Melt's G5 mods - Two complete, LianLi and MountainMods

[meltman]

Hello everyone!
Thought I'd post up a couple of G5 mods I've done to give inspiration to others.
Final picture of mine (see build below and continued on next pages):

First mod, Lian-Li
Awhile back I helped a friend of mine mod a G5 using a Lian Li tray. We finished the whole mod minus front panel cable in one night. I was so impressed with how it turned out I set off to find myself a G5.

Sadly, I didn't take many pics of the building of his. We used the PSU on top and HDD cage in front strategy.

Here's my friends completed, sorry the pics aren't clearer:

Second mod, Mountain Mods
I found a G5 -complete with dead PSU on Craigslist for $40! Here it is next to the first completed Lian-Li mod.

For mine, I purchased a Mountain Mods motherboard tray with the dual 80's option. For those who dont know, they come in pieces and screw together which is actually pretty nice for G5 modding.

Doing a little test fitting:

And cranked out a front panel harness today. I need to get some sleeving for it.

Here's the Mountain Mods rear panel trimmed for the latch how I want it. I opted to block as few holes as possible with my mod vs the one I did previous.

Here's where I left off today. The short stock standoffs are perfect height to hold up the motherboard tray! I popped the long ones out with pliers.

I'm planning on dremeling up the stock 92mm fan grills since I cant find anything that looks anywhere near the same to buy. I have not seen anyone do this before - not to say no one has. Should be cool and retain some stock look

That's where we are. I should finish up tomorrow without any problems.

 

[rdhughestech]

Re: Melt's G5 mods - one complete, one in progress

Very clean start. I love the Mountain Mod trays. I have used 2 so far and they are a nice product and look well with the Mac Pro and G5 cases. Post up some pictures of the completed projects when you get done. It's always nice to see how people lay out the components and route all the wiring clutter.

 

[meltman]

Re: Melt's G5 mods - one complete, one in progress

Appreciate the comment. I'm still not totally done with it but I'm quite a bit further along.

I wanted to mount the hard drive cage "right side up" unlike the previous mod I did. This required spacers to space it away from the DVD tray. I decided to recycle the standoffs I pulled from the motherboard by drilling them all the way through and tapping them. Here's one drilled through waiting for the tap.

Here's the cage attached. I did it this way so that if I want to add a second (or third) cage in the future it will be as simple as trimming the metal part, drilling 3 holes, and bolting it to the cage above.

The last major cutting item was the powersupply which went up top:

Only thing left is to figure out how I want to secure the motherboard tray rear. I'm thinking some nice machine screws and nuts on the inside. It needs to remain removable so I can get the power supply out in the future.

 

[meltman]

Re: Melt's G5 mods - one complete, one in progress

Update:
Here's the motherboard tray attached from the back. You can see the small black screws holding the tray down in the stock standoffs. You can also see I added two screws to hold the tray to the case above the 80mm fans. I had to do this to keep the mesh flush with the rear tray panel.

Here it is with the PC installed. I do not yet have 80mm fans for it so I just ran the 120 on the CPU cooler. I'm going to install dual 80s and build a shroud to pull through the heatsink so there will be no fan on the heatsink directly.

Shot from the rear - until I make the fan grills and get some fans.

Powered up and running.

To do:
*Micro switches for the rom eject and possibly a reset switch
*80mm fans and cut fan grills
*Possibly a hard drive light. I'm wanting to actually put a second LED behind (next to?) the power LED so the power LED blinks with disk activity.

comments? I appreciate all feedback.

 

[Say Heading]

Re: Melt's G5 mods - one complete, one in progress

comments? I appreciate all feedback.

I am impressed. Very nice job.

I like your idea with the second LED and look forward to see your micro switch solution for the ROM (and the shroud construction as well...)

 

[meltman]

Re: Melt's G5 mods - one complete, one in progress

I have not actually pulled the power button out yet but from the pictures I can find online it looks like there would be enough room to sit an SMD led right next to the power LED. Hopefully light will transfer. I'll have to try I suppose.

For the micro switches, I'm trying to source some with a 2.5mm diameter button so that I dont have to trim them to fit through the holes in the mesh. Any input would be appreciated for those who have found a solution where trimming was not necessary.

Finally the shroud, I'm going to attempt to incorporate the G5 CPU plaques into the design. Should be very straight forward given the layout of the CPU and the fans to make the shroud - but incorporating the G5 panels may be a challenge. We'll see.

 

[minihack]

Re: Melt's G5 mods - one complete, one in progress

I have not actually pulled the power button out yet but from the pictures I can find online it looks like there would be enough room to sit an SMD led right next to the power LED. Hopefully light will transfer. I'll have to try I suppose.

Hi Meltman,

Really like the neat simplicity of it all, very neat. I reckon that you should be fine with an LED shining through the first one. I did a similar thing when modifying a Mac Cube a few years back.

The link here explains me using that principle - albeit on a slightly bigger scale (!). It might be though that you want a different coloured LED to contrast with the white one.

 

[meltman]

Re: Melt's G5 mods - one complete, one near completion

Yep absolutely a different color LED to blink for HDD activity. I'll need to look in my parts bin to see what I have laying around. I'll probably use blue honestly.

 

[meltman]

Re: Melt's G5 mods - one complete, one near completion

So I made a hard drive light using a tiny SMD led (bright!) but unfortunately you cannot see anything through the existing power led window.

I'm looking for a circuit that will turn off the power led when the hard drive LED is on. Anyone have any ideas?

 

[minihack]

Re: Melt's G5 mods - one complete, one near completion

So I made a hard drive light using a tiny SMD led (bright!) but unfortunately you cannot see anything through the existing power led window.

I'm looking for a circuit that will turn off the power led when the hard drive LED is on. Anyone have any ideas?

Use a miniature solid state relay (or transistor switch) triggered by the voltage of the hard drive activity LED to disconnect the + supply side to the power LED. When the HDD light goes on, the power LED wil go off....