DaveVegas G5 PowerHack

[davevegas]

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.

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:

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

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!

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 (And I love it too)

Okay so soon after I upgraded my Hackintosh to a BEAST P) 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:

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

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:

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!

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:

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:

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:

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.

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:

And this is how everything turned out:

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/

Thanks!
Rob

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.

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.

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

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

The back:

And the front:

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

Rob

Thanks! What do you think?

 

[pahoran]

love it!!!! i like how u put the hdd rack, im thinking of doing the same, but i wanna use a backplane, with sliding caddys, just so i wont see the hdd cable mess..
congrats!

 

[hardmantosh]

Well congrats to your well done efforts;i applaud anyone with the creativity and desire for wanting the best case in the world.and making it happen without hacking a case that deserves more..my hats off to you ;

if i may say one thing to you without being rude[tidy up that wiring]

sorry man couldnt help myself..well done.

 

[mikemelbrooks]

Nice build
quote"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)."
Hmm I have seven, three ssds and a quartet of 1tb samsungs. Mike

 

[davevegas]

Hey guys,

Thank you all for the nice comments!

I know I could've done the wiring better, that's why I reassembled everything and cleaned up the wiring a little bit.

Thanks guys. It looks awesome, the only thing is the dvd eject button which I'll focus on next.

Keep you posted.

Rob

 

[o_mega05]

Hi davevegas,

First and foremost, great mod! I'm in the early stages of my first G5 mod and after many hours of research I've decided to make mine similiar to yours. I especially love the 5 Bay HDD rack w/ fan setup. I hope you don't mind a few questions now and again as I start my project? I'm a complete noob when it comes to modding, but I'm a Graphic Designer, so my craft skills should help some.

First off, since it's been a couple of months from when you completed your build, have you had any setup issues that you wish you could've done differently?

o_mega05

 

[tischler]

davevegas: how can i get a motherboard tray with the atx back like your one in the g5 case?

 

[lore]

I know I could've done the wiring better, that's why I reassembled everything and cleaned up the wiring a little bit.

Rob,

Tidy work. If you have to work on it for the cable management, you may consider to change the way you fixed the fans on the hard disk caddy. I don't want to sound blunt, just offering an advice.

From what I see, the two 120 mm fans push air in what essentially is a closed surface; in that case I doubt there is an air flow at all.. the only holes are the screw fixing holes.
If you can't change the metalwork you could put a spacer so that there is a way out for the hair hitting the hard disk caddy... not the best solution yet.

 

[richmond2000]

this is mostly a Q for curiosity sake
but if the HD caddy was turned 180 degrees and the HD's fitted cable towards the "mobo tray side and the cables pulled through then the drives put in could there be room to "store" the slack by the fans as to not be visible ? (spacers on the caddy to raise it unto the door)
awesome and EZ looking mod

 

[dddirtman]

awesome build