- Joined
- Jul 3, 2011
- Messages
- 10
- Motherboard
- Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5P
- CPU
- i7-980X
- Graphics
- GTX 980 Ti
There's a lot of great G5 / Mac Pro case mods out there. Most of them involve cutting a hole in the back of the case, or swapping in a motherboard tray from another case, both significantly altering the stock appearance. These alterations are usually tastefully done, but I wanted to keep the stock appearance. Specifically, I had the following goals in mind:
(1) Completely maintain 100% of the stock external appearance
(2) Completely maintain 100% of the original case's functionality - all ports must work, including SPDIF in and out, power LED, etc...
(3) Tastefully alter the internal appearance
(4) Components must be easily swappable
By far, the most difficult part of the mod was getting the rear panel I/O ports working. Since the ports on ATX motherboards is flush with the pci slots, there's a half-inch gap between the ports on the installed ATX motherboard, and the ports on the rear of the G5 case. There's enough room there to fit a custom-built port adapter, but it's not easy. I harvested the ports from a G5 motherboard, but they were too long, so I had to grind them down and re-route the pins to get them to fit. After modifying the ports, I soldered them to a custom PCB. This gave the adapter rigidity, and made soldering the pins easier. The pins on the FireWire 800 connector are especially tiny and densely packed, so soldering leads to them would've been a nightmare. Instead I was able to solder the ports to the PCB (which is comparatively easy) and map the traces to a larger remote area on the PCB.
Another challenge I faced with the rear panel I/O was that my motherboard didn't have a built-in modem port, FireWire 800, WiFi, Bluetooth, or SPDIF Input. Even for SPDIF output, I wondered how I would be able to route the optical signal. It turns out that most high-end motherboards have SPDIF headers. Mine had a header for SPDIF Input only, since the SPDIF output was a built-in feature. However, my board does feature a two-pin digital audio header intended to act as a passthrough for HDMI audio on graphics cards which do not have built-in audio chipsets. After a lot of reading, I determined that I could take these two pins, and the ground from the nearby SPIDF Input header, and attach them to the toslink output port I harvested from the G5's motherboard. That solved the SPDIF Output problem. For SPDIF Input, I simply gutted Gigabyte's SPDIF Output bracket (which I had to buy separately), and re-used the same wiring and connectors.
For the bluetooth and modem ports, I bought USB adapters, and removed them from their cases so that they would fit underneath the motherboard. For Wi-Fi and FireWire 800, I installed compatible PCI cards in slots 6 and 7, which are externally inaccessible, since the G5 case only has four slots. I harvested a PCI bracket from another G5 case, cut out one of the slots, and JB-Welded it above the existing PCI slot bracket. This allowed me to secure the cards inside the case (see screenshot).
For the power supply, I ended up gutting the original G5 PSU. But I ditched the pair of puny fans in favor of a 120mm fan which I installed inside the PSU housing at a 45˚ angle. In addition to angling the fan, I cut out the plastic border on the exhaust-end of the fan to allow greater airflow. Then I added more holes to the PSU housing to make room for things like PCI Express power cables and extra HDD cables.
I cut out 75% of the G5's upper shelf so that the motherboard would fit. The edge of the shelf seems to be mechanically involved with the case's latching mechanism, so I left about a half-inch of the shelf's edge intact. I pulled the FCC sticker from the side of the original DVD drive, and put it on the side of my Blue Ray burner, just to dress it up a bit.
For the front-panel I/O, I ended up ditching the original adapter board. It is possible to rewire this board, but the headphone port is missing a pin which makes it fully Azalia compatible. In practical terms, the only thing I would've "lost" by re-using the original board would've been automatic silencing of the speakers when headphones are plugged in. Not really a big deal, but the first case I bought didn't come with this board anyway, so I figured I'll just make my own.
The hard drive caddy is composed of three G5 HD caddy's screwed together. The assembly is screwed to two quarter-inch aluminum bars oriented vertically in the case and secured with JBWeld. I attached two 120mm fans to the front of the caddy. I painted the fans grey, combined the power leads (so there's one plug instead of two) and wired in a resistor so they would spin at a low speed. I repeated the process for the rear fans.
Actually finding the HD donor brackets was a challenge. There's this wonderful place in the UK that sells these things for like $20, but refuses to ship to the US. I found another place called welovemacs that sells them for $70 plus shipping and handling, which I thought was absurd. Turns out, it was cheaper to buy used/broken cases on eBay and just pull the brackets myself. I wrote an email to welovemacs, hoping they might change their price, but they never responded, so I just bought a couple broken cases instead
Mounting the motherboard was probably the easiest part of the whole project. I pulled the standoffs off the G5 case, ground them down a bit, and just JBWelded them back to the case in the proper ATX locations. Here's a tip: JBWeld sticks a lot better if you grind down both surfaces first. I failed to do this the first time-round and some of the standoffs came off when I installed the motherboard. After grinding down the mating surfaces, and reapplying JBWeld, the problem did not reoccur.
Pics attached!
(1) Completely maintain 100% of the stock external appearance
(2) Completely maintain 100% of the original case's functionality - all ports must work, including SPDIF in and out, power LED, etc...
(3) Tastefully alter the internal appearance
(4) Components must be easily swappable
By far, the most difficult part of the mod was getting the rear panel I/O ports working. Since the ports on ATX motherboards is flush with the pci slots, there's a half-inch gap between the ports on the installed ATX motherboard, and the ports on the rear of the G5 case. There's enough room there to fit a custom-built port adapter, but it's not easy. I harvested the ports from a G5 motherboard, but they were too long, so I had to grind them down and re-route the pins to get them to fit. After modifying the ports, I soldered them to a custom PCB. This gave the adapter rigidity, and made soldering the pins easier. The pins on the FireWire 800 connector are especially tiny and densely packed, so soldering leads to them would've been a nightmare. Instead I was able to solder the ports to the PCB (which is comparatively easy) and map the traces to a larger remote area on the PCB.
Another challenge I faced with the rear panel I/O was that my motherboard didn't have a built-in modem port, FireWire 800, WiFi, Bluetooth, or SPDIF Input. Even for SPDIF output, I wondered how I would be able to route the optical signal. It turns out that most high-end motherboards have SPDIF headers. Mine had a header for SPDIF Input only, since the SPDIF output was a built-in feature. However, my board does feature a two-pin digital audio header intended to act as a passthrough for HDMI audio on graphics cards which do not have built-in audio chipsets. After a lot of reading, I determined that I could take these two pins, and the ground from the nearby SPIDF Input header, and attach them to the toslink output port I harvested from the G5's motherboard. That solved the SPDIF Output problem. For SPDIF Input, I simply gutted Gigabyte's SPDIF Output bracket (which I had to buy separately), and re-used the same wiring and connectors.
For the bluetooth and modem ports, I bought USB adapters, and removed them from their cases so that they would fit underneath the motherboard. For Wi-Fi and FireWire 800, I installed compatible PCI cards in slots 6 and 7, which are externally inaccessible, since the G5 case only has four slots. I harvested a PCI bracket from another G5 case, cut out one of the slots, and JB-Welded it above the existing PCI slot bracket. This allowed me to secure the cards inside the case (see screenshot).
For the power supply, I ended up gutting the original G5 PSU. But I ditched the pair of puny fans in favor of a 120mm fan which I installed inside the PSU housing at a 45˚ angle. In addition to angling the fan, I cut out the plastic border on the exhaust-end of the fan to allow greater airflow. Then I added more holes to the PSU housing to make room for things like PCI Express power cables and extra HDD cables.
I cut out 75% of the G5's upper shelf so that the motherboard would fit. The edge of the shelf seems to be mechanically involved with the case's latching mechanism, so I left about a half-inch of the shelf's edge intact. I pulled the FCC sticker from the side of the original DVD drive, and put it on the side of my Blue Ray burner, just to dress it up a bit.
For the front-panel I/O, I ended up ditching the original adapter board. It is possible to rewire this board, but the headphone port is missing a pin which makes it fully Azalia compatible. In practical terms, the only thing I would've "lost" by re-using the original board would've been automatic silencing of the speakers when headphones are plugged in. Not really a big deal, but the first case I bought didn't come with this board anyway, so I figured I'll just make my own.
The hard drive caddy is composed of three G5 HD caddy's screwed together. The assembly is screwed to two quarter-inch aluminum bars oriented vertically in the case and secured with JBWeld. I attached two 120mm fans to the front of the caddy. I painted the fans grey, combined the power leads (so there's one plug instead of two) and wired in a resistor so they would spin at a low speed. I repeated the process for the rear fans.
Actually finding the HD donor brackets was a challenge. There's this wonderful place in the UK that sells these things for like $20, but refuses to ship to the US. I found another place called welovemacs that sells them for $70 plus shipping and handling, which I thought was absurd. Turns out, it was cheaper to buy used/broken cases on eBay and just pull the brackets myself. I wrote an email to welovemacs, hoping they might change their price, but they never responded, so I just bought a couple broken cases instead
Mounting the motherboard was probably the easiest part of the whole project. I pulled the standoffs off the G5 case, ground them down a bit, and just JBWelded them back to the case in the proper ATX locations. Here's a tip: JBWeld sticks a lot better if you grind down both surfaces first. I failed to do this the first time-round and some of the standoffs came off when I installed the motherboard. After grinding down the mating surfaces, and reapplying JBWeld, the problem did not reoccur.
Pics attached!
