Case Mod - In Progress Project: G5 Unlocked - Updated 10/12 2012

Welcome to the ranks of us that modded a G5.

I watch.

john

 

Thanks!

An update should be coming up next week, hopefully. I have easter break from school at the moment, so I can't access a tool I would need for the next update.

However, when I'm back to school and able to get my hands on that tool and I get the work done, then there will be an update!

Thank you!

As I figured out when I did a lot of searches before I began my mod was that the mod has been a couple of times before, but most of the time the outcome of the mods never looked like the other one.

My goal is to go as clean as possible and to keep as much original as possible when it comes to the case itself. But the interior I'm going to change, such as fans and different parts

I want originality and functionality at the same time, can't have both!

Thanks

/nikkop

 

more updates

 

Indeed! I've started to sleeve the cables but I'm waiting for a package from Djungelapa with pins for the 24pin and 8pin.

I'm going to shorten them because they are pretty long and not really needed and only take place in the PSU making it more hot inside.

However I could do a small update with my sleeving one of the PCI-cables.

I will do an update tomorrow, it's 00:40 here and I need to grab some sleep before school starts in about 8 hours. So tomorrow a small update it is!


/Nikkop

 

UPDATE 17/4 2012


Hello!

Here's a small update in before the next update. I have some time ago received my package from Djungelapa, which consisted of the following parts:

• 50m Paracord sleeve NARROW - Solid White - http://djungelapa.se/product.php?id_product=235
• 5m Black Heat Shrink - http://djungelapa.se/category.php?id_category=3
• Black Sleeve for self-made cable - http://djungelapa.se/category.php?id_category=2
• Tool to 6, 8, 24pins connectors - http://djungelapa.se/product.php?id_product=70
• "El Cheapo" - 2pcs Molexverktyg - http://djungelapa.se/product.php?id_product=47

Lets start by saying that Djungelapa / Stefan (owner) has a fairly wide range of sleeve of different varieties and sizes, and any other peripherals that may be needed such as shrink tubing, etc. Other stuff that pin connectors, contacts, crimp tools, tools to get the pins out etc. Very nice support and he's more than happy to help with questions.

Here is how the package looked like when I got it. The package was small enough to get delivered directly to my mailbox which was very impressive! A big plus for it so you do not wait a whole day to get the paper to pick the package up.


Here begins the "unboxing" of the goods and the package I received. Exciting!

Looks like a noose Haha, tried to make the picture a bit "spooky"
50m Paracord sleeve NARROW - Solid White


Shrink tubing to be used!
5m Black Heat Shrink


Black Sleeved and shrink tubing for my self-made cable that will be made.



The tool that you can get all the pins out of the contacts.
Tools to 6, 8, 24pins connectors


The small tools that will help us take out the molex pins! Very small and simple but they do their job perfectly!
"El Cheapo" - 2pcs Molexverktyg



These are the products I've been supplied with from Djungelapa and now remains work in the form of SLEEVING!

The pictures that will come is a bit of "on the fly" some quick pictures I took with my girlfriend's iPhone while I was trying it out. I did this because I did not want to wait any longer with an update even tho I'm not really finished with this part of the project - the sleeving.
So it will come more and more detailed pictures in the next update when I've sleeved it all, but so far it only gets as I said, "on the fly" pictures taken a little quickly.

Here I start by sleeving cables from Fractal Design within their power supplie Fractal Design Newton R2 1000w.

This is the PCI cable that consists of a total of 8 wires inside but is tucked into a big plastic sleeve.


I used a knife to cut the shrink tube and the small cable tie that hide underneath that keeps the cables together.


Here I use scissors to cut the current cable sleeve. The type of sleeve I will use are "Paracord", a kind of fabric used for parachutes and the military for its strength.
When we cut sleeve we see how the cables look like naked.


When the cables are "naked" and all the old sleeve is removed, so it's time to make use of the tool that lets take out the pins from the contacts so that the cable is removable from the connector.


Here we see how to use the tool. You should insert the tool so it's tips are being placed outside of the square pin.
Push the tool until it stops, however care that you don't press in with violence, it should be fairly painless and easy.
When you are sure that the tool is secured and in position you should be pulling the cable. If you can not you can wiggle back and forth. Also, cables may need some force to get out sometimes.


The first picture here is the same as the last one on the last picture but it is for me to demostrera how it works.
When I managed to pull out the cable (may take a while), it looks like this.


If we do so on both sides of the connector, we get the cable altogether and can separate it from the others. Do not forget where you took it from! Will be good to know where to put it back haha.


Now we bring up the sleeve we will make use of. Measure how much you need to cover the cable.


When you have measured the length you need, it's time to cut the sleeve-piece from the remaining sleeve-lengths.
As we see it Paracord consists of 2 "fabrics", a cover (sleeve to use) and "guts" (which is discarded). In order to not allow "cover" to fray at the edges you have cut will take you quickly and easily with a lighter and melt a little easily. This will stop the sleeve from fraying.
Once that's done you can pull out the "guts".


Now the sleeve and cable are both ready. To stop the pin from tearing up the sleeve (which is easy because the pin is made of metal) I would recommend putting a bit of tape around it.


When completed, simply start pushing the cable into the sleeve and start pushing it out. This is pretty simple, just press and follow it and finally it comes out the other side
When it comes out we will take the tape off. Here I got a tip from a guy that if you wanted you could use a lighter to make the edge of the sleeve melt and attach to the cable. Then you can skip having a heat shrink at all. But it is up to each one if you want a heat-shrink tubing or not


Here I cut off a piece of shrink tubing that I have measured up. I've done a number of markers in an ordinary piece of paper which means that if I follow the markings and cut my shrink tubing so it becomes 1cm long.
I then put the shrink tube about where it should sit. It may look weird but it is for display purposes now


We take the lighter again to now get the shrink tubing to shrink, hence the name! When it is heated by the flame underneath it starts to shrink and tighten, which means that it will "hug" the sleeve and the cable. If done right it should have the sleeve and shrink tube to be stuck on the wire. One suggestion is also that while the shrink tube is still a bit warm is to insert the cable into the connector, this makes it easier than doing it when it has set and is cold.


Here we can see when I replaced the cord with sleeve on!
And we also see how it looks when almost all the wires are sleeved. What is not sleeved is the extra 2pin cord. This will be sleeved however, obviously.

And yes the sleeve is far from perfect That said, this was just a quick way to try it out! Will hone everything when the rest of the sleeve is done. Waiting for the new pins from Djungelapa so I can cut my PSU cables and shorten them!


My girlfriend also thought it looked interesting, so she wanted to try it out.


A woman with fire in hand, watch out! Jokes aside, her shrink was really good, even better than mine, lol.


I went on to sleeve the cable from Fractal Design Silent 92mm fan which will fit the exhaust in the rear of the chassis.
Here we see a fan whose cable is sleeved and the other black is the original cable.


Here we see them again. The fan on the left is the original and fan on the right is the one I have sleeved.
It was pretty tough to get through all three cables into a single sleeve.
The results, I was quite pleased!



So here we had a small update that was "on the fly." The next update will probably be when I've sleeved all the cables and can thus show how the final will look like inside the case. White sleeve in this case will probably be so hot, I can imagine, and I look forward to seeing the end result. My girlfriend has gone to Australia now for three months, so now I have all the time in the world (almost) working with school work, including this project. There remains a lot to do but as I said we'll have more time now to work with

Until next time, take care mates!
Enjoy and don't hesitate to ask questions or write something!

Best Regards
Nikkop

 

looks great , hope to see more progress on your build

 

great build!

[ot]well i thought that true modder has some kind of small 'heat gun' to shrink heat-shrink and was shy to use lighter... now i don't[/ot]

 

I'm loving this mod so far!

I can't wait to see what you do with the I/O section on the back of the case.

I purchased a broken down G5 from ebay a couple of months back, solely for the case... I've managed to strip it right down, and have been pondering about the back for a while, undecided if I should keep the existing ports, or replace them with a ATX spec one.

Anyway, it looks all good so far, keep up the good work!

 

Thanks a lot! An update is to be coming tonight! Need a hour or two to fix all the pictures and write the update

Haha I could have used a heat gun from my fathers job, but I was like "Meeeeh I don't want to wait for that, let's go with the lighter" haha.

The I/O part at the rear of the case is a really hard decision! I'm not sure if I should chose it to be nice looking (keeping it original and make some kind of cable connection) or make it usable in an easy way, cutting a hole for the I/O and then make it look good with some kind of frame.

I'm leaning to doing the latter because I rather have a small cut in the case and have it being functional, then having it look completely original but only having 2x USB and such things if you know what I mean.


An update coming tonight so stay tuned!

Thanks
/nikkop

 

UPDATE 5/1 2012!

UPDATE 1/5 2012!


Here comes an update that has been a pain to do!. It has taken quite a long time and it has been a lot of trial and errors, so to speak, but eventually I finished it and was happy with the results!

Here you read about and see pictures of how I shortened and sleeved the 24pin and 8pin cables!

I begin with showing additional products I got for this update from Djungelapa. I got pins for cables and a crimp tool.



What I started to do was to check how long the cables were and how long I wanted them. As we see in the pictures, they are relatively much longer than is really necessary, and since the cables will be stored inside the power supply so I would like them to be as short as possible.



Then it was time to start cutting up the existing cable sleeving.


Heheh I have a pet snake, that have shed his skin off


Here, I measure about how to shorten the cables.
What I did not think about with this was that where the 24pin connector is not a standard but it can sit either higher up or lower down on the motherboard, and since the motherboard that is mounted in the chassis is intended to only be tested with as I happened to measure after that. Luckily, after the initials of the cables so it worked even on my own motherboard, even though its 24pin connector is a bit further away. It gets a little tighter but it works.


The next step is to just shorten the cables, but there is a full 24 pieces of wires into the connector so they can be easy to accidentally mix them together, and that's no fun when the power supply will then be used

So I started to write down what it looked like.
The figures indicate the number of cables that are combined to serve on that particular pin, and the color of the text shows what color the wires are.
eg so in the second box, so is there a blue cable, while in the final on the same line, it's 2x red wires that go together in a pin.


So to avoid mixing the cable sup I started to mark each cable! A little tape (although electrical tape when I could not find anything else) and a fine silver pen
[url]http://img99.imageshack.us/img99/8364/82775491.jpg[/url] [/ IMG]

There, now are all the wires are numbered according the order in which they are placed in the contact, so you do not make a mistake and mix them accidently.
[IMG]http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/616/93232170.jpg

Then it was just to bring the tools to get the pins out of the connectors, and after all cables were out and a couple of sore fingers.


Pulls up the scissors and cut where I put the highlight of the short cables will be (mark I made using a tape-bit).
I cut one cord at a time because I want to be on the safe side and not make any mistakes.


When the cable is cut, we have to get the contents out of it and get rid of the casing itself, and it is done with this kind of tool. I have no idea what it's called, maybe a wire stripper?
At any rate, do you stop the cable into a hole that fits and pinch to it, then you and coaxes a bit and finally to release the cover but the content remains, parts for conducting current.


Here we see how the cable looks like when it is stripped at the top, but we also need to have pins to attach the connector. So I take a pin that I had been provided with by Djungelapa.


Insert the stripped cable into the pin and then insert it in the crimping tool (looks like a crococile who are hungry for meatballs)


After placing the cable and plug correctly, press and the tool will push the pin so that it surrounds the tiny wires that cable is composed of, and finally we have a new cable with a new pin! (Note this was the first I had made it looks so ugly)


Now do this on all the cables. It takes time!
Note that I put the cables back in the connector because I wanted to see that the length was OK before I started to sleeve it



Here we see how it looks inside the chassis, looking good if I may say so myself!


Now the sleeving! I do what I did in my last update where I had a little "guide" on how to. However, I skipped the heat shrink altogether! Thought it was better looking without and that Paracord has the ability to adhere without heat shrink tubing as it melts and hugs on the cable, a very big plus for it!


All cables sleeved and like this was the result, looking good!


Then it was time to do the same on the 8pin cable and it's the same thing again.
Here we have the little picture I made to keep track of leads, but so are all the yellow wires the same and all black alike, so making an error here isn't really possible


Here we see the cut 8pin cable. As we see it is a hefty piece that has been cut, leading to less wiring inside the power supply = more space and less heat and better looking.


I do the same with 8pin as I did with 24pin cable, no funny business.


The sleeving goes on as usual as well. However, there was something very annoying here! The cable would not go in if it had sleeve on it, probably because it gets a little thicker then. I kept this up for literally hours! It turned out that you had to be right on the nanometer thickness to enable it to run in, sometimes I had to take out a knife and scale by the precise non-existent piece of molten Paracord and then got the place. Troubled frustrating and strange! But eventually I got it.


Here are the pieces that I had to do to 8pin cable just because they were too thick on one end. Were many of the experiments and frustration rose slightly sick a lot! These were the pieces that I later threw away.


PSU with 24pin and 8pin cables, became good result I think!


And this is how it teaches look when it is located inside the chassis.




That's it for tonight folks! What do you think? I'm satisfied with the PSU-sleeving and it will look great later on with all components in place!

Also this week I will solve the rear I/O port. I have to decide if I want to keep it good looking (original but then lack a bunch of ports, only 2x USB etc.etc) or make a hole and have all the ports available (doesn't look as good but practically better!)

So expect an update this week again!

What do you think so far?

Best Regards
/Nikkop

 

mmm, very nice. I'm actually doing a G5 project of my own ATM, however i'm going opposite too you by powder-coating the case black.

 

Looking good! - Paracord seems to be the way to go, especially with no heatshrink; looks very clean.

@ Ruairi

A matt black powder coat would be cool, but would you do the entire case, or just inner / outer cage?

 

Thanks,

I've seen a guy paint his G5 black, the results weren't very good and also it looked strange that the whole case was one single color.

Are you going to use different types of black/grey or just plain black?

Anyways looking forward to see it

Paracord is nice, I like it. However white paracord isn't best suited I've noticed when it comes to sleeving cables of different colors. It's not seen on my pictures but you can see differences because the cables are different colors.

If you are going white paracord be sure to either be ready for the tint difference in the sleeve or go with cables that have all the same color.

Other than that I like paracord a lot!

/Nikkop

 

more updates love to see the finish result

 

Wow, I'm loving this G5 mod!!! I'm really tempted to do one myself
Can't wait for the next update!!!!!

 

Nicely done there. It's nice to see that the project goes forward.
It's interesting to see how others do with the case, my project is close to finish (the case is actually done).
Power Mac G5 cases <3

 

There's one now in this post! I've been in Germany this week and therefore I've not been able to answer this thread nor do any updates!

Thanks a bunch!

If you have a G5 case or you are able to get one cheap, do it!
This is my first project ever and it's really fun

Thanks a bunch.

Yeah the case has been modded pretty many times but it can be done in different ways
The case is one of the most beautiful indeed, no question about it.

Anyways, here comes the update!


Update 11/5 2012

Hey!

This update is about how I solved the problem with the I/O ports at the back!
I've seen a number of different solutions and many are good, but one must always compromise.
Either you get it totally original and unmodified, but then there's not many ports to be used (max 2USB, 2 audio outputs, etc.) or you can modify it, such as cutting holes, and in that way have many more contacts to choose from.
The whole thing is what to prioritize, functionality or appearance.

Although my goal for this case is to keep the clean and tidy I decided to go the other way when it came to I/O plate. I actually prioritated functionality and not appearance.

Here is a picture of how I/O looks original.


I tried from the beginning to push the contacts I will be using to see if a modification was necessary.
So I started to push a 3.5mm jack for audio / microphone.


But as we see here, it is not the correct length or in the right latitude.


I thought I'd see if the ethernet-cable would fit or not. It showed that the cable/head was approx 1-2mm too wide.


But so is the plastic "shield" on the I/O that can be removed. Removing this will yield a little more space to but the contacts through.
Remove the plastic and the cable will pass!


Looked like this, not the most beautiful but it works!


I found out that the ethernet works, however the audio connectors and the USB had no chance to fit, so I decided to mod the back I could have bought PCI plates with USB and Ethernet-port, however I didn't want to do that.

So I brought my beloved box to a woodworking where it would modified a little!


This is my first marker I did. Note that I have chosen not to cut off the entire I/O panel, but only where the holes are. The entire hole will be as wide as the widest hole original (USB-hole). In this way I get to keep the icons and markings, which is neat, even if they did not correlate with the output connector that sits there.


I wanted to get it completely straight before cutting so I sawed up a piece of wood that was as wide as the widest USB hole was from the chassis edge. If I recall it correctly it was about 36mm.
So I created a small piece of wood that reached at the widest aperture start. Now, I will definitely get straight lines that are as wide as the widest aperture.
Perfect, now we can mark!



And this is what lines up with masking tape.


Let's bring out the big guns!
I originally planned to use a dremel but the aluminum was 1 mm thick, which is quite thick. So it had to be another tool.
Out with the jigsaw tool and time to drive on!


The hole is done! As we see, I kept all the icons, it's pretty neat I think.
However, the hole is quite rugged and it needs some work of course.


So I got a couple of files! Aliminium filed away faster than I thought actually.


For fun I did put a small piece of toilet paper in the chassis to see how much dust/splinters that came off, and there was a lot! What I got on the paper was only a fraction.
For your own good, do not breathe this! >


I filed around 22:00 at night and my dear mother was finally tired of the noise that arise when one files aliminium. I was also anxious to wake sleeping neighbors when it literally sounded like some kind of monster who suffered. So it's not entirely clear and smooth, but it begins to take shape and you can definitely see the improvements.

Here we have the chassis and its I/O with the motherboard and a number of contacts inserted.
As we can see, all place without problems and even more ports can be used.


A small comparisment picture of the I/O where one part is rought and the other one is filed.
As we see, they have the potential to become straight and beautiful!


That was what I had to offer at this time!
This project needs to be finished within a week!!! So I have a very very very tight schedule and hopefully there will be a couple of updates coming up very soon!

Until next time,
Ciao!
/ Nikkop

 

Looks like youll have to get rid of those rear fans , and create a propper IO shild ,

 

Why is that?
You don't think I can have it like this or what?


I can mount the rear fans, no problem at all and still have the motherboard contacts in like in the pictures

Please do explain what you mean.

Thanks

 

UPDATE 16/5 2012

Hi!

Here's a tiny update on how I solved a very big problem, but is very easy to solve
Indeed, it is plate where the original DVD-ROM drive is mounted and hard drive cage as well. This plate also serves as a locking mechanism for the side door.

If you have a mATX motherboard you won't have to do this mod because the motherboard is short enough. If you like myself (and most) has an ATX you'll have to perform this mod to be able to use the plate.

Here we have an ATX motherboard.


And this is the plate I was talking about. We can see immediately that this plate is in the way of the motherboard, you can not have both of them at the same time.
Also notice the blue marking I did with a marker which marks where it will be cut.


Once in the workshop I wiped away the blue marker and drew a new, finer line.
I have also chosen to make the hole as wide as the widest hole, best to get it nice and symmetrical.


Clamping plate for it not to fly rounds when it's getting cut.
Piece of wood serves two functions:
Support for the clip and that it will be used as a wall pretending you from going out of track.


And then we saw! As straight as possible, the piece of wood sure does help!



That's it, finished. Was actually pleasantly surprised how good it was.
But how it looks like in the case is the question!


In the case!
Must say I was pleased with the results. Such a small mod that enabled ATX motherboards to fit.


Here we see how much actually "stands out".
The lowermost PCI / E ports are of course not usable, but it's quite given when the casehas only 4x slots


That was what I had for this little while!
Tomorrow is a red day and the same week that the project will be finished, so it will come up a number of updates one after another. Tomorrow it will be at least one, maybe two, otherwise they fall in on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and the project will be done!

Looking forward to it!

Best Regards
Nikkop