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DaveVegas G5 Power Hack


DaveVegas
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Hey guys!

 

I wanted to mod a G5 case for several weeks now, I've asked for help from the community with this thread: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=266870

 

I just wanted to thank everyone who helped me getting my own G5 mod going! Especially ponch0v and micha and of course BlackCH!

 

Now let's start with some pictures, and some behind the scenes information.

 

That was my case yesterday.

 

zrich2011090800427.jpg

 

As you can see it's pretty fugly. It looks like one of those "13 year old nerd kiddy gamer cases". Since I'm in the film industry and I often have clients at my office and home I had to have a professional case. It always looked so stupid, and they always looked strange at me when they saw this case. Something needed to change!

 

So I decided to mod a G5 case. I've looked through the forums for hours and, even I was a moron in handicraft work, I deciede I would give it a shot.

 

The first thing I did was buying a G5 case for 50 bucks from Ebay. It arrived soon enough:

 

e5e04826189a4726ad2f81b.jpg

 

So I started taking the unnessecary stuff out, and I ended up with this:

 

zrich2011091300462.jpg

 

Because some of the stuff I ordered still wasn't there yet, I took the opportunity to upgrade my hackintosh! Because I live near a computer store I bought the stuff right away, what eye candy!

 

zrich2011090800426.jpg

 

For record; I upgraded to a Core i7 960 3.2ghz, 24gb ram, 3x2TB 7200rpm Drives, 1xSSD 80gb, 1xSSD 240gb. Now if you ask me why I need such amount of ram etc: I do video work, I edit red raw footage, do heavy compositing and 3D so I need this :wacko: (And I love it too)

 

Okay so soon after I upgraded my Hackintosh to a BEAST (:)) the MB Tray arrived from Mountain mods. This was really easy, I just drilled holes into the mb tray (With help from ponch0v, thanks buddy) and then I cut the back with a dremel. I ended up with something like this:

 

img2011091700476.jpg

 

img2011091700477.jpg

 

Okay, I started mounting the Motherboard on it! Result:

 

img2011091700478.jpg

 

img2011091700479.jpg

 

Okay so now, I saw a lot of good G5 case mods but nobody seems to have 5 Harddrives (Only a really mad movie director would need 5 Harddrives for his insane movies). Since the HD Tray from Apple (which came with the case by the way) can only hold 2 Harddrives I had to rethink. My "13 year old gamer nerd kiddy case" fortunately had a HD Tray with 5 slots. So I took that out, cut some stuff here and there, attached two 120mm be-quiet fans to it and the result was this:

 

img2011091700480.jpg

 

img2011091700481.jpg

 

I attached two 120mm fans into the left side, so that way it would face the front of the case and everything would be smooth as hell.

 

I started adding the Harddrives into the tray. This took some while, I had to drill additional holes because I had to turn the tray upside down, it worked out well!

 

img2011091700482.jpg

 

img2011091700483.jpg

 

All right! Let's start to assemble the tray into the case. I cut the heavy metal plate which holds the DVD Player right where the mb tray started. That way I could still use the smaller plate to hold the dvd player and my harddrives. I ended up with this:

 

img2011091700488.jpg

 

img2011091700485.jpg

 

I added the PSU, and it fit really nicely under the harddrive tray, so nicely that I didn't even had to worry about fixxing it to the case.

 

I started with the SATA connections:

 

img2011091700489.jpg

 

Okay, so I added two 80mm fans at the back and I connected everything to the PSU. I didn't really worry about a clean look because I won't open the case anyway. Some of you might've done it cleaner, but again, it's my first case mod.

 

I ended up with this:

 

img2011091700490.jpg

 

img2011091700492.jpg

 

So I started it up, and it worked like a beauty! Unfortenately it got really hot after some time, so I added two 120mm fans to the ground so my baby stays cool.

 

img2011091700501.jpg

 

img2011091700500.jpg

 

Because the front is pretty much covered with the tray I don't have to worry about the lights, you don't really see them.

 

This is how my baby looks:

 

img2011091700499.jpg

 

And this is how everything turned out:

 

img2011091700498.jpg

 

I'm so happy right now. Like a little child.

 

Thanks again to everyone who helped me doing this!

 

I hope with the pictures I can convince somebody to make his own case mod, it freaking rules!

 

I would love to know what you think :)

 

Thanks!

Rob

 

Update:

 

For you guys I've made some nice pictures of my home office with my new G5 case. Notice my background, it's the movie poster of my upcoming movie. Check the trailer out here, if you want: http://trailers.apple.com/trailers/independent/therift/

 

finalegrande01.jpg

 

finalegrande02.jpg

 

Thanks!

Rob

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Hey Nikkokick,

 

Thank you for your kind comment, I used the MB Tray form Mountain Mods (Link here: http://www.mountainmods.com/mountain-mods-...tray-p-56.html) Make sure you select the 2x 80mm Backplate, the other one has the wrong size.

 

Good luck with your build.

 

Rob

 

PS: If you need any help, pm me.

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Update:

 

Today I took everything out again, did some finetuning and assembled everything back together. I took high res pictures so you guys could see it better as reference.

 

10000000j.jpg

 

50000000n.jpg

 

I drilled additional holes under the case, and attached two 120mm fans (which fit perfectly) on the ground. That way the big hd tray didn't take away to much air.

 

20000000.jpg

 

30000000.jpg

 

Put everything back together (This time a "little" cleaner, lol).

 

40000006q.jpg

 

And here's my final G5, as it stands in my home office:

 

The back:

 

60000000k.jpg

 

And the front:

 

70000000.jpg

 

I hope you get enough inspiration to make your own G5's! It wasn't that difficult as I imagined.

 

Rob

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