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

[Laverda]

Meanwhile at the mancave, I've been looking at the 44 pin multiconnector cable on my Mac Pro A1289 front panel, to the original logicboard. Both ends are 44 pin 2,0mm spacing mini jst connectors and while I have a set of 2,5mm pins and connectors, it's not usable for this smaller more narrow pin type. So, I decided to undo one end connector, and it looks like this. Note: the cable can only be connected one way to sit correctly, as wires are twisted and meant to be at a certain position. Connetor is the same though.

This is done with a magnifying glass plus a good lamp (old eyes), and a thick sewing needle, which I then carefully lifted up one tap at a time, very little, just enough so that I can slowly pull out the individual wire and it's connector.
By using the list/diagram from above, which is another users findings, not mine, I then decided to remove all wires that is not used according to this scheme.
In doing so, I assumed that the pin 23-44 designated, are the outermost row, towards the spectator/the service door (side of Mac Pro cabinet) removed, and the numbers 1-22 are the lowermost row in a similar orientation, if that makes sense.
Working with this, I suppose that the dots marked red in the schematics above, are "GND" - ground.
These are the surplus wires after doing so. I'll keep them for future updates, if I manage to find out more usable connections:

This was the cable I ended up with so far. The white dot is something I have applied, as it helps to orientate the cable, when working on all the individual wires:

As can be seen on this picture, there is a mixture of thin and a little bit thicker wires. These are by Apple installed where either more amps are drawn or for example a group of wires need to be wound up together to keep signal integrity. I suppose. That is at least normal practise. This seems to be valid for some of the USB cables as well. I'll get back to that later.
So, the groups of wires taken off here, are not all needed to be removed, according to the schematics above. Because of that, some need to be re-installed. I chose other separate wires as a first try, and if need be, I'll undo those and install thicker gauge wires/insulated wires again, for example the USB as mentioned.

Then it was time to follow the pins designated in the schematics above, and I started by clipping off only the small 2,0mm spaced jst female pin, one at a time, and solder on a long wire to reach the motherboard by using the usual path with hidden cables as per Mac Pro's design. That is 4 wires, a total of 1 more than in the schematics above, as I wanted to keep a ground (gnd) for both the "Power on LED" and one ground for the "Power on button". This is because if I don't reach a point where I will have most or all of it working, at least I will secure propper ground for both "Power button" and "Power LED" independently.

After that procedure, I ended up with a multiconnector like this, and then carefully tested it after each wire soldered into the system:

Note the red heat shrink wrap. It's for identification purposes and will be hidden away later. I had to be very careful using a heatgun on the heat shrink wrap, as these are very thin wires and they simply melt down if too much heat is applied. So heat gun only for short time and only on low heat setting.

I then went on to divide the remaining wires into groups such as power, audio and usb, on the multi pin connector:

1/: White wrap - for power on and power led. 4 pins in total.

2/: Blue wrap - for sound jack connector on front panel, as in for example a headphone. 3 pins in total.

Note: 6 wires in Apple's setup, so I suppose at least one of those are a sensing wire. The 3 wires I did not use, and therefore removed so far, are pin 39 and 38 on outer row, and pin 5 on the lower row. One or more of these can be re-installed into the connector, if or when I'll find out what they are used for, such as sensing the jack inserted into the front panel jack.

Pins in that group all isolated from the other wires, I suppose are all somehow for audio. I could be wrong though. In that group of separetely isolated wires, they are coloured as follows:

Outer row: ----------------------------------------- Inner row:

pin 40 common: black (now used) --------------- pin 5 (unknown): green

pin 39 (unknown): black -------------------------- pin 6 Right channel: grey (now used)

pin 38 (unknown): purple ------------------------- pin 7 Left channel: brown (now used)


3/: Upper red wrap - for upper row of pins of the USB 2,0 connector (on the schematics).

4/: Lower red wrap - for lower row of pins of the USB 2,0 connector (on the schematics).


So, the prefinished front panel cable, was ready to be installed temporarily into the Mac Pro and test for power on/off and power on led. It did work as it should, so I can go on trying to compare the wires/pins for the audio, to the pins on my motherboard, which is an Asus H410M-E. That motherboard is a year 2020 design, so use a 7,1 audio setup. Terrible. I don't like that and would prefer the usual old school AC97. But one cannot always hang on to old stuff.
So, having totally different names, I would really appreciate, if someone knowledgable out there could tell me which led the Mac Pro wires correspond to in relation the the 7,1 HD audio on the Asus motherboard?



Here's the audio pins from my Asus H410M-E motherboard. I tried to scetch down the pin connector on the Asus motherboard. I hope it makes sense.

Question:
On this, one can see a "sense_send" pin. Would that be for the front jack for example? And what pin on the A1289
Mac Pro front panel board connector would that be?

I really hope someone can help out with this.

I'll get back to the USB2 pins later.

Here's the cable as it is now. Once I have found out what to connect to what and tested it thoroughly, I'll smarten it up to ressemble the cables that Apple uses in the Mac Pro. When all is set and done, hopefully, I'll redo some of the small 2-pin connectors, to be a 4-pin connector, to ease installation, orientation and clearness.

As for wireing the front panel on this A1289 Mac Pro from 2010, I am not sure they are all the same as say early 2009 Mac Pro, as front panel connectors changed many times over a production period/model spec changes. I have another spare complete 2010 front panel cable, which I'll keep as a reference. This could prove helpfull to see if some of the wires for USB and Firewire 800 have changed compared to the schematics above which may be an 2009 machine. I'll write back on that if I find out more.

As I've read numerous places that the Mac Pro power button is not very long lasting, I thought it was a good idea to install a new one anyway. The failure of me trying to solder on cables and it didn't work on the old power button, was not completely wasted after all

Finally, I've also worked on Win10 tonight, uninstalling not only all sorts of crap that it contains, but also by formatting the new small 240Gb ssd to be a Windows swap drive only. As I have 32Gb RAM for the time being, I set the limit for the swap file to be minimum 32Gb and maximum 32Gb. So totally held in ties. As it learns how I work on this new pc, it'll smarten up and react faster and faster up to the point where I won't introduce new ways of working on the pc. That point probably never happens Anyway, just some info on that as well.

More later.

Kind regards,
Laverda

 

[Laverda]

Update per 22'nd of November 2020:

I've been working on the audio the whole day, some 16 hours, and finally I have audio in the front jack socket on my Mac Pro A1289 from 2010.
The problem was not the cable, which I've been chasing for some time. I did adjust all sorts of things in Win10, but it was finally the Realtek new updated driver and program suite, which works. So must have been a flaw inside the driver or the program, or I just didn't notice it propperly.
I will later on test with another motherboard (a whole pc) to see if this can autosense.
Anyway, I now have front jack audio, although autodetection still doesn't work.

So now, I have the following audio abilities:

1/: rear audio out for my Bang & Olufsen Beolab 4 desktop loudspeakers in red.

2/: rear audio out from my rear usb 2,0 which is an integrated part of my Apple Cinema 24" monitor.

3/: front audio jack out for my Bang & Olufsen H6 wired headphones.

Further I can now control monitor brightness, as I couldn't make the Brightness Controll software function, but the newest beta-version works well. It's now set to autostart on win10 startup, together with automatic minimizing into the system tray, so it doesn't clutter the screen work area. All other unwanted programs and elements are deleted from the pc. There's an automatic function for that, but it's pretty demanding, and requires special working on for example directX 12, so for now, it's done by me manually, and have to be repeated when updating win10. But that is no longer automatic, thank God.
Really looking forward to seeing Win12 based on Linux surface.

I will have to search and try harder to make the auto detection for the front audio jack work. Likewise to auto-dissable the rear jack when a front jack is inserted. For now, I have made added two more wires to the 3 wire audio front connection, into being a 5 wire front audio cable that is inserted into the 44 pin front panel mini jst connector.

As I have kept the length for the power on/off and the power led a bit long, to suit the hidden cable work, I made the length of the 5 audio cables the same and they fit fine in the same path to reach their front audio header which is on the upper edge to the right, as the motherboard sits upside down in the Mac Pro.

I've kept the same colours as Apple used on the 44 pin connector front panel cable, so it's easy to identify.
Further, this time I've also used jst 2,5mm blocks: 1 pin block of 1 x 4 for the power on/off and power led headers, and a 10 pin block of 2 x5 pins for the audio front panel header. I've identified the upside with a dab of white paint that also designates what it is for: "pw" fpr power and powerled and and "A" for audio.

To try to avoid degeneration of sound, I've twisted up the 5 wires for front panel audio. This way they are better shielded for lesser interferrence and possibly less cross talk.

Then I looked at the way Apple did it on the 2010 Mac Pro, and there they used a thin black wire for shielding together with a foil wrapped around the cable in it's entire length (apprx. 10 cm). This time, it's one meter and a bit. Again to enhance protection against influx of unwanted noise and distortion. If it works? Well I cannot say to which degree, but when I listen over the B&O headphones, I get really good clear and powerfull sound, full spectrum frequency and good dynamics plus a detailed and wide and tall soundstage. Depth could bebetter, but I guess that is a function of listening via headåhones. Playing the same audio cd on my living room stereo, brings exactly that: depth, as well as more details. Anywya, I am very satisfied with the quality of the sound on the Mac Pro so far. If someone have some good tips on improving it further, I wellcome that very much.

Then I had to isolate the shielding from outside wear and for now, I've used shrink wrap, but I'd like to get something else softer and finish it off with some normal black web cable braid I have lying around. More on that later, as I need to look into the USB front connectors and make them work too.

Here's the multicable I've made so far, which then consists of unused USB wireing, connected front audio cable and finally a front panel power and power led cable:

To try to make the sound on the front jack work, I've studied some papers from Intel describing how the AC97 and HD Audio work. HD Audio was made because with AC97 it wasn't possible to control enough loudspeakers plus lower the noise floor as well as not having good enough control over jack retasking ability. That is the function where the motherboard automatically detects that something is wrongly inserted, such as for example a microphone inserted into the headphone jack. It then detects that by a series of varying resistors to determine what it is, and then swhitches over the function to enable the microphone , and also does the same with other devices. Smart, and I would very much like that to be enabled on my Mac Pro.

I looked into pin designation for the Asus motherboard and also the same from Intel, which actually describes the pins a little bit better.

So, on the Asus H410M-E is HD Audio only. No AC97 detection and connections, although I've seen some old rmotherboards having this ability. Also double conenctors for that same purpose. But not this motherbard, which is from 2020. Drivers were first developed late 2019. I guess that at that time, it was irrelevant to include an AC97 option.
The pin layout for the front audio header is like I wrote in an earlier post, but I now know that the pins 1 and 3 are not only just called Port1_left and Port1_right, but they are meant for microphone connection.
The pin 7 is sense_send, which is the pin that gives a signal when something is inserted into the front jack.
The pin 10 is not only called Sense_return2, but are meant for detecting when the front jack is removed from the socket.
Likewise the pin 6 is not only called Sense_return1, but meant for detecting when a microphone jack is removed from it's socket.
If the jack retasking ability is working, it would then be indifferent which or how many jacks one would have, and as the Mac Pro 2010 A1289 only have one front jack, it would be smart, if this could work. Easier to work with in daily use of the computer.
The pin 4 is often stated as not connected, but that is not true in the sense that it's actually meant for something. It's called "pressence". Intel describes it as : "Active low signal that signals BIOS that an Intel® HD Audio dongle is connected to the analog header. PRESENCE# = 0 when an Intel® HD Audio dongle is connected".
What and Intel HD Audio dongle is, is beyond me. Haven't found a propper description so far. Some places describes it as a multipin connector for HD Audio. I think it means a audio function frot panel as a whole.
That is most interesting, as it may or may not add support for senseing jacks inserted into the system. I'll have to look more into that as well.

Further, I then looked at the wire colours of the Mac Pro 44 pin front panel connector, and there are a total of 6 wires isolated in one group, which I suspect is all audio function related in one way or another.

Looking at the top of the front row:

- pin 40 is black and is audio ground. Thin wire.
- pin 39 is black and is audio shield (unisolated under the common wrap). Thin wire.
- pin 38 is purple, and not known yet, but I suspect a sense send wire. I may be wrong on this. Thin wire.

At the top of the inner row:

- pin 5 is green, and not known yet, but I suspect a sense return of some sort. I may be wrong on this. Thin wire.
- pin 6 is grey and is right audio channel. Thin wire.
- pin 7 is brown and is left audio channel. Thin wire.

The two wires unknown so far, green and purple, could also theoretically have ben a function of the rear jack audio socket in a try to build a sense function into the system, while not being HD Audio. That remains to be worked out. If I find out, I will of course post it here.

I then removed the old Mac Superdive front panel cover plate from the new Bluray drive as it was blocking ejection despite being original on the Mac Pro. I suspect I didn't install precisely, so will get back to that later.
Now works perfectly and is much more silent in operation than the old Superdrive. Well worth the change and also to gain bluray read- and write- ability.

Finally, I looked a little into my MSI GTX1080Ti Lightning Z which is pretty fast (for an Apple Cinema monitor anyway), so inserted this into the Mac Pro and it certainly takes up a lot of space, and needs 3 x 8 pin power connectors, which I've built into the machine already. Fits nicely and have absolutely no sag. But as I mentioned earlier, it is around 7 milimeters too long to fit with the middle level front fan, so I cut down that a bit, but still not enough room to slide into it's tray. I then ordered a new middle level front fan which is now here, and I'll use that, once I may get my hands on a RTX3090fe or a RTX3080Ti-fe if they ever become available where I live and at a fair price. Not happening for a forseeable time as I write this, I suspect.
Meanwhile I will make a bracket and stick that to the old middle level fan housing and insert that into the original mounting stays on the rear wall of the Mac Pro case.

Now time to look at the two front USB 2,0 connectors.

More later.

Kind regards,
Laverda.

 

[Natnatfr]

Hey, I love you mod !

Very clean and without altering the original look too much !
I did almost exactly the same way with mine: PSU cage conversion, rear cutting and 3D printing

WIP Mac Pro 3.1 Mod, low budget and stock look

I already had a Hackintosh when I decided to put my pc in one of these amazing cases, this is my first mod (not already finished) and I didn't think that it would take me so many time. The most time I spent on this was thinking about how to do it, reading posts here and figuring out how I would...

www.tonymacx86.com

Your build seem cleaner however. I'm considering removing the Sata connectors, or at least 2 or 3 as I moved my drives in my server / nas to improve the cable management.

 

[Laverda]

Hi Natnatfr,

Thanks for your kind words. In my humble view, it's a far more aesthetic design and expression that Apple used on those generations of Powermac and Mac Pro. Far better than anyone in a big company have come up with so far. I know there are fantastic builds (homemade) out there today, but that is not for a normal consumer to buy or create, unless you get really involved. So, I wanted a compact aesthetic looking aluminium case which is modular and can be reused for future builds, unless of course, they change all components to be different. Which may actually happen already during 2021, as atx may be relieved by a totally new design and way to create power supply to the board etc. Anyway, I looked all over in shops and on the web, and honestly one case was worse than the other, all being ugly, only two had a cd-rom capability, som had lots of hd spaces for being some sort of server etc, and generally speaking, they wer all having issues with either air, or materials, or an ugly window in the side or a full assortment of discolight, or lousy dustprotection a la open glass cabinets such as Thermal Take P3-5, which is actually interesting, but when you look further into them, they have design flaws, so I avoided those too, or all of the above. I follow a lot of pc case reviews and they mostly are ugly or have some strange solutions. Clearly Apple was lightyears ahead at the time. And it still looks cool today to my eyes.
So Apple Mac Pro case for me, thanks I am working on it and honestly it takes a lot more time than I first asumed. It won't be finished for a forseeable period, but anyway, it's good fun compared to just assemble a new ordinary pc, which I've done really many times both for myself and for friends, and on my former job years ago.

May I ask you a few questions:

- Did you manage to finish your build so that you have a working front panel?
- Which front panel type (connectors and board) do you have on your Mac?
- Did you manage to make a 3d printed frame that fits your rear I/O and the cut out you made?

I have made some rough drawings for mine, and gave them to a friend who have a 3d printer, but currently he is rebuilding it to make it more precise, so it may take a while.

Kind regards,
Laverda

 

[Natnatfr]

I share the same opinion regarding the look of this case ! It was released in 2005 with the powermac G5 and 15 years later still looks stunning, and will for many years more. It's nothing new that Apple is a master in designing products with timeless designs. You may know the works of Johnathan Ive.
The new Mac Pro looks wonderful to me too. And all its components are all "over engineered", I don't think any computer have the same build quality.
Some guys even made a copy of the case, the first shippings should have been made this month apparently.
https://www.dunecase.com


My mod took me some time too, but I'm really happy with it and it was worth it. I'm sure you will feel the same way. You will have exactly what you wanted and will be glad of all the work you've done.

I didn't know that the ATX standards may change in 2021, do you have some articles that I can read about it ?

And on my build, the only things that I didn't finish are the front and rear I/O.
I made some drawings too, printed but it wasn't at scale about 1/2 mm. I printed again with modifications, the front is still not adjusted like it should, and I didn't tried the rear yet (by laziness).
It's no big deal to me as I'm not using lot of USB ports, and when I do I have some on my desk.
And the USB ports I was planning to use were these ones:

3.86€ 10% de réduction|Carte mère 19 broches USB 3.1 Type C USB C femelle vers USB 3.0, câble d'en tête 40cm | AliExpress

Achetez malin, vivez mieux! Aliexpress.com

fr.aliexpress.com

2.95€ |Double Ports USB 3.0 femelle vis montage sur panneau à la carte mère 20 broches en tête câble plat | AliExpress

Achetez malin, vivez mieux! Aliexpress.com

fr.aliexpress.com

 

[Laverda]

Allright, so here's an update per 25'th of November 2020:


Working on the frontpanel of my Aplle Mac Pro A1289 from 2010.

I've been working on the usb side of the front panel cable, to test various configurations to see if data integrity was comproised, as well as trying to make it work at all.

So, the front panel usb connection consists of two usb2,0 hich suits me fine. No need for usb3,0 which is on the rear anyway in addition to more usb 2,0 ports.
Each usb 2,0 port carries 4 wires:

1/: +5Volt supply, for up to 500MAh

2/: Data+

3/: Data -

4/: Ground (gnd).

This have to be duplicated for the second port.

Again following the schematics already laid out, and since I'd already removed all unused wires from the 44 pin front panel connector, and also separated the 8 wires corresponding to the above into two groups, 4 wires each, it was easy to cut off the small 2,0mm spaced mini JST female connectors in the opposite end of the apprx. 12cm long front panel cable, and extend them to a 100cm. This though, represents a few potential problems I shall get back to later in this post.

So, I chose to considder the black 5+5Volt 500MAh wire to be the most important for load, as I stepped up slightly in diameter and kept the others being thin wires.
The ground (gnd) I kept black, the Data+ orange, the Data- yellow and the +5Volt supply white. This is not following standard usb colours, but that's what I wanted and had with premade 2,5mm spaced jst female end conenctors.
These were then inserted into a 10pin jst connector block (2 x 5 pin) and tested in the Mac. Alright! it recognised everything I inserted into the two sockets, such as usb sticks, bicycle lights, SD card reader, camera connection (both pocket and mirror reflex), my Iphone and other things.
But data kept being lost and connection automatically disconnected.

Reading up on USB standards, it was clear that I needed to take care of EMI, electromagnetic noise, so I had to shield the two individual usb cables.
First, I took it all apart and separated the two Data+ and Data- wires into a sub-group for shielding.

First step was to twist the two wires according to industry standard in their full length. This is done in many situations and have been used for many decades in other applications as well, and offers a certain basic level of emi protection and of course also the opposite: keeping emi from radiating from these cables as well. So I figured I'd better do that as well.

Next was to wrap the twisted pair into a copper foil that I got from an electronics component hardware store.
This was done by wrapping the pair in entire length except a few cm's in each end to manage cables, as it's pretty stiff. This offers a very good shielding as a next level.

Third level was to twist the remaining two wires: gnd and +5Volt around the shielded pair. So I did that as well.

Fourth level should be to pull over all of the above with a copperthread jacket, plus exterrior insolation, but I refrained from that copper threaded jacket, and used just some braid.
I then tested it all again and this time response in data transmission was super fast and precise with absolutely no data loss or breaking off the conenction. Perfect integrity because of very little jitter interrupting.

I now need to install the near finished front panel cable set into the Mac Pro and reassemble the lower level air tunnel, plus insert my MSI GTX1080Ti Lightning Z, which is plenty fast for 1080p and also can do good in 4K. But that is irrelevant on my Apple Cinema monitor, which is after all, 10 years old.

This concludes the front panel work for my Mac Pro build, and the only thing I'd like to update, is automatic front/rear audio control. The win10 now have 4 different audio modes:

Realtek Audio,
Realtek Audio 2 (front panel headphones),
Realtek Digital Audio.
Apple USB Audio.

Within win10 and also in Realtek's software, it's very simple and fast to toggle between these 4 conditions. So far, so good.

So, on my Mac Pro A1289 from 2010, with it's infamous 44 pin front panel mini jst connector, it is absolutely possible to have it work perfectly. It is my own choice not to have the firewire 800 connectors in use. I will possibly opt for trying to used those two connectors for something else, later on.
I therefore have made the following work:

- Power on.
- Power off (by holding in the power button).
- Power on led.
- 2 x usb 2,0 connections fully working.
- front panel audio jack for headphones.
I'll test for front mic later.

Further, for my Apple Cinema monitor, I also have the following working:

-2 x usb 2,0 connections.
- Brighness control.
- Apple Cinema Sound via it's common usb cable.
I'll test for monitor camera and monitor mic later.

I'll get back with more later on.

Kind regards,
Laverda.

 

[Laverda]

So time for a bit of other stuff on the Mac Pro pc build.

I had to undo a bit of the protection of the near finished (former) 44 pin connector front panel cable, and re-sheath it in a more managable braid, although I kept the shielding of course. Otherwise it wouldn't work as data will be corrupted because of jitter and incoming radiation. I did also incorporate a bit of larger braid for the first piece of the cable, where it's spread out on to the 44 pin connector, to protect it.
Then time to take out some hardware and testfit the cable. It could go under the front panel board and be routed in between the stays for that.

Then run along the rearmost edge of the front, and then go under the baseplate of the lower level fan tunnel, where the mac cpu tray normally sliden on to. Then under the support for that, which I'd cut away a part of, and fasten it with some cable holders, to fixate it and up behind the motherboard and clip the 3 jst mulitpin blocks on to the respective headers on the top of the motherboard.

Ooops! I noticed that the cpu cooler fans sat on the wrong way, blowing into the case, not out. I must have been tired when I last installed them. So a quick releaseand turning around of the two fans and voila, it blows cpu air out through the back of the case
With everything in place, and easily detatchable and just a matter of plug and play, I lowered the lower level cpu fan tunnel down over the cpu and hit the new cable in the front corner, so had to move the cable slightly, just a few milimeters forward, which there is ample room for anyway, and then the tunnel fits perfectly. It slides directly into place, and I can fasten the Mac bolts to the bottom and the mac screws to the innermost rear of the fan tunnel, on to it's stays which I'd left intact when I modded the cabinet.

Then insert the Nvidia GTX760 graphics card and it supports itself very neatly on the top of the cpu fan tunnel, so no sag at all. Then fire it up and test. All systems good.
Then out with the old gpu and insert my main graphics card an MSI GTX1080Ti Lightning Z, which is a pretty big card, to say the least.

To be able to insert this giant card, I had to move the middle level front fan a bit forward, so for now, I hotglued it in a better position. I'm working on a nicer solution and which is easily removeable too.
The length of this card is 34 cm, which seems to be the standard of today for fast gpu's. This way I am prepared for an even faster upgrade, when time comes. I did change the rear bracket of the card from a chrome 2-slot, to the supplied MSI black three slot bracket, to aid structural strength and have less wobling around, although there is none detectable, contrary to many pc cases where internal walls are thin and wobbles when weight is attatched. We've all seen the non-sag arms that one must sometimes install in pc cases, but no need here. Well done, Apple!

This card weight near 2 kilo and is pretty stiff, so no sag. Still, it's good the have it lying flat against the top of the cpu fan tunnel, just in case and also if I move it around.
This is how it looks like now, with everything in place and working.

And then turn it in...

Oh dear! What a terrible disco light. Quickly install a piece of software to turn it off. Permanently.
Phew!

Now that I've been running this for some days, I can report back that the fan setup is working very well. Nice and cool, while also being totally silent. I tried various fan settings besides the auto function, and it can certainly make the case really cool in just a short moment. The ambient temp is 23 deg. cel.in the room and the mac is 27 - 31 deg. cel. on the cpu and and 30 on the board at silent operation. This is when running all 10 cores between 5GHz and 5,2GHz. Next speed is for gaming and it's actually also silent. But when gaming the gpu will develop a lot of heat naturally.
I like the idea of having the gpu upside down, and the separation from the cpu fan tunnel, as the fans on the gpu is sucking nice cold air in and blowing hot air out, not mixing it with the cpu, like on a normal pc.
The 120mm fan for cooling the powersupply also is silent and the tempinside the powersupply never gets real hot judging from the exhaust air from the powersupply coming through the cheese grater rear side of the Mac Pro case. I'll put a probe to that to test and see what it measures in reality.
I will try out some other mods to air and we'll see later on that, as well as some different mods for other parts as well.

And no visible cables obstructing any flow or operation
So far, there's no dust collecting inside, as the front panel sucks less dust than my old case and it is also positioned higher above the floor. Real easy to vacuum clean when times comes for that once in a while. I use a soft artist brush adn keep the vacuum cleaner a bit away because of a potential build up of static electricity.
I did stick on 4 felt pads underneath it, to save the aluminium from scratches when moving around. No problem, it stands steady.

It's been really fun to build and not that hard at all, apart from spending many hours on the project.
I'd highly recommend such a building project; it's different, it's fun and far beyond normal pc cases in quality, inside and outside. Of course this is not the right place to type something like that, as you all know that already Just felt a need to express the joy and saticfaction with the build and the quality of the Mac Pro parts.
We'll see how a PCI express 4 motherboard will fit inside next year. Maybe an 11'the gen intel cpu? And some more RAM, upping to 64Gb?

Cheers,
Laverda.

Question: Is the 27" version of the Apple Cinema a faster monitor, or just bigger?
Better refresh rate? Lesser respons time? Better quality of picture, or any other parameter improved over the 24" version?

 

[ShatteredAvenger]

The 27” is pretty much the same as the 24”, though it is 12ms response vs 14ms. I’m not sure that difference really merits much discussion, tbh. I think the speakers in the 27” are noticeably better, but still outdated by now.

I’ve also seen a lot of the 24” models go bad in recent years, including my own 2 (bummer). The 27” seems to have a little more success, but I probably wouldn’t pay more than $150 for one at this point.

 

[Laverda]

Thanks for the info.
While one could be worried over the slow refreshrate, the lack of higher contrast and other data, in real life, it turns out pretty good.
I've now played some games on the new pc Mac Pro build, and the Apple Cinema 24" monitor I have, are slow in refresh rate and so on, but it works flawlessly with no visible problems. So, I think I'm just going for a 27" verision if one turns up at a fair price.

Apart from that, I am looking into making more airflow on the middle level - the gpu side of things. It seems that under full load, the gpu get's quite hot (as expected), but I'd like to improve on lowering the temp on that gpu. I've ordered a second cpu fan tunnel, so I can experiment with cutting it open on it's top side, so some of that really good cold flow that passes the cpu, can benefit the gpu's underside.
Further I've also bought another Noctua fan, this time a 140mm one, that I am going to testfit just inside the front cheese grater front side of the case. That flows just over 140 m3/h which a good improvement over the 92mm fans 78,9 M3/h, while being even more silent. They are totally silent anyway, but under full load, when the fan spins up to higher rpm's, it's good to have an even more silent fan in operation.
More on that later.

Kind regards,
Laverda

 

[Laverda]

APPLE MAC PRO PC Mk. II.

All right, so here's an update per May 2021:

Since I last posted on my thread, I've been busy working on old sportscars, but I did find some time to continue using my Mac Pro PC, and thereby gathering some experiences regarding it's use.
Some of the points I found was:

1/: graphics card is getting too hot being in a confined space and having too little ventilation. I needed to make a solution for that.

2/: I want the secondary ssd (which is a normal 2½" ssd, not a M2 of some sort), to be installed properly, making the best airflow for it. So no more sticking it to the underside of the Blue Ray dvd burner drive. I needed to make a solution for that.

3/: I need an improved air flow at the middle level: the graphics card level. I've been working on that.

4/: I wanted a nice place to hang my pc headphones, so looked out for that.

5/: since the Mac Pro cabinet is made out of almost entirely aluminium, I think it's scratches or dings easily, so need to try out various solutions for that with regards to house cleaning.

6/: the open cabinet surrounding the rear I/O plate, which I had not installed and wanted to close off properly, preferably looking Mac Pro-like. I've been working ion that as well.

7/: There's not enough room for the big GPU's of today, especially if I am to lay my hands on GX 3090Fe. later on. So needed to work on that.

Okay, so first things first.
1/: Upon installing say Red Dead Redemption II and playing it, my Geforce GTX1080Ti ultimate version from MSI, the Lightning Z model, it became clear, that using it in a Mac Pro cabinet, leaves it flipped upside down. So, the 3 big vents are facing up.
Being a big heavy card (aren't they all?), I think it's smart to use some sort of support stay, a la modern PC cabinets tend to use. No way I am ever going to use it with an extension cable, that can make it burn or what ever, so having the Mac Pro cpu cooling tunnel right below the gpu, makes up for a perfect big gpu stay with propper support.
The problem here is, that my gpu, the Msi Lightning Z GTX1080Ti contains a mega big and very well executed cooling solution, but it demands a propper airflow and access to that same airflow.
I did some temperature resting, and it quickly became obvious, that the 3 big coolers on the gpu itself, are sufficient to keep it cool at all times. But the underside (what is normally upside in a PC cabinet), with it's own heatpipe etc, becomes very hot. I therefore took some measurements to make a cut out in the top of the Mac Pro cpu cooling tunnel, which I thick should provide improved airflow to the underside of the card.


This is a big and heavy card, so need propper installation.
And here's another angle of the space requirements demanded by the gpu:



One of the many smart things about Mac Pro cabinet design is, that on the topside of the cpu fan tunnel, is a glued on piece of light grey plastic to prevent shorting anything. This I wanted to modify. So taking measure, I then decided to cut out a portion of said plastic part and the aluminium layer below, making a large but still well supported hole for the gpu.
To realise this, I also had to remove the Mac Pro intermediate fan and it's grey plastic cabinet in the left side of the middle air level. It's a two screw and a two-hole attatchment solution on left side on the top of the cpu fan tunnel. So I used a heat gun to carefully release (low heat) the glue of the stuck on grey plastic part, and cutting out a part of it and sanding it to suit the covering of the now exposed holes in the top of the cpu fan tunnel, where the intermediate fan used to sit. A bit of super strong glue secured that to the surface, and it now looks more factory, with no bad looking big holes in the top surface.



And here's another photo of same covering. Remember, that the factory installed piece of plastic sits ever so slightly recessed, so I needed to slightly sand thinner the underside of my cut out piece of plastic, before gluing it on.



And here's the finished article. Now, the gpu is well ventilated from the underside as well, with more than ample air flowing by from the all in all a total of 4 big fans, working in the cpu fan tunnel below (lower air level).



Then, working on point no. 7 in the above list of needed modifications, I then had removed the smaller middle air level fan, covering it hole, so now there's vey much space for all big and future gpu's.

Point no. 3 from my list, was to improve airflow on the middle air level. This I did by wanting to install a maximum sized max cfm silent extra fan at the front of the cabinet. To make enough room for this and to make it not interfere with other components, and still retain the quick on/off movement of all the components inside the Mac Pro PC, as per Apple, I then decided to look at what Apple could deliver. So, looking at their cautious aluminium structures, from various versions of Appel Mac Pro cabinets, I realized that I needed another of the lower fan tunnels - the cpu fan tunnel. So I went out and bought another of those.
This lower tunnel, if cut and adapted, would provide me a sort of bracket, that will have original Apple Mac Pro mounting brackets and spring loaded screws, and I therefore cut of that piece, rounded it off at the corners to make it interlock with the existing cpu fan tunnel, and finally breaking off two stays from the inner side of my Mac Pro cabinet, moving them slightly to the left, towards the front cheese holed surface.

Here, I am measuring up where to cut out a bracket from my new extra cpu fan tunnel:



And this is the bracket I made for the purpose of having a quick mount Apple like extra gpu cooling fan. As can be seen the fan does not totally cover the with of the case/bracket, and that is fully on purpose, as I want to make in with a silent suspension - more below.



And here's the stays broken off:



Using my trusty old bronze lion, I epoxied them in and waited over night for the slow curing but strong epoxy to settle and stick on.



I then tried it in the cabinet, and it became clear, that to obtain optimum position of this extra fan, I needed to lower it slightly into the lower sitting cpu fan tunnel. Here's a testfit:



To measure this need of extra space, i needed to install a new fan into the new extra frame. So I also wanted this to be totally silen and free of any vibrations resonating out into the cabinet, so used some semi soft foam cut to suit, and glued it all together. This used up the extra space between the frame and the new fan:



and here:



The fan chosen is in line with all of the other fans I've used in this build. It delivers a very high cfm, but is totally silent except for max speeds, in which it makes a slight noise, nowhere intruding and near not audible.

Next up was therefore the need to modify the original front lower fan's chassis, and this I did by positioning the new fan without it's frame, on top of the fan tunnel, to the extreme left, and then using a sharpie marker pen to line up the cut lines.



Here's the finished adaptation of the shape of the front lower tunnel fan frame:



Note: the integrity of the lower front fan in the cpu fan tunnel is not diminished. It's still strong and clicks in place as per Apple. Snap - snap, and it either in or out.

Next up was my point no. 2 in the above list. I wanted to drop the tape glued on extra ssd disk, and suspend it properly in a sort of frame below the blue ray drive, where there's ample room and good airflow from the fan sitting in between the drive and the power supply, with only fresh cold hitting it. This ssd is only used as medium for Windows swap file and makes the pc run faster and more secure.

Fortunately, looking on the web, I found a solution from a webpage a friend suggested, having ready made file for printing out a 3d frame. So my friend did that for me, and voila, it fits perfectly for the Mac Pro cabinet:



And using the original Apple Mac Pro screws, which are very nice made, it fits perfectly in the 3d printed bay, and also fits perfectly in the upper part of the Mac Pro cabinet:



Point no. 5 on my list was to try to protect the Apple Mac Pro cabinet against a vacuum cleaner... So again I found a nice file that my friend 3d printed to me, and we chose a grey that will suit the Apple used color:



When using my pc, and sometimes using my Bang & Olufsen H6 headphones, I wanted a nice place to hang them, when not using them, short term. Funnily enough, someone on have posted this on the web, making a 3d printable file. I chose an Apple grey to suit. It's a bit loose, so I may either make a shorter one, but that makes is hard to install and remove it, or shim it up on the "inside" with some small felt stickers, so that it does not move about. Works perfectly and looks oem. Very nice. That was my point no. 4 solved.


Apple used 3 shades of grey (not 50) on various place of the cabinet, and I tried to make these parts in the propper grey shade, depending on where it is to be needed. Choosing a resin color is not easy, as they change when printed, so a bit of experimentation was needed to make it suit.

The last of my points in the above list, was point no. 6: the finalization of the rear I/O plate and surround.
To obtain this, I wanted to make something that looks Apple like and could be an integrated part of the cabinet, also readily available if I later on decides to change the motherboard.
Personally, I am not into the various solutions of buying a lasercut rearplate or making one myself from an old pc cabinet, so from the start I wanted to make it Apple like, retaining the original Mac Pro cabinet as much as possible, inside out.

After having built it all in, I was left with a bit open hole in the rear of the Mac Pro cabinet, because I needed to make a cut out for the pc motherboard's rear I/O panel.
Because of this, I wanted to retain the PC motherboard's I/O plate, and make it suit the Mac Pro cabinet.
So, after having installed it all, I measured it up, and asked my friend to make a testshape od it to see what was going on:



And from the rearside:



This revealed that I had to make a shape that is round at the bottom, to suit the Mac Pro cabinet's shape, and also had a need to hold on to the PC I/O rear plate's edge, so it would click in position.
Another point was to NOT cut any more at a time, that was needed. So no gaps and unfortunate shapes. No outer edge was to be made, and instead a shape that resembles the expansion card area from Apple, right above. All in light Apple grey.


and:



After this, it became clear, that there a structural point on the Mac Pro cabinet that obstructs this shape, but is needed to keep the integrity of the whole rear section of the I/O area and expansion slot area:



This problem area can be seen in the above picture, to the extreme up and right. I believe it to be some sort of rivet. I wanted to retain that, for looks and strength.
Therefore I have to recreate the shape and finally, it could click in place and be finished!






And this brings me to the conclusion of my Mac Pro PC project Mk. II, with many small mods and getting a more OEM Mac Pro look and functionality, of the pc build.
I will though, be making moremods to this later on, as I already have a list of ideas to for a Mk. III version. More later.
I hope this has been usable and for inspiration of others in their builds.
I think I have reached the slick look and functionality that Apple made, just with a proper PC inside

Kind regards,
Laverda.