Dschijn's G5 Mod

[Dschijn]

Inspiration

I got inspired by all the beautiful G5 Mods here at Tonymacx86!
Especially by:
MacTester57
eelhead
chaosdesigns 1st
chaosdesigns 2nd
nikkokick
kiwisincebirth

Thanks to you guys!


Getting a G5 Case

Finding a G5 Case took me quite some time. I tried to get one on eBay, but all the PowerMacs have been kind of pricey.
After checking out some forums and private offers I found a nice deal on ebayclassifieds (kleinanzeigen.ebay.de). The offer has been a "G5 Powermac Case" for 50€. When I arrived at the seller, I got a nice surprise! The Powermac G5 was not just the case, it has been a 100% working G5 in good shape. The 2nd surprise was that he was selling four 100% fine G5s (1x late 2004, 3x early 2005) each for 50€.
Of course I took all four G5's and chose the late 2004 G5 to be my case. I gave two of the other G5's to friends of mine.

G5 front panel wiring

To be able to use the front panel, I followed eelhead's Guide and did some soldering. With some nice sleeves the cable does look quite good.

ATX motherboard tray

I ordered the Mountain Mods ATX tray from the US, unfortunately the shipping to Germany did cost me the same as the tray itself + I had to pay import taxes...
My plan was to use some of the original G5 stand offs without replacing them. So I pulled out most of the stand offs until four have been left and in a good position to attach the MB tray.

My plan is to use the upper part of the case for the power supply and the DVD drive. Therefore the tray had to be in the lower section of the back side. With a friend I cut out a big piece of the backpanel...

... and was able to put in the MB tray in the correct position, covering all the edges and keeping enough G5's perforated sheet to drill some holes for the screws.

As you can see four screws are keeping the tray in the correct position with the original G5's stand offs

HDD Tray

For beeing able to add HDD's to the system easily, I selected the Lian Li's EX-H34S. Based on the little space left in the G5 case, I disassemble the HDD cage to it's most important core tray and drilled some holes under the DVD drive plate. With screws and hexagon stand offs with internal threads on both sides I attached the tray to the plate. After connecting the SATA cables to the motherboard, I will be able to just slide the HDD's into the tray without attaching any wires.

Front fans

For attaching two 120mm fans to front I used the fan frames from the Lian Li HDD tray and assembled it 90° around the tray. To avoid noise from the air pulled/pushed air, I kept some space between the front G5 mesh - Fan - HDD tray.

Assembly pt 1

I managed to build some parts into the case. Unfortunately my selfmade front panel cable can't start the PC…, but a simple two wired cable + button can.
I tried to hide most the SATA cables behind the tray, because the distance to the SATA ports on the MB is small.

Assembly pt 2

Finally I was able to keep most of the wiring in the upper section. It is really hard to bend the cables of the power supply and by that its difficult to lay the wires as you want to…
My two SSD are just next to the power supply and not hold by any frame (I hope that works).

Source

Mountain Mods motheboard tray

LIAN LI EX-H34S @ Newegg

Enermax Cluster fans 120mm @ Amazon
Enermax Cluster fans 120mm @ Newegg






to be continued…

 

[chaosdesigns]

Really nice work so far! Thanks for the mention. I'm looking forward to the completed build. Grabbing the three extra G5's made me laugh....it's exactly what I would have done!

chaos

 

[Dschijn]

Thanks.

+ Addes pictures of the front fans

 

[heretolearn]

Give them away BUT THEIR SO PRETTY.
Must start 4 builds at once [each one completely different.]

 

[Dschijn]

Assembly

I managed to build some parts into the case. Unfortunately my selfmade front panel cable can't start the PC…, but a simple two wired cable + button can.
I tried to hide most the SATA cables behind the tray, because the distance to the SATA ports on the MB is small.

 

[Dschijn]

Assembly pt 2

Finally I was able to keep most of the wiring in the upper section. It is really hard to bend the cables of the power supply and by that its difficult to lay the wires as you want to…
My two SSD are just next to the power supply and not hold by any frame (I hope that works).

 

[Dschijn]

Problems…:

- external watercooler has trouble. The pump seems to work, but cant pump the water (barrier in the circuit?)
- the front fans are blowing in wrong direction
- i have the feeling that the G5 case is under voltage :/

solved!

 

[Dschijn]

I will order a front panel cable from BlackCH @ insanelymac.com because my cable doesn't work and is to short.

 

[djulink]

I will order a front panel cable from BlackCH @ insanelymac.com because my cable doesn't work and is to short.

You won't regret it: works like a charm, and has the jumper included, so you can use or not the FW front port and boot either way.

 

[billyprefect]

Wow. Very nice. I wish mine would have turned out this pretty.