Laverda's new A1289 2010 Mac Pro PC build, incl. front panel functionality.

[Laverda]

Hi all,

Completely new here. During these last two months, I've been collecting some new parts for a new pc, based on the 2010 A1289 Mac Pro case (with all internals save the cpu tray and the hard disk tray 1 and 2).
So far minimal cutting around the rear I/O panel. I've reused all Mac panels inside, such as the powersupply case, the Superdrive case, the cable management panel behind the superdrive, and I've installed all Noctua fans in all of the original places: one 120mm between superdrive and powersupply on the top level air tunnel; one 92mm fan in front of the graphics card (that later on became a problem that I am working on now) in the middle fan tunnel; two 140mm fans - one front and one rear - in the lower cpu tunnel. Plus a Noctua NHU12A cpu cooler which slides in comfortably into the lower fan tunnel.
I did have to cut part of the lower fan tunnel away to make space for the mini ATX motherboard (Asus H410M-E), but as close as possible. Therefore I have also reused as many of Apple's bolts, screws and nuts as possible, from the stand off's, to black screws and stand off's for trays etc.
I am asking a friend to design a 3D print of a sort of an adaptor to install between the rear case and the retracted rear I/O panel. In light grey plastic to fit with the theme that Apple already did. I won't be painting anything, just keep the aluminium surfaces etc.

I am also keeping the front I/O, and for a first, I tried to solder wires to an older 2008 model I have lying around in the garage. No soldering would work. So, I cut off the connector from the wires going from the power button/power led, to the front panel board. The remaining wires broke off as I tried to connect them, so I then soldered 3 new wires on to the power button print, long enough to comfortably reach a hidden path around to the motherboard connectors. But unfortunately, thet didn't work all, and the problem seems to be the narrow space between the solder tabs on the power button print. So, I ordered a new power bitton, which came this morning. Phew!

Now I have looked around for hours, trying to find a picture or description of how to actually dissasemble and reassemble the power button. Nothing seems to have surfaced so far. I need to know the sequence and how to correctly install the button, the print, the multispring, the rubber hat and the circlip. Is this the sequence?

And also need some help to do this correctly. So, if I do the following, would that be correct, as I have no more power buttons available, and they are really expensive on the web:

So, the following is a question:

1/ insert power button in aluminium into the front panel power button recess inside the case.

2/ turn the power button print so that the elongated tap is pointing upwards and slide it in to the recess on the case from the inside, so that it sits behind the aluminium button itself.

3/ the spingy super thin metal multispring (the one with 3 arms) should the be inserted behind the power button print, so that the tap on the spring is pointing around 3 o'clock and the turned downwards, so tha all 3 little "arms" slides on to the top of the aluminium recess. This means that the 3 little arms should be pointing inwards into the case, not towards the front panel.

4/ insert the spring clip behind the metal multispring, so that it's opening is at around 3 o'clock, and then press it together from above and below (at 12 o'clock and 6 o'clock), and insert it home into the recess. Then turn it clockwise, to that the circlips opening rests at around 1 to 2 o'clock.

Would that be correct?

Okay, it's getting real late, and I'll go horizontal now, and get back here tomorrow with some update.

Kind regards,
Laverda

 

[Laverda]

Okay, so here's a first start of my build.

I scanned a lot of the already made Mac Pro's in various versions and the versions of Power Mac as well, and tried to see what could be reused and what could suit my requirements.

First I had to list up what I wanted from this machine:

1/ Micro atx motherboard to suit the case in the best possible way.

2/ As little cutting as possible to keep it looking Mac.

3/ Aluminium look, not painted. If I wanted painted case, I couls use something else or build another type of case out of aluminium and wood for example. But I like the aluminium case from Apple, as they are far more designed both inside and outside, compared to most aluminium pc cases on the market.

4/ Good ventilation. No liquid cooing, only air cooling.

5/ A fast Intel cpu. Although AMD has been improving a lot over the years, my life is too short for their inherrent problems, but that is outside this build thread. So chose the 10900 non-K, as once it's installed and you boot up, all 10 cores run 4,6 Ghz and boost to 5,2 GHz in real life. I don't need overclocking, so this time a non-K cpu was okay. If one adjust the tdp in the bios, the 10900 non-K will run 5,7 GHz stable on all cores.
The 10900 cpu is also running really cold. A good idea for a small case like the Mac Pro.

6/ Easy to get stable RAM. So DDR4 PC3200 with fairly good latencies. 32Gb split in two 16Gb sticks. I am thinking of changing these to 64Gb of the same kind. Non needed for playing games, but good for more serious programs that I also use.

7/ CD-rom/burner drive. I need that for various purposes, and most cases don't have that any more. I do have an external HAL burner for my HAL laptop, but I would prefer to work with an internal one, to rid connecting, cables etc. all the time. Mac Pro does havea burner but doesn't do Bluray, which I also want in this machine.

8/ No tinkering with all sorts of third-party back boards, trays, front panel covers etc. Keep it looking nice and fit.

9/ Room for my MSI GTX1080Ti Lightning Z graphics card, which is pretty big.

10/ Although I'll use an NVMe for primary hd, I'll need extra furure capacity and mac Pro seems to be very smartly integrated compared to the pack of pc cases. Hot swap... Mmmmmm

11/ Keep it simple and fast.

The older Power Mac's are built with a nice purpose made lower section for the powersupply, but the upper floor is not as smart made. On the other hand, the hot swap trays for extra HD's are smart and we'll see.
Then I looked at the later style Mac Pro, of which again there are several. I went to a shop which sells old used gutted Mac Pro's and took a look in real life. I decided that a model A1289 from 2010 is the right one for me, so bought that for a fair price - 750 dkk - apprx. 125 usd with most of it's internals still in there.
Went straight home and gutted it's internals. I left all stays in place as I would need to plan what to use for what and so on. NEVER break them off at first hand! One will regret that later. The cpu-tray and hd-tray 1 and 2 were missing, so needed to buy the two missing hd trays, which I've now done.
This is the case after being stripped down:

Then I took a look at the removed internals. I noticed that on this particular model, the whole interrior is split in 3 horizontal levels or floors, if one wants. That's perfect, as I think it's easier to work with airflow in 3 separate planes. The upper one being the superdrive and powersupply. The middle one being the graphics cars level, and the lower third one being the cpu level.
I've measured temperature with a probe on my pc, and RAM has never been a heat issue, so no need for that. Cooling those is nonsense in most cases.
Here are some of the internals. Luckily case and all internal parts had never been manhandled and are in really good shape. Very little dust as well:

I looked at various mother boards, and decided for a simple micro atx Asus H410M-E this time, while not wanting a crippled itx board unfit for this purpose (I know, they do come with good specs now adays), as it's got enough features to solve what I want from it, plus Intel doesn't support PCIe 4 untill next year (2021), and at that time, I'll have a look at the next generation 11xxx Intel cpu's and motherboards. So this one is really small and not meant to overclock anyway. It actually can do quite much and that's okay. The material on the web about it is not at all describing it's capabilities.

I then looked at various stays to hold the motherboard in place, and decided I did not want a tray. It's taking too much internal space and I never used on my other pc cases through many years. I looked at various stays and decided that re-using Mac Pro stays are best. They are lighter, nicer, sits far better once attatched, and offer a little more space behind the motherboard for cable management. Okay, so I used a normal set of pliers to hold each stay tight and broke them off, one by one, Easy peasy, no need for cutting, sawing, dremling or hammering. No dents in the case as well. I thought I'd use epoxy for gluing them in, so screwed them on to the motherboard.

As can be seen, the Mac stays are really nice and trumphet-shaped, so they offer a larger foot print to glue on to.

I sanded the underside where they will be glued, and used some slow curing super strong epoxy I had in the garage. I flipped the mb over and applied some dots of the epoxy to the underside of the Mac stand offs and once moreflipped it over and held it over the Mac case and gently lowered it down into place. The mb is movable for nearly an hour, so adjustments are possible. Installed books and graphics card. Then laid to rest for a full 24 hour. I used some books for extra weight to hold the mb down as well as having fixed my spare graphics card (GTX760 6gb) on to the slots on the rear of the case. That should do it. What a super nice made Mac bracket to hold them down! It's got finger screws, springs to ease operation and locks them down so nothing jumps away. Very well thought out by Apple.

Now it was time to think if the stays could support the heavy weight of the cpu cooler, the 2 kilo graphics card etc. So to avoid any future problems with stays breaking off, I decided to apply an extra amount of the super strong epoxy and let it cure for another 24 hours. This should do it. And it will be totally invisible, once parts are installed, so I decided against any painting of the epoxy and the like. I naturally cleaned the case for glue threads etc, so it still looks very nice if it's being dissasembled.

Now it was time to havea first early look at cable management inside the case. I decided to build a new powersupply into the case and make all cables easy removable as Apple does the same. I decided for all Noctua fans in their factory colors: cream and brown. Despite many not liking them, I do, and I find them very good looking and non-black. I generally dislike black on things as it makes it look dull. So fan cables are from Noctua and they offer a wide range of things inside the packages with their fans. Just what I needed.

Apples design with splitting the case into 3 leves came in handy here, as I could reuse the nice cable cover panel on the upper floor, behind the super drive. I also find the frame worked into the middle of that upper section, to support a fan, very nice. Good flow and easy to install into. I removed all Mac Pro rubber supports and renewed them with longer silicone "screws" sticks from Noctua. I needed to buy a case of those, as the ones Noctua fans come with are shorter. Sometimes it's easier to use the longer ones, such as indeed the upper level fan.

Then I mingled a bit about with it, and decided to use a little bit different orientation, so it's more serviceable in the future.

Here is the installed upper fan, which should take care of the upper level cooling and airflow. All fans I bought are pwm, so the motherboard, it's bios and sensors take care of operation. Plus they can be programmed with Asus software for the motherboard. A120mm fan fits right in, replacing the Mac fan. There's been some critisism of the Mac fans, but as I've seen them, they come in two variants: one old version with only 3 blades, but pretty curved. And the newer one, which have more blades and move more air. I wouldn't reuse them after 10 long years of good service, despite being all clean and noise free. These Noctua fans are a newer development, and has all sorts of small improvements, such as fan blade curve, fan blade length that comes really close to the frame (less noise) and small shark skinlike bubbles visible in the picture here, so that also creates less nosie. They also sport silicone corners on all eight corners so that the fan chassis cannot touch anything = less noise. Should be good in operation with a long warranty and nosie free operation.

On this picture, one can also see the guides and guide blades that support the installation of the original Mac Pro powersupply, which is smartly installed in the upper level of the case. I think it's smart, as heat seeks upwards, so having it on top, removed the heating up of covers and components from down, up. So now it was time to have a look at the powersupply. On my 25 y.o. high tower pc case (that I am now sending on pension after God only knows how many internals over the years), I have done the same solution: psu uppermost.
Mac Pro A1289 have a 980 Watt powersupply, which is nice and very solidly made also with good electromagnetic protection. I'll reuse some of that. But after having looked at it, it's connectors etc, I decided I would not reuse the whole powersupply by recabling it all. Instead I looked around for many hours for a suitable compact good quality powersupply, which would fit inside the original Mac powersupply case. Most modern fairly strong or strong powersupplies atx form, are longer than they used to be, so no space inside for those. There's also been a belief that 1200 Watt is minimum, but that is not at all the case for a normal fast pc. I ended up buying a new Enermax MaxPro II 700Watt (I used 750 watt in my old pc) powersupply which is actually very small and is also 80% proven. It has non-modular cables, but they are all black and flat, so I thought it would be relatively easy to install it all inside the Mac case, as well as looking a bit Mac-like.

Here's the powersupply: Enermax Maxpro II (a new model) which got good reviews for being silent, cool and really precise about the different rails and good amps on the rails too. If it turns out to be too small wattage and amps, I'll surf around for a bigger one.

Another thing about this pwr is, that as it's non-modular, there are less connections that can go wrong as time passes by. Something good in my book.
Then it was all about opening it up and I noticed it's really small inside, with the fan taking up much of the space. The fins would be possible to orientate so that they promoted good airflow once installed into the Mac powersupply case. Caps in this psu is good japanese ones. If they don't last, I'll solder in some better ones.

Next step was to undo connectors, undo the cable securing ring and undo the 230 Volt socket, as I really wanted to reuse the Mac Pro 230 Volt connector.
I will also note, that my soldering iron is a 25 Watt electronics one, and it could well desolder the seriously soldering that the Enermax 230 Volt connector have done to secure it to the small print board. And because of powerdraw, naturally. Just need to be patient, and it'll come loose.

As can be seen, the plastic ring holding the cables out of the Enermax, is easy to remove and to loosen up the cables. And to manage them better for the installation in the Mac case. For example the Mac use an elongated slot to direct cables through, where as the Enermax atx as standard use a round hole. The elongated on the Mac psu case is much smarter for cablemanagement. Cheers to Apple for that. I think their whole idea of guiding a lot of air straight through the psu case "tunnel" is much smarter, than in normal atx powersupplies, where air have to be redirected in a 90 degree angle. This creates an air blockage and lowers effeciency. Kudos to Apple for a better solution.

Then it was time to do the fun part: to unsolder the internals from the Enermax psu.
This is not very smart made, as the stays from the 230Volt connector is soldered directly into a minor pcb. But still have to be done. After doing so, I drilled two holes in that pcb and soldered in the wires from the Mac psu connector.
The Enermax atx power supply use an on/off switch and the Mac does not. I chose the Mac way for now. More on that later, for another after-mod.

Here I have taken it more apart and readu to undo the screws that hold it in place.

I conencted the Mac electromagnetic inlet on to the Enermax small print board and protected it by also cutting an insulation "cage" for that as well. So no shorts!
After having looked at the Mac psu and the Enermax psu, I decided to reuse the Mac psu board stays so undid those once again using a pair of pliers turning them over and re-gluing them into position on the same Mac case, after I screwed them on to the new Enermax internals. Steves book came in handy again.

I only broke off the stays that I needed, so I was left with a stay that could support the ground wires that are connected to this last stay.

Here they're glued in. The front most to the right side on the picture, is the stay for the ground cables:

I wanted to make it safe, os I reused all insulation plastics and cut to shape with new internals, the extra small board etc.

On the Mac psu 230Volt connector there's also a gasket for insulation. I reused that by carefully regluing it back on.

Here's the finished Enermax Max power supply. Cables are undone from it's strips and I began to cablemanage.
More on that later as I afterwards got some more ideas of how to do it invisible and create less pressure on the superdrive cable management backplate cover.

On this pic one can see how little space the new 700 Watt psu takes up inside the Mac psu case, which is also orientated so that it offers maximum airflow and cooling. Should be quite efficient. It's not always about enormous flow, it's about making it smart and efficient and with extra capacity to go. Note the orientation of cooling fins to air flow. And the Enermax spec sheet is glued on to the Mac psu case.

Okay, so that's a start. I'll get back later with more build.
Thanks everyone on here and on Aquamac and many other places for good inspiration. A very very informative society

Kind regards,
Laverda.

 

[Charlee78]

Welcome to the forum!!

That is a goo start indeed! I'm following!

 

[Laverda]

Thanks Charlee78,
But I still have a problem I need to solve:
I cannot refit the power button and it's assorted parts.
I need to knwo the sequence on parts. For example:

After inserting the metal button itself, should the three-armed little thin spring then be inserted and which way, or the green print itself?
Or is it the metal button, then the green print, then the thin 3 armed spring, and then finally the circlip?
I need to know to reassemble, and I cannot find out.

Kind regards,
Laverda.

 

[Laverda]

All right, it seems that the following is the correct sequence for installing the power button kit:

From the front panel recess:
- first lay in the metal power button itself.
- then insert the 3-armed leaf spring.
- then insert the green pcb.
- then insert the circlip.
- then add on the rubber cap.

Now I just need to find out which way to turb the leaf spring.

Kind regards,
Laverda

 

[Charlee78]

If I remember correctly, the little spring is the part that make contact on the pcb when you push the button.
There is some kind of a guide here: https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/t...move-the-g5macpro-case-power-button-assembly/

 

[Laverda]

Update:

So now it was time to give some more thoughts about how to cablemanage, as the powersupply and the upper level fan was in place. To help this, I undid the superdrive as I anyway wanted to change it for soemthing else; more later.

So coming from the upper level were basically all cables. The power for the superdrive and an eventual extra harddisk should stay there, along with a Sata6 cable going from the motherboard up to the upper level. To Shorten this path, I used the supplied hole in the top shelf (both layers), that Mac normally use for a fan cable (I think it was). This makes the length of the cable as short as possible, as using the pc motherboard in the mac Pro case, required it to be turned 180°. By doing this makes some very fortunate alterations: the sata6 connectors on this particular motherboard is now positioned uppermost, along with other connectors for the front panel, audio etc.
By having this short path for the Sata6 cable, data integrity can be maintained - less chance for loss, errors or instability.

To go with the aluminium/bare metal theme, I decided to brace thea Sata6 cable. Instead of using normal black braid or similar from the pc world, I bought some Bang & Olufsen cable braid/cable hide braid, that I cut to size, added ends of heat shrink and pulled the cable through the hole in the upper shelf, and it so happens that it comes out exactly where is needed, at the front lower left corner of the upper level fan, right behind the superdrive. More expandability for later use as well. I further more used a Sata 6 cable that was black (not red), and had metal clamps each end for added security, plus one end is straight, the other angled 90°. This makes the installation nicer and more factory looking.

These are all the nice flat black cables coming out of the altered Enermax/Mac psu:
I decided against cutting the unused ones off and also not desoldering them in the psu, as they can come in handy later on, and the Mac Pro case offers an intelligent system for hiding them out of harms way, out of sight and leaving the best airflow possible.

Taking a look at the remaining stays on the back of the case, it now paid dividends to not having broken off the stays. They will be used for parts, as well as cable management to be somewhat hidden and servicable easily.

By spending some time twisting them, uncluttering them and position them in the direction they are supposed to go, it's possible to minimize visible cables and make them work quite well inside the 2010 A1289 case.
The upper section cable management section then looks somehow a bit like this. I tried to lay them all as flat as possible, and tape them up. They now stay put, and can be easily pulled out to be used for future expansions.

After that it remains only to have the upper level cable management back plate behind the superdrive reinstalled and the upper section is now presentable, workable and having the best airflow possible for the superdrive and the powersupply. Only visible cables are the two for the sata6: data and power.

This left me ready to take a look at the middle and lower section of the case. Again if a cable were visible I applied a braid from Bang & Olufsen and some heat shrink covered ends.
I let the two powercables for the graphics card turn right and the 24 pin and the 8 pin extra power connector go straight down at first.
By loosening some of the cable clips in the case with a heatgun (and then reglueing with very strong contact glue (remains flexible), I could reposition all the cable clips in the case to be helpfull for my build. The ATX 24 pin connector then takes a sharp right turn and the 8 pin extra power connector tajes a left turn in between the remaining stays and the front panel board.

For all the Noctua fans, I used their extensions supplied as well as the splitters also supplied. I laid one in the very bottom of the case (under the cpu fan tunnel), and applied splitters for both ends: one splitter on the right for the lower level exhaust fan, and two splitters for the right side with it's intake fan at the lower level and also one intake fan for the middle level. They are now guided and fastened with tape. They are long enough so I can remove the lower cpu fan tunnel corfortably and then place it on the middle shelf and unclip the extensions. Easy peasy and well hidden. And nothing makes any noise if the PC is being moved around.

The 8 pin extra power for the cpu, also goes along the very bottom of the case and comes up at the point where it connects. Also hidden once installed and still servicable. As can be seen here, I also had to cut out a little bit of the bolted/welded in support for the cpu tray, to make room for the motherboard, as it sits pretty low in the case.
When that job is being done, one should take care when booth cutting and/or twisting some material out, so that the remainingpanels in the case won't be twisted or dented. Again as little material as possible is removed. Edges filed down and rounded plus sanded a bit. Out of the original 5 special cpu tray bolts, I managed to keep 4, so that I try to keep as much of the mechanical integrity of the case, as possible.

By that time I had also installed the NVMe M2 2Tb stick on the motherboard, as well as the 2 x 16Gb Corsair low profile memory PC3200 DDR4 sticks and the Intel 10900 cpu with the middle part of the Noctua NH-U12A cooler.
Pretty compact and quite functional. Here can also be seen how the start of the powercable for some of the fans is guided wround a connector and under the motherboard, into the bottom of the case, hidden.

Now time to clip on the two 120mm fans on the Noctua cpu cooler. They fit perfectly inside the Mac cpu fan tunnel with room to spare, so that they can easily be undone and reattatched if need be.

Then it was time to finish the cabling and it looks like this:

Now I had to take a look at the CPU fan tunnel, which has to be modified. I opted for as little cut out as possible, to suit my motherboard and making cabling easy and not being able to make cuts to cables. The rearmost rounded long side edge, is only cut so that it's not visible from outside, when the pc is assembled. So it still looks as if the metal swoops round the back. This is the backside before sanding and filing edges, removing tush lines etc. It is worth noting, that the rear fan is not loose as can sometimes be seen on other builds, but clicks into place just as the front one does. Again, by removing as little material from the lower level fan tunnel, the best possible mechanical integrity of the piece is kept. Out of the original 6 real wall spring loaded fasteners, I could keep 4.

Again, I glued on a couple of the cable clips that I had previously undone with the heatgun, to guide the fan cable for the middle level gpu fan.
I testfitted a few times making lines closer to the real finished product. Lower the tunnel down over the MB, fans, cooler etc. and measure up, then cut a little away and repeat a few more times. This makes it possible to cut away as little as possible.I also had to make a small curved cutput for the 24 pin powercable for the motherboard. it assists holding it in place.
Another really smart thing is, that once this Mac Pro cpu fan tunnel is in place, it act's as a support for any graphics card you install. Very nice! No sagging gpu at all! That is a good point once the near 2 kilo gpu is inserted.

Then I installed an emergency power on button through the vent holes on my spare GTX760 graphics card and booted up, installed windows and other software. Very fast indeed. Runs perfectly on 4,6 GHz on all 10 cores, unclocked. 5,2 GHz with boost, unclocked.

As can be seen I reused as many screws and bolts from the Mac cpu fan tunnel as possible for trying to keep an original look and because they are spring loaded, cannot fall off and they are all really very nice made by Apple. Very high quality all over on that case and it's brackets etc.
It runs very cool and stable as well as fast. I'll get back to that later.

Here can also be seen the tripple power cables I made for hte next card: my GTX1080Ti MSI Lightning Z. A really big card. More on that later.

Okay, so enough for today. This is my Mac Pro PC Stage 1.
More later.

Kind regards,
Laverda

 

[Laverda]

So next up was adding some features to my Mac Pro build, as well as trying to solve some problems that came alsong the way.
While I deliberately decided that my main drive should be the very fast NVMe stick, which is 2 Tb and it's also from adata, the SXG SX8200 Pro, which works which reads with 3350 MBps and 2900 MBps writing, so that is really fast for PCIe 3,0, I also decided to relieve win10 a bit by installing a secondary small ssd to only contain the swap file. This was then decided to be 240Gb which is plenty for that.
I am working with a friend to 3D print a frame for that drive, which should slide into the secondary drive slot at the upper level, right under the Superdrive.

I also opted for changing that Mac Superdrive for another more capable drive: a bluray reader/burner, so that I can now read and write most possible formats. A funny thing is, that it's made by the very same company that Apple used in their Superdrive. But spinning the mec shows some more development by making less noise than the Superdrive.

Here the extra swap file ssd is glued on with a few layes of carpet tape. This is not the best solution as it will get vibrations from the new "superdrive", but that is temporary while making a 3D print for the supporting frame for the ssd.
Cables were already in place and ready to be inserted into the new ssd.
I also adjusted win10 to never make disc optimization, because it's an ssd, not a magnetic spinning hd.

The extra sata cable, I installed like the Superdrive cable, from top of the motherboard, via the slot already supplied by Apple, so that the length could be kept short. The sata cables that came with the drive were red, and had no metal securing clips, so I had to shop for that. The clip ones sits so much more secure, so well worth doing, both for general use and if one brings the pc to a gamer party or what ever. I used a bit of Bang & Olufsen cable braid in silver grey and two small bits of heat shrink to finish off.

They do not conflict with the 4 extra hot swap hd trays, for which I have another plan.
I encountered some problems looking at those. On the G5 cases, the hot swap trays are shorter and slots into externally installed sockets. and separate wireing. On my Mac Pro A1289 case, it's built into the original logicboard, so all was deleted once I removed the Apple internals.
Luckily Corsair makes something similar, so I will buy that. The next problem is that as the hd trays are longer, the whole lower part of the upper shelf is also different. There's no provision for that instaling of 4 separate connectors. To overcome this, I had an old Mac Pro case in the garage, that I originally bought super cheap (completely stripped out), and that case uses the shorter older version of the hot swap system. These I'll probably use. But on the other hand, I'll loose the cable guide for the present sata cables.
So I may try to take both cases completely apart and mix the upper and the lower part of the upper shelf. I am also thinking of guiding the sata cables into and between the two parts of the upper shelf, so that I can save that original fan cable guide for something else. It can be used to insert an on/off switch for the powersupply, which I find reasuring.
Hmm...

Meanwhile, I found out in what sequence the power button parts should go, as I lost track of that some tiem ago, while taking it all out, so try and solder separate wires onto the power button small board.
The sequence is the following:

On an empty case,
- first insert the metal power button itself.
- then insert the 3-armed leaf spring. I turned it so, that the 3 arms point outwards towards the front of the case.
- then insert the small green power button pcb, wires pointing rearwards (obvious).
- then insert the small circlip.
-then insert the small black rubber piece over the top of the diode.

To do this, I laid the case down on the front, so things wouldn't fall out as I inserted them, and when I came to inserting the circlip, I just laid it down flat, orientated so that the open part of the circlip was pointing away from myself; pointing towards the backside of the case. By doing so, the open piece of the circlip does not enter where the case slot for the power button assembly is open. I then kept one indexfinger on top of the circlip, and used a small flat blade screwdriver to carefully slowly moce one tip of the circlip a bit inwards, so that it clicked into the scase slot. Voila, the powerbutton is installed with absolutely no drama and no risk of hitting any cables, possibly breaking them off (dissaster, as the kit is really expensive).

Now time to look at the rear I/O panel.
As I wanted the case looking original to a certain degree, I chose not to use any pc rear panel/motherboard tray, although the ones on the market and the ones you can make yourself, are nice. So I looked at the Mac Pro case, and as my motherboard sits really low, there's a small lower part of the mb's rear I/O that protrudes into the curved part of the case.
I then marked it up and began to cut with my trusty old Proxxon mini multitool. The cutting discs are really small, and I used like 5 small discs to cut out that part of the case. I also used a long cable extension on to the Proxxon, to make it a lot slimmer and more versatile; easier to do the job without the tisk of damaging something.
This is the cutout and it is not yet filed and sanded, as I need to work on the connection between the case and the actual rear I/O panel on the motherboard.

My idea is to replicate what the Mac Pro case used for the expansion slot area above. The aluminium case is as near to the panel as possible. Then there's a light grey plastic insert that supports the area and makes up for a nice tight finish.
So, I want to create a piece of light grey plastic that can be epoxyed into the case, between the motherboard's I/O and the inner surface of the cheese grater case panel. Then finally, once installed, and adjusted, to file and sand down the edges of the cheese grater panel.
This is some rough sketches on that:

Then I asked a friend who plays with 3D printing, to try and draw a propper drawing and we'll try it out.
Here are some early drawings.

Note that what will be the top once installed is at this time an open end. This is because on my motherboard, there's very little space between the rear I/O and the expansion slots. Once the motherboard is into the case, it nearly touched the Mac expansion slot frame support.
When I have a test print, it will be easier to see if I can make a cross over part to further strenghen it. If the part is printed out as solid or close to solid, it will be very strong and you can actually step on it, with no breakage. But it's not finished yet, so we'll have to see about that. We'll have to see if the whole idea is a bad one or good one I want to try to keep that Mac Pro original look, hence this idea.
More later as it finishes.
Now I'll have to look at the 44 cables that comes from the front panel, and try to sort that out, so I can get some working front usb, sound and power on etc.

Kind regards,
Laverda

 

[Laverda]

If I remember correctly, the little spring is the part that make contact on the pcb when you push the button.
There is some kind of a guide here: https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/t...move-the-g5macpro-case-power-button-assembly/

Thanks Charlee78. I also found that. It shows some ideas as to assemble it, but not totally clear. Anyway, I looked at it and realised that the leaf spring is right behind the power button itself. I also opted for not using my pliers, but holding with one finger and using a small screwdriver to click one end of the circlip into place. Really easy, if the case is laid down on it's front.
Thanks again.

Kind regards,
Laverda

 

[Laverda]

I found this drawing on the web, thanks to other Mac users research. I am not sure if it covers mine exactly. But I do have a question:
What pin on this drawing is what? How is it orientated?
Are we looking at the connector on the front pcb itself?
If so, would the vertical row of No. 44 - 23 be the row that points towards the open side of the case, when it's standing on it's feet and service door is off?
And do the red dots mean ground?

UPDATE: I found out at last - Please see below.

Kind regards,
Laverda