "air tight" seal. Its not really air tight but that is the best way I can find to describe the fit. I need to retain the fan housing as it also has the groves that help to guide the memory raisers in place. The fan was attached to the housing by those pesky rubber fan snaps. I quickly removed those and got 4 normal fan screws (those large self tapping screws) from the box o crap. It will be hard to see in the pictures but the exhaust port is circular with a square base. The base sticks a bit out from the case when the exhaust port is attached. So I lined the fan up and drilled 4 wholes in the base of the exhaust port. I then used some 6-32 screws and nuts to attach the fan to the exhaust port. Next, I slide the fan housing over the fan and base of the exhaust port and secured it with the normal fan screws. The exhaust port attaches to the case on the outside by 4 extremely tiny screws. This allowed me to assembly everything, slide it into place and then secure it by those tiny screws.

Rear fan housing with fan and the exhaust port



Exhaust port with holes drilled. You might notice one of the holes was off so I re drilled but did not noticed until after I took the pic



Rear fan back in the case. Noticed the grooves lining up with the memory riser slots on the motherboard



The front fans were no where as easy as the rear. My first idea did not work out so I needed something new. After playing around I decided it would be best to attach some L-brackets to a hump in the case that is right in front of the heat sinks. Before doing this I needed a way to attach the two 120 MM fans together. I came up with the simple idea of using S hooks as a way to hold some screws together. I tried making some out of a wire clothes hanger but they looked crappy. So I did a quick trip to Lowes to pick some S hooks up. Its nice Lowes is only about 8 minutes from where I live.

The S hook come open. I need them closed. So here is a before (left) and after pic



Fans attached together with the closed s hooks. I did this on both sides. I use a washer just to make sure enough pressure was applied to the s hooks.



The easy part was done. While not hard, finding away to attach the L-brackets was going to be a pain. When I did my G5 case mod, bonding anything to aluminum just sucks, so epoxying the L-brackets was going to be a last resort. I started to look at this hump in the case and noticed that there is had to be something underneath it as there were wires going inside it.It was appeared to be either riveted in or bolt in. On the outside of the case opposite the hump is a big label with all the FCC, UL Listed crap. I started feeling around on it and could feel some screws! I started to try to pry this label off. No luck. I then took my exacto knife and careful ran it along the edge of the sticker a few times until I could slide it under. Next I started to gently pry the sticker off. This is what I found beneath it.



I quickly located the 4 screws holding whatever that is (I am assuming wireless antenna) and took it out. With it out of the way, I could drill holes allowing me to attach the L-brackets with screws and nuts.

Holes drilled and 2 socket head screws (the black dots) in the holes



Here you can see the L-brackets attached to the hump I have been talking about. Sorry this one is so blurry.



The motherboard has to go in before the fans so it was time again to put the motherboard back in. I dropped the motherboard back in, got 4 more of those self tapping fan screws and went to work. From the pic you will see it is a tight fit. Luckily I have a nice set of electronics screw drivers and I was able to find one I could slide through the holes in the front of the case making the job of tightening the fan screws a lot easier. Once the fan assembly was in, I really did not like how there was nothing at the top to secure it. My solution was to use some 2" hex stand offs and some long 6-32 screws. I threaded the hex standoffs into holes on the front of the case and then used the long screws to adjust the spacing and a nut to tighten it all together.

Fans all in place



Front pic where if you look hard you will noticed where the standoffs are threaded in. Sorry for this one being blurry



And finally everything in place!



Like I said before, I expect no problems from here on out. Just have to wait for those finally parts to arrive.

You made a nice job there, the small compartment at the bottom is indeed for inbuilt bluetooth and airport antenna. On my Hackie, I installed the D-Link dongle in here and took a wire to a USB header on the motherboard.

Nagal - beautiful job so far!

Do you know the difference between the first and second version of the Mac Pro case? I plan on building one myself!

Thanks. I have no idea what the difference is as I have seen a lot of v2 parts when researching this. I honestly believe there is no difference or so minor it would be hard to tell.

Dude! Wanna send me one??? Looking good!

Sure whats your address?


So I had an opps moment. I forgot to mount the speaker. The speaker is screwed onto a black mounting thing that goes over the hump where the wireless and blue tooth antenna is and is use to help hold the front fan housing in place. I just removed the speaker (4 tiny tiny screws) and used some double side tape to attach it to the case.

The black housing guide thingy, speaker and double sided tape



Speaker in place. I had to remove the fans to get it in. I am not looking forward to tearing this all apart once it comes time to do the BSEL mod



FedEx literally just dropped off the memory riser cards so expect some more pics shortly!

Here they are, the memory riser cards. I got these from www.Mac-Pro.com and I have to say they unlike ApplePalace.com, Mac-Pro are AWESOME!. Shipped the same day I paid for them.



I thought I might have an issue with the memory raiser cards and the heat sinks. Turned out I was wrong, I had a different problem with the fan housing assembly not sticking out far enough. Blurry pic but you can see what I mean



So I pulled the fan assembly out and spaced the fan out from the exhaust port with some 1/4" nylon spacers.



Put it all back together and life is good in memory raiser land. There is still some space and I might put use some washers in addition to the spacers to get a nice tight fit.



Here is a pic of one of the memory riser cards with 4GB in it. I need to order the other 4GB soon as the second memory riser is feeling left out.



So I am waiting on Power Supply and Video Card. It is going to be a long wait at this point.

nagal,

That is just sweet. It looks so snug and awesome in this case. The next project should be taking Mac Pro parts and sticking them in a Cooler Master Stacker 830 Evolution case.


pcwiz

I live at 555 E. Mac Road, no. I really need to buy one of these. What memory do you have in there? Those are pretty hefty heatsinks.

Its 2GB DDR2 667 FB-DIMM. FB-DIMM run a lot hotter than normal DDR2. Why? I don't know but it does according to everything I have read. You can get FB-DIMMs without heat sinks but Apple Certified memory should have them.

Nagal,

Looking good, do you have an overall pic of the area of the riser cards to heat sinks? Are the risers secure enough without support at the heat sink side?

Wow, they look much bigger in these photos.

skyhigh - the heat sinks on the memory are pretty massive!

aqua-mac - I think the riser card will be fine without the support on the CPU heat sink side. I was messing around with the plastic piece for that side of the memory cage and it looks like I could mod it to fit over my heat sinks but there is no way the metal part of the memory cage will go in.

I will take some pics of that area along with the Power Supply that was sitting on my front door when I just got home Need to eat first.

I have to say the Power Supply was a TOTAL pain in the ass to put in. It is so simple looking, I was dumbfounded by how hard it was to get in. I have big hands, so working in tight spaces as always been an issue for me and once again they were causing me problems. I struggled for 30 minutes trying to get all four plugs in but could never get #3 to plug in. After a lot of cursing I decided to take the ribbon wraps off the the cabling. 5 minutes later, PSU was in. Sheeze! There are 5 screws used to hold the PSU in. The screws are M3 but I did not have anything long enough to fasten them down. Luckily, once you slide the lock assembly to lock, the PSU gets locked in. I will get those screws but for now I can live with out them. ApplePalace has them for $26 for 5. McMaster Carr has comparable M3 20mm stainless steel socket head screws $7.56 for 100. I wonder where I am going to order them?

So here are some pics of the PSU







besides the side panel piece and the custom plugs, that sure looks about the same size as an ATX PSU to me.

And here is a pic of everything in!



I did put my Asus 7300GT in just to see and yes, it would not boot. Everything would power up, fans would spin, I would get the start sound from the speaker but it would not do anything else. I did try to eject the cd by holding down the mouse button during boot but for some reason the tray would not pop out. It could be an alignment issue as it was trying.

There is an Apple Store about 2 hour drive from me. I am going to call them tomorrow and if they have a 7300GT in stock it will be road trip time. Its sad to pay $149 for a 7300GT but finding one on eBay has been a challenge and I am so close to being finished I will pay it the extra for the instant gratification I wish there was a way to flash my Asus and have it work but I have not seen anything online about it.

On a side note, this thing is LOUD! It might be simply because the fans go 100% until a certain part of the boot cycle or the thermal probes I am using are not working and it thinks it is running super hot. So the future might hold some quiet fans or water cooling. As long as the system will boot without a drive in Slot 1, I will re-visit the water cooling aspect.

nagal, check this out first >> http://themacelite.wikidot.com/nvidia-section

Oh sweet! Thank you so much! I have been searching and searching and never found what I was looking for. I guess I was using the wrong search words. Luckily I have my work laptop here so if the flashing goes bad I will have a computer

It looks like I can do this but not 100% sure. Never flashed a card so a bit leary right now. Maybe after another Guinness I will work up the courage

nagal, I'm pretty sure that this is obvious, but after flashing if the 7300GT doesn't work, try getting a Mac specific 7300GT video card. This 7300GT Mac card is specifically for a Mac Pro:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/4582...ce_7300_GT.html

That is what I was originally planning on getting if my "local" Apple Store had them in stock. I am looking at the ROM flashing right now it the list only shows 7600GT from iMac, I need a 7300GT so the search is on. Thanks for the link.

Your welcome! The link I posted above, the price of the card is $148.95. I checked out the same card at the Apple Store:

http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebO...More=MA567Z%2FA

Its 5 cents more expensive If you are doing an online order, order from the Apple Store definitely. For 5 cents more, the Apple Store name is a pretty good deal

Does not look like flashing is an option for me. While the 7300GT uses the same GPU as the 7600GT, my card only has a 64K EPROM and there is no modified ROM for the 7300. Lets hope the Apple Store has a card in stock so I can go pick it up tomorrow

OR

I can see if I can find a known card that is flashable locally and give that a try tomorrow as well.

Fantastic build up Nagal, well done.

All mac pro cards need a 128kb rom chip as there are two parts to the rom software. The first part is the rom itself and the second part is the EFI part that injects values at boot time. Some pc cards (a few) already have 128 rom chips fitted, you may be lucky. You can have a look with nvflash. The only card I have managed to convert for a mac pro so far is a 7800 GTX 512 and 256 version into a Quadro FX 4500. These did need new rom chips resoldering though. The roms are available for downloading here. Strange thing is, I could never get a real PC Quadro FX 4500 to boot!!@? Good luck, I am looking forward to the first boot!!

Hey Nagal,

Great build, truly inspiring! I am planning a Hackintosh housed in a G5 case in the coming 2 months, I am going to mod the case first before buying any parts. Do you have any advice for a non-experienced modder? This would be my first proper project to work on and I am determined to do this! I'm just a little skeptical about the whole cutting a hole in the rear-end of the case so the motherboard will go there without having to wire things in and out of the case, etc.

Also has this mod cost you less, the same, or more as a normal Mac Pro that you'd buy directly from Apple?

Thanks and keep up the great work! =D

You aren't the only one Kind of torturous that it is 7am here and the Apple Store does not open till 10 am.Thanks I haven't done the finally cost savings yet because I still have a couple things to buy and to be honest there is a couple ways I can do it. If I compare it to directly buying a similar speced system from Apple (can not get a 1 to 1 match due to hard drive sizes) the savings is around $4000. If I compare it to buying the base 8 core system and then using 3rd party memory and re-using my existing hard drives the savings drops do to around $2000. No matter how you look at it, I win :DAs for modding a G5, go for it! There is a ton of info here on how to do it. Just do not rush it. Research, research, research. While there is not step by step guide to modding a G5 case you should be able to get a detail plan of attack by following the various threads here.

Don't think it will open today.

Luckily the Holiday Schedule was posted on Apple.com. I just got back and with the video card Checking email and what not before trying to boot this sucka

Cool!

Three and half hours later and $170ish dollars lighter I am the proud owner of a MAC 7300GT





I wasted no time putting the card in and booting it up. It all worked like magic! Boot from DVD was so fast compared to doing ToH RC2 on my Hack it is not even funny. Enjoy the screenies









My Quality Control Inspector hard at work



If you have not guessed, I am posting this from my MacPro. And here is some proof



I do not know why Activity Monitor does not show all 8 cores in the main window but you can see them in the CPU Usage window. Weird bug there where the CPU Usage window gets doubled when taking a screen shots. Software Profiler is reporting the CPUs as 2.13 GHz which is not good. It should be 2.4 GHz. I need to contact the person I bought them from and see whats up with that. Still, it shows all 8 cores

Impressions so far.

The clarity of the screens is amazing compared to my Hack with the Asus 7300GT. It is literally a night and day comparison with the font smoothing.

Boot time, silly fast. One annoyance I had with my Hack was that if I had my firewire audio interface plugged in during boot, it would take about an extra 45 seconds to boot up. I am hoping that has gone away but not sure as it is not currently plugged in.

File copying is what it should be. My iTunes library (22 GB) copied in under 10 minutes. On my Hack it was around 18 - 20 minutes.

Things just seem smoother but that really could be my imagination.

Down side.

NOISY! I have some 120MM low noise fans but need to make sure they can just plug in before trying them out. Water cooling is now a must at this point. If the system will boot with out the main drive in Slot 1 that will make life very very easy for me I have an idea to save Slot 1 and water cool but means ditching my dual 120 rad.

iStat is not showing any temp sensor so I have no idea whats going on in that area. Maybe it is just a Leopard thing as it did not work on my Hack either.

Awesome. Water cooling sounds cool! No heatsinks so that means memory cover and cpu cooler with holes! Walk into the apple store with that.

Really glad this has reached a satisfactory conclusion and there were no boot problems. Are the fans running full pelt as mac pros are usually quiet. If your temp sensors are not functioning properly then your fans will run too fast.

Well I know why the fans are so noisy they are running full speed because the CPUs are reporting there temp at 126 C. Time to cook some eggs if that was true

Okay, I will probably not be posting a whole lot more for the next few days as I have a lot to get setup and researching on the water cooling. I will still check in to answer any questions as they come.

Nice they were open.
I need a video card now. lol 32 MB just don't get it.

Do you need to install a cracked version of OS X on this machine or can you use an official Apple Licensed version? If so how is that possible? Is that just by putting in what Apple would put in to a Mac Pro?

Also could you give me a rough estimate on price! =] I'm debating between this... and the G5 mod. The less tools I have to use the better.. lol

Thanks!

Why would I need a cracked version of OS X on a computer built off of an Apple Logic Board?

Check the very first post, there is a total of how much I have spent so far but I got LUCKY on a few of the parts. My price list does not count anything I re-used in my build (hard drives, optical drives, various bits of hardware to bolt it together) only what I have spent.

I went back and read the first post and discovered the price list, sorry! lol So overall this A LOT cheaper than just going out and buying a Mac Pro? And where the heck did you get an Apple Logic Board from =O I wasn't aware they were being sold anywhere. I'll have to check out some of the websites listed in this thread! =]

Thanks again!

I could not take the noise any more so I replaced all the Apple fans with some Yate Loons I had here. A LOT better now and temps seem good. I know the Apple fans are running full blast because I am missing the thermal sensors for the heat sinks.

General question for you Nagal:

Where do you live and what do you do for a living? =P I'm planning on this now rather than a Hackintosh, might be more trouble than it's worth doing a Hack! And a Mac Pro would set me for life, haha, specially one that I have built myself!

Thanks =]

Are you going to buy the thermal sensors?

I live in California and I currently work as a software engineer to pay the bills BUT I have been tinkering with anything and everything that needs a screw driver/wrench to take it apart since as long as I can remember. Computers did not entire the picture until I was about 12 a good 25 years ago.

If you can not find the processors, case and logic board for cheap you might actually end up spending MORE than what it would cost to just buy one and throw in 3rd party memory. The processors are the key to keeping costs down.



No. The sensors are part of the heat sinks Apple sells and can not be bought separately as far as I can find out. I also could not find any to buy but honestly did not look very hard. I am more than likely going to water cool it. I have to tear it apart tonight to get some info off the CPUs as the guy who sold them too me needs it to determine if he sent me the wrong ones as they are only showing up as 2.13 GHz and not 2.4 GHz. Since it will be all apart and I have everything to water cool, if it will boot with no drive in the primary slot I will go for it.

I figure I can get the processors pretty cheap £115 each on Intel Core 2 Duos (I only want a Quad Core system!) The case I am still searching for and the Logic Board works out at around £200+ for me depending on where I get it! (I live in the UK!)

The graphics card (7300 GT Mac Version) I might be able to get on my Student Discount as well as Mac OS X Leopard =]

Sound is all onboard, correct?

I am afraid you are looking at LGA 775 processors. You need to be looking for LGA 771 processors for the MacPro. Logicboard for only 200 GBP sounds amazing, almost too amazing but if you can get it for that great.

Sound is onboard.

Also remember you need FB-DIMM. They are not nearly as expensive as they use to be but its not just normal RAM you get at most places.

EDIT: I put down $200 even though I meant 200 GBP

Kemmi,

Here is a link to some reasonably priced Mac Pro ram (reasonable by UK standards anyway) for your Hackie project. Remember you cannot just sling DDR 2 in a mac pro.

Kemmi,

Make sure the logic board you are looking at is one of the following Apple part # 661-3919, 661-4307. These normally go for $600 - $800 new here in the States so your price of 200 GBP seems very low considering how much MORE things usually go for in the UK versus the US.

I went back and looked at the board. It was about 715 US Dollars so it's roughly about £350, I must of looked at the item below it and got mixed up! And I really had no clue about the processors!! Is there a site I can take a look at the ones you got? I might be able to convert some prices! Even though, Leopard and Graphics Card should fall under Student Discount, so there is an upside lol, I'll be selling my old computer parts to help pay for this bad boy though =D

And thanks for the link Aqua Mac, I got all my first computer parts from there when I was building the PC I had =]

Here is an idea of a few more prices $

http://www.mac-pro.com/Mac-Pro-Online-Stor...placement-Parts

Since I used Engineering Samples, there is not really a site to go and buy them from you just have to get lucky on eBay.

Double check on the student discount on the video card, I thought it was only towards software.

I hope you fair better in selling off your old computer than I did with mine. The money I got helped some but not a whole lot.

Ah the Logic Board on Mac-Pro.com is listed at 487.77 dollars so that's not too bad! =D Looking at about £225 depending on where I can get it from, it might work out cheaper to buy some parts from the US and I think you might be right Nagal about the Graphics Card, I'll have to double check!

Thanks for all your help! =D

MacPro rocks for sure! They have the memory riser cards as well and you need two of them. No idea if the ship out of the US or not but they can not be cheap and then tariffs on it once you receive it. ouch

Hmm I think you only have to pay an extra charge upon receiving something if it has a few problems going thru customers, etc Like weight issues, etc. I could be wrong though, I'd have to look into it!

Where did you buy like the internal casings to go over the heat sinks originally before you figured out they were a couple of beasts =P

The internal casings? If you mean the memory cage, front fan housing then all that came with the case I bought. I do not know if that is normal or not.



http://knowhow-now.com/Taxes-article44096-...dUKCustoms.html

If you can get the seller to mark the item as gift then there is no issue but a lot of retailers in the US will not do that.

I am just letting you know this as you *should* figuring it into your cost so you are not surprised when that mega-awesome deal in the US all of a suddens turns out to not be such a good deal.