G5 with a twist

I haven't gone through with a full G5 mod in a while. At least not one that I have done purely for myself. So this one will make a bit of a change for me.

I have had a few ideas I have been working on for a while, but this build (not finished, this is posting more or less as I go) was prompted by a few things: too many G5 cases in different states of ripped-apartness, the lusting after of a particular fan controller and an impulse buy.

The catalyst for this build

This is the impulse buy that started the thought process for the build. It started when I was going to buy some kit online and saw there was a special offer on the Kraken x60 water cooling set up and thought "yep, okay I'll just tick the box that says "buy".







The Kraken hasn't been around for long and it is an integrated water cooler based around 2 x 140mm fans and a 280mm radiator. It has had some reasonable reviews, but I've seen no reports yet of one in a hack. Fitment in a G5 is not a logical one as though you might be able to front mount it I don't like the idea of exhausting hot air into the case. It certainly won't rear mount, so that leaves top or bottom.

The donor case

In my day to day stuff I end up messing around with a lot of cases, usually doing half a build to see if something fits and then ending up with lots of hacked around cases littering house and workshop.

The case I have decided to do this mod "for me" with is a broken case. It started as one that someone sent to me for me to do a conversion on, but it arrived with the familiar bent leg (thank you white van man).




I tried to bend it back and made a reasonable job of it, but really didn't want to be modding a damaged case for someone else, so I swapped the case out for one I had here and did the customer mod based on a good case - and then kept the damaged one here as one of my guinea pig cases.

The guinea pig case I ripped apart and converted it to do a test fit on an ATX kit, and then ripped it apart again. So now it was not just broken, but had a large hole in the back already.



What kind of build?

The impulse buy of the X60 got me thinking about sticking the radiator on the roof of a G5, so I thought now was the time to try that out on the guinea pig case.

But there was no point in just having a roof mount for a radiator if it wasn't part of a full build was there?


A 280 radiator on the roof seems pointless without the case being able to take a full ATX tray. So it had to be ATX (if only to fill the large hole already in the case back).

I wanted plenty of disk storage, and also needed to do a little development work on my design for a 7 disk hot swap enclosure so using that on this build seemed logical.





My only option with a radiator on the roof and my using the hot swapper is to put the PSU in the G5 PSU case.

I also wanted to keep a DVD drive. The 280 radiator though, wherever I put it, would not give room for a full size DVD, so I decided I'd need a slot loader.

Unfortunately the depth of the radiator and the fans and the whole length of it - even if I put it to the back of the case - would not give room for a slot loader to spit disks from the original DVD area so I needed a re-think on that too.

The final configuration then, and now decided on, is to put the slot loading DVD at around the top shelf level and, to use the space above it to fit a fan controller. Not just any fan controller though - the Lamptron FC10 with Nixie tube display that Graeme at Kustom PCs had just told me had come into stock after having been a virtual product for months and months. This controller set me back a fair amount, but it just looks so awesome that it almost deserves to have the mod themed around it.



It was the arrival of this fan controller that prompted me to put dremel to case again. I had to see how this might come out and also to work on what my ideas would be for putting some sort of a novel twist to the outer case that would be different to the other G5 mod.s out there. By the way, when I say different I don't mean better - that's not something for me to judge and definitely not at an early stage like this - but it'll certainly be different when it is done.



I can hopefully work on having a ATX board, graphics card and processor somewhere along the line (!) - as this build deserves to live. More than that, this case really should have some serious hardware to justify the Kraken cooler.

Next post will be the first case cuts.



Things to decide though (and I really haven't decided yet!) is whether to go black and white, black and silver or conventional. And, as I am prototyping almost everything I do in acrylic, whether to stick with some or all of my acrylic parts or translate everything into aluminium.....

looks cool! Keep the updates coming!

So, some cuts to the inner case today.

I did some measurements around the radiator and made a cutting template which I then fixed as far back as possible on the roof of the G5.




and then dremeled around the line to make the mounting frame.

I designed my own grill for the radiator as I couldn't find one that I liked that had 15mm fan hole spacing - so this is a laser hive special. What do you think?

I wanted it to look 3D and to look as if it had separate grills that could turn. In reality though this is a sandwich of two pieces together. I could maybe give it a better look by using acrylic of different colours.




For my proposed 5.25" bay for the fan controller and slot loader I made some files in Corel Draw. I counted up the holes in the front mesh vertically and horizontally (vertical hole spacing is 5.8mm and horizontal hole spacing is 6.25mm) that would give me enough room for a plate to make a bay opening and have a slot loader underneath it and then cut a piece of acrylic to hold against the G5 and see if it looked okay.


The acrylic was held there temporarily by poking M3 screws through the attachment holes I had made and I then adjusted it to be as high as it would sit on the front without going on t the curved part of the case.

The G5 front was masked with tape and I then drew on to the tape the shape I thought I needed to cut.



After cutting the front here is the loose assembly of the fan controller and plate at the top of the case.


So, that's more or less where I am at with this case now. Next jobs are working on the outer case and the back of the case. Outer case is going to be new and will feature being able to hot swap drives without having to remove the whole side door.

I really like that solution for the 5.25in bay!!! I might have to either do that myself, or hopefully buy it from the Lazer Hive! Hint, hint?

Jeffinslaw

Ha, ha. Better wait and see how it turns out first!

Seriously on the materials side though I am really torn on which way to go.

Obviously I am prototyping everything in acrylic and I like the black matt acrylic and part of me is thinking about keeping that for the drive bay adapter, rad grill, backplate adapter and for front panel (watch this space!).

On the other hand, I would like to try some stuff from 3mm aluminium which of course will cost more. Then the question is though do I have any aluminium anodised or go for powder coated.

The outer case though will definitely be all new as I want to experiment and now have already settled on these feet:



and have attached them to the bottom of the case - screwed them into the power supply holes actually. They look good and will be easier on flooring than the normal G5 frame.

The MacKraken G5! Maybe with the debut of the new front panel I/O? The radiator grill is looking sweet.

Thanks for sharing your build.

Vash

Minihack you have access to a world of possibilities that others can only dream about. Its great to see that you are taking creativity to another level yet again.

Watching....

A test fit of the radiator and fans and the rear backplate etc. to double check all will go in!



Note pic. above shows before I turned radiator 180 degrees to put pipes at the front, out of the way.

The backplate aim is to place the motherboard absolutely as low as it could possibly go while keeping the original PSU case and being full ATX. The reason for the " G5 LZR" little extension at the top is that the hole in the back of this case was bigger than I needed for this conversion as originally I had used it to test out one of my "high" ATX kits - so the backplate on there now is sort of a "middle" one.





The position of the board, PSU and radiator/fans JUST allows the all of the PCI-e slots of a full ATX board to be fully clear and totally useable.


At the front, the hot swapper forces the pipes from the radiator to do a tight turn, but I am relieved to see that these Kraken pipes do not kink and make the turn nicely.



Looks like the CPU plate should just fit nicely with where the processor will be eventually.



I have been thinking about the colour scheme and also the style of the side panels for this. Just thought I'd share my current thinking to see what you think of it.

I am replacing the outer case totally on this mod. So whatever it'll be a departure.

I am though still thinking about the final look.

The latest idea is this:



The bottom and sides on this design follow the inner case outline, while the top extends up above the case and forms handles for hauling the case around. I am thinking 3mm polished aluminium as the material.

I sort of was thinking of those Airstream caravans and wanted a streamlined front section with a more square back. The vent area would be to provide some extra ventilation for the radiator fans at the top to directly draw cold air from and expel through the roof outlet.

I have made a prototype new door keeping the original door mechanism and having an integral sliding panel for the hotswap access (in case I am too lazy to open the whole door!) so here are a few of the pictures of me rigging up a door mechanism prototype.

What I wanted was to make a door with a sliding compartment.

I reckoned there was the possibility to do this because all the G5s have the inner plastic door which is 3mm thick and then the inner frame also has a 3mm thick recess in it and finally the outer door itself is of 3mm thick aluminium.

So I thought that if I measured right I should be able to make a 3mm inner part, and a 3mm outer part and then sandwich a moving shutter in between the inner and outer.

The prototype phase is tedious.

I started by taking the frame off of the original door and by measuring up the dimensions of the plastic airdeflector.

I then measured up where the holes were on the frame and did some first cuts in card, then offered that up to the mechanism, saw where some mistakes were and did a next prototype in clear acrylic.

I went from that to a bit of 3mm ply I had in the workshop and then finally to the prototype you see below.



The pic above shows: A clear inner piece with the three tabs sticking out the bottom (which go in the same slots as the original air deflector piece used) and this is connected at the moment by M3 screws that go through the metal frame and then connect with nuts on the outside of the door which at the moment is grey plastic. Trapped between the clear plastic and the grey plastic is a smaller piece of black plastic which can slide front to back in the 3mm depth of the door frame.



This pic shows (from the outside) the grey plastic piece which has a hole in it for accessing the hotswapper. Here, the black sliding perspex is slid back and contained in the right hand side out of sight.



Pic above shows black shutter now closing off the access to the hotswapper.





....and half open.

Hey MiniHack,

I assume the black backplate is one you made yourself ; do you plan to make some more ?

Hi Djulink,

If there is any demand for a backplate like the one here then yes, I could make more and I do black acrylic like this in house.

I am in fact probably going to have this one replicated as a one off too in 3mm aluminium to go with the industrial look I am aiming for on this build.

Please remember the rules of the forum though and do not contact me through the forum or the Private Messaging system for anything that might be seen to be against forum rules.