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Building a MacPro


nagal
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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 {censored}. 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

 

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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

 

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

 

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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

 

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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.

 

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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 {censored}. 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.

 

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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

 

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

 

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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

 

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

 

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And finally everything in place!

 

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

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Nagal - beautiful job so far! :D

 

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.

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

 

Sure whats your address? :D

 

 

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

 

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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 :D

 

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

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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.

 

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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

 

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

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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

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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.

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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.

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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

 

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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!

 

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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 :D 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.

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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 :D

 

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 :(

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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.

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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 :lol:

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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.

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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!!

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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

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I am looking forward to the first boot!!
You aren't the only one :) Kind of torturous that it is 7am here and the Apple Store does not open till 10 am.
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
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.
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