Hey all! First post here although I've been a B-T & CPC reader for a long time. This is my first attempt ever at doing a case mod, and apparently it's quite a challenge, but it should be fun! I got the idea of trying my hand at modding a G5 case after skimming back through the modding archives here to Cyprio's 'AppleCore Duo' mod. The G5/Pro case has always been a symbol to me of great case design, and would be the perfect look for my next build. I managed to pick a full G5 up from eBay for £80 as a spares/repair, which was good. The case has a few scrapes and scratches but nothing that a spot of paint wouldn't cover up. My plan is to create a fully black G5 with silver edges, like so: with a similar front button to Cyprio's mod, but maybe white light instead of blue. I want to have the power supply mounted at the top rear of the case, which I've seen done before, and the 9cm gap up there is just enough for a standard ATX PSU (86mm); however: I want to be able to use longer power supplies for a higher power machine, so 20cm long. Measuring this shows I'll only have an inch or so between the PSU and the back end of the DVD drive. Apologies for the low quality image, the lens on my proper camera's gone bust recently so I'm forced to use the phone I have currently got a motherboard tray and rear IO panel from a larger Lian-Li case, with 8 slots and EATX capabilities. Although this is nice, I don't know if the G5 will be able to take this. As you can (just) see in the picture, this panel -just- fits the case! The other idea I had for this would be to buy a large enough sheet of aluminium and mount it on the case side panel so I could hide cables behind it, and put the motherboard on top of it. I don't want to be limited to only mATX boards I'd like to mount the hard drives in a rack similar to the ATCS 840 / HAF cases, with the dual 120mm fan mounts built in, this would be placed down the front of the case at the bottom (similar to the aforementioned cases) I'd need to have room for 3+ HDDs and 2 SSDs. And being an OCD kinda person, I'd want the mod to look as clean and professional as possible, even if it means custom length sleeved cables and modular PSU to route only needed cables to the right places. Does anyone have any pointers on how I could best achieve any of this? This is going to be my celebratory going to uni summer project
G5 is sure an awesome case to mod! Personally i would preferr to use mATX mb, also if you would plan to use watercooling you will have alot of place to put rad/pump/fans. If you just want to use full atx/e-atx mbs, then the best to me is to cut the whole back of the case and use an extractable mb tray. Clean and professional as you like
Thanks for the reply! As far as the ray's concerned, I'm thinking of grabbing some alu panels and trying to go a similar route to MrBean's Bad Apple project, with a black coat of paint inside and out afterwards. As mentioned in the first post, I don't want to be limited to mATX as I have several expansion cards I wish to run alongside (most likely) 2 SLI'd cards. Watercooling, I doubt I'd ever do a full loop in this case, but the corsair H70 looks mighty tempting! The case has now been fully disassembled and masking tape's been applied ready to mark out where i'll be cutting. I'll post pics once I've marked it out.
Hmm, after doing a quick re-measure, it turns out the PSU I wanted to use isn't going to fit within the upper area as it currently stands. So I'm going to create a new platform for it myself and mount it slightly lower than before, low enough so it'll fit flush with the back and not within the curved area. I've also ordered a 7-slot rear panel from mountainmods and a 50cmx50cm sheet of 1.5mm alu to create a motherboard tray from. I've noticed that if I remove roughly half of the Torx screws that hold the outer shell to the inner casing, I can place two motherboard standoffs inside (all M3 threading) and create my own standoffs aroudn the edge. The inside can be supported with some custom height blocks/spacers. Anyone know of an easy way to bend metal in a straight line? I don't have access to big tools, only general items.
