Hackintosh Build

[Timman_24]

Continued:

The motherboard stand offs are pressed into the back panel and are surprisingly easy to take off without damaging either the stand off or the back panel. I decided to re use these stand offs by repositioning them and reattaching them with JB Weld.

Test fitting and marking where the the motherboard needs to be located wasn't that bad due to the PCI slots. I mounted an old graphics card to the MB and was able to line up the motherboard for depth and alignment. Luckily, the stand offs were the perfect length offset the motherboard to line up with the PCI slots. As you can see, the IO shield will need to be pushed inward to match with the motherboard connections. I cut up an older case to use its mounting bracket.

The DVD player that came with the G5 is very long and uses IDE connections. Fortunately, it has standard mounts on the bottom using standard screws. I was able to use a shorter DVD-R drive with SATA without any modifications.

I wanted to use the stock PSU enclosure because it neatly fits into the bottom of the chassis. Most people just strap the ATX enclosure to the bottom and call it a day, but it destroys the air flow and look of the case. I stripped out the stock PSU and will fit the internals out of an ATX power supply for use in the stock enclosure.

[Timman_24]

Continued:

After the JB Weld had set up over a day, I gingerly attached the motherboard. It lines up quite well, not like a factory unit due to me having to hand place each mount. I have to get all the screws started and then tighten them for it to align properly, but it works!

I wanted to use the stock media panel that creates a shelf for the HDDs and disk media towards the top of the case. However, the motherboard interfered with the panel. I marked off and cut the panel, which was steel. I have a metal chop saw, so it was really easy. Dremeling this piece would have taken forever.

Lastly, I screwed down the motherboard, media shelf, and the DVD drive to make sure everything worked well together. Due to clearance issues, I will only have a few PCI slots available, but I don't use them except for a graphics card.

Next up is cutting out the rear panel to insert an IO bracket. I will relocated the fan holes to the left about one inch.

I'm lucky that I had a broken ATX motherboard sitting around with an old GPU for test fitting. I would never have wanted to stick my 180 dollar Gigabyte board into the case for test fitting!

[Timman_24]

I've made some more progress. I cut out the back with a dremel tool and fitted an IO shield inset mount. I was going to cut up an aluminum cookie sheet, but decided to mark up a 2D SVG design of what I need and have some material laser cut. Not only will it look much better than me trying to either dremel the sheet or cut it with the chop saw, but it also gives me a chance to add a custom touch to the case by doing a bit of engraving. I'm working out the design right now with Inkscape and will order two different panel designs due to the size of sheet that I need (I'll have left overs, so may as well use them.) I'm doing one panel that will accept the stock fans (2x92mm deltas) and one panel that will take a single 120mm fan.

It will be a week or so before I get the pieces, but I think it will be worth the wait to have it done properly. I'll update you guys with price and stuff once I get further along.

[SharkyOne]

Total cost was $587 for CPU, MB, case, PSU, and HDD. GPU was another 99. Ram would have cost 45, but I already had it. I already had an extra 120mm fan and fan controller as well, but thats optional. OSX was 19.99. I'd put this at around $740 retail. You could do better by down grading the motherboard (-99), going with HD4000 graphics (-99, if you don't need resolutions over 1080p or if the MB supports DL-DVI), and not using an Enterprise level HDD (-20).

This setup smokes the current top of the line iMac except at gaming, but for an extra 100 dollars I could have gone with a 560TI which would smoke the 6970M (top end iMac GPU.) Figure around $700-800 compared to 2100 for the iMac. The good part is that I can upgrade as needed and OC the 3570k. With an OC, there is no comparison.

It's not expensive better than buy new hackintosh haha

[Timman_24]

Update: I finished mounting the HDD rack and I swapped my ATX PSU components into the stock G5 PSU case today. I also made a mount for 2x140mm fans to intake through the front. It draws a major amount of air through the front now without the whine of the 92mm fans that the stock G5 was equipped with. After doing those things, I was far enough along to go ahead and install my components into the case. I'm still waiting on my laser cut piece to finish the back, but it will probably be another week before I get that.

Everything fit together well and it fired up the first time. I wired the power switch on the front to work with my motherboard, but I put off wiring up the USB, firewire, and audio until I have more time and the proper heat shrink tubing. I'll post some more finished pictures when the back plate finally comes in.

PSU all wired up.

Motherboard mounted. I will probably get either get a premade water cooling set up (like the Corsair H series) or a side exhausting fan. The downward blowing fan I currently have doesn't fit the air profile of this case at all.

[Timman_24]

An update for those that are interested, I've had no trouble at all with the build other than having to tweak the sleep function (which now works.) I've had no kernel panics, crashes, or hitches. I'm definitely glad I saved the money.

[agello24]

had you thought about a virtual machine with mac os? you can build the system to run windows 7 , linux or w/e with a virtual machine. just a thought.