Yet another Power Mac G5 to ATX conversion

Hi Everyone

Shortly my parents are moving to Melbourne and given my assumptions about Melbourne I have decided to convert an old Power Mac G5 to an ATX case . Below are my assumptions that lead to this Mod.

Melbourne = Hipster Land
Hipsters like Macs
Having a Mac will make you fit in in Melbourne
My parents are too IT inept to change from PC to Mac.

I managed to score this case for free from Work however it is a bit beat up so it will never look perfect, Free is free so I cant complain. I should ahve taken more Photos before i started to Mod the case but its too late now.

The G5 before I started. Full of Old Maccy Badness.



The case has been cleansed of the Old Maccy Badness. It took quiet a while to undo all of the torx screws holding the hardware in and figuring out how to remove the top shelf took a while (about 8 months cos I Rage quit for a while and then about 3 weeks before my parents were due to leave I spent 5 minutes on Google and figured it out LOL). i also have to literally rip the Heat sink out because i did not have a really really long torx screw driver that was really thing (2 screw under the HS needed a 20cm long Torx Screw driver that is less than 5mm wide for the full length).





Unlike most G5 conversions I don't really want to use the built in latch for holding on the side panel so I have come up with an alternative solution using magnets (PS yes I
use magnets on all of the Mods cos i'm crazy like that). Leaving the latch in place means that you have to cut around it when installing the ATX backplane which means more work and the Job looks less seamless, So off to my Magnet stash I go to find some suitable for this Job.

These magnets are from the screen of Old White Macbooks. Yes many Macs died in the making of this case (About 10 Macbooks I believe)


Luckily the cross beam and metal frame on the side panel are steel so installing and holding the Panel in place was very easy. The magnets fit perfectly in the grove behind the crossbeam where the old latching mechanism went and old in place without any glue (they are bastards to get back out)

 

It's HIPSTERS.

Look forward to the mod btw, and welcome to HIPSTER State.

Cheers,
Beano

 

Spelling fail.

PS, I'm not moving just them .

 

Haha, all good, my dry Friday humour....

Looking forward to this, started something similar ages ago, now it's sitting in a shelf in the garage

Cheers,
Beano

 

Same thing happened to me , it has been sitting blocking a door of my wardrobe for several months now, The dead line forced to to start working on it again.

I have been doing a tonne of work on it today and it almost complete. I'll post detail on Monday

 

Now that the case has been stripped it time to work on some of those connectors.

The most important being a way to get power into the case. A trip to Jaycar got me a IEC C13 connector and an old power cable provide the C14 half of the equation. A bit of soldering and hot glue and Bam we are done.



This is the Front IO board that comes with the case. Its a bit large and soldering onto this board directly is bit of a pain so i ahve replaced The 3.5mm jack with a HDD LED, and removed most of the board. The only thing left to do is the power button .



Desoldered all of the connectors and soldered a USB head from and old case directly onto the USB plug.



Then its just a matter of gluing everything back into the metal metal casing (spacing was achieved with an old plastic card. )

 

The next thing is to get the ATX board in there.

Tapped up and marked for cutting.



After a bit of cutting with my jig saw.



Cut a hole for the power connector.



Test Fitting with the ATX back panel.




I glued a few pieces of MDF to the side panel for motherboard tray to rest on.




A few pop rivets and glue (glued the Tray to the MDF)and its in .

 

Now to fit the PSU and HDDs into the case.

JB Weld to the rescue (well a rip off) from Supercheap.

To handle the HDDs I will be using a few bits of Alu L bar.



Drill some holes for the SSD and HDD to screw into.



Then Expoxy them to the case.



I glue them to he case with the HDDs in place to make sure the spacing is correct. I did manage to snap a screw off in one of the SSDs holes (stupid Alu screws are very easy to break if you cross thread them)



Then onto the PSU bracket. Unlike most G5 conversions I don't really want to use the top shelf and getting it out is a pain with the mobo installed (that and I might have slightly murdered the top shelf while I was in a rage trying to get it out before I rage quite)

More Alu to the rescue

4X 170X3X20mm and 4X 87X10X20mm (stupid 20mm thick stuff is a pain to cut with my crappy rig saw) .



I drilled a few screw holes in he 170mm bars and Tapped both end of the 87mm bars. the countersunk bars are going to connect to the case so they need to be flush.



Screw it altogether and do a test fitting.



I had allowed 2mm of play with the vertical bars just in case, turns out that with a bit of filing ect I get about 1mm of extra space so i just some rubber to fill the gap and damped some vibrations (I was hoping for Rubber on both ends but the fit was too tight)



Time to glue it in place.



With lower bars into place (case is upside down)



The Thumb screw do hang over the Mobo tray a bit however thats not an issue as my parent PC uses and mATX board. (the ATX tray I purchased was the cheapest i could find that would fit. mATX trays are harder to find.)



And with the PSU installed




All I need to do now is cut the Top shelf a bit and wire the power button up and we are good to go.

 

I have now wired up the Power Button, System LED and HDD LED.

 

Always liked the way them cases look, yours is looking good

 

looking good....this thread has got me off my butt to do mine thats been sitting here for over 2 years, Yours makes mine look so ghetto and Im nearly finished

 

I have a G5 in the shed I've planned to do a mod with. This is looking good so far, well done!

 

Well all done now and everything seems to work . I did the final cutting with an angle grinder + file as the cut will pretty much never be seen . Not perfectly straight but that is of little concern .





PS, I managed to get the PC into the Case last night as well (upgraded my cable hider skill to lvl4 at least) but my Phone decided it did not want to take good photos last night (flash was to flashy and the room was too dark otherwise) .

PPS, the power supply used was not cable sleeved so it can only look so "Pro" irrelative of my cable hider skills .

 

So my phone and camera decided to take really bad photos straight after I put the case together and now the PC is being used (did not have enough time to take photos in a well lit environment) so the crappy ones will ahve to do.

Old case new. (Why does Photo Bucket always seem to rotate my photos, Stop it .


Inside. Soo Empty.


The back , only good shot of the bunch.


The specs of the machine are OK, I5 750, 4GB @1600Mhz and a 5770.

 

Nice mod, I always wanted to do a G5. Lovely looking case just a shame what's normally inside them.

 

Finally, someone has used a Mac for something useful! HAHA, j/k, a very nice mod indeed, I've got a dead Intel PowerMac sitting next to me right now, perhaps I could give it a similar treatment.

 

If you have a look on TonyMac there are a lot of very easy options for conversion. Most just leave the top shelf in and use the standard front panel (or you can buy a pre made one) which cuts the wok in half.

Finding the Mobo tray will be the hardest part as he one I used is EOL.

 

I should really finish mine...

 

ice work!
I picked one up for free last year, but haven't used it as of yet..

 

I just used the G5 standoff's re tapped for pc m/board screws, then glued them on