Power Mac G5 Ryzen 3900X Custom Loop Build

[awei]

I normally do not post things but I figure this was something worth putting out on the web.  This goes back to sometime around 2009, i acquired a G5 power mac and gutted it to mount a pc inside because I have always liked the G5/Mac Pro tower design. This was back when I was in college, so it was pretty barebone and rough how I did it.  I did not want to cut the outside so I mounted the board by removing and epoxying the original standoffs to fit an MATX board.  I ran all I/O through the PCI slots to avoid cutting the rear.  The PSU carrier I made out of sheet metal and bolting it to the bottom of the case using the existing screw holes for the orignal psu.  It was pretty shoddy but it worked.

 

 

I used this pc about a year before I needed to upgrade for school work and its been pretty much sitting untouched since, until about 3 months ago when I decided it may be worth revisiting and the timing fit in with the launch of the ryzen 3000 series pc.  Like my first attempt I wanted the exterior to be left untouched, and this time I wanted to try to use the existing I/O cutouts.  To make this happen I used my 3D printer to fabricate a motherboard tray and printed a housing that would fit usb, ethernet, and aux extensions/couplers.  Note the USB Type C are only 3.1 and not thunderbolt.  I couldn't find thunderbolt 3 or Gen 2 couplers.

 

 

Aside from the motherboard tray and I/O adapter, I also 3D printed a top 240mm radiator mount, front 280mm radiator mount, a psu carrier w/ a mount for a pump/reservoir combo, and a cable tray that ran from the psu carrier up to the top radiator.  The GPU was mounted using a pci-e riser card and screwed into the 3D printed tray. I also designed a top cover for the psu carrier, but I had to printed it using an online SLS printing service because it exceeded my printers limits. Below is a photo of the prototype fitting. 

 

And after spraying on some paint.

 

And some pics post build.  Originally I was planning to do hard tubing, but then I thought black rubber tubing with nickel fittings would look pretty nice.

 

Components:

CPU: Ryzen 3900X

Motherboard: Asus ROG Strix B450-I

GPU: MSI Vega 56 OC Air Boost

RAM: G.Skill Trident Z 2 x 16GB DDR4 3200

SSD: 2x 512 Samsung 970 Pro NVME

PSU: Corsair SF 750 SFX

Radiators: 1x 280mm EK SE, 1x 240mm EK SE

Reservoir: Singularity 150mm Protium

Pump: EK D5 Revo Pump

Waterblock: Heatkiller Series Waterblocks

PCI-E Riser: Phantek 220mm Premium Riser Card

Fans: 2x 140mm , 2x 120mm, 2x 92mm Noctua redux series PWM

Wifi Card: Dell DW1560 (needed for Mojave Wifi/Bluetooth)

 

This build is currently running Windows 10 & Mojave 10.14.5.  I managed to get wifi, bluetooth, onboard audio and onboard ethernet all working.  The only things that is not working is HDMI/Displayport passthrough (They were working, but the kext that got onboard audio working broke it.). 

 

 

For the Mojave installation, I followed AMD-OSX knowledge base guide.

 

For reference, below are the following kexts that I have in my clover folder.  Please note I am not an expert in hackintosh, this is fact the second hackintosh I have done, the first being back in 2007 on a toshiba laptop.

 

-AirportBrcmfixup

-AppleALC (This probably can be taken out as I couldn't get it to enable the onboard audio, VoodoHDA however worked)

-BrcmFirmwareData

-BrcmNonPatchRAM2

-BRCMPatchRAM2

-FakeSMC

-Lilu

-NullCPUPowerManagement

-SmallTree-Intel-211-AT-PCIe-GBE

-VoodoHDA

-WhateverGreen

 

Clover Fixes

-FixShutdown

-FixAirport

-FixHDA

 

Boot Arguments

- -v

- npci=0x2000

- darkwake=1

- -lilubetaall

 

Overall this project took 2 1/2 months to complete and although not perfect, overall I am happy with how it turned out. Their are some things i would do differently if I was to do this again. For example the cable cover I designed is to difficult to access because I was trying to keep it all one piece.  If I was to do this again I would segment it to be accessible.  At its present you cant remove it without completely removing all the pc components.  A friend of mine gave me a couple Mac Pro towers that they had been sitting at their office for years and slated to get dumped.  They do not work, but the exterior are in great condition so the next project would be to do a build in one of them, although for that one one I will likely do it as an air build.

[Fasauceome]

Putting that thicc ass cheese grater on a glass table, brave.

[peger]

14 minutes ago, awei said:

I have always liked the G5/Mac Pro tower design.

Not only you. This case looks amazing.

 

BTW cool Freedom in the backgraound

[jiyeon]

Awesome transformation! Loving how clean the loop goes in terms of radiator placement and tube flow.

[Jackgamer91]

Looks amazing, any hardware issues or bugs with the Hackintosh? 

[awei]

20 hours ago, Jackgamer91 said:

Looks amazing, any hardware issues or bugs with the Hackintosh? 

So far no major bugs or hardware issues, I've only encountered some minor ones like for a bit I suddenly wasn't able to right click to pull the drop down menu on the secondary monitors, and I couldn't get a couple third party apps to install or run properly but I am not sure if its because its a hackintosh or if its just Mojave. 

[Dr. KEK]

3 hours ago, awei said:

So far no major bugs or hardware issues, I've only encountered some minor ones like for a bit I suddenly wasn't able to right click to pull the drop down menu on the secondary monitors, and I couldn't get a couple third party apps to install or run properly but I am not sure if its because its a hackintosh or if its just Mojave. 

I have a old X58 motherboard with a Xeon, and a spare R9 270x. Could I make a good hackintosh from that?

[awei]

On 8/1/2019 at 10:29 PM, Dr. KEK said:

I have a old X58 motherboard with a Xeon, and a spare R9 270x. Could I make a good hackintosh from that? 

Not sure, you will have to do some web browsing to see if anyone has had luck with your particular Xeon series CPU working.  I believe your R9 290x should work natively, but again you will need to do some research.  Motherboards become a little tricky as getting networking & audio is dependent on the chipsets used on the motherboard.  You will need to find out what Ethernet & audio chipsets are on your board and see if its either natively supported or someone created a kext/patch for those chipsets.  Honestly I was lucky in that I picked a motherboard that I could get everything I wanted functioning.  I choose the Asus B450-I motherboard for this project because it was the only B450-I motherboard that I found that had 2x NVME.