15 replies to this topic

[eelhead]

March 28, 2011

Well I have been doing this slowly as money grants but I figure I would post my progress so far. I went the route of a G5 mod because for some reason I love this case, so simple yet elegant looking. I have always used an Apple product and the only Windows I have is a Toshiba Qosmio gaming laptop.

In this build I will be using
Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R
Sony DVD
Thermaltake 850W Modular Active PFC Power Supply
     I know it's over kill but I will be getting another GPU in the future lol and it was cheap!

the rest is still in my wish list and will get as needed. I only have the stuff above for fitting and making sure It's all good to go when I fire it up.

The work station!!


Removing studs


All cleared out!!
Just waiting on parts now.


Here is the G5's original power supply, 600w


With it removed from tray


I am also trying to figure out the power supply. I want to open it up and place it in the original G5 power supply tray but god forbid if it takes a {censored} while in warranty I wont be able to sent it back after I break the seal by opening it.


It just seems so gaudy sitting in there like that :/


And here is the new 850w power supply taken apart lol I guess I voided the warranty  


I am thinking of using the stock G5 Power supply cooling fans for my new power supply. Don't know how that will work though.


I will mount these on the cover plate, I will cut out the holes to it will fit nicely in there and I will be able to use them as needed.


Well here is my proposed layout! It's looking good


I snagged another G5 HDD tray and will use the stock fans to keep them cool.


Here is the IO ports for the mother board in which I need to figure out and cut case in order to use.


And the outside with IO shield. I know the IO shield is bigger then the hole I am cutting but I will be trimming the shield as well because I am trying to use the stock rear fans and opening with out cutting those all to shai as well.


And there's were I am at so far. Broke the shaft on my dremal tool last night and will get a new one today. I am really excited so far  

March 28, 2011

Well my first boo boo  :oops:
Note to anybody trying to keep as little cut out, start with perforated side to cut first then to solid side by case edge. I did case edge first with both ends done then shot to fan side and the vibration broke the piece off.


The piece.


I think I can fix it back up, I am using the rear fan support and with that and my body work skills I should be able to make it look purty again lol



April 09, 2011

SO the work continues!!!  :headbang:

I fixed the broken piece at the back of the case with some JB weld. I have some paint that matches that I will use to clean up and make it look nice after I sand it down and drill the holes out


The work station with my 24" Apple display, I can't wait to get this going!


The inside with motherboard glued in. I did remove it all and get new risers to get the motherboard lower to fit the rear fan housing.


Ok so I wired up a Tact switch to the DVD player so I can open in Windows as well.


here is the little TACT switch I shaved down to fit in the case holes


That's where I will solder the wire for the switch


Tada!


Now its all wired together.


The DvD tray shaved down to fit motherboard


Top of DvD tray


Tact switch wired up on the bread board


And it works!!!


I hot glued the switch to the top of the inside case


Nice hidden button!


Ok Front IO panel rats nest!!!
Don't know if I did it right or not but there it is in it's glory. The one thing I don't know if I should do is twist the wires that are supposed to be twisted and of course I don't know what ones those are  


Here is my dual HDD trays! I hot glued two G5 trays together and then I put a 120mm fan to get some air flow through them to keep things cool.


Here is the rear fan housing, I notched it to fit over the Gigabytes audio jacks at the rear IO port. It will have two 92mm fans. I bought two at Fry's but the one was 92mm and the other in a 92 package was an 80mm lol


Here,s that notch


Here is me resetting the risers yet again lol. I don't want to here nothing about the mobo. It's a bad board I got my hands on to not have to worry one bit  


Rear IO ports, It's looking better  since I got lower risers. A little trimming around the opening and it should be good to go. NOw I have some aluminum I will fit for the opening to make it like perty!


So I have a back up PSU that I will use for now inside the G5 case. Here is the one I broke the power supply socket board. I will rebuild those pieces but in the mean time I am going to fit it in the G5's original PSU case.


ANd with cover



April 17, 2011

Well I got it all done!
It's running fine right now, just need to fine tune it which I might do later on today or Monday.
I had a wireless card that I got and will be putting together from this site HERE. I also will be putting in Bluetooth and a USB PCI card for more USB action in the rear  

All in all I am happy with the build, I will relocate the PSU cooling fan more to the front because I couldn't fit the Scythe CPU cooler and the PSU fan in same space lol. I will move it forward and it should be fine but until I will run it like this. I will do the fix before I overclock it.

Here is a pic of the PSU


And with PSU all together,


I cut open the top for the fan.


Here it is inside the G5


And the finished project (for now), I will move those rear fan wires lol they are driving me nuts.



April 20, 2011
sigh…..

Bench testing the motherboard, been having start up issues. I would power it up and about a half a second after it would power down for about 2 1/2 seconds then power up and post with no issues at all. Been doing that for a bit but I figure I better call Gigabyte and file a claim just in case. I swapped memory and PSU to see it it was those but it still does it. I have no way of testing the CPU so I hope that isn't the root cause.



OK so back at it lol


April 27, 2011

So I basically had to tare it all apart again and do a bench test on the mobo because of start up issues. Here it is all pulled out and running with Gus' G5 front IO cable    my cable was short and Gus asked If I would test his cable out and I said heck yeah I would! It looks awesome!


Here is an over view of it


And here is Gus' cable plugged in. Have to say he made an awesome cable, looks great!


There it is powered on with working LED


I tried to get a pick of Gus' awesome cable but it's a bit blurry. I will get more after I get the mobo back.


Over view again.


24" Apple cinema display working with mini-displayport using Andy's ATI patch.


NEW AND IMPROVED MOTHERBOARD TRAY WEEEEEEEEEEEE  :headbang:


I should of done it this way first. I decieded to do the motherboard tray because I only had 4 PCI openings using the G5's original back. The GPU used the lowest opening and I am making a homemade Airport card and needed the PCI slot under the GPU which was blocked by the rear dual 90mm fans. So I just went with mobo tray and solved all my PCI slot issues and of course now I am future proofed and now can even go bigger with a board that has even more PCI slots later on down the road.


I have to say thanks so far to Gus and his awesomely made cable!! After I get the mobo back from Gigabyte I will get the end product pics and of course get Notshy's New ATI Kext from MBP 10.6.7 update done and I should be good to go!

[BlackCH]

Very nice
Where did you get the tray?
To me a motherboard tray is the way to go, in terms of upgradability and cleaner inside look

[eelhead]

Thanks BlackCH!

I went with Mountain Mods for my motherboard tray.

It was a tad more then I wanted to pay but When I started this project I wanted to use a motherboard tray but the Lian Li trays were always sold out. So I figured I would give it a go with the reusing the G5 stand offs but I ran out of PCI openings in the end. I should of just bought the tray to begin with, it looks awesome with it plus I can use the case for a long time with out worry of being stuck with a limited PCI option mobo.

[zammykoo]

Looking good eelhead!

I'll need to get myself one of those. My current mobo tray was salvaged from an old hp case.... it's steel and super heavy.

[eelhead]

Thanks Zammykoo!

Yeah I am happy as heck with this mobo tray. It's aluminum and light weight and doesn't add to the already heavy case lol. I know Lian Li makes just a tray over at Performance-PCs. Also Mountain mods have one tray you can get as well.

[eelhead]

OK So here is some more of the adventure

I decided to make my own Airport Card. I was nice and easy and works OOB with it recognized as AirPort Extreme  (0x14E4, 0x8E). I used a APPLE Broadcom BCM94322MC and a Mini PCI-E to PCI-E Wireless Adapter 3.3v.
http://cgi.ebay.com/...ME:L:OU:US:1123
http://cgi.ebay.com/...#ht_1408wt_1167


And with it put together


Another empty view shot


So here is the modded PSU opened up.


and again


So here it is with a new cover and it cut just right for the fan.


Here it is set in, fits like a glove!


So parts put back in again lol


Here is an over view of both my Hac and iMac, was transferring all of my stuff over.


Front


Rear, I need a GA-X58A-UD3R IO plate, mine was ... um .. modded with the old design lol


Here is the 5 port USB PCI card I slapped in it with the Rockfish Bluetooth dongle


Here it the Airport card mod from the inside.


And here it is! Running OSX and Win 7! Of course that G5 was used for staging prepossess only lol I have it on the ground next to the desk all hooked up already so I used another for a prop shot



......the end?

Nope I have two more to play with!!

[zammykoo]

eelhead, on Apr 27 2011, 09:36 PM, said:

Hey eelhead, I was looking back at your log and had a quick question.

In this pic, what stand offs are you using to get the pci cards to match the rear of the case? I might reposition my mobo.

[eelhead]

I was using the shorter 10.2mm ones. There was still a very slight space I'd say .2 or .3 mm gap. What I did was use a longer screw for those and not tighten them all the way down. Basically right when they got snug I stopped, the 6870 was nice because two screws go into that.

Of course after the mobo tray was put in there was no worries of that space.

[gr4fk]

Very nice and well done on the PSU looked a pain , this is why im going mac pro not g5 too much cutting oh also nice recovery on your read panel break

[zammykoo]

eelhead, on May 18 2011, 01:06 PM, said:

I was using the shorter 10.2mm ones. There was still a very slight space I'd say .2 or .3 mm gap. What I did was use a longer screw for those and not tighten them all the way down. Basically right when they got snug I stopped, the 6870 was nice because two screws go into that.

Of course after the mobo tray was put in there was no worries of that space.

Oh, so you're reusing the G5 standoffs, for some reason I thought people use pc standoffs for the proper height.

The gap you're talking about, is that the distance from the side panel that the standoffs are glued to?

[eelhead]

Thanks gr4fk!

Yeah at first I messed the PSU up, look on here and I have a thread on how to fix my PSU board lol
I finally got it going and fixed with Gus' help.

Yeah I had the rear fixed sanded and looking awesome then I went and put in a mobo try lmao.
lessons learned that for sure, I can't wait for next build

[eelhead]

zammykoo, on May 18 2011, 11:30 AM, said:

Oh, so you're reusing the G5 standoffs, for some reason I thought people use pc standoffs for the proper height.

The gap you're talking about, is that the distance from the side panel that the standoffs are glued to?

Oh snap sorry zammy I didn't see your post

The gap I was referring to was the height of the GPU to the PCI openings where you screw it in.
When you use the lower G5 standoffs the mobo is a tad higher and anything placed in the PCI slots have that gap. So when screwing your PCI cards into the PCI openings at the rear you are unable to screw them down fully. Either you need a washer for the space or you need to just set screw just as it get tight. If you over tighten then you risk popping out the card from the slot and bending or breaking something

[zammykoo]

No prob bro, thanks for clarifying!

I haven't had a chance to get around to this yet.... had to clean up and rearrange my bedroom cause of so much tools/junk accumulating over the months of modding, lol.

[eelhead]

zammykoo, on Jun 10 2011, 11:36 AM, said:

No prob bro, thanks for clarifying!

I haven't had a chance to get around to this yet.... had to clean up and rearrange my bedroom cause of so much tools/junk accumulating over the months of modding, lol.

Yeah I know the feeling! I have one room just full of G5's and parts, it's crazy lol

[Frikish]

eelhead, on Jun 10 2011, 08:42 PM, said:

Yeah I know the feeling! I have one room just full of G5's and parts, it's crazy lol

Hey eelhead.

For some time now, I have been working on my own G5 Mod. And now I am trying to get/make a front IO cable, many of you are talking about the "Gus" Front IO cable you have installed. Since I am new to this forum I don't know who that is. Are there anyway to buy a such cable from Gus.?

The HDD case's you have, where do you get them? I tried at my local Apple store, saying I broke mine and wanted a new one. But everything with apple these day's are "we can't repair it, if it goes on your warranty you will get a new mac, if not I'm sorry. (Asked for rubber feet for my MBP 13" 09, and got the same answer, the hole back-plate had to be replaced)


Frikish

[eelhead]

Hi Frikish

Yeah Gus no longer makes them but if you see the two thread lines here with BlackCH and dontthroworanges, they are making them. BLackCH is in Europe and dontthroworanges is here in the States, I do believe lol

I get my HDD cases on eBay, or atleast one I did. The ther was in the case and was really easy to glue together. Or you can try DVwarehouse. At DVwarehouse you can get a bunch of Mac parts and cases.