Apple PowerMac G4 Cube - clone

[pippoppeo]

Hey community!
Im from Germany (im sorry, my english is baaaad) and a big fan of the Cube-design! A few days ago i discovered the cube on wikipedia, it was love at first sight. I researched a lot, seen a lot projekts on tonymac and thought about my projekt. At the end i assess that my budget is enough for all these components, but not for an original cube. So i started to plan my own case, with plexiglas. And now i need some help from experienced (cube) users. The biggest problem by building my own cube are the dimensions from:
-thickness of the wall from the transparent case
-thickness of the wall from the white case
-the slots at top and buttom
-the white case (outside, inside i can calculate with the thickness)
Can anybody snatch a yardstick and caliper to tell me the dimensions?
Ive got some more questions about the hardware inside:
-what about cooling the i3 3225?
-what about the power supply unit?
I would be very happy about some answers, details and photos. Im sorry again for my baaad english, i hope you can understand me.

 

[eelhead]

Well I dont know your budget but I know you can buy just the casing for the Cube at places like DVWarehouse,
http://www.dvwarehouse.com/index.ph...h_result&search_in_description=1&keyword=Cube

I dont know what shipping would be there. You can always make a ebay watch list and see what pops up.

As for the PSU most of us have been using a PICO PSU like this
http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/sc.8/category.13/it.C/.f

as for cooling
http://www.tonymacx86.com/hardware-parts/77209-low-profile-noctua-nh-l9-cpu-cooler.html

I don't know the measurements you need off the top of my head but I ma sure somebody here will respond by the time I get them lol


So If you cant get these items shipped you at least have the items you can now search locally.

 

[pippoppeo]

Woooow Thx eelhead. Dwarehouse is a good adress, but a bit too expensive for me. Its a lot money for a pupil. But i must think over it.
The link for the PSU is very nice, i try to get them in a german shop, but there they are very rarely. The cooling is problem for me, the cpu is vertical and the cooler must blow the hot air to the top, but the most cooler blow it horizontal to the other components. So i need a cooler which blow the air vertikal to the airing slot. However, ive seen here some constructions with horizontal airflow, maybe its the own solution. My idea was a passive cooler and a big, silence fan with low rpm at the top. Sadly, passive coolers are very bulky. But i dont put much components in the case, only mainboard, cpu, cpu cooler, touch sensor, ssd, pico psu and maybe a real gpu (improbable). I hope that somebody else can give me the measurements. But, again a big THANKS to eelhead!

 

[minihack]

Hi, and welcome!

This is a tricky one. If a dead cube is beyond your finances then my suggestion would be that the only way you can make a cheaper Cube mod would be to abandon some of the original Cube features. By that I mean go for something that is inspired by the Cube but does not try to "be" a Cube.

There are lots of ways to do that:

1. Maybe get just an original perspex Cube case and find a way to fit your components to it that is different to the original Cube mechanism.

2. Buy a cube shaped display case made from Perspex - some companies sell those and you could build a computer into one

3. Go your own way and design your own cube based on the footprint of a Mini_ITX board. If you are not using a real cube case then just go for an easier size of 20cm x 20cm x 20cm and that will give you good component room and still a Cube "look".

There is a danger that with any of these routes you may end up spending the same money as you would buying a dead original Cube, so perhaps as a noob modder it might be a better idea to just keep an eye on your local eBay and eventually something will come up that meets the budget!

In the meantime take a look around the forum as there is plenty for inspiration and we are all pretty happy to give help and advice along the way.

 

[pippoppeo]

Ok, thx minihack too!
I must think over it, maybe i cant build a new computer, there is a lot of work in the school at the moment. sry for late answer :/