Watercooled RYZEN Hackintosh in a Powermac G5 Case

[jgperson]

Here is my build in its current form. You can go back and view my posts for previous iterations of this build but this is where it has gotten to over the last few months since I built it. I absolutely love this project as it has grown!

 

First thing to know is that two of these systems were built at the same time. One for my buddy to use for his YouTube channel This one is not mine, it is the twin!!!!

 

I picked up two PowerMac G5s (both working mind you) in case I messed anything up on the first one. I did not so now I still have a working PowerMac G5. Lol.

 

Starting off we have disassembly. Note that I don't have a lot of pictures of this progress as I have impulse control issues and wanted it apart ASAP. lol. This is a challenging computer to take apart but well worth doing as this case is amazing! The case I had was pretty beat up with scratches and stuff so I had to do a lot of sanding to get them out. 

 

 

 

After disassembly, I took to a small test fit by placing an old mother board in the case to figure out where to cut out for IO in the rear of the case. A quick sharpie line and some dremel time were in order after that.

 

 

 

[jgperson]

Following the IO I cut out the side panel for my piece of acrylic. Using the existing frame that holds on the door of the case, I marked 1/2" in from the inside edge of it and drilled holes in all the corners so they would be rounded. (remember that at this point you want to drill your holes with a 1/2" drill bit and make it so the outside of the bit matches up with your lines.) Then cut the acrylic sheet to fit the inside of the frame (not your cutout).

 

From there you need to use a jigsaw to cut along your lines and connect your 4 holes that you drilled.

 

 

Then on to paint. I sanded all the pieces with an orbital sander then used a can of primer and did 3 coats of primer on them all. Followed up with a few coats of black. I added a coat of clear to just try to keep it a little more durable but I should have just done more coats of black. To finish off the case, run some edge moulding around the side panel cut out and attach your acrylic sheet to the side panel with double sided tape. Re install your side panel frame and you are good to go!

 

 

 

 

 

 

To mount the motherboard, I used the existing standoffs from the PowerMac G5 case (be careful here as there are two different heights of standoffs). Add in some JB weld on the base of them and a small coat around the outside of them it was ready to go. I used a GPU to line up where it goes in the case.

 

[jgperson]

Now for the final assembly. I test fit a bunch of different hardware placements but what I ended up settling on was the PSU at the bottom mounted with double sided foam tape.  All of the cables were then run up the front side of the case along the motherboard mounting tray and grouped together using zip ties. It is also important to know at this point I bought a cable from Black CH mods to use the existing IO on the front of the case with an ATX motherboard. Radiator at the front with pump/res combo unit mounted to it using the EK uni bracket. I secured the radiator to the front with car grade double sided emblem tape. If you have ever used this stuff you know it is not going anywhere. I reused the existing hard drive cage from the case and secured it to the top also using emblem tape.

 

 

One of the most important steps in this process is the running of tubes (since it is watercooled and all). There are only 4 tubes in this build thanks to the plethora of fittings I have in the case. I don't know if I listed them all but any time you do a hardline watercooled build it is important to have a handful of rotary 90s and dual rotary 90s on hand. I tried to do it without them in my last version of this build using the NZXT H440 and couldn't get my tubing runs to look like I wanted.

 

 

Fill up the system, leak check, then hook up the power and you are good to go. I added in a RGB light strip and hooked it up to the ASUS aura sync header for a little bit more color. This process was a long time coming and took almost a month from idea phase to final assembly.

 

 

 

 

I spent a long time without a working home PC but man was it worth it! Thanks for reading.

[Tech_Dreamer]

Builds logs like this reminds me of the Zerg Protos Hybrid story line from Starcraft2.

[jgperson]

2 hours ago, Tech_Dreamer said:

Builds logs like this reminds me of the Zerg Protos Hybrid story line from Starcraft2.

I appreciate the comment but I'm sorry to say that your reference is lost on me. ?

[Tech_Dreamer]

49 minutes ago, jgperson said:

I appreciate the comment but I'm sorry to say that your reference is lost on me. ?

it's as if two things that aren't supposed to be together and is from different origins are forced are made to be that way.

[jgperson]

12 hours ago, Tech_Dreamer said:

Builds logs like this reminds me of the Zerg Protos Hybrid story line from Starcraft2.

Ahh thanks for the explanation. ?

[Zando_]

That is what the new Mac Pro needs to look like. 

[BuckGup]

8 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

That is what the new Mac Pro needs to look like. 

Knowing apple and how they are selling it as modular its going to be like this

You then just buy a new rendering modular or storage modular.

[Zando_]

5 minutes ago, BuckGup said:

Knowing apple and how they are selling it as modular its going to be like this

You then just buy a new rendering modular or storage modular.

 But I want a beautiful aluminium dark space grey/black case that looks super sleek and Appley. 

[jgperson]

1 hour ago, Zando Bob said:

That is what the new Mac Pro needs to look like. 

I agree! But if we're being honest it still wont be as upgradeable as this machine! This is how you should build your own Mac Pro!

[Zando_]

Just now, jgperson said:

I agree! But if we're being honest it still wont be as upgradeable as this machine! This is how you should build your own Mac Pro!

Yeah. I have an old PowerMac G5 as well (it's working though, so I don't want to gut it unless the parts go to a good home), and one of my long-term-eventually-gonna-do-it dreams is to make an awesome hackintosh inside it, since it's a beautiful case. 

[jgperson]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

Yeah. I have an old PowerMac G5 as well (it's working though, so I don't want to gut it unless the parts go to a good home), and one of my long-term-eventually-gonna-do-it dreams is to make an awesome hackintosh inside it, since it's a beautiful case. 

I bought two of them that were working for $100. Have a box full of the parts from the one I gutted and the other is sitting in the closet in my home office. Maybe another future project one day. IMO I would go with powdercoating and real glass as my buddy did in the youtube video if I were to do it again. 

[Zando_]

Just now, jgperson said:

I bought two of them that were working for $100. Have a box full of the parts from the one I gutted and the other is sitting in the closet in my home office. Maybe another future project one day. IMO I would go with powdercoating and real glass as my buddy did in the youtube video if I were to do it again. 

Noice! My only problem is that I already have a beautiful case (the Enthoo Evolve, which looks really similar), so there's no reason to replace it. But maybe when I get my Star Wars costume done I'll have enough experience painting and gluing stuff to take on a project like this. Maybe I can save up and get a good Ryzen PC to put in my Evolv, and then move my current rig (specs in sig) into the PowerMac case, and upgrade to an i7 and get a 980 for it (the 980 Ti would go in my gaming PC)... but monies. Well, the case won't rot sitting there, so its always ready for me to pick up my tools and get to work!

[jgperson]

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

Noice! My only problem is that I already have a beautiful case (the Enthoo Evolve, which looks really similar), so there's no reason to replace it. But maybe when I get my Star Wars costume done I'll have enough experience painting and gluing stuff to take on a project like this. Maybe I can save up and get a good Ryzen PC to put in my Evolv, and then move my current rig (specs in sig) into the PowerMac case, and upgrade to an i7 and get a 980 for it (the 980 Ti would go in my gaming PC)... but monies. Well, the case won't rot sitting there, so its always ready for me to pick up my tools and get to work!

Yeah I considered the Enthoo Evolve when I built the system before I had it in this case. I decided on the H440 instead and as it turned out I wasn't happy with how it came out. This one is a different story! I would go with the Ryzen system as the hackintosh and run two SSDs for boot drives into either windows or mac. I love the way This works with both.

[Zando_]

Just now, jgperson said:

Yeah I considered the Enthoo Evolve when I built the system before I had it in this case. I decided on the H440 instead and as it turned out I wasn't happy with how it came out. This one is a different story! I would go with the Ryzen system as the hackintosh and run two SSDs for boot drives into either windows or mac. I love the way This works with both.

Or run both computers as hackintoshes just for fun....

[jgperson]

Just now, Zando Bob said:

Or run both computers as hackintoshes just for fun....

Yes to this!

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, jgperson said:

Yes to this!

Tinkerers till we die! I love tinkering with stuff... I try and get mods for all my games, I love alternative OS'es (I used to test out all sorts of Linux distress for kicks and giggles) as well. Though Battlefront has been eating my computer time lately. And my tinkering time this weekend was all eaten up by lazing around and painting this:

[jgperson]

2 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

Tinkerers till we die! I love tinkering with stuff... I try and get mods for all my games, I love alternative OS'es (I used to test out all sorts of Linux distress for kicks and giggles) as well. Though Battlefront has been eating my computer time lately. And my tinkering time this weekend was all eaten up by lazing around and painting this:

Nice work on the paint! I should have had you paint my case because I did a terrible job. Lol. Yeah it took me over a month and a half to get my system up and running from the day when I had all the parts because I am so busy. Training for an Ironman this year so spending a lot of time "outside" (whatever that is). Haha. 

[Zando_]

Just now, jgperson said:

Nice work on the paint! I should have had you paint my case because I did a terrible job. Lol. Yeah it took me over a month and a half to get my system up and running from the day when I had all the parts because I am so busy. Training for an Ironman this year so spending a lot of time "outside" (whatever that is). Haha. 

LOL. The other side has some damage from the humidity causing the paint to stay stick and it sticking to the cardboard backdrop. But a bunch of redcoats and sanding and Bondo has fixed most of it. Here's what my warzone looked like this weekend: 

[jgperson]

 

2 minutes ago, Zando Bob said:

LOL. The other side has some damage from the humidity causing the paint to stay stick and it sticking to the cardboard backdrop. But a bunch of redcoats and sanding and Bondo has fixed most of it. Here's what my warzone looked like this weekend: 

Yeah I did some sanding and primer work but just no luck. I permanently stained the floor in my garage. Lol 

[Zando_]

1 minute ago, jgperson said:

 

Yeah I did some sanding and primer work but just no luck. I permanently stained the floor in my garage. Lol 

 

That's what garages are for! I can't work in the garage at my house, since a fridge, freezer, and my dad's car and tools are in there, thus why I paint outside. The wind can be a pain though, but not as bad as the fumes if I did it in a garage. And no matter how tricky it is, it always feels more awesome with every coat!

[jgperson]

1 minute ago, Zando Bob said:

That's what garages are for! I can't work in the garage at my house, since a fridge, freezer, and my dad's car and tools are in there, thus why I paint outside. The wind can be a pain though, but not as bad as the fumes if I did it in a garage. And no matter how tricky it is, it always feels more awesome with every coat!

Perks of owning your own house, Tell your wife to park outside for a week because you have stuff to paint! Lol Yeah I struggle with patience issues so I probably didn't put enough coats on it. 

 

[Zando_]

9 minutes ago, jgperson said:

Perks of owning your own house, Tell your wife to park outside for a week because you have stuff to paint! Lol Yeah I struggle with patience issues so I probably didn't put enough coats on it. 

 

Yeah. My main problem is putting too thick of a coat on and the humidity making it take forever to dry. the advantage of spray pain is that it's cheap and you can just sand it down till it's smooth and do another couple coats. 

[jgperson]

Yeah I live in Arizona so humidity isn't really a big deal here. Except for the week that I was painting was during monsoon season so we were in our time of 70%+ RH...