Case Mod - In Progress Project Carbon Apple (G5 mod) - finished! more/better photos to come (July 2)

Well folks, I’ve been haunting you all on the forum for a while now. And I must say you have all inspired me.

I just bought a new motherboard, processor and ram (Sabertooth 990FX, AMD FX-8120, and 8gb Vengeance DDR3 1866). I was super excited.



I put all my parts into my old Cooler Master Praetorian and fired everything up.





Lo and behold, the temps were terrible. And I was bummed. But then one day between surfing the forum, I found an old Mac G5 on eBay for a reasonable price.




I have always loved this case. I think it is one of the prettiest cases, well ever. So, I decided to join the ranks of you greats who have modded this case. This will be my first time ever holding a dremel so any advice, guidance, etc would be appreciated!



Here goes! Stay tuned in!

 

Anything bigger than mATX is going to be a REAL challenge to fit. I've had 3 G5s and they are not PC friendly.

That being said. If you go slowly and search this forum, you will find some marvelous G5 mods for inspiration.
Good luck separating the outer case from the main case. It's great fun. 2 lbs of bolts holding them together and not all in places where human fingers operate well.

sub'ed

john

 

First Cut

After getting my case, I set in to removing the top tray. This turns out to be somewhat tricky... Non standard screws, tiny clips, and other Apple trickery all over the place. Luckily, many modders before me have done this and left very handy instructions.

My new dremel came in the mail (I said it was/am new) and its time for my first cut. Since it is my first cut, I decided to start on the top tray rather then start cutting the exterior of the case. I am not going to put my psu in the top space with the optical drive like many others have. Rather, my motherboard tray is going to extend into that area and my psu will go on the floor in the front. I am planning on making the airflow travel from bottom to top, with my new Corsair H100 in the bottom and a couple 120mm fans in the top.

<Corsair, I will be singing your praises both for your vengeance ram but especially for the H100-- complete with before an after temps and a reasonable overclock-- so if you want to grace a starving student with a sdd, I will forever be grateful. Zotac, I could also use a video card if you have some in need of a good home >

After that shameless plea... its time to cut the top panel to make room for the motherboard.




Not the straighest cut ever, but I still have my fingers and the sparks were exciting. My fingers, still being attached, were itching for more practice cutting. So, I attacked that back of the case to make room for my Lian Li replacement mobo.




These cuts came out a little better (metalworking lvl ups already ) and Im pretty happy.

More to come, stay tuned in!

 

I am in the thick of finals, so while I have been working on my project, I have been neglecting this log. Time for a bit of an update.

I got my motherboard tray mounted. However, I stupidly forgot to take a pic of the progress. Next, I started making the holes for fans and various ventilation.



This is on the bottom of the case, where my Corsair H100 cooler will go.

I am also planning on having the PSU intake from the bottom, and then exhaust out the front of the case.



This cut came out really roughly. I spent hours and hours with a file trying to get it to the right size. I finally succeeded and placed the mesh.



<sorry for the fuzzy pic>

I am trying to push the PSU up to the front as far as possible to make room for the H100. However, those who have modded this case know there is a line of bolts there. I needed some kind of platform or something for the PSU to rest upon. I took some pieces of scrap metal and JB Welded them together to make one side of the PSU rest. They slipped out of alignment when I put the clamp on. More filing....




I then JB Welded that into the case and added some pieces of rubber.



It came out kind of ugly, but it won't be seen so I guess I am not too upset about it.

As I mentioned, I am planning on the airflow traveling from top to bottom. So, time to make a hole in the top of the case.



And attach the radiator grill so its nice and pretty.



Much better than my sorta-straight cuts . You can also see the motherboard.

Well, that's it for now. I will try and post more of my progress soon.

 

I'm watching. Is nice.

john

 

I love apple cases... They are sexy in design, but not so user friendly... I have a G3 I have been modding for a long time, but have lost interest in at least a few times...

 

Finals (and therefore law school) are over! Which means I have had about ten days between then and graduation/beginning bar prep to work on my mod. While I have been making progress, I have been lazy about sharing it with you all. So... time for some updates.

Where to begin... how about with the cd drive. I engaged a soldering iron-owning friend of mine to attach a new switch.



Then filed down one of the holes in the case. It is not very noticeable.



Then made a little cover for the drive.



I think it looks much better this way.




I cut up a spare power cord a tried to solder it inside of my psu... but alas, my friend's iron was not hot enough to get the job done. So.. plan B.. try and trim down another spare cord to fit in the little bit of space I have.




This will be soldered to a replacement plug placed in the back of the case.



Then I started with test fitting... you can see where the psu and corsair h100 will go.



Then I added in the hdd rack. It has room for my four drives and a small fan controller. I forgot to take pics of the modding I did to the rack. I had to trim it down a little, and I moved the fan from the back to the side so I could orient the rack the way I wanted. (you can see my tolerant girlfriend in the back )



And finally the motherboard!



Stay tuned.. more to come shortly! As always, thanks for watching!

 

Hey All, finally back. Turns out, studying for the bar is time consuming.... Anyways, a little while back I finished installing everything in the case. As anyone who has modded the G5 case surely knows, there is nowhere to hide the cables.



I did the best I could to stuff them out of the way but I hated seeing them. So, i took that acrylic shield the G5, you know, this one..



And cut it to make little cable hides. But, it being my first time working with acryclic, and it being used on the first place, it came out a little scratched and ugly. So, I had to figure something out to cover it. And.. while I was at it, get a few more goodies.



First piece done.




And then I made my first attempt at sleeving.



I have a much greater respect for all you masters of sleeving (and some sore fingers). I also understand why threads often include so many sleeving pictures. That task is tedious and by no means easy. <P.S. my girlfriend is a saint for putting up with my mess!>

I put it all together and made an attempt at taking some fancy pictures, like in the threads I love reading. Here aremy first attempts.




In the second picture, you can see the lower acrylic piece is not sitting flat (turns out the sleeving made the volume of cable much greater and I have managed to fix it yet ). Other than that, I am quite happy with how it turned out.

I will try and take some more, and better, pictures to show it off soon-ish. One last, gratuitous pic of my case in its new home.



Oh, and if you're wondering why all that cardboard is there, its because this little guy thinks it's great fun to chew through my cables



As always, thanks for watching. More to come.

 

Whoa you've done exactly what i did for my G5, i mean exactly!! Great minds think alike, maybe i'll upload my build log one day Looking good.

Where did you get the HDD rack from?

 

Really? Thats awesome. I looked at a lot of builds before doing mine, and I didnt find any that quite did it this way so I'd love to see it. As for the HDD rack, its a san digital (here).