Case Mod - In Progress Project: HeckaFresh Apple G5 Mod

Figured that out did you?

2 schools of modding - the case first and then fit the innards and fit what you have inside then do the case mods.

Neither are wrong. Many of us choose the first option because the inside hardware changes so fast but we already have the case.

The G5 is not a case to mod easily. It is/was Apple hardware orientd. PC was never a thought.

You are doing well. Keep going.
We watch.

john

 

Yup! I guess it's more important to figure out if everything actually fit in the first place otherwise, all the outer designing would be for naught. Now I know! And knowing is half the battle...

 

Glad to see you are still at it numps. Kudos for taking so much time to 'build' your own PSU!

You've also hit on another lesson i learnt early on in modding - try and get another pc to use as your main machine so you can focus on the mod and not have to worry about it being fully functional all the time. I know not everyone has the luxury of being able to afford 2 PCs but if you can it would take a lot of the stress away.

Cyp.

ps i might be getting in touch to ask how you got Snow Leopard working... any idea if you can dual boot with Windows 7?

 

Yes I would like to know too. I triedd it all day yesterday and can't get it to boot, I also keep loosing my win7 bottmgr.

 

As a matter of fact, yes! I have it dual booting win 7 & snow leopard now. It's actually easier than it sounds but I learned that the hard way. I did some research before I purchased all the parts for this system because I read that Gigabyte boards are more compatible with OSX. If you guys have heard about the efi-x usb dongle, turns out that it is actually the osx86 project in a usb stick with an efi-x sticker!

Yeah my laptop has been invaluable in this mod. Especially for looking at diagrams and wiring and looking for inspiration. But yeah don't mod wIthout another computer. Another pain is when I'm building stuff and I need a part then I'll have to order it and wait a week for it to come in. There's a lot of waiting Involved. So if ur not patient, u will get bored because u won't get instant results.

@cyprio: what board do u have? I have several guides that may help you.

 

You need to install Snow Leopard on a separate drive. I'm sure there is a way to do it with 2 partitions on a single drive, but will be a lot easier with 2 drives, so Snow Leopard will not mess with your Win 7 bootmgr.

 

I have an Asus Maximus Formula SE board but only the one system drive atm. I might upgrade to a couple of SSD in the future when they come down in price though.

 

PSU Update!

Hi Guys,

I've recently got more work done on the PSU and getting a CoolerMaster Silent Pro 700W into an Apple G5 PSU Casing. Here's what I've done:

So as you can see, this is the top metal part of the casing, and I needed a way to get the PSU cable plugs to expose themselves on the case so I can plug in my HD's & Video card power cabling to the PSU. I took this little sticky part from the Coolermaster Box that tells you what goes where and I put it on the Apple casing to trace where the holes should go. This spot is the only spot I can put it because of the way the circuit board positioned itself. It's hard to explain.





I blacked out where I'll be drilling. Because the casing dips a little bit, I had a harder time tracing the upper part, so it's just an approximate here.



The drilling begins...I don't have much tools to work with so I use what I got, and started drilling holes everywhere.



I was then finally able to drill as much holes as I could, and then I began filing with a set of $5 files from a local hardware store...This part was very tedious and tiring, and it took me about 2-3 weeks to do because I was dreading it.



So several weeks later, I finally filed the crap out of this thing, while stabbing my thumb in the process (it's okay, the bleeding has stopped and is healing nicely) I then tested to make sure that the plug holes fit in properly into the casing...it didn't at first, but I had to refile a little bit here and there to make it just right.



But there was a huge gap between the inside of the circuit board to the bottom of the casing, and the plug holes would just fall through, so I needed to make a little stand, that needed to be measured correctly otherwise, it'd be too high or too low.



after some bending...(thanks cyprio for the tips) I made a little stand. It wasn't measured correctly at first, so I had to do a lot of cutting with an exacto and then breaking off pieces with pliers to get the right height.



now with a correctly measured stand, the plug is even to the top of the casing and I can plug in the cables without worrying that the plugs would fall through.



So I then screw it all back together and start it up, hoping I didn't mess anything up in the process.



It doesn't turn on... forgot to put the switch to On, (turned it off for safety), so I unscrew it, and switch it on. This time, it works!

In the mean time, I put some wiring sleeves on my exposed wires for the front panel. It's nice looking now.



Also replaced the old hard drive fan from the original mac casing and put in an 80mm fan...it now runs 10 degrees cooler! Yuppee!!



Sorry for this blurry picture, but here, I have the PSU casing put right into the G5 tower case and it fits like magic!



And here you have it with all the parts in!! I had to remove my whole motherboard and everything to get this PSU in, so I hope I never have to pull my PSU out, cuz I'll be too lazy to remove everything...I'm glad it's fitting so efficiently. And I can now close up the tower. It's been open the whole time cuz I couldn't get the PSU in there.