PowerMac Reloaded | A Gift for My Girlfriend

[Nicktrance]

Very interesting, looking forward to see more :)

[jiyang1018]

Looking forward to the finished product

Should not take a long time.

 

That is neat.

Thanks

 

Very interesting, looking forward to see more :)

About to come

[jiyang1018]

I/O fitting, standoff positioning, cooling, lock mechanism, PSU mounting

 

Back to the crime scene, motherboard is still sitting there instead of bolted down.


Retention plate interferes with one standoff, so I ground it down to almost flush. Some people just remove all the stock standoffs and patch the panel. My opinion is they are secured really well, may even be stronger than bare metal sheet. You remove it, you get a hole to fill. I just grind them shorter, so if one day I need to put a standoff there or close to the spot, all I need to do is to grind it flush and tap thread. Patching a whole is always hard than making one.


A lot clearance between CPU heatsink and memory modules. To make motherboard positioned correctly, I had to use a second graphic card, which is a Quadro 4000 if you wonder, to assist.


Tapping tools was borrowed; I do not own any. Here I need to mention, to newcomers not to experienced modders, that most cases use 6mm standoffs with M3-0.5 or 6/32 thread. Here Apple uses 10mm M3-0.5. Well, I couldn't find any 9.5mm ones which is closer to the stock ones. It is very hard to find anywhere. I found some on eBay seller [christanery], M3 thread 10mm standoff, 30pc/order, link. Shipped from my home country, China. I bought 30, and used 7. Motherboard has 8 screw holes, one uses a the standoff I mentioned earlier with minor modification, 7 I drilled and threaded. I still have 23 left, and I have no idea what type of standoffs are used in G5 or Mac pro cases, which I am planning to mod in the future. Another thing about the standoffs I bought is the thread part is longer than 6mm ones. I even fastened a nut on the one close to the center of the motherboard because I stripped it a little when I was threading. If you desperately need several 10mm standoffs and you do not want to buy a whole 30pc order, I can send some to you and I will pay for the shipping cost(should be just an envelope and a stamp). Again, I just want to help, and I do not sell standoffs.


When I borrow the tap tool, I forgot to take the wrench. Buying one and keeping it is not worthy it. Buying one and return it afterwards(which is perfectly normal) still bothers me. So I just used a regular wrench, press down firmly and turn slowly and evenly. It worked out very well, but I will definitely buy a whole tool kit if I decide to mod cases a lot.


Some places, e.g. close to PCI bracket, are not easy to turn that already-quite-small wrench, I just drill a hole and tread from the other side.


My calculation was right, 212 fits just so close.


Another angle to see the threshold. 5mm taller probably won't close, 3mm may get away. Wider may cause trouble as well.



It can't be any closer to the other side of the case, so I would say 160mm is the tallest one for CPU cooler in this [case].


Quicksilver was designed to take 3 sets of 3.25in HDD mounts at the bottom of the case, between the interior steps on front and end, it's roughly 285 to 290mm, just fit 2 140mm fans. I do not have a hole saw attachment for 140mm fan holes, so I used a jigsaw. While keep spraying WD-40, the bi-metal saw blade ran and wore just ok. One fan can take 3 screws, the 4th can't really be drilled without a drill press. Internal space is about 180mm wide, but you can't really fit 180mm fan in it because you need to remove 10mm standoff and motherboard and component thickness. Between 180mm and 140mm, there isn't anything to consider. 2x120mm fans will produce more noise while provide similar CFM.


The pulling side of this fan is just good looking. BTW, this is test fitting, lines drawn with a sharpie isn't round. Holes are more round after filing, which I was too busy and tired to take pictures.


Brand snow, new version, 140mm dust filter with magnetic soft frame. It is very fine mesh, and should stop most dust. Since they are intake fans, holes were cut round. I would have cut more of octagon shape if they were exhaust.


I tried to keep the plastic piece, but I have to compromise a bit.


Left part of the plastic piece cut off to fit PSU. To make the resistance equal on both side when open the door, I cut the fin-looking spring-kind-of mechanism from the right hand side as well, where the screw driver extension sits.


This is how I secure the PSU. Note that the angle aluminum piece is not full length of PSU on the side. You may think it is not really secured, please keep reading.


I hope you can see the holes on the vertical part of the angle aluminum. PSU is will be secured with screws through the angle aluminum to the stock mounting holes. It should hold it, but not when the door is closed which all weight of PUS is twisting away from the stock mounting holes. Please keep reading.


Cut open 2 grooves on either side of PSU where the aluminum pieces are significantly shorter than PSU, feed a velcro through, around the back and come out stick to itself. This way, when the door is closed, the Velcro strap is pulling all the weight against the door panel, and other aluminum pieces are hold the PSU from sliding any direction. I know this is an ugly solution, and I wish I had a metal bender to make a bracket. Maybe in the future. HDD is not underneath Velcro, but I ditched this plan already to no obstruct HDD cooling gaps.


How strong is this? I can lift the whole door buy just grabbing PSU. I believe if I want to , I can lift the whole machine just by grabbing PSU, but I did not do it. I mentioned that I wish this GTX650Ti could be a bit shorter, as you can see how close it is to the PSU fan grill. PSU cannot go outwards any more; it just scratches the plastic back housing of stock speaker. Talking about the stock speaker, I can use it only if I want to fit a small amplifier in the case, which can be does by USB powered amplifier module. I decided to keep the speaker installed just to avoid an empty hole at the front is it's not installed. Or, if the 6 pin connector is facing away from motherboard, it would be a lot easier. Maybe I can move the PSU a bit closer to the motherboard. Any way, 6pin cables connects tight, but no problem at all; I tested the gap beforehand.


A look at the through and through hole(s) for Velcro. And this is the final solution for mounting HDD and SSD. Drive screws were replaced with silver ones later.

 

[Jan.B]

Powermac case or Mac Pro case? They are slightly different. More to come soon.

forgot to mention that :p probarly the mac pro casing, since it's a style that appeals the most to me ^^

[jiyang1018]

Power plug, custom wiring, I/O shield

Where did I get this metal that looks just like the bare metal of the case? Remember I cut of 2x140 fan holes? Apple used very thick sheet to make this case, and very high quality. I broke 3 drill bits while working the whole case, not jut on this piece; I'm not that bad. What's if for?


Wala. Ordered a white power socket. Shipped from Hong Kong. I planned everything at the beginning and order a lot in advance. It took about 3 weeks to get here, which was great considering I paid only $2.80 for it with free shipping. link from Amazon.


Some fans come with vibration reduction solutions, my 80x25mm fan didn't. That does not mean I have to buy that separately. Just find some supplies laying around and make use of it. This whole box cost a few dollars from Harbor Freight BTW.


My cheap but efficient solution for reducing vibration. Black fan screws were replaced with silver ones later.


Most case modding parts are done. Testing if I broke any component.


That's how tight it is to fit that 6 pin.


Special wires that my parents brought to me from China at the end of 2012. It is Teflon coated, silver plated copper wire. Very good looking wires. I custom crimped all the pins and fit all connectors. Don't worry, I did not lose focus; it was on wires. Next pic is on SATA power connectors.


Did I mention drive screws were replaced with silver ones already?


SSD arrived. Probably one of the best performance SSD for consumer market. It came with a free copy of Far Cry 3, which I played once for about 2-3 hours and haven't got a chance or interest to play it ever since.

Well, this SSD went into my personal according-to-some-people-the-most-confusing rig, which can be found here:

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/12099-cooler-master-possessed-by-silverstone-cosmos-ii-and-tj-11-hybrid-mod/
And I took a Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB SSD from my rig and installed in this Hackintosh build.


This should answer your question of why I cut the whole I/O area off. I measured the I/O shield came with the motherboard with a caliper, 2D drawing in Solidworks because I don't know how to use AutoCAD, and laser cut a extruded acrylic or plexiglass from Lowe's. This material is so weak and so easy to break. I broke several times when I was cutting and fitting it to the case. Superglue came in as a handy solution at the end. I don't know why acetone won't melt this. If you use the same board, or another board with the same I/O shield(which is unlikely), I can share the drawing file with you. You can either find a place to laser cut, or print and cut by hands.


Whole edge cut, filed and sanded. Painted white from the back side, so white from the back through the transparent piece. This should fit Apple style nicely, just like 1st gen iPod. That was molded twice, transparent over solid white, I believe.


This is a lot thicker than stock I/O shield came with the motherboard, and you would have to reposition motherboard and a lot of other things if you want to fit it between motherboard and the case metal part. It is however very suitable to fit between plastic shell and bare metal case.


The outer plastic shell uses hook and loop kind-of fastening method. Inserting this piece will cause the hooks cannot reach the loops/grooves/ditches(I really don't know the correct and accurate word for it, but you should be able to understand me). To solve this problem, I use a cutting disk to widen those loops, the dark rectangular shape things. This methods does bump the back plastic shell outwards roughly 1 to 1.5mm. If I don't tell you, you may only think that is a manufacturing tolerance. To be honest, Apple's case does not show any type of tolerance in term of gaps. Close your eyes and move your hands all around the case, gaps feel the same, and you never encounter any sharp or un-perfectly-finished edges.

 

[jiyang1018]

PSU mod, custom front panel connector cable mod

 

Opened up the PSU, peel off the fan sticker. It was designed as 3pin fan with RPM reading, but in this PSU, on the other hand, is controlled by the PSU itself based on workload instead of temperature. That means, even if you put this PSU in a freezer, and you are drawing 450W, the fan will spin 100% regardless what temperature it is running under. This fan is a beast in terms of noise, it feels like a hovercraft(people usually use jet engine or helicopter to describe fan noise, I want to use something else).


The 80x15mm fan I bought, same procedure, peel off partially, take a picture so you won't forget how to connect it back. If you have extra fan head pins laying around, you can definitely do a new plug instead of soldering. My way just works better for me.


Wires soldered.


Fan replaced. You may have noticed that this fan is pushing air out of PUS as exhaust fan instead of intake fan on stock setup, and you are correct. Here is my thinking process:
Modular connectors facing upwards, power cord connector facing downwards, fan as intake, hot air exists from bottom of PSU right against bottom intake fan.
Modular connectors facing downwards, power cord connector facing upwards, fan as intake, hot air exists from top, fits air flow plan, but a power cord front top side of PSU needs to run all the way down to the bottom of the case and the to the back. Besides 24 pin, cpu 4pin is oriented at upper part of the case. Wiring could be a problem.
Modular connectors facing upwards, power cord connector facing downwards, fan as exhaust, creating vacuum inside PSU, air is forced to be sucked from bottom, where conveniently there is a 140mm fan with focused airflow blowing right at it.
Overall, this case has 2x140mm intake, which are filtered. 1x80mm fan exhaust. Very positive pressure configuration, dust shouldn't be a problem at all.


Front panel cables were cut off from a old Rosewill case, and soldered to the Apple stock flat cable. Rosewill cables are not all black so I had to sleeve it. But one end is flat 10-wire ribbon cable, the other end is 3x2pin connectors. It is ugly after all.


Apple connector


Rosewill connector


At the end, there is nothing wrong with Rosewill. This case was bought almost 5 years ago, and just sitting there. A lot of other brands are still using not all black cables nowadays anyways. I am not here picking on Rosewill, it could've been from any brand.

 

[ALXAndy]

Nice project. I did a Mac Hack back in 2004 (was one of the first to do it) so I know just how hard this is to do :)

 

You can see mine here, based on a reactor.

 

http://shiny.testbox.net/mac/

 

Good luck with this I will be watching with a keen eye :)

[TicTac]

looking awesome i love it so far!

[reignbringer10]

Really cool build log, I also quite enjoyed the aesthetics of the old Apple desktop cases. Looking forward to seeing more of this build log.

[jiyang1018]

Nice project. I did a Mac Hack back in 2004 (was one of the first to do it) so I know just how hard this is to do :)

 

You can see mine here, based on a reactor.

 

http://shiny.testbox.net/mac/

 

Good luck with this I will be watching with a keen eye :)

Thanks for sharing this with me.

 

looking awesome i love it so far!

Thanks for the love.

 

Really cool build log, I also quite enjoyed the aesthetics of the old Apple desktop cases. Looking forward to seeing more of this build log.

Old Apple case may not be the best looking one, but it is more of the feeling of first love. I want to see the new Mac pro that should come out in June.

 

forgot to mention that :P probarly the mac pro casing, since it's a style that appeals the most to me ^^

That shouldn't be a very difficult thing. Mac pro internally is a modern PC with reversed motherboard tray. Drop a word when you start.

[jiyang1018]

Front panel switch mod is simple. I follow this:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/powermac-g4/50729-g4-quicksilver-switch.html

What works: power and reset button, one LED can be power or HDD indicator. The chime sound when turning a Mac on can be done by planting a recorder powered by USB. I did not feel like doing it. The breathing light can be done, but I can't remember where I found it last time, besides I don't have a lot of knowledge of electrical stuff.


Remember to remove that micro controller which is missing in my pictures.


The stock front panel connector is punch-through same idea as SATA, and the wire gauge is the as other brand front panel cables.


My rig which is in a Cooler Master Cosmos II case, and the fan control board was updated. Cooler Master was replacing these boards for Cosmos II owners. I requested one, but it was DOA. They sent me another one right after I contacted them. That means, I have a bunch of black flat cables to use. Cosmos II fan control board needs a Molex, so it has no power LED. Measure the length and cut the cable and there is no extra power LED connector for the OCD part of my to worry about.


Find out what's what and punch them through, trim excess, close the cap.


Connected


New parts are still coming.


It's listed as silver, but actually zinc color comparing to my silver plated wires.


Not too far away from my silver plated wires. Still looking very good.


Each cable has one right angle connector, which is on motherboard side, and the cable can run under the graphic card. I didn't make any calculation this time but these short cables happened to be long enough(I did measure to make sure they are long enough, but I did not anticipate this specific length). The Velcro loop you see, through it is a Molex going to the other side to power fans.


Upper left corner of 140mm fans, there is a white Molex. It is a Molex to 3x3pin fan splitter. I rewired it to provide constant 7v all 3 fans(2x140mm+1x80mm). PSU power cord runs from bottom of the PSU to the bottom of the case(with some intentionally twisted loops so it will stay away from other parts when the door is closed) along the edge all the way to the back where stock PSU would sit and connected to a power cord socket.


PCI expansion add 2x USB 3.0 ports, 4x USB 2.0 ports(replacing old 2x USB 2.0 ports). Will she use all these USB ports? Not likely, but some ports are quite close to each other. Sometimes, you have enough ports to use, but not enough space around them. With 6 extra USB ports, space is the whole back.


Unplug only keyboard and mouse, side door can be opened.


These USB internal header cables are such a failure to this build. They are too long and there is no way to hide them.


Hardware phase is pretty much done. Hackintosh should start by now.
Disable VT-D in BIOS. Set chipset SATA to ACHI. I started with 10.8.2, as many people already know. GTX650Ti and GTX660 are not supported in this version. I added driver with a method I found from tonymacx86 forum to support it after many hours wasted trying.
Another strange part or funny part is I could get it to install with GTX650Ti, but after installation, system restarts and screen never turned on after bootloader. I tried Quadro 4000, same thing. Used -x, got some error code and searched in google. Some pelple suggest switch to a different output port from graphic card. I plugged a displyport cable to Quadro 4000, everything worked great. I realized I was using DVI-I all the time. Mac OS may just only out put digital signal. Not many days later, 10.8.3 came out. It was almost a brainless installation process for my build.

[jiyang1018]

One more update to come.

[RectangularBox]

I keep coming back to this build, and I am always impressed good job can't wait to see the finished product! 

 

Edit: wow i completely missed a page sorry about that.

[MzCatieB]

all this amazing work for some1 who is just gonna use it for facebook and angry birds :|

[jiyang1018]

I keep coming back to this build, and I am always impressed good job can't wait to see the finished product! 

 

Edit: wow i completely missed a page sorry about that.

no worries, only 2 pages.

 

all this amazing work for some1 who is just gonna use it for facebook and angry birds :|

try pinterest and candy crush.

Actually, she uses Photoshop and Illustrator sometimes.

[jiyang1018]

Angled view


Side. It is reflection of TV screen, not scratch.


I did not unplug anything to make photo look clean and neat. From top to bottom, left to right, and u for USB:
keyboard(white u), mouse(black, u), Bluetooth adapter extension cable(black, u), Wacom tablet(silver, u), Ethernet cable(gray, almost white), speaker plug(green connector, black cable), Apple Cinema Display DVI-I(white), monitor built-in hub(white, u)
and case main power cord(white) in the next pic


My girlfriend said this cable management tube looks like off a washing machine because it's white. I said I would get her a black one instead. She then said that would be off a vacuum machine. I got no other words.


Wacom tablet I bought in college in 2002, with the money I made from part time design jobs. It cost quite a lot of money back then, about the same amount as my whole month expense.
Speakers are from Lenovo for about $10 on sale. Very similar to Apple speaker design, but in red, USB powered, analog signal. USB plugged to monitor USB hub. I tried plugging it to back of the case, but picked up a lot of interference.
Mouse pad is my old Steelseries, same as the one I use now, biggest thick cloth pad. I washed it one day and couldn't find it any more. I thought someone must have thrown it away as trash, so I ordered another one from Amazon. The day that they new one arrived, I found the old one. My girlfriend said she would keep the old one.


Boot Camp widescreen version boot loader theme. http://forum.voodoop...pic,2882.0.html
Sample shows only Windows 7, but mine shows system reserved which is the drive to boot into Windows 7. Choose Windows 7 there is no booting.

[jiyang1018]

Some screenshots  


All information displayed corrected by manually editing some system profiles.





Anyone knows how to change the display name of graphic card in this window?







 

[juanton]

It looks nice, but there's no window. Have you considered adding one?

There's really no way to add a window without making it look a bit awkward. The motherboard is in an unorthodox position by today's standards, so if he/she wanted to, it would also be really hard to do because the entire case looks to be made out of plastic and acrylic already.

[jiyang1018]

There's really no way to add a window without making it look a bit awkward. The motherboard is in an unorthodox position by today's standards, so if he/she wanted to, it would also be really hard to do because the entire case looks to be made out of plastic and acrylic already.

I agree.

Motherboard is mounted on right side panel. Left side panel is holding the whole case together and rigid. However, it is certainly possible to open a window on the left side panel but it wont affect the case's structure significantly. As you can see I already removed a panel below stock PSU mounting position, which had some minor negative impact already. The case has metal structure with plastic shells, mostly acrylic.

One reason to even spend a little more than $50 on this case over a modern one is my love and passion to its design, and that is the reason I did not do anything to the exterior.