Case Mod - In Progress Project Gravitas - A Sponsored G5 Mod (December 2012)

The reason is that I want to keep things as tidy as possible. By drilling the modular connectors into the G5 PSU case I would then have super long cables on the outside of the enclosure that would be hanging around. This way they can plug in inside and I can keep the excess out of site.

Thanks! There are several "clean" G5 mods out there on the web, but to be quite honest most of them look great on the outside, but are a mess on the inside. I think the Laser Hive custom products are about the next best thing to not cutting at all

 

Nice progress so far. Regarding the PSU, as someone else mentioned, I think you should cut away as much as you can from both of the sideplates. Especially the one in the back since it has no holes at all. You will get a better airflow an probably wont need to cut openings in the top of the PSU. Also I see that the heatsinks on the PSU is very close to the top lid of the PSU. On most PSUs today, those heatsinks are Live, meaning that if you or any metal touch them you are probably gonna get a pretty nasty shock, 100-240v and it might end badly. Just to be safe, I would make shure that those heatsink was protected from the top cover by having some insulating material on the top cover. Maybe you already knew this but I thought I should give you a heads up incase you didn't.

Anyway.. looking good so far. I will follow this

 

This is looking really nice so far man, Ive been thinking about doing one of these lately - your approach is inspiring!! love the psu mod and cant wait to see the finished article. nice work

 

The Gnu - thanks for the tip re: the heatsinks - I wasn't aware of this and will definitely use some of the leftover insulating plastic from the original G5 PSU. Much appreciated! As far as the airflow goes, I have had several people on various forums bring this up, and it's an excellent point. I will be drilling holes on the non-mesh side to increase airflow. Those little 60mm push a surprising amount of air (I'm very pleased with them), so I think that once I drill some extra holes I won't need top venting, as you said.

Small update:

Finally got around to making the custom SATA power cable for the hard-drives. I bought a bunch of these SATA power connectors from FrozenCPU - I have used them before and despite not having the punch-down tool, have had success using a small flathead screw-driver.



A couple of pushes later, and I had my custom power cable ready to go!



Once the sleeving comes in on Monday, I'll post a bigger update with the PSU sleeving process - I'm nearing completion, just waiting for some more hardware to come in!

 

Another mini update. The sleeving came in, so I spent a few hours today getting started! I have the motherboard +12V power done, and the PCIE power...I'm waiting for a totally free day to start the 24pin!



Anyone who has sleeved a PSU before will be quite familiar with staples:



Honestly? 1/16" sleeving is a pain in the butt (but a necessary one for a clean mod):



This literally took me two minutes to get over the sleeving (I couldn't find any larger 3:1 sleeving in a gray that I liked):



And finally one result:



It's not the best I have done, but definitely better than unsleeved. I'm just thankful that our eyes don't have macro capabilities - it looks great from afar!

I can't wait to have this project done. Right-angle power cable came in today that I need to solder in to the G5 PSU case, I'll have pics of that soon. I may have found a temporary solution for the hard-drives (borrow from my Lian-Li case)...that motherboard is taking its time getting here!!! Thanks for viewing, and thanks for all the comments so far!

 

Well, after getting some great advice from furball zen over at the Xoxide forums, I decided that heat shrink was ugly, and I never wanted to see it again.

So, I undid everything, and ended up with this:



It's really not that much harder than sleeving with HS...a little trickier but absolutely worth it - I'm much happier with the result, despite the resulting backache from several extra hours hunched over my workbench!

 

Well I have most of it finished - I realized that my second length of sleeving had some snagging every few inches, right out of the package, but FrozenCPU is really good about things and sent me a replacement out already:



Here's how it looks so far, I'm really pleased with the no-shrink look!



Definitely going to look really nice in the G5!!

 

They look really nice!!
Could pass that advice on and tell us how you sleeved the cables without heatshrink?
Thanks!

 

elAwesome - thanks for your comment! I'm super pleased with the no-heatshrink look myself.

I only just started sleeving like this, but I got some great advice here. Honestly, it's really not too tough, and I don't do even do it "properly".

With 1/16th sleeving, you slide the sleeving on, making sure that once on it ends at the end of the pin/beginning of the actual wire itself. Once you've got that part done, Furball Zen (on that link) recommends burning it a little and rolling it, but what I've been doing is just squeezing it and sliding it in very slightly into the hole of the connector, and then using the blade of a knife to push in any stragglers from the sleeving itself. Then, as you push it fully in to the connector, roll it back and forth so it twists in, which helps everything straighten out. Push and click it in. If you've done it right, it should be nicely in place, but if it's not in far enough, you can always bring some of the slack from the other end (you know how it kind of bunches up when you are sleeving the other way?) so it push it further in the connector.

I might make a quick video if I can find my iPhone tripod! I hope this helps!!!

 

Mini video tutorial is uploading now. It's iPhone quality, and I'm on vicodin for tooth ache, but hopefully you can get a better idea!

In other new, processor came in today and motherboard and RAM should be in on Monday. This means I'm almost ready to put together. Once this dang toothache is gone, I'll start drilling holes to mount the hard-drives!

 

Here's the tutorial:



For some reason it's rotated to the right on this preview, but press play and it's fixed.

Hope it helps explain!

 

Well for the sake of information and because someone on another forums asked me, here's my method for using the stock G5 power socket. It's actually pretty simple, to be honest.

Tools:
- Right-angle power cable (link)
- Soldering Iron, Solder and Heat Shrink/Electrical Tape
- Wire Strippers (kinda optional)

Here's my patient:


I cut off the plug end of it, so I just had this part left with enough wire to reach the stock socket (with a little extra). Here's where I'll be splicing in to:


Using wire strippers/scissors/teeth (usually, but read comment above about toothache), I stripped about 3/4" on each side:



Once I did that to each wire (except the stock G5 green ground one), I put heat shrink over the longer side. Side note: double check that your shrink is rated for heavier-duty electronics work. Mine is rated up to 600V so I'm good to go. Double-checked to make sure I had shrink on each wire (since I can't tell you how many times I forget this):



With the heat shrink on, I slid the co-ordinating colored wires together, and soldered. My soldering workstation is broken (possibly from overuse), so I'm using a battery-powered iron which is rubbish, and my flux I think may have gotten too cold - it no longer sucks up solder, but just fizzles.



Once soldered up, I applied heat to the heat shrink so it...errr..shrank. (I bet an engineer named that product...)

Now, I don't want to get shocked every time I touch my case, so I took the green ground wire from the cable, and curved it a little to match the loop of the G5's ground. You can solder it in if you want, but it's optional, and I didn't.



Using a screw, I layered the two grounds, and screwed them down into the dedicated ground hole:



And done! Now I can use the stock G5 socket on the back. It's a minor thing, but I have purchased black sockets before and they just don't have the same aesthetic as the Apple-gray ones!

I also (side note) followed the wise advise of The_Gnu here, and added some insulating plastic to the top and sides of the enclosure cover, just in case something touches that shouldn't. The plastic was taken from a ring binder, but seems nice and thick. When I test run with my older hardware, we'll find out if something's wrong down there right quick! Thanks for the tip, The_Gnu!!!

 

OT: this little guy visited me in my back yard this morning. I'm not a hunter (no problem with those who hunt for food), so the only thing I ran to grab was my camera. Sorry for the quality - the only lens I had on hand was a cheap vintage lens from the 70's....

 

Looks like you got most of your psu and sleeving done. Looking pretty sweet.

 

Thanks!! PSU is done, custom cables are all finished - now I just need to mount the hard-drives and wait (im)patiently for my motherboard and RAM to get here!

 

Thanks for the sleeving vid, and I like the look of the PSU. Some brutal modding there!

 

Not a problem whatsoever, and thanks so much! Now that all the color has disappeared, it's really starting to come together.

Tiny update:

You know, sometimes shipping companies mess up. It happens. You know what's worse? Sleeping in the living room next to the front door and not waking up when your motherboard, RAM and other supplies are waiting right outside needing to be signed for....

I'm still getting over toothache - apparently pain medication makes you sleepy - who knew?

Still, the mailman left my new fan in the mail box, and I was really excited to take a look. The Enermax TB Silence is a sweet looking fan and is super quiet, but I bought it because it is so easily taken apart! I ripped it open (snapped it apart more like), and took the first half to be spray-painted. Not that it doesn't look great already, but since I'm not using the stock Apple fans, I decided I still wanted to carry on the Apple color scheme! I've already put enough spray painting pictures on this work log, so here's a midway-through pic:



Has anyone used these fans before? They are suppose to just click out (the blades part) but mine is taking a lot of force and still not popping out...I don't want to break it! If anyone knows if there's a trick, or has done it before and knows it takes as much pressure as I think, I would love some pointers!

So I guess Monday will be my big update since I was sleeping this morning

Thanks for watching!

 

Edit: I got it. I had no idea that it would need that much force to pull out!!

 

Well, the motherboard came in (finally) as well as some cable management parts from FrozenCPU, my RAM and my new lens (the other one had no AF).

I did a quick dry run of mounting the motherboard:



Again, I feel like a broken record but I can't stress enough how easy everything is with The Laser Hive's conversion kit. The motherboard I/O shield fit perfectly, and all of the holes for the standoffs were dead center!

I also test-fitted the PSU (now completely sleeved) to see how much slack I had to leave coming from inside the PSU itself. Ignore the stock intel fan - I only have an Intel G550 (celeron) in the machine right now as I save up for an i5, so I thought it unnecessary to put the monster Freezer i30 on just yet.



The two cables on the far left are SATA power cables for the DVD drive and Hard-Drives.

Here's a close-up of the +12V cable:



I'm really pleased with everything so far! In a perfect world, the motherboard would be a gunmetal gray instead of brown, but this board really fit all of my needs (4 x RAM slots, USB 3.0, 4 x PCIE and OSX support).

I thoroughly tested the PSU cables with my multimeter. Even though I was doing them one by one, I got mixed up twice: once because I couldn't count properly and thought that a cable was missing (turns out the -5V white cable is optional) and another time when I put a pin back in the adjacent hole by accident. The 24pin cable was easy, as the colored wires are simple to check against a standard ATX pinout, but the +12V and PCIe power cables had all black wires, so the multimeter was necessary. Everything looks good to me, so now all I have to do is mount the hard-drive cage and plug everything in!

I'll have more pictures soon.

 

Well, I have some good news and I have some bad news.

Bad news: my new rig won't post. The motherboard, RAM and CPU are all brand new, but for some reason when I press the power button the CPU fan will attempt to spin, and then shut off. It cycles like this. I called MSI (using the Z77MA-G45) and they said that with Sandy/Ivy Bridge set ups it's often the CPU that isn't seated properly. I double checked for bent pins, reseated twice, removed my second stick of RAM and tried again. Same issue. The RAM and CPU are both on the compatibility list, and I removed everything but the power connectors and PWR button to eliminate drive issues, but no dice.

The good news: it's not the PSU I sleeved. I put my LGA775 board in and everything is working beautifully! It has been running for 3 hours while I did some video rendering in Final Cut Pro, and there don't seem to be any heat or power issues. The other good news is that Alohacab's front panel cable is just wonderful. Aside from audio (which isn't working on my board) the USB, Firewire and PWR LED are all working a treat:



(wire management wasn't done since this is temporary)

If anyone has any ideas on what to do to get the board to post, I would love to hear them. Since it's brand new, getting an RMA wouldn't be difficult, but the three weeks I'll have to wait for a replacement would be an annoyance indeed. That's modding for you!