Building up an PowerMac G5 on ATX with Water

Hi,

i really like the power mac g5 Tower. So i plan like many other people before to convert the tower to ATX and build in my pc parts. At the end i like to build a OSX partition (hackintosh) and win.
Started with buying a Power mac G5 Case in superb condition. they are really cheap...
Now im ordered this nice convert kit from a guy in the UK: http://www.thelaserhive.com/product-category/g5conv/ (i choose the ATX high 120 kit)
I also order the front device, and the front Fan Panel for 2x140 fan setup. And of corse the back mesh fan grill 120...

I use my external water cooling unit to cool the CPU/GPU.
Also i will switch to a Msata ssd for system and for data a 6TB WD Red. So i only need one Slot for HDD.
The biggest problem i see on this is the place for the PSU. I need 800W+ because GPU (R9 295X2). At the mom i use for this a enermax PSU. But this is huge and the G5 PSU is very small at the bottom.
First idea was a Shuttle PSU, but they limited to 500W what i see.

Any sugestion for a psu i can use ? I not really like to rebuild a psu or something like that..


regards
Chris

 

I've been wanting to do a build like this for awhile. Personally I've never seen the inside of a G5 tower, so I'm of no help to you. Good luck with the build, maybe make a thread of out of it. I enjoying your builds, you put the extra details in.

 

I've seen people take apart an ATX PSU and fit it inside of the G5 PSU before, of course after removing the insides of the G5 PSU.

I'm pretty sure the ATX high kit gives you enough room at the bottom of the case to fit a full size ATX supply, at the cost of not being able to use the original HDD bay or optical drive positions. So you'll have to move the HDD caddy somewhere, maybe where the optical drive once was? If there's room?

As for the ATX supply since you have the room at the bottom you could position it so you could directly plug a power cable into it from outside the case or use some extender from the outside to the PSU. I'd recommend doing this rather than figuring out an external power supply, much easier and probably cheaper.

As far as actually mounting the PSU inside the case you could figure out a way to give it place to screw in to but I honestly wouldn't bother. I've used the adhesive from command hooks to hold PSU's in place vertically on the outside of a case before so they would definitely work inside of a case.

Besides that you'll need to figure out how to plug the power button and front panel ports into your motherboard. If they aren't directly compatible I imagine just a little bit of soldering and some extra wires would sort that out fairly quickly.

Good luck with your conversion!

 

I finished my powermac G5 Casemod:


Components:

MSI X99S XPOWERAC
i7 5820 @ 4,2Ghz Phobya UC-1 Extreme
16GB G-skill DDR-4 3000 Ripjaws4
Sapphire Radeon R9 295X2 @ Alphacool
Samsung M.2 SM591 SSD 512gb
WD RED 6 TB Storage HDD
Asus xonar essence stx
Enermax 850W PSU
Front Fans 2x Noiseblocker PK2, rear 1x PL2
The Laser Hive Kit

























The water cooling loop, its a phobya Xtreme Supernova 1260 with 9x Noiseblocker pk2, controlled with watercooled aquaero 5 + many extras, perfect silent on any lv.

 

I have two G5 lying at home and thought about doing that, but the more I think about it, the more I feel less interested in the project.

Don't get me wrong, I am an Apple-specialized tech and love their products, but I find my MacBook Pro 2012 to be the best machine they made for my needs and I thought about building a PC for emulation and home theater, but in the end, I use originals consoles rather than emulators and I am waiting for the next Apple TV for all the media center stuff.

So, I really like what you did, especially the watercooling which is a nice revenge on the one Apple made on some G5, but seeing it make me feel that doing the same as you was just a whim for me; or maybe am I missing something?

 

no problem, i understand what you referring. The project is more on the decision building a hackintosh.
Was a lot of work, but i have many moments where i was thinking it fits perfect.
So using that case for me was many fun and i really like the result.
I just want it with atx on my preference.

 

Great job! Looks very clean

 

Most important thing is that you are happy with the end result.
BTW, a friend of mine is thanking you, because I showed him your work. Since he wanted to do the same, he now knows that the result is worth it and is quite happy to have seen what you did.

 

so bad? Np lucky if i can help, and im very happy with my mod/setup