iMac G4 Hackintosh [In Progress]

[Einsteiniac]

Alright I have a lot of old spare Macs laying around my office and I have always really loved the 20" iMac G4. So today I have decided to give one an upgrade. My plan is to keep as much as humanly possible stock on this machine. That means retaining the stock LCD panel, fans, wifi antenna, dvd drive, and NOT cutting ANY of the machine's exterior. Tall order I am sure.

I have found this Motherboard as the soul of the project.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813135313

I will be using an i5 3570k as the heart.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504

This is the CPU cooler I will be using.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835426028

This board is pretty unique as it has builtin support for LVDS and power for the inverter. I plan to fabricate a bread board for all the ports and then extend them to the ports internally. I found this Mini PCIe Firewire board.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/StarTech-co...rs_Adapters&hash=item2ebefec502#ht_5095wt_922

I want to find a USB based wifi/bt adaptor that is fully compatible as well as having support for antennas so I can reuse the existing antenna wires for both.

I just placed the order and have everything being overnighted. Hope to get this rocking this weekend! I will update with pics and progress as I go!

Mark

 

[rehpotsirhc]

Looks like it will be a fun build! Why spend the extra on a 3570K vs a 3570 when you most likely won't be able to overclock (without insane temps at least) with that cooler?

 

[neilhart]

Very interesting project.

Now the issue that I see is the CPU i5-3570K is rated a 77W and does not appear on the ESC approved CPU for this motherboard.

The H61 chip set may not support the Ivy Bridge CPUs. I do not know this for a fact but is work checking.

Also, this motherboard has the onboard PSU and power budget needs to be explored.


neil

 

[rehpotsirhc]

Very interesting project.

Now the issue that I see is the CPU i5-3570K is rated a 77W and does not appear on the ESC approved CPU for this motherboard.

The H61 chip set may not support the Ivy Bridge CPUs. I do not know this for a fact but is work checking.

Also, this motherboard has the onboard PSU and power budget needs to be explored.


neil

I think you're right, I remember reading that the only older 1155 boards that would support Ivy Bridge were Z68 but that could have changed.

 

[Einsteiniac]

According to their website it supports 3rd gen core i processors including ivy bridge. They haven't listed it as a tested unit but honestly lots of things aren't tested on their including any ivy bridge even though their site explicitly says its supported. I got the K because i wanted HD4000 and I didn't see any others for sale on newegg that had HD4000 that weren't K. Plus if this chip doesn't work it will in my main rig I will be building next month. I can't find ANY power requirements or anything on ECS' website on this product their site sucks. So I figured I will buy it and test and if it doesn't work, new egg return policy FTW.

 

[Einsteiniac]

OK I found a little more info on the power. It is in the form of a PDF from Intel describing these boars. These seem to be mainly targeted to OEM's. Gigabyte makes a few boards but they don't list ANY of them on their website. It looks like I can get 150-180W out of the builtin power supply! So this should be enough to power the board this CPU and MAYBE the display if not I will have to work that out. I am going to ditch the CDROM drive I think.

http://download.intel.com/support/motherboards/desktop/sb/thinminiitxcomponentcatalog.pdf

 

[Einsteiniac]

Alright after more research it looks like 65W and below CPU's are supported. It may work but not something I am will to test for a fun side project. So back to new egg all of it goes for a 3770k instead for the future project.

It is an interesting board though for a project like this! The LVDS connector is awesome and Intel even makes a really cool heatsink special for the board. I am thinking it is worthwhile to look at this project for a newer Aluminum iMac enclosure that has a native LVDS instead of TDMS display.

Mark

 

[rehpotsirhc]

You should consider a quad core i5 or i7 S series 65W sandybridge