The attachment points were simply a pair of steel male 1/2" to female 1/4" reducers forced in through the aluminium openings until they carved their own threads, then removed, sealed with epoxy and re-inserted. In the end, I just used the top and bottom portions of the frame I made, and used the ridge around the top of the cooler as a cantilever, with the ridge being the fulcrum, the foam layer on top being the load, and the screw holding the bracket into the motherboard tray as the downward force (See final step's photos for a better look at how this worked). Since I had no way of welding a frame or attachment points to the case, I instead made a riveted bracket with tabs to attach it to a vertical strut (A design feature I later removed to simplify the case). Since the PSU was overhanging the CPU, I needed a very low profile cooler, and I decided to make one from an old car oil radiator. This step will undoubtedly vary depending on how you choose to cool the CPU. One thing to take note of is that the motherboard will be in an upside down orientation Rather than rivet the PSU bracket, I used M4 screws to allow it to be flipped over, although given the lack of venting, the PSU may be one of the main sources of exhaust ventilation and require any fan intakes to face the motherboard. Unfortunately, there was not enough space to use one of the Mac's dual fan arrays since the fans were larger than the PC's, so I saved myself a lot of effort by instead using that space for the PSU, adding a reversible bracket to the inside and a second back plate to the outside (5 separate layers of metal at its thickest point).
#Server motherboard in a power mac g5 case Pc#
The order of the metal sheets was: Donor motherboard IO panel (Inside case) > Mac rear panel > Donor PC rear panel. The rear frame of the donor PC served as a back plate to sandwich it all together once re-riveted together. The rear IO consisted of several layers, but the smaller one could be removed from the back panel once the rivets were drilled out, allowing it to be used as a template to cut out the back of the Mac. I worked out the positions to drill the holes on the donor motherboard tray by painting the tips of the Mac's standoffs white, placing the tray on top, pressing down, and drilling out the centre. The rear IO panel, motherboard tray and PSU bracket had to be cut out with an angle grinder. The most common motherboard standoff mounting seemed to be JB welding the standoffs to the inner wall of the case, but I actually used the existing standoffs to mount the entire motherboard tray from the donor PC onto. Other Mac G5 conversions have used methods like mounting an ATX PSU in the existing power supply and removing the upper partition to have a higher motherboard, or fitting it in the top where the HDD cage is. Likewise, it is divided into four different thermal zones with nine computer-controlled fans for optimum cooling.The trickiest part of the build was making it compatible with ATX motherboards and PSUs. The Power Macintosh G5 "Quad Core" (2.5) uses the same easy-to-upgrade "anodized aluminum alloy" case as all other Power Macintosh G5 models with the same removable side panel for easy access to internal components. The Power Macintosh G5 "Quad Core" (2.5) is powered by two "dual core" 2.5 GHz PowerPC 970MP (G5) processors with four optimized AltiVec "Velocity Engine" vector processing units (one per core), eight double-precision FPUs (two per core), 1 MB of on-chip level 2 cache on each core, and dual bidirectional 1.25 GHz frontside system buses (one for each processor).Ĭonnectivity includes USB 2.0, FireWire "400" and "800", a single-link DVI and a dual-link DVI port, optical digital audio in/out and two independent Gigabit Ethernet ports.Īll of the "multiple core" equipped Power Macintosh G5 models have three open PCI-Express (PCIe) expansion slots. The Power Macintosh G5 "Quad Core" (2.5) is the first and last Power Macintosh G5 models to use dual core PowerPC 970MP (G5) processors, which have two independent processor "cores" on a single silicon chip. It also includes dual optimized AltiVec "Velocity Engine" vector processing units (one per core), four double-precision FPUs (two per core), and on chip level 2 cache on each core. This system has two PowerPC 970MP "G5" processors each with two independent 2.5 GHz processor "cores" (four "cores" total). Refurbished - Perfect working condition, case may have few scratches Processors: Two Dual Core PowerPC 970MP Processors at 2.5Ghz eachĭocumentation and Other Accessories - Not Included With Two Dual Core PowerPC 970MP Processors at 2.5Ghz, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD, and GeForce 7800GT Video Card Apple Power Macintosh G5 Personal Computer Mac