Budget iMac build 17"G5 A1058

[pepi.san]

Dear builders,

This is my first post here, and it's a 95% completed build based on a1058 17" G5.

Let me tell you, it was an interesting ride this past month but it finally came through and it seems like a nice stable system. The idea was to build a usable mac running os X but with minimum expense. Used iMac G5 seamed like a good start with a low price but usable screen. For the guts, the idea was to use a laptop mb which if correct would fit nicely inside the case.

A month later this came to life:

As you can see it all fits nicely with a little extra room to add a the rest (5%), meaning a usb hub and a small amp for the speakers. Inside, we have ASUS K56CB mb i5-3317U CPU, HM76 Chipset, 6GB DDR3, 750GB HDD, not great not terrible

About the build, thanks to all previous posts, especially MacTester57's iMac G5 17" and Kiwi's 20" iMac i5 build which helped a lot!

MacTester57's iMac G5 17" (A1058 Model)

Hi guys I'm happy to officially announce my new project: an A1058 17 Inch G5 iMac, which I've bought for only 16.50 bucks last week. It was announced as defective. The non-working part is the logic board (LED 3 did not light up) The auction is finished: My current vintage Mac collection...

www.tonymacx86.com

Kiwi's 20" iMac i5

Kiwi's 20" iMac i5 Introduction This build started almost a year ago when I purchased a working Apple iMac G5/1.8 20-Inch (A1076). This was the first iMac to have a G5 processor, and the direct successor to the iconic lampshade iMac. It is also notable as being the only iMac...

www.tonymacx86.com

Some interesting details:

1. Screen hdmi conversion went smoothly but it was a bit difficult to solder. I used kiwi's table just used 3.3V for the display.
2. Power on/off is done trough a optocoupler with high signal taken from the laptops ON button led (which conveniently lights when the thing is running regardless of state)
3. Custom SMC is based on arduino pro mini with two pwm controlled outputs for the top and bottom fans, and temperature is read from the reused apple hdd temp sensor (glued to the heatpipe). System runs at pleasant 50 deg with some tweaking of the fan speeds, it is very quiet.
4. Part of the board with I/O's was cut to fit, unfortunately I couldn't manage to have the rj45 working. Apple uses some stupid specs for this and it is limited to 100 fd which makes it useless. I opened the thing, removed the coils and used the 4 data wires directly but no luck. Probably will remove it, make a hole an put a new connector small enough to fit in the future. Used 1 USB and audio, will make 2 more usb port wit a hub in the future.
5. Laptop psu is always on, taking power from the same mains.
6. HDD is connected on one usb3 port for now. I will try to find and order male/female sata cable to have it connected to the sata port or maybe install a m2 drive, but I have to check compatibility first. Runs fine as is, maybe I'll just put an old ssd and live without the usb 3.0.

I've been testing the thing for the last week for 5,6 hours per day and works great. It has 10.11.6 for which I managed to find working kexts but I will try to upgrade after a while if the system proves stable.

Budget for the build:

iMac G5 50$
ASUS K56CB with damaged screen 60$
Arduino (chinese copy) 7$
Materials 10$
Total 130$ (about 110eur)

I hope you will find this post interesting, I will update the post with more pictures and build details in the next weeks.

 

[jmilan0302]

Nice build, haven't seen an iMac G5 mod in a long time... I wanna do one myself but with an ITX board and maybe even a GPU, as far as I know something like that hasn't been done before.

 

[pepi.san]

Thanks, I did some tweaking lately. I disabled the bottom fan, it was too loud and not really needed. I installed a small amp powered form 5v rail for the speakers. Unfortunately the mb internal amp is blown so I had to use the headphone jack, that means no headphones until I figure out a solution for switching. I put a mSata 240 drive and now it boots in less than 2 mins. It has Sierra now and the performance is excellent. Now I bought a 20" 2009 iMac C2D, and I'm still in a dilemma whether I should transfer the internals to that machine or use it as is.

For the ITX way, there might be a height issue. The max usable height is about 2cm or 1". Most ITX boards are 1 1/2" but there are some with lower profile (check Gigabyte). GPU card would be a real challenge, maybe a riser cable... Keep in mind that the resolution is only 1440x900.

 

[jmilan0302]

Thanks, I did some tweaking lately. I disabled the bottom fan, it was too loud and not really needed. I installed a small amp powered form 5v rail for the speakers. Unfortunately the mb internal amp is blown so I had to use the headphone jack, that means no headphones until I figure out a solution for switching. I put a mSata 240 drive and now it boots in less than 2 mins. It has Sierra now and the performance is excellent. Now I bought a 20" 2009 iMac C2D, and I'm still in a dilemma whether I should transfer the internals to that machine or use it as is.

For the ITX way, there might be a height issue. The max usable height is about 2cm or 1". Most ITX boards are 1 1/2" but there are some with lower profile (check Gigabyte). GPU card would be a real challenge, maybe a riser cable... Keep in mind that the resolution is only 1440x900.

I am aware of the existence of thin mini ITX boards but they are impossible to find used here and new they are waaaaay too expensive. I can get a H77 board with an i3 3240 for 65€ while an ASUS H310 thin mini ITX board costs 130€ new and that's the cheapest one, Gigabyte boards are 170€. These boards also lack an ATX 24pin connector and a full PCIe x16. I could just desolder ports from a normal ITX board until it fits instead. For the GPU, there are quite a few options. I could even fit in a Vega 56 in there if I wanted, there's that Sapphire Pulse variant with the tiny PCB, of course a riser cable is required. Realistically I'd go with a Radeon 7750 or something similar though. Also the 20" models are 1680x1050. Also I see someone here who did an iMac G4 mod replaced the panel with a modern 1920x1200 one.