X99 In a PowerMac G5

[Crunchy Dragon]

As many of you probably know by now, I've been slowly chipping away at my first real case mod. This project has been in the works for almost a year; I got the PowerMac G5 in April of 2018 and decided after spending hours troubleshooting it, that I wanted to modify it to fit ATX hardware in August of that year.

 

Thus the research phase began. If you go on Google and look up "powermac g5 mod", odds are I've read and watched every build log on the first page and a half of results. This phase continued for a few months while I planned how I wanted to do the mod. I also talked with people who have done mods like this before, aka @DrMacintosh.

 

The next step was deciding on parts to use. I decided on the X99 platform as the base for this mod. I had been spending some time with the lovely people in the X58 Xeon/i7 Discussion Thread, which fed me a lot of information about Intel's HEDT platform and how it had been aging. X58 is 10 years old at this point however, and I don't really want something that old in my new gaming PC and workstation. So I popped over to the used market and started looking at X99 prices, since I knew it was still modern and the CPUs perform pretty well by today's standards.

 

Over the summer and fall of 2018, I went about gutting the G5 case entirely. By this time I knew how I wanted to modify it and most of what I'd need to fit an ATX motherboard in. Apologies for lack of pictures, there were technical difficulties and I ended up losing all my documentation of most of the project . Hope y'all like to read, this isn't a very image-heavy thread.

 

A couple years ago, I got an Athlon MP system from a church friend who was looking to rid of some of their old computers. That's not as important to my story as the case that system came in is. The Athlon MPs were housed in a Lian Li PC-61:

Spoiler

This case is important to this project due to its motherboard tray and back panel. The PowerMac G5 is extremely proprietary, and won't house an ATX motherboard with all 7-8 expansion slots without some fairly extensive modding. The PC-61's motherboard tray and back panel slide out with the removal of 4 thumbscrews on the back, leaving you with something like this:

I knew when I saw it that this was how I could mount an ATX motherboard in the G5. So I took some power tools to the G5, cut out a big hole in the back(it's not pretty due to the tool I was using, but it's functional), cut down the back panel just a little bit, sanded everything down, JB welded it in place, and boom! ATX motherboard support!

 

However, my journey was nowhere near complete. I still had to figure out mounting for my power supply, hard drives and SSDs, and still source parts. Back to research, it was. Not much was helpful this time around, most people reused the G5's drive cage. Not an option for me, that cage was brutally ripped out of the case with most of everything else. Keep looking.

 

By the time I reached this point, through a chain of events, I had started and stopped working for @CUDAcores89. Long story short, I got his X99 rig as payment. Housed in a Fractal Design Define R5. With removable drive cages. The stars had aligned perfectly, or something.

 

I tore the hardware out of the case as soon as I got it home so I could do some test fits. I found places for the drive cage and the power supply, and started ordering various parts from Amazon and eventually Ebay to finish the project. By this point, the date was roughly 2 weeks ago if my memory serves my correctly. pakidges started arriving, and my hard drive cage was JB welded into the G5 case. Featured in this picture are also my Crucial MX500 SSD and WD Blue HDD.

Spoiler

Again, not exactly pretty, but functional. This was my first time using JB Weld, give me a break. Gosh.

 

"But Crunchy, what did you order from Ebay?" I'm glad you asked! My GeForce GTX 780 has served me well for sure over the year and a half I've had it, but I thought it was time to move on to something better. That something arrived today, taking the form of an EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 SC:

Spoiler

I know the lighting and quality is bad. Bleh.

 

This was to be my crown jewel of the build(in a manner of speaking). I started doing tests(had to figure out some technical difficulties, thakns to @Stefan Payne for attempting to help me through them). Everything fit together nicely, and cable management was surprisingly decent.

Spoiler

How is the power supply secured, you ask? Industrial strength Velcro. I didn't want to fabricate a mount for it. It's been holding up pretty well.

Is that Lego between the power supply and CPU heatsink? Yes.

Why the heck did you put Lego there? There's only half a centimeter of space between the GPU PCB and heatsink, the Lego is there to make sure the PCB stays off the heatsink so it doesn't kill itself.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS:

This was a fun project overall. I can't wait to do it again in 10 years with a Mac Pro 2019 and a G5.

 

FUTURE PLANS:

I'll want to wire up the front panel power button at the very least. If I could get some intake fans mounted as well, that would be nice too. I may cut a bigger hole in the back so I can mount a 120mm exhaust fan. Eventually, I'll have to find some way to upgrade storage.

 

SPECIFICATIONS:

Intel Core i7-5820K

16GB(4x4GB) mixed DDR4-2400 memory

Gigabyte GA-X99-SLI motherboard

Phanteks TC14PE CPU cooler

EVGA GeForce GTX 1070 SC

Corsair RM1000x

WD Blue 1TB 7200RPM HDD

Crucial MX500 250GB SSD

Modded PowerMac G5 case

 

Thus concludeth the case mod build log. If I dig up any other pictures that are noteworthy or act on any of my plans for the future of this system, I'll post them in this thread.

 

Thanks for reading this far, I hope you liked it.

~Crunchy

[MEC-777]

All things considered, you did a pretty nice job with the mod. Looks great!   

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, MEC-777 said:

All things considered, you did a pretty nice job with the mod. Looks great!   

You haven't seen the back of this case

It's not a very pretty cutting job at all, haha.

 

Thanks, I'm pretty happy with it. The thing is super quiet too, holy crap. It blows my mind how quiet this system is, never had one this silent. I like it a lot.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, CUDAcores89 said:

Now my next question: How can we monetize this?

Hide the build log behind a paywall, obviously

[DrMacintosh]

Wow, the drive cage and backplate welding are certainly a committed way to go about doing this. LOL. 

 

It's nice to see another G5 mod. 

 

Also I can see you have to correct front panel board to allow the power button, LED, and USB 2.0 ports to work too. Interesting that you have a metal housing for it though, mine does not because I bought the front panel board separately. 

Spoiler

I still think my less destructive and more vanilla look is superior  

 

(Ignore the GPU sag, I fixed it with LEGO)

 

[LukeSavenije]

that cooler... that pcb

 

this can't be true...

 

SC BLACK MASTERRACE

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

(Ignore the GPU sag, I fixed it with LEGO)

I guess we have another thing in common, then

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, LukeSavenije said:

that cooler... that pcb

 

this can't be true...

 

SC BLACK

 

Oh yes. SC Black.

[OJTheAviator]

1 minute ago, CUDAcores89 said:

Or build gaming PCs inside of mac cases. 

 

I am almost sure there is an audience for that. I am being serious.

How common are used mac cases? I'd imagine there wouldn't be a huge supply, but I'm not at all an expert in used PC parts.

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, OJTheAviator said:

How common are used mac cases? I'd imagine there wouldn't be a huge supply, but I'm not at all an expert in used PC parts.

Depends on where you look.

 

I don't believe they're common enough to make a whole business revolving completely around Powermac cases, though.

[LukeSavenije]

Just now, Crunchy Dragon said:

Oh yes. SC Black.

i added one word... you're part of the sc black masterrace now

[DrMacintosh]

Just now, Crunchy Dragon said:

I guess we have another thing in common, then

Cards are not designed to be inverted! 

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, DrMacintosh said:

Cards are not designed to be inverted! 

 

At least you have more clearance than I do

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, starcoaster said:

out of curiosity, why'd you put an ACX3 in there as opposed to an iCX card?

ACX3 was what I bought. It was kind of a steal for the price, I paid a little bit more than 200 USD for this card.

[XR6]

This is brilliant, I now want to try this (but in a PowerMac G4 instead).

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 minute ago, XR6 said:

This is brilliant, I now want to try this (but in a PowerMac G4 instead).

G4 would be cool. I like the sleek, modern look of the G5 a little bit more personally.

[XR6]

6 minutes ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

G4 would be cool. I like the sleek, modern look of the G5 a little bit more personally.

I also prefer the way the G5 looks, but I don't think many people have attempted to do a G4 build yet (the only one I know of was done by IMNC) so it's something I'd like to look into.

Unfortunately building in a G4 would be extremely difficult as it's not a very big case and almost everything is proprietary. A lot of modding would have to be done for it to work.

That aside, I really like what you've done with this G5 build and I think it looks great. Good job  

[Guest]

47 minutes ago, CUDAcores89 said:

Now my next question: How can we monetize this?

 

 

Apple would def. have the FBI at your doorstep lol....

[Stefan Payne]

Glad to see it working and putting a beautiful case to good use for the next 10 years or more.

 

Have fun with the System!