Project Hackintosh G5

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First project log. As this is my first attempt at doing any kind of mod, I made some mistakes and learnt a lot. Also I did it just for the hell of it.

So in 2014 I got a busted PowerMac G5. I tried fiddling with it to possibly repair it but soon got tired of that. Got the idea to build my pc into it, while still keeping the original Mac G5 exterior look.

First some shots of the G5 case.

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Stripped out the innards. That is one massive board, with heatsinks on the reverse side.

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The grey plastic thing is a sort of channel to route the wiring for top part of the case, i.e. the hard drives and optical drive. I wanted to keep that in to keep the channel and keep the wiring neat. Turns out it gets in the way of the cpu heatsink back plate and causes clearance issues.

Just adding a mention [MENTION=12007]Death the Kid[/MENTION]
He said I should a project log one day.

 

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Doing a test fit with a board, cpu cooler and gpu, just to get an idea of clearances needed and where to put the motherboard standoffs.

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With the dust cover/ariflow baffle installed.

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I initially used one of the Pratley products, the white one. But I found that it didnt hold a bond for too long. So I got gatvol and switched to Pratley steel putty after roughing up the contact area a bit more. Sadly no pics of this part as the idea came to me and just did it. Some of what I did in this build went like that. Get the idea, do it, no pics.

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Above is the rear extraction fan mount with my own 90mm pwm fans. The original fans in a Mac G5 all run on 12v, but due to the way the Mac OS manages the fans in relation to temperatures, getting those fans to work on a x86 based system or fan controller is more trouble than its worth. They are ridiculously loud at 12v.

 

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Between the previous post and this one, some things happened with the build and it ended up looking like this:

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On the top of the case is a Zalman ZM-MFC3 fan controller. Why on top? Cos I don't want to be cutting into the case. And it seemed like a bright idea at the time.

The graphics card and cpu area is seperated by a divider. So I was able to mount a 80mm fan with cold cathode for cooling the gpu (a Club 3d HD6850 at the time). And cooling the cpu area was 2x90mm pwm fans in the original fan mount blowing across a Cooler Master Hyper TX2. In front of the 2x 80mm fans was a 120mm fan with red leds, to add some flair. Later 2x90mm fans were added for extraction behind the cpu cooler. This push-pull combination seemed to work quite well in cooling a Core2Quad. I have not yet had a chance to see how this would work on a i5, as I don't currently have a tower cooler that is the same height as the Hyper TX2.

 

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About a month ago I go the idea to plasti-dip the interior of the case, as looking at a bare interior while working in the case is not very nice.

So out came all the components and I started cleaning and dusting. Two of the mounting points for the motherboard can be seen. The original standoffs were used. (I tried to reuse as much as possible from the stock parts and pieces available)

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I was a bit of a lazy bugger at this point and didn't remove two sata cable and the power cable for the hard drives, as its a lot of faffing about as everything was originally made to just about fit with almost no tolerances.

The side panel got the same treatment.

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After 3 coats with a drying time of about 45 minutes between each coat, this is the result:

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Side panel with the frame that has the rubber seal (there's probably a term for it, but whatever). I may do the metal frame on the inside of the side panel in white or red, have not decided yet.

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And a shot from the outside looking in.

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I sort of mucked up the edges of the spray job, guess I should have waited a bit longer or my masking off technique needs to improve.

 

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Ironically, one of the first things that was completed, was building an atx power supply into the Mac G5 power supply case, as rewiring the original power supply for an atx motherboard is not something I want to, too many ways that things can go wrong and lead to explosions and possible electrocutions.

The original psu fills the entire length of the bottom of the case and is cooled by two small Super Red fans, 40mm I think. I just happen to have a few laying around that can be used on a fan controller and used them when I did the power supply. The two that I have will be connected to the Zalman ZM-MFC3 fan controller. I will add another two behind the power supply as extraction fans.

The donor psu came out of a HP workstation type pc and was made by Delta. Sadly the kiddies got to it and had some fun playing with it after I had it all buttoned up and tested. It blew when I did the final testing and wiring check before installed it into the case. But this it what it looked like. the corrosion is from another Mac G5 that had a liquid cooling system malfunction, but it wont affect my build.

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So the plan is do the same thing, but with a modular or semi modular psu to reduce cable clutter.

There is also a shroud that separates the psu are from the motherboard area, I will do a plati-dip job on that as well.

 

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After getting the psu done, I just need to find a way to secure the radiator of the Corsair H105 that I am currently using.

I should also mention that while it is still very much a work in progress, the build is live and in use, I just wont be posting any pics of it as it is, cos it looks a bit nasty with the majority of the wiring being visible at the bottom of the case.

 

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Hopefully the last part of this build is the following:

Cut off the back I/O part of the original Mac board and solder leads for the audio and usb connectors so the for whichever atx board is in the case, the back I/O can be used. This will result in a cleaner look.

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I've got the power button and power led working, but have no immediate plans to get the rest of the front panel working (too many tiny pins).

I also have some led strips on the inside. Two cool white strips at the very top and the very bottom and one in the main body of the case. Will post some pics of that as soon as I can locate the ones that I took. Or I'll take more.