PowerMac G5 ATX - A Hackintosh inside a Macintosh

[xox]

NOTE: Please read the Document on Google Drive at the bottom or view the album (also at the bottom) if you want nomal-sized images as the forum blows the images up to their maximum size pretty much. Thanks.

 

 

Apple Powermac G5 Mod: A Hackintosh inside a Macintosh

 

A few months ago; I decided to undertake a project to help me with my Uni applications and also to make my PC look a hell of a lot better. Currently, my PC resides in a CiT Labs Vantage Angel case. However, it has terrible build quality and looks too angular and violent in my opinion. I generally dislike gaming cases, which is why I refer more professional looking products like Apple stuff. I may dislike Apple itself, but their attention to detail is unmatched and is what really sold it to me. Also in my list of things to achieve is to make my Hackintosh actually work. At the moment, Audio, sleep and PS/2 does not work; on this project, I aim to fix that. Currently though, I use Windows as it genuinely is the superior platform.

Found this Beaut on eBay:

 

I started with looking for cases on eBay. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a case within my price range that was buy it now; so I settled for various bidding wars. I bid on about 5 different cases and I was outbid on all of them by a person who bid in the last few seconds. This meant that I had to settle for click and collect because not only do they sell for less, less people actually want to bid for them as most of the time, they are in the wrong area. I waited for a few weeks for a nice case to come up on eBay. That was until I found one. This one was about £30 and in Leeds, which is an hour and a half’s drive away from me; I started bidding only to be messaged by the seller: “Where are you picking it up from? Only, I can send it over to Liverpool [5 mins in the car] with my company if you wanted to.” I then quickly replied saying that I would be delighted to do that. It’s amazing how far people will go to be a decent human being.

 

After the first stage was completed by getting the case, I planned out everything that I would need; planning is essential to anything; so due preparation and meticulous planning is needed for this [larger] project.

 

• Standard ATX Motherboard Tray (from The Laser hive)
• 2x140mm fans for the front (Corsair AF-140 Quiet Edition) and fan filter
• New Power Supply – Could not cope with shitty cheap, old one
• Dremel – Even though I have a pair of tin snips, I would like a clean look. So a dremel is preferable.
• Acrylic cut to my specifications – the school has a £5000 laser cutter that I may use for the fan mounts that I need
• Magnetic tape for the fan filters
• Spray Paint and Primer – I want to paint the Apple Logo on the side ‘Space Grey’ Or just jet black and I wanted a Space Grey interior as bare aluminium is kind of drab and uninteresting
• Elastic for HDD Mounting (Inspired by DIY Perks’ YouTube Video on his Wooden PC)

 

All of this stuff costs a lot of money; since I don’t have a job, I had to wait a long time to do these things, hence the lateness. Also on the agenda was making sure everything was going to work together, so I drew out a diagram of how things were going to go. Planning is an essential part of any mod.

 

Build Log : Installing OS X (Plus Rant)

 

Well, the first stage of any Hackintosh (or liberally named ‘Hack Pro’) mod is to install OS X on the machine. I picked Mavericks as my OS of choice and set to work installing it. Despite all the help various members of the forums gave me, I could not manage putting Mavericks on my computer using the USB *.iso files that they kindly provided me. This meant that I went on eBay and bought a specially made USB stick for Hackintosh, which had all of the necessary UniBeast things on it that I needed. I would dearly recommend this method of installing OS X because it is download-free and hassle-free. Plus at the end, you get a free 8 GB memory stick to use.

 

After running through the install wizard for OS X, I went into MultiBeast and selected the DSDT-Free installation and the appropriate audio, network and third party SATA drivers [or kexts] for my system. Unfortunately, the audio does not currently work. I just can’t get it to do so. Later, I installed the PS/2 Kext which doesn’t work and also the kext for USB 3.0, which I am proud to say actually works.

 

If you are getting a mac for the Mac App Store; don’t. It is about as bare as a Soviet Supermarket and in typical Apple fashion, has too many paid apps [including iLife and iWork(!)] and too few Free apps. In fact, the only good free App that I actually use is Twitter for Mac, which is Awesome to be honest.

 

Games support for Mac is dreadful. Out of the 40-50 games I have in my Steam Library, only 3 of them are actually compatible with OS X. In the Mac App Store, there is a whole cornucopia of about 15 games most of which are either terrible or cost more than I paid initially to hackintosh my computer. Furthermore, there are very few enthusiast utilities which give us a greater understanding of what our computer is actually doing and the root system folders are generally inaccessible to the average user. Finder is a horrific application, to me from a Windows background, it is shamefully unintuitive. On top of this, iTunes for Mac is actually worse than it is for Windows and Quick Time has significantly reduced functionality.

 

In other news, I don’t like dragging my mouse far on my computer [possibly a laziness thing IDK], but I found myself constantly moving my mouse from one side of the screen to the other. In Windows, we are used to having one start menu; which coincidentally does everything for us. In OS X, you have two; one to give you the program functions and the Mac functions and the other to give you the programs in your computer. This is fine if you only use one program (ie: Safari), however, when you want to use more than one program at once, I find myself dragging my mouse too far and my arms getting fatigued (PC Master Race FTW).

 

Graphically, OS X is great. I find myself loving all of the spinny things and shiny things that it has to offer. I like the way that programs un-minimise themselves and the magnification of the icons in the dock; it looks awesome, being fully anti-aliased etc. Alas, Zorin OS offers better animation than OS X. Performance wise, OS X is terrible. Idling, it is using about 4GB of RAM and more CPU power than I initially anticipated (at 5-20%). On top of this, it uses way too much graphics power, all of these fancy animations use upwards of 10% of the GPU power.

 

Rather unfortunately, if you have a problem with your Hackintosh installation, I would recommend turning to the LTT forum instead of the TonyMacx86 forum. Although they have very useful guides and stuff like that, nobody gives a shit there, your post generally gets ignored and you are left on your own. On LTT at least, you get a reply and an acknowledgement of your post even if you don’t get the exact answer that you were looking for.

Snow Leopard didn't take

"Hack Pro"

Mavericks Installed On PC

Build Log: Disassembly

 

There are a few things that you will have to undertake first before building a PC in your Powermac case. The Powermac G5 is very difficult to disassemble; I would strongly recommend watching a multitude of videos on how to take one apart before actually taking the project on. In the end, it will probably take you longer to gut the Mac than it will to actually build a fully working computer. I would strongly recommend having a cardboard box handy; that is what I installed all of the components into after I had finished with the build. I then gave this cardboard box to my mate who wanted the computer to do some video editing. I will also show a build log of that afterwards just in case.

 

The problem with the Powermac is that it has too many sectors: Firstly, it has a sector responsible for cooling the IBM PowerPC G5 Processor, which is about the most power hungry chip I have seen with my eyes. The heat sinks that Apple use to cool these beasts are truly mahusive, they are also incredibly heavy and are attached to the processor assembly. There is also a huge metal divider between the PCIe slots and the Processor cooling towers. This is a good design for the end user as it may keep the graphics card 2-3 degrees cooler, but incredibly bad for me as I had the job of taking the damn thing apart. It turns out that you remove this after the motherboard.

 

Since the case does not have built in dust filters, (Apple has opted for the “Cheese Grater” approach, as my friend said) there tends to be a large build-up of sediment particulate matter inside. Even though mine was seller-refurbished, there was an extraordinary amount of dust inside of the power supply and heat sinks which was disgusting to say the least. This is why I am installing dust filters in there because to be honest, I can’t cope without them. I hate maintaining a build and having to clean it out. Plus, I want it to last for as long as possible; as does anyone when they come to build their computer. Having dust in your case does nothing but make the system die quickly.

 

The disassembly was difficult to say the least. There are too many parts in the case for you to simply unscrew a few screws; you have to be really savvy when it comes to that because everything is out of the ordinary and proprietary, which makes it somewhat difficult. I ended up using a soldering iron to melt the plastic of the hard drive cages and the fan assembly in the attic of the case, it is on a whole new level to building a ‘simple’ PC.

 

Before gutting it, the computer weighed in at around 16 kg, now it’s more like 6-7 kg. It just shows how much some computer parts weigh, especially these ones, which I would call massively over-engineered; I guess Apple likes to do this. It’s kind of nice from a consumer standpoint, but seems a little wasteful (and superfluous) at the same time.

 

After disassembly, I couldn’t help noticing the scorch marks on the back of the motherboard tray. The Power Mac (rather unconventionally) has chipsets and heatsinks on the back of the board and no fans to cool these. As a direct result, there are serious black marks left there. Despite my best efforts to clean them off, they just stayed there. Perhaps Apple didn’t think everything through about this; maybe it could have been assuaged by putting a fan there.

 

Speaking of cleaning unwanted marks off of it, I decided to wash off the outside of the case as well as the inside. All you need to do to clean such a case is to get some water and add a few drops of washing up liquid to it. Then, simply wash it down with a fabric cloth. After you’ve done this, wipe it down with a new damp cloth with only water on it. Now, it’s time to get a normal bath towel, and lightly buff it, removing all excess water and dirt. Now it is complete.

 

The Powermac G5 is home to proprietary Apple Drivel

Build Log: Bringing in all the Parts

 

Obviously, one of the most important parts of any build is having all of the stuff present. Since I had my list of stuff that I had to get, it made the collection of this stuff easier. If you are doing a similar mod, I’d recommend ensuring that you plan everything beforehand or you may find yourself out of materials (and budget).

 

Firstly, I made sure I had the case, as I may have mentioned earlier, it was off eBay for £30, so that was all good and checked out. I then cut an acrylic front dual 140mm fan mount using a laser, the sixth form I go to has one handy; so I thought I may as well use it to my advantage.

 

When it came to mounting the fan mount, I had decided to use wood to do the deed. Unfortunately, wood is a complete bitch to work with; it wants to stay together rather than do what you want it to do. So, after multiple failed attempts of making it, I decided to retire and have a rummage through my shed. Inside my shed, I found two little right angled pieces of metal. This was perfect for what I had in mind. At last.

 

When it came to the front panel mod, I decided against such a thing. It would involve butchering my current PC case for parts. I didn’t really want to do that; I still wanted a backup case for other projects.

I had prepped a logic board cable for it too; only I didn’t want to go through with it, so I ditched it.

Acrylic Cut:

 

Build Log: Modding and The Build!

 

So, once I had the case and the dremel, I started dremeling. First off, I cut a hole in the attic tray for the motherboard to fit through. Then, the space for the I/O at the back, this doesn’t fit the I/O shield, instead, I made a new one. The next step was to wait for the motherboard tray. When it arrived, I installed it and found that the standoffs were incorrectly aligned, so I sent it pack and then promptly received a new one. Hooray for the good customer service at The Laser Hive.

          

After putting the motherboard and tray into the case, the next step was fitting the power supply. The SATA power cables weren’t long enough to get to the attic, so I stood the power supply on some cardboard and bubble wrap so that they could easily reach. I then bought a SATA power splitter so that the cables that went up to the attic were able to reach without the power supply being on stilts.

 

You may be noting the Acrylic piece in the attic. That is just for looks. I figured that the old Air deflector from the G5 needed to be used for something, so I used it for this, I cut it down to size, filed it and then stuck some tape at the bottom of it to make it look premium-esque. I mounted it to the four screwpoints on the optical drive.

 

Well, the next thing to do was to make sure it didn’t live its life with a tail constantly attached to it. So, I fitted an IEC power port on the back of it. To do this, I butchered one from an old Antec Power supply. It may have been perfectly functional, but it had a greater use than sitting in our attic for the rest of its life.

Dremel Bought

Tray Cut

IEC Port Fitted

 

Build Log: New Power Supply

 

So basically to cut things short, when I was screwing one of the acrylic plates into my case, the Allan key that I was using dropped into my old power supply. Well, that was rather unfortunate (and costly) because I had to buy a new power supply. My choices were simple: either the Corsair RM-550 or the SeaSonic Fanless 520 watt one. Since the SeaSonic one was about £40 more expensive than the RM-550, I was forced to go Corsair. In hindsght, I would have gone for the SeaSonic one because the cables are simply better, it was a lot of hassle getting any sort of cable management because the cables are so poor. Below is a picture of the measly cable management that I was able to do with what I had at my disposal. Remember; the Powermac G5 has no motherboard tray, so it is impossible to hide the cables away. Furthermore, there are no anchorage points, further setting back the cable aesthetics.

 

 

Then again, I only spent about half an hour doing that, so I would consider it not a bad job if you take into account the problems.

 

Front Panel and shizzle like that

 

Well, I wasn't too bothered at the time to take pictures of this bit, but basically, I bought a power button from the Maplin that I was banned from and wired it all up with a front panel cable from an old computer. I also cut the 19.2mm hole in the front of the case that was required. This was more of a problem than normal because I had completely run out of dremel tools so I had to use small tin snips and a circular file, which took about an hour (what a waste of time).

I also bought front panel USB 3.0 ports from Amazon, these cost about £13, but are well worth it, it saves dealing with the monstrosity of the G5 front panel connectors, which was a project that I later ditched. I also glued on the front panel thing from the G5 just to fill in the holes and maintain a half-decent aesthetic.

On top of these little things, I have fitted an 80mm fan in the top to cool the HDD and a 120mm fan in the front (there was once two of them, but on eof them started ticking, so I promptly removed it.

 

MORE TO COME, SO FOLLOW TOPIC TO SEE MORE

 

Full Gallery (Imgur) - http://imgur.com/a/LCQwG/all

 

Full Document (How this is meant to look) -  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_kN1RgbpgsjejUyd1B1WEI4RnM/edit?usp=sharing

 

Thanks To:

 

• http://www.thelaserhive.com                                                    Motherboard tray maker
• @Megabikerjoe (on the forum)                             Helped with Hackintosh
• Fred6669 (eBay)                                                                     Seller of Powermac
• @leodaniel (on the forum)                                    Helped with Hackintosh
• @Osmium (on the forum)                                     “
• Various other Powermac G5 Mods on other forums
• http://www.tonymacx86.com
• My friend, Rikk for doing the lasering thing

 

Key Definitions:

 

• Kext – A sort of Driver utility for OS X
• Dremel – A spinny disk on the end of a drill to cut through things
• Powermac G5 – Apple’s ‘Top’ computer from 2003-5
• Acrylic – Plastic, commonly used in Laser cutters and just about everything
• Primer – A special type of pre-paint for when you want spray paint to stick to something
• Balsa Wood – Thin, soft wood generally used by hobbyists and modellers. Can be cut with a craft knife easily

 

Tools Used:

• Dremel 3000
• Small Phillips screwdriver
• Large flathead screwdriver
• Soldering Iron
• Power Drill
• Wire bearers
• TORX screwdriver
• Electrical Tape
• Epoxy Resin
• All Purpose Glue
• Newspaper – Wirral Globe (only thing it’s good for, so full of adverts)
• Needle and thread
• Metal file
• Side clippers

Specifications:

• Motherboard: Gigabyte Z77-D3H (s1155)
• CPU: Intel Core i5-3570k - back at stock due to Hackintosh compatibility
• Heatsink: BeQuiet Shadow Rock Topflow SR1
• GPU: NVidia GeForce GTX 760 (ACX Cooler by EVGA)
• RAM: 8GB Corsair XMS3 CL 9-9-9-24 1600 MH_z
• HDD: (Windows) Seagate Barracuda 1TB
• SSD: (OSX 10.9) OCZ Agility 3 60GB
• PSU: Coolermaster RS-500-PSAP-J3 (500 Watt) Corsair RM-550
• Optical Drive: Sony Optiarc DVD Burner
• Case: Modded Powermac G5

 

Still To Come:

• New Power Supply
• New Acrylic pieces to direct airflow
• 2x BeQuiet 140mm fans
• Fan Filter
• Power Button
• Front Panel
• Hard Drive Cage
• Possibly a Blu-Ray Drive
• Possibly Windows 8
• Possible re-paint of Apple Logos to shiny black
• And probably more than that too

 

Oh, and a shoutout to @tmcclelland455 - He wanted one a while ago.

 

THANKS FOR READING!!

Edited October 31, 2014 by tomlambert01

[Hecknologist]

AAAAAAARRGH!! INTERNET EXPLORER, THE AGONY!!!!!

[xox]

AAAAAAARRGH!! INTERNET EXPLORER, THE AGONY!!!!!

I know, damn school computers

[flibberdipper]

I like it. At least you had the determination to follow through making a Hackintosh unlike me.

[JokuTyyppi]

Looking forward to see how is this goes and how you place the parts.

[3VIL_G3NIUS]

Yet more inspiration! 

I have 2 of these awesome cases and they are always in the damn way

I can't wait to see how this turns out

[jiyang1018]

After modding my Powermac G4 case, this has been in my wish list. My mod is linked in my signature.

[xox]

Yet more inspiration! 

I have 2 of these awesome cases and they are always in the damn way

I can't wait to see how this turns out

Thanks!

 

 

After modding my Powermac G4 case, this has been in my wish list. My mod is linked in my signature.

That mod looks really good, dude. Really got something to live up to

[BenD]

looking forward to this

[jiyang1018]

go to you imgur address, click images, under image counts and page guide, there is [View Image Info] drop down menu

click that menu

select [Generate Image Links]

select the images you want to include in your post, and click done

under [Original Image] drop down, select [Large Thumbnail]

under [Link (email & IM)], select [bBCode (message boards $ forums)]

DO NOT USE [copy] button on this page, select all the urls generated and hit ctrl+c, and past it in your post, this way, each url is in a separate row, if you use [copy] button, all urls will result in 1 long continuous row,

click preview to see your image order

once you preview, you cannot drag to reorder images, you have to ctrl+a to select all and delete everything and paste your ulrs again, rearrange or image urls, ctrl+a and ctrl+c, and preview

once you are satisfied with the ordering, insert your text

 

You can always do a few pics a time to get better ordering if you want, but the method I listed above is the most efficient one for me so far.

[xox]

go to you imgur address, click images, under image counts and page guide, there is [View Image Info] drop down menu

click that menu

select [Generate Image Links]

select the images you want to include in your post, and click done

under [Original Image] drop down, select [Large Thumbnail]

under [Link (email & IM)], select [bBCode (message boards $ forums)]

DO NOT USE [copy] button on this page, select all the urls generated and hit ctrl+c, and past it in your post, this way, each url is in a separate row, if you use [copy] button, all urls will result in 1 long continuous row,

click preview to see your image order

once you preview, you cannot drag to reorder images, you have to ctrl+a to select all and delete everything and paste your ulrs again, rearrange or image urls, ctrl+a and ctrl+c, and preview

once you are satisfied with the ordering, insert your text

 

You can always do a few pics a time to get better ordering if you want, but the method I listed above is the most efficient one for me so far.

I'll do it when I get home

[leodaniel]

Nice! Looks great, actually also thinking of rebuilding my hackintosh.

 

I don't know if I missed it, but whats your hardware?

[xox]

Nice! Looks great, actually also thinking of rebuilding my hackintosh.

 

I don't know if I missed it, but whats your hardware?

Oh yeah, sorry. Will add to the post; it is on my profile anyways

[simson0606]

this makes me want to continue my powermac g5 build....

[xox]

Updated to include some little bits that I have done extra. Will keep updating it.

[xox]

Okay, it's been a bit; I've had a level exams and shizzle to contend with. Although I failed and had to re-sit the year, I made a few alterations to my powermac in the process. Sorry for dodgy picture taking, I am still using my Xperia S and have no additional lighting in the room.

The changes I have made include:

• New fan - Noctua NF-P14 PWM Redux. Picked this fan because it's grey, which suits the build, it has no superfluous LEDs and it doesnt come with unnecessary things like noise reducing adapters which i don't need because it's PWM. I also fitted a fan filter to this so that then my components won't be choked by dust,
• New HDD Cage You may be able to see that at the bottom of the build. I just decided that I needed a proper cage in there as opposed to home brew elastic mounting.
• Installed OSX Yosemite
• The hole in the shelf is now full width, meaning that I have adequate airflow over my graphics card.

Future changes I will make:

• New SSD for Windows 10
• Firewire card - don't ask me why, but i need it.
• Proper IO shield mounting
• New processor cooler

Pics: