Power Mac G4 Mod Planning

[Landons]

Budget (including currency): $1,000 ish

Country: USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Assassin's Creed Valhalla, Minecraft RTX (one day), many emulated titles, Solidworks, Blender, general college use.

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc):

 

I have bought a bunch of the parts this far. I am waiting until January to start modifying an old Mac G4 case I bought for $30 to fit a 240 Cooler master AIO in the top of the case and modify the door to take a MATX board.

 

I have thus far:

I7-9700K for $200 on a microcenter special

Asrock B365M Pro 4 MATX (will be replaced down the road so the I7 can overclock but it was $40 and only MATX microcenter had for the LGA 1151 socket)

Coolermaster Master Liquid Pro 240 (Will be top mounted, hoping the tubes are long enough to allow the door on the G4 case to open)

Sapphire HD 7950 graphics card. (Got it for free. A 2012 Q1 release card. Taking bets if the integrated I7 graphics will be faster than this card or not.)

EVGA 600 W Bronze+ Power Supply

Acer 1080p 144HZ 1ms response time monitor

Last but not least, I have the Power Mac G4 which will be getting modified and painted black and dark grey.

Here is the pc part picker for all the parts.

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/1993landon/saved/#view=k4ZBjX

 

I still need ram, storage, fans, and a WiFi adapter. Any suggestions on that front would be appreciated.

 

I would really be thrilled to be able to play at 144hz with an upgraded graphics card. Sadly with the 3000 series launch I have yet to get a hold of a 3060ti.

I am upgrading from a Dell gaming laptop with an I7-7xxxH processor and a 1060 max Q.

 

Let me know what you think. Attached are some photos of the case taken apart for sanding and paint prep.

 

[WhitetailAni]

Is it a PCI or AGP motherboard?

[Landons]

PCI express 3.0 motherboard. The old graphics card is also PCI 3 0.

[WhitetailAni]

PCIe didn't exist then... can you post a picture?

[Landons]

I don't have any of the hardware accessable currently. That is all in my dorm room in another state. The graphics card I know is a PCIe as it came out of a DDr3 era Intel machine with only PCIe.

 

The motherboard is a new motherboard from micro center and I will be retrofitting the 20 year old Mac G4 Case to take MATX. The only thing staying in the Mac Case is the shell, side panels, and power button circuitry

[WhitetailAni]

No, the original hardware of the machine.

[Landons]

Ah, Sorry about that. The original hardware is definitely AGP graphics. All the OG components are sitting in a box my dorm room as well.

[WhitetailAni]

Would you be willing to send the hardware (minus the case) to me? I have one as well but it has a motherboard fault. I am willing to pay shipping.

[Landons]

For sure. Absolutely no idea if any of the hardware works. I can't ship till January 20th at earliest, but if you want it for shipping plus lunch sure. I edited last post to show the og hardware.

[WhitetailAni]

Thank you so much!

[Landons]

Got around to painting the Apple logo and some of the other panels a dark grey. I really like the paint color. Waiting on better weather here and more parts so I can finish modifying the rear panel and the top panel before paint. The side panels will be getting painted black except for the Apple logo. The front panel will be the grey shown with black accents.

[Landons]

I realized I never ended up posting the end results of my project here... Well let me photo dump the progress I made. Finished building this in 2021. I;; write a description once I upload all the pics.

[Landons]

[Landons]

[Landons]

[Landons]

[Landons]

So I worked to modify this case to just do something besides school. I had very limited tooling and budget, being a college student. I laid everything out and measured everything. It would all fit, but just barely. I cut the old CD drive bay down so I could fit the new motherboard, cpu and have space for a GPU. In the cd drive slot I installed a port hub that had tons of features, nicely hidden byt the spring loaded door.

I cut the holes in the case with a hole saw. If I were to do it again, I would have either fixtured the case on a manual mill and cut the hole using an end mill or used an under size hole saw and filed to dimension. The holes I cut were slightly off-center to each other and too large. I made the rear cut-out by using a hand saw and drilled holes in the corners. I knew nothing about sheet metal work at this point, so it looks horrible. I should have used the Mac G4 kit from Laser Hive (https://thelaserhive.com/product-category/powermac-g4-conversion-kits/), but I wanted the reward of doing everything myself.  I had to make modifications to the sliding door, to allow for new motherboard mounting points and had to cut the heatsink down that was mounted there. This looked pretty ok when done. Standoffs were directly threaded into the door, no issues there.

Painting went ok, I wish I had bought gloss paint, but that's just my taste. The side panel had dirt blown on it because I painted it outside. Should have figured out a way to paint it in a more protected area. Loved the paint scheme though.

When it came to assembling everything went together fine. Pardon the massive mess of wires. I never dounf a good way to cable manage with the door. I wired the old power button/reset to the new motherboard using jumpers. I never installed a GPU while I owned this case, because of the absurd prices. It would have fit a single fan dual slot card. Thermals were as good as could be expected with the low profile cooler. Never overclocked due to motherboard not supporting it. It was a fun case to build, and definitely a learning experience, my first time building a PC, modifying a case, and doing any kind of sheet metal work. If I redid this today, I could have done a much better job, but I was happy with it. It got all sorts of cool reactions when people walked in. 

I ended up trading the case+$200 for a 2080ti in 2022 and gave the components to my brother so he could have a computer. Guy who has it now is a massive oldschool apple geek.