$421 Simple PowerHac G5

[Misscomp]

Dear Dr. Tom,

Awesome I am glad to see that you installed Yosemite on the board. I will use your Multibeast settings with the exceptions of the special driver that you installed. I am glad it worked. Do you know of another install of Yosemite using this board?

Misscomp

 

[Misscomp]

Dear Dr. Tom,

One more thing did you have to use a boot flag to get into the Yosemite installer?

Misscomp

 

[Misscomp]

Dear Dr. Tom,

I looked at your Multibeast settings and noticed that you did not use the ElliotForctLegacyRTC and EvOreboot in your Yosemite install. Should I use these kexts in my install? I have the same Gigabyte board that you have.

Misscomp

 

[DrTom]

Dear Dr. Tom,

Awesome I am glad to see that you installed Yosemite on the board. I will use your Multibeast settings with the exceptions of the special driver that you installed. I am glad it worked. Do you know of another install of Yosemite using this board?

Misscomp

I'm sure that there are other successful B85M installations of Yosemite. I'd just try using the search function on the Tonymac website and see what you find. I didn't even strip my computer to minimum configuration to install Yosemite, but did it with everything attached and full memory. My first successful installation used the Clover bootloader, but the Unibeast with Chimera install is definitely easier.

Tom

 

[DrTom]

Dear Dr. Tom,

One more thing did you have to use a boot flag to get into the Yosemite installer?

Misscomp

Nope. The only time I had to boot to safe mode (-x) was when I was experimenting with the Clover bootloader.

Tom

 

[DrTom]

Dear Dr. Tom,

I looked at your Multibeast settings and noticed that you did not use the ElliotForctLegacyRTC and EvOreboot in your Yosemite install. Should I use these kexts in my install? I have the same Gigabyte board that you have.

Misscomp

I didn't use either of these. I don't have any shutdown and reboot issues (EvOreboot) nor does the B85M motherboard bios reset on boot (ElliotForctLegacyRTC).

Tom

 

[DrTom]

5/3/2016 update

All three of my 2013 PowerMac G5 builds (red, white, and blue) are still working perfectly. All have been upgraded to 16 GBs RAM, all have been upgraded to two hard disk drives (main and clone), and two (my son Alex’s G5 Blue and my G5 Red) have been upgraded to 250 GB SSDs and Vantec USB sound cards. The same two (G5 Blue and G5 Red) have also been upgraded to dedicated video cards: G5 Blue has a Dell Nvidia GT640 and G5 Red has a PNY Nvidia GTX650.

My original G5 White, except for the memory and drive upgrades, remains much as it was when I originally built it in Feb. 2013. It is still using 10.8.5 Mountain Lion and HD 4000 graphics with the OS and all programs updated as much as is possible.

Alex’s G5 Blue and my G5 Red are our main computers, and both are running El Capitan 10.11.4 with the Clover bootloader.

Finally, I upgraded G5 Red’s i3 4340 CPU with a Xeon E3 1241 V3 (which cost me less than an i5) in April, and I'm very pleased with the results. In fact, El Cap thinks the Xeon is an i7.

The only issue my G5 has with El Cap is that it sometimes wakes from sleep having lost its video synchronization. The workaround is to turn the monitor off then back on again and all is well. [The fix was to connect the PowerMac and monitor with an HDMI cable. No more snow when waking from sleep.] Other than that, El Cap solved all the issues I was having with Yosemite and I like it a lot. Alex's G5 has no issues.

I should note that a Skylake version of my original G5 build can still be built for around $420:

Parts
- Intel Core i3-6100 $110 (3.7GHz, HD 350 graphics)
- Gigabyte GA-B150M-DS3H $50 when purchased with i3-6100 at MicroCenter
- 2 x 4GB Crucial Ballistic DDR4-2400 $37
- 1 TB WD Blue SATA hard drive $45
- Corsair CX430 power supply $55
- LG 24X SATA DVD-RW $15
- Lamptron 3mm blue LED with tail $2
- StarTech front bezel wire kit (used for front panel) $6
- Homebuilt Airport WiFi adapter <$20
- Used PowerMac G5 case about $50
- Apple USB keyboard $20 from Ebay
- Apple USB mouse $10 from Ebay

Tom

 

[chrisrand]

Dear Dr. Tom,

I really like your build and the detail you go in to, but one thing that I can't seem to find is an explanation on how you created your power button cables. Could you please elaborate?

Thanks

 

[DrTom]

Dear Dr. Tom,

I really like your build and the detail you go in to, but one thing that I can't seem to find is an explanation on how you created your power button cables. Could you please elaborate?

Thanks

Sure can. I basically followed Eelhead's excellent guide (http://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/g5-front-panel-quick-guide.77208/) and the diagram in it plus J. Rivera's simplified diagram. I have pasted both below. Since I only connected USB, the power light, and the power switch I only used pins 2, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14. I removed the other wires and pins from the connector after I cut the original cable in half. I then spliced in a USB cable (to pins 9, 10, 11, 12) making sure they led to the proper pins on a USB header on the motherboard, the power button connected to pins 2 (-) and 13 (+) connected to the power switch pins on the panel header of the motherboard, and two leads that connected pins 2 (-) and 14 (+) to the power LED pins on the motherboard. In fact pin 2 on the panel connector only needs to connect to one pin on the motherboard to properly ground things (i.e. the power LED only needs to connect to the + pin on the motherboard if the power switch ground on the motherboard is using pin 2). The wires are very small and fragile, so use care when stripping and soldering. The first diagram is the connector as appears as if you were looking directly at the connector unplugged and the second diagram is from the perspective of the connector as it looks when it is plugged in. When I had the wires connected and taped, I put some heat shrink tubing over them to make the cable look a little more professional. I hope this helps.

Tom