Finndamage's G5 Bad Apple

[Finndamage]

My first G5 Hackintosh: Bad Apple - "Clean, simple and empty inside"

Background and goal:
A fully functional Hackintosh to be used in photo editing, other daily use and maybe also gaming. Until now I have used a 2009 MBP for everything. For couch surfing as it is and with a Henge Docks dock, Magic Trackpad, Wireless keyboard and a 23" Cinema Display for desktop use. Now I'm thinking of selling the MBP and getting a second-hand Macbook Air for the couch and travel use.

The original idea was to do this with a fairly limited budget but that idea was updated a bit along the way. I planned to do it with an i3 processor, 8GB of RAM and so on. I upgraded many components a bit but still tried to keep it somewhat economical.

I thought I'd go for a simple Hackintosh without any special tricks or anything. Try to manage the cables neatly and so on. Then I saw Ersterhernd's second G5 mod. First I thought I would use that as an example someday later but as it turns out, that's quite close to what I actually did already this time. So thank you Ersterhernd for that excellent example and ideas! You might as well call this "Inspired by Ersterhernd".


Used hardware:
G5 case with the glass door
"120mm mATX backplate conversion kit" and the "G5 motherboard tray" the Laser Hive
Front panel cable: http://g5atxcables.weebly.com/g5-atx-adapter-cables.html
IOGear Bluetooth 4.0 dongle
G.Skill RipjawsX DDR3 1600 Mhz 16 GB (2 x 8GB)
Samsung 830 SSD 128GB
Seagate Barracuda 1TB
Gigabyte B75M-D3V
Intel i5-3450
Gigabyte GV-N640OC-2GI GeForce GT640 2048 MB DDR3 PCI Express x16
Corsair CX500M V2 CX 500W
Antec Kühler H2O 620 V4
2 x Fractal Design 92mm cooler

Work done:
- Saved the original PSU case because it was easier to build on it than without it
- Placed the PSU and disks on the top shelf - threw the optical drive away
- Installed a clean cover plate on the top shelf
- Used a 1,5mm single cut L-shaped cover plate to hide all cables
- Used a 0,8mm cover on the PSU (I was going to use this also in the L-plate but it was too thin and bent too easily
- Used 15mm aluminum bars as raisers below the L-plate
- Original twin-cooler assembly used at front of the case
- (It felt bad but did) cut the mobo tray to make running the cables easier


What next?
- Successfully installed OS X and Multibeast stuff yesterday. Next trying the update things for the first time and starting to move software and files from the MBP.


Completed build photos:


Link to project photos: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/e476xsrhi6y1zad/e4Zg0LcOhp

 

[neilhart]

Your efforts were well worth the end result. Great job. This is one of the cleanest G5 Power Mac conversion that I have seen.

Good modding,
neil

 

[ersterhernd]

Great job Finndamage!

Looking at how well you completed this, I'd recommend a G4 Cube or iMac G4 project for you. If you enjoyed building your G5, either project would likely turn out to be very rewarding for you.


Thx for the mention...


Ersterhernd

 

[Finndamage]

Thanks gents! I really appreciate it from you guys.

Thanks for the optimistic suggestions for the next project but I think the G4 iMac and G4 Cube are still way too hard for me. Maybe at some point though. I still have a neat G4 Quicksilver case in my garage. That might be more suitable for the next project. Let's see..

Oh yeah, that one last thing. Some friends of mine have asked me why would I do something like this. I keep telling them that if a man's got a garage too small for his car, he has to come up with some other use for the garage.