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Deadly Silent Passive G5 Mod

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Not open for further replies.
Joined
Jan 8, 2013
Messages
138
Motherboard
Gigabyte Z370M-D3H
CPU
i5-8600K
Graphics
RX 570
Mac
  1. MacBook Air
Mobile Phone
  1. iOS
(See most recent version at post #8)

Hi,

Here is my G5 case mod that I've finished for a long time now. I took some picture of the different phases, hope you get some inspiration from this mod! ;)

The Parts:

Motherboard: Gigabyte H81M-HD3
Processor: Intel Core i5-4570S
Processor Cooler: Arctic Cooling Freezer Xtreme Rev. 2 (without fan)
RAM: Kingston HyperX 2x8GB 1600Mhz
SSD: Samsung 840 EVO 250GB (OSX), Samsung 840 EVO 500GB (Data)
Sound Card: HRT Music Streamer HD
WiFi/Bluetooth: Apple BCM94360CD 802.11ac Wifi + Bluetooth 4.0
Power Supply: Corsair RM650

Monitor: Dell U2414H (modified, on iMac stand)
Keyboard: Apple wired keyboard
Mouse: Apple Magic Mouse

I've bought the empty case from a local people for ~20€ it was a bit scratchy some places but fortunately the mostly visible parts were in very good condition.

After removing the unnecessary screws inside the case, I cut out the motherboard tray from an old broken PC case. It was hard not to blend the plate during the cut out. I used a super strong epoxy glue (for metal) to fix it in the G5 case. I got my case without the front IO circuit board so I patched the Power On/Off cable and an Apple style USB extender cable with glue gun. I don't like status LED's so I left this part alone - as well as the front audio jack connector because I use the headphone out on my Denon amplifier.

01.jpg02.jpg03.jpg04.jpg05.jpg06.jpg

On the back, basically I left everything untouched as I put the case in a corner under a table where this part cannot be seen... I'm not a fan of the back plates, it's easy to connect all the cables to the hackintosh without it. I only made a short extension cable (Supra LoRad 2.5 MkII) for the PSU to easily access it's connector.

The goal of this build was a cable managed clean looking G5 inside with fanless 0dB system.
I love the covers inside the Mac Pro ~2008-2012 series, it's so beautiful that the motherboard, drives and everything is hidden. I ordered two big G5 labelled cover plate (922-6951) from Ebay: one for my CPU cooler and one for a custom "Storage Cover". I brought this second piece to a water cutting machine to have a nice clean cutting without distortions. I merged the upper and lower piece to one wide part with two screws. This cover hides the SSD drives and the SATA/power cables very nice. The cover is fixed with one screw in it's place so takes just seconds to remove if I have to.

I had a small cover piece left after the water cutting, I used this to hide the Front I/O part. Fixed it with some epoxy glue and two piece of LEGO. For the CPU cooler, I managed to fix the cover with clips. It works great!

07.jpg08.jpg09.jpg10.jpg11.jpg12.jpg

The CPU temp is around 38-45°C in idle and 80-85°C at max load. It doesn't go higher than this temp even at continuous max load, so this passive cooling is fine for me! The PSU is also a silent one: below half load (~325W) the fan is not moving - it's funy because even at max system load, the power consumption is less than this so actually the PSU is always passive. For a completely 0dB system, I replaced my HDD's with SSD drives. Without turning the monitor on, you cannot tell whether the system is running or not! :headbang:

(For Bluetooth I used an IOGear Bluetooth 4.0 dongle first. The massive alumininum G5 case shields the Bluetooth signals dramatically, so I couldn't plug this USB adapter directly in the motherboard. The best solution would be to put it in my Apple wired keyboard, but sadly it can't draw enough power to operate.
You can solve this problem by removing the IOGear's plastic housing at one side (this was pretty hard...) and press the status LED with a sharp scalpel strongly. This way you kill the annoying bright LED and leave all the other parts 100% functional. After doing this I could use the Bluetooth adapter in my keyboard: no low USB power warnings anymore and the connection is very reliable and strong with my Magic Mouse.)

iogear_1.jpgiogear_2.jpg

Later when Yosemite came out with Continuity, I switched to the official Apple BCM94360CD Bluetooth/Wifi module with the matching PCI-E Adapter (guide). You can use any PCI adapter theoretically, but for the full functionality and speed I strongly recommend to purchase the one that is made for BCM94360CD. (it's colored black, has 4 antennas and an USB out). For the antennas I simply widened 4 holes on the back of the case and used IPX to RP-SMA extension cables to connect them to the PCI adapter. WiFi ac, Continuity, Handoff are all work fine...

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The final pictures after all is done. With and without the covers:

18.jpg17.jpg16.jpg31.jpg30.jpg

(See most recent version at post #8)
 
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Absolutely stunning, thanks for sharing!

I'd love to use one of the G5 cases for a hackintosh like this, what inevitably puts me off is the amount of specialist machinery everyone seems to use to get the desired results. Anyone ever seen a mod to this case that doesn't use any machine cutters etc. ?
 
Absolutely stunning, thanks for sharing!

I'd love to use one of the G5 cases for a hackintosh like this, what inevitably puts me off is the amount of specialist machinery everyone seems to use to get the desired results. Anyone ever seen a mod to this case that doesn't use any machine cutters etc. ?


I agree Very Strong Work! Don't think you'll find a mobo that fits oob, I'd like to know too if one does exist. The aluminum is very soft and is easy to work - with a dremel and a cut off wheel ( planning, patience, and a steady hand).
 
Anyone ever seen a mod to this case that doesn't use any machine cutters etc. ?

I did get both my boards to line up with the "pci" slots by cutting away the appropriate area on the top shelf.the first is an old c2d hp workstation, and the second is my gigabyte I5. for the I5 I gutted the mac psu and retro fitted a 500W rocketfish.
 

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Great job on that case and I especially liked the bluetooth adapter hack. Only thing I dont like is the nasty antenna's but I guess you can't do much about the look of those. Anything planned to cover up the whole in the back?
Thanks for sharing! :thumbup:
 
Update: Replaced the CPU cooler to a bigger & more effective one and also bought a new passive graphics card for my noiseless build :thumbup:

New:
- Processor Cooler: Thermalright Le Grand Macho
- Graphics Card: Palit GTX 1050 Ti KalmX 4GB

For the CPU cooler I put a strong neodymium magnet to the G5 cover element to stay in place. This way I could remove the clips used previously. The nVidia card works perfectly as it's a Pascal card, so only need to do is install the nVidia web driver, and add:

<key>NvidiaWeb</key>
<true/>

to your Clover config.plist file, under SystemParameters. (link) I was able to do this without the nVidia GPU installed in my Hackintosh. After I put the card in, on the first bootup I set Primary Graphics option to PCI-E in my BIOS and that's all, macOS boots fine.

As I don't have a back plate on my G5 case mod to attach the graphics card, I put a rubber between the CPU cooler and the graphics card to fix the gap. :lol: The Thermalright cooler is a beast... 38-40°C in idle and about 50-60°C at max load. It's very hard to get it over 60°C. The Palit GTX 1050 Ti KalmX is also a very unique one as there are no other stock GTX card without a fan on the market in this category.

Took some pictures and run some benchmarks on the current machine!

2016-12-24 10.49.47.jpg 2016-12-24 10.49.05.jpg 2016-12-24 10.46.01.jpg 2016-12-24 10.45.48.jpg BlackMagic SMSNG EVO500 SSD SATA III.png Cinebench i5-4570S  GTX 1050Ti.jpg Luxmark v3.1 i5-4570s GTX 1050Ti.jpg
 
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Update: Replaced my entire build with a 8th gen Intel CPU, DDR4 RAMs, NVMe SSDs and an RX 570 graphics card. Basically everything changed except the power supply and the G5 case.

The Parts:

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z370M-D3H
Processor: Intel Core i5-8600K
Processor Cooler: Thermalright Le Grand Macho (without original fan)
RAM: Corsair DDR4 3000MHz Vengeance LPX CL15 (4x8GB)
Graphics Card: Gigabyte RX 570 Gaming 4GB (without original fans and casing)
SSDs: 2x Samsung 960 Evo NVMe [M.2/2280] (250GB for macOS & 500GB for Data)
WiFi/Bluetooth: Apple BCM94360CD 802.11ac Wifi + Bluetooth 4.0
Power Supply: Corsair RM-750x
Fans: 2x Arctic P8 PWM PST CO (for GPU), 1x Arctic P12 PWM PST CO (for CPU)

Monitor: BenQ PD2700U (modified, on iMac stand)
Input: Apple Magic Keyboard with numpad & Apple Magic Trackpad 2

This time I put fans in the G5 case because of the RX card and the K series CPU, but surpriseingly the build remained deadly silent. For all 3 "system" fans I set a constant 600RPM speed in BIOS which means zero noise for this excellent fan. You cannot even tell that the fans are spinning even if you put your ear directly into the opened G5 case.

With my previous build I fed up with the passive nVidia 1050Ti card, because the webdrivers became unreliable. With this native Radeon card macOS became so much more responsive... Animations are much more fluid, Safari is not lagging on startup, my Hack became really fast. If I knew this, I'd replaced my 1050Ti card sooner... :rolleyes:

The benchmark numbers speak for themselves:

2018-11-04 10.59.48-b.jpg2018-01-23 23.40.01.jpg2018-11-04 11.17.26-b.jpgGeekbench i5-8600K & RX 570.jpgLuxmark v3.1 i5-8600K & RX 570.jpgCinebench i5-8600K & RX 570.jpgBlackMagic 960EVO NVMe SSD.jpgVideoProc i5-8600K & RX 570.jpgFBPatcher report i5-8600K & RX 570.jpgSpeedtest DiGi Harmat - Ethernet.jpgSpeedtest DiGi Harmat - WiFi.jpgAbout this mac.jpg
 
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Very Nice!. I have the same motherboard and graphics card as you in my G5. You changed the fans on your RX 570 to Arctics, I have one of those fans at the front of my G5, does the 570 extra cool?.
 
The RX 570 has healthy temp: 60C at idle, 75-80 at full load. It's not cool but a safe temp. :)
 
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