G4 Build with Blu-Ray Drive?

[Auream]

I wanted to build a hackintosh in the Sawtooth G4 i just picked up from my employer's storeroom (it's been collecting dust for years and they were about to toss it). So I somehow failed to realize that even with my little Z370 Mini-ITX board, there's no way I can fit a Blu-Ray drive in the original spot without blocking the part of the board where the ATX power connector plugs in. D'oh! I also realized this after I stripped the whole machine down in preparation for hackintosh-ing. My goal was to use this machine as a Plex server, and being able to rip Blu-Rays without having an ugly external drive hanging out was one of my primary motivations (besides boredom) of doing a hackintosh in the first place.

Question 1: Has anyone done a build a G4 hackintosh with a DVD or Blu-Ray drive, and if so, how did you fit it all?
Question 2: If I can't make this work, anyone want a free Sawtooth G4? I can include any of the original internals if wanted or just the bare case.

 

[atl285]

In general it should work. I've it realized in an Power Mac G4 Quicksilver chassis with an "old" Mini-ITX board (ASUS P8H77-I) and an AMD RX560 graphics card. The system is powered by a cheap ATX power supply.

But as far as I know, You can't use main boards with 4 RAM slots. But 2 slots should work. There are some H310 boards (mATX form factor) which has only 2 RAM slots and 3 PCIe slots, which should work. Please have look at the dimensions of the board.

To have more space for (CPU) cooling, I will swap the power supply with a SFX power supply in the near future. And in my other Hackintosh I use a ASUS BDRW writer, which is shorter than the old DVD writer in the G4 chassis.

 

[Auream]

Nice, thanks atl285! It looks like the key might be that 90-degree ATX power connector, which I didn't really know was a thing.

Which Blu-Ray drive are you using? And which CPU cooler is that? I had picked up this one which got good reviews as a "low profile" cooler but when I received it its a lot smaller than I had expected and I'm not sure if its up to the task of cooling my i7-8700 (even if I undervolt it which I had planned on doing). The one you have looks much more substantial.

 

[atl285]

The CPU cooler is Noctua NH-L12 and the Blue-Ray Drive I'm using is a ASUS BW-16D1HT.

The Arctic Freezer 11 LP was the first cooler, I've used. But the fan made some noises in low spin mode. So I swapped it with some other soultions. But the Noctua is the one, which is the best until now.

 

[atl285]

Because of a little mistake of me, the G4 chassis gots a new mainboard (incl. CPU & RAM). So I had to look for the right mainboard. I've decided to a ASRock H470M-HDV/M.2 because of the Micro-ATX form factor (8.9-in x 7.4-in, 22.6 cm x 18.8 cm), the count of PCIe slots and the two M.2 slots. But it was not easy to integrate the board into the G5 chassis, because the optical drive have to stay usable.

As you can see, I had to cut off some material (15mm in heigh, 5mm in length) from the edge of the optical drive. Therefore I had to disassemble the drive. Luckily no electronics had to be cutted, only plastics and metal from chassis and a small piece of the PCB without electrical functionality. After putting all together and taping the ATX cable a little bit, all is working now!

Notice: Maybe you can see, the system is now powered by a SFX power supply. I've use a Enermax REVOLUTION SFX 650W, which gives me 20mm more room between the CPU cooler and the power supply. So the CPU is running very cool also for long task with high usage.

But this led me to some nice information for future updates:

1. You have no problem, if ATX-connector is more than 60mm away from top side on the board. On the H470M it's 45 mm.
2. There are boards from other vendors (for example Gigabyte H410M boards), which are slightly smaller (22.6cm x 18.5 cm). And yes every millimeter does matter here.
3. There are optical drives available, like the LG GH24NS, which are only 165mm long, which would give 5 mm more space than normal drives (170mm).

 

[Auream]

Thanks for the info atl285! My current board that I was trying to use (already had it, didn't pick it up for this project) has the ATX connector only about 20mm from the top edge of the board . I was hoping a 90-degree connector would still allow it to fit, I notice that on your new build you didn't use one. I assume that it still wouldn't clear the DVD drive even with a 90-degree adapter?

 

[atl285]

@Auream, no the 90 degree adapter will not help. On the photo, you can see, that it is too high and the chassis will not close.