spackley Posted March 25, 2010 Share Posted March 25, 2010 I Know I’m late to the party here but after building a couple of Hackintoshes in the past on ordinary PC cases and one on a G4 case I have always hankered after an ally G5 case and eventually one turned up for a bargain price on Ebay. As the title says this was a budget mod not a no expense spared build so I really wanted to use I already had to keep the cost to a minimum. I had a 2.53 Core 2 Duo CPU, 4GB of RAM, a Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3 mobo and an Nvidia 8400GS video card in an existing Hackintosh so I decided to cannibalise that. I also used the backplate and mobo tray from this machine too The 8400GS did have a noisy fan on it so I did buy a silent cooler from Quiet PC for £17 First job was to mark out what needs to be removed to accommodate the backplate.. Then remove the unwanted material.. Then position the mobo tray And position the new backplate.. The Mobo I am using doesn't have a firewire header so there was no point using the original PCB and front loom so I made a bracket to hold a USB and Firewire port that bolts on with the original mount. this can be removed easily so I can revert to the original if I change the mobo in the future. I added a 3.5mm headset socket which connect to the mobo and there are also two new blue LED power and hard disc activity lights.. Arctic Freezer CPU cooler which I also had left from an earlier PC build which is now watercooled was mounted to suck air from the bottom of the case and blow upwards.. Through the Arctic Accelero S1 graphics cooler to the PSU.. The front Firewire port runs to an internal header on a PCI card and the front USB runs to a mobo header.. All loomed up.. Here are the two front LED lights as discretely mounted as I could.. Here is the finished back.. Up and running Snow Leopard 10.6.2 on test monitor before hooking up to the Samsung 22" monitor that it shares with my Windows 7 machine.. Not as pretty as a real Mac inside or as some of the other mods on here but excluding all the bits I already had it cost me less than £95 to build and it's really quiet too. I am really pleased with it... Hope you like! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
apple apple Posted March 26, 2010 Share Posted March 26, 2010 I love it! Great job! Haven't seen another using that direction for cooling, how is it working out? I'd imagine it's just as effective. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pilad Posted March 26, 2010 Share Posted March 26, 2010 Tell us about cannibalised case model. So easy to install the backplate, amazing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spackley Posted March 26, 2010 Author Share Posted March 26, 2010 Nothing much to say about the base case other than it was a cheap and nasty desktop case that I bought from Ebay a few years ago. Really ugly and that's why it was cannibalised. I used a jigsaw to cut the base/mobo mount out to use as a mobo tray and an angle grinder to cut the backplate out. In the G5 case there were two set of stand offs, one set tall and one set short. I used pliers to pull off the tall set and mounted the mobo tray on to the short set. I did need to glue two short stand offs to the case at the top end of the mobo tray otherwise the top end would've been unsupported. When the mobo tray was firmly fixed I mounted an old dead ATX mobo and graphics card & PCI card to allow me to position the backplate on the case accurately. Next I drilled some mounting holes through the backplate into the back of the case and fixed it with some small nuts & bolts. Regarding the cooling it seems to very effective but bear in mind that as a 2.53 Core 2 duo it's not a particularly high end computer. It is very quiet though, much quieter then my Zalman Reservator liquid cooled Win 7 machine. I can hear the hard drive more than anything and that is a really quiet Western Digital item. As you can see from the screenshot below the BIOS indicates CPU at 24 degrees Centigrade at idle while system temperature is 43 degrees centigrade... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pirloui Posted March 28, 2010 Share Posted March 28, 2010 Very neat, congratulations Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kmare Posted March 28, 2010 Share Posted March 28, 2010 where do you buy those sticky wire tie-downs? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spackley Posted March 28, 2010 Author Share Posted March 28, 2010 where do you buy those sticky wire tie-downs? They were bought in a pack of 100 from a UK store called Maplins Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aa_500 Posted May 6, 2010 Share Posted May 6, 2010 That looks awesome!!! It looks like you’re directly connected to the back of the pwr/led button. I can see that there’s 3-pin connector at the back of the power button, but I’m not really sure which one is the power, led and ground. Can you please tell me how did you do yours? Thank you in advance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spackley Posted May 16, 2010 Author Share Posted May 16, 2010 That looks awesome!!! It looks like you’re directly connected to the back of the pwr/led button. I can see that there’s 3-pin connector at the back of the power button, but I’m not really sure which one is the power, led and ground. Can you please tell me how did you do yours? Thank you in advance. Your right, it is direct to the back of the switch, bypassing the 3 pin plug entirely. Although i did leave the 3 pin plug on mine in case I wanted to use it in the future. I found a site while building mine that described this but unfortunately I forgot the address - Doh! I did keep this picture though.. There are 3 wires on the switch but one of them is for the LED which I didn't use on my G5. You can use a multimeter to see which 2 make the connection when you push the switch or if you don't have a multimeter some wire, a battery and a torch filament would do. Hope this helps... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pubjoe Posted May 19, 2010 Share Posted May 19, 2010 Good job. That's what I'm looking to do ...If I can repair my case first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
splodgecat Posted June 11, 2010 Share Posted June 11, 2010 Awesome job - putting in my own ports on a bracket is exactly what I'm planning on doing IF i can't get the original front panel wired up properly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manu0600 Posted July 27, 2010 Share Posted July 27, 2010 Very neat, you placed the PSU and the HDDs in the places of a real Mac Pro (more or less) : very nice !! You did a very good job, but I was wondering about the heat in the case : there are no fans, so if you want to upgrade your system to a higher one (which will of course be hotter) you will need to add fans. Not a very big deal… The advantage of this, is the silence : you took a passive cooler for the CPU and the graphic cards, no fans in the case at all so the only thing that you hear is your HDDs. Go to SSD and you'll have a compleatly silent computer This mod is very good !! you placed all the cables neatly, everything is very good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lenn4rd Posted July 27, 2010 Share Posted July 27, 2010 Nice and clean! I'm in a similar situation like you are, a couple of years ago I also bought a case on eBay as a bargain and started modding. Halfway through I lost interest and kept the hard disk and DVD drive lying on the case and the door unmounted for some months before I bought a MacBook Pro. I just built a new workstation and I'm really looking to finally complete this three year mod now. I already drew some inspiration from your pictures if you don't mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nuyawker2000 Posted November 8, 2010 Share Posted November 8, 2010 Can you tell me where you got the psu extension cable? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KiepDenThui Posted November 8, 2010 Share Posted November 8, 2010 great i want a case of mac pro but i can't find it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spackley Posted November 21, 2010 Author Share Posted November 21, 2010 Can you tell me where you got the psu extension cable?Thanks The PSU extension cable actually came with a "Media Centre" case that I had in the past where the power supply was mounted at the front and needed an extension from the back but if you are in the UK you could look at somewhere like http://www.maplin.co.uk/ for IEC mains lead or IEC connector. They will probably be too long but you can always shorten them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nuyawker2000 Posted November 21, 2010 Share Posted November 21, 2010 greati want a case of mac pro but i can't find it call these guys: 1-800-We-Fix-Macs I got a fantastic case from them for $138.00 minus shipping Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ravi J Posted November 23, 2010 Share Posted November 23, 2010 Hey, Im 14 Im a virgin to case modding and such. But Im hoping to rip out a old dell computer of Ebay, that i got running 10.6.3 and put it in a G5 case my plan is to put foam board to cover up the current holes. and then screw the atx mounts onto the foam board, without cutting the back of the case im going to do the same as this guy http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=187553 But the one thing i dont want to do is create one of those front panel cables, they look so hard to do, and i dont want to be doing stuff like that, so i had the idea, like this guy has done, to rip out the Front panel, and solder straight to the stuff. I was just wondering, how do i take the front panel off, do you have any guide that u followed to do the front panel. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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