I need to devise a motherbaord cover plate, that would be functional, allowing a lot of airflow across all components, eg motherboard capacitors, but more so, across SLi GFX card's ramsinks.
CPU and GFX's will be watercooled, so it's essential to have some airflow across various components that would naturally be cooled by airstream from the aircooled heatsinks.
With this in mind, I will channel bottom fan from rad across memory, and cpu area caps on motherboard, and the top fan towards the 2x 7800GTX gfx cards.
At the rear I will exhaust via 2x 92mm fans, via the std G5 exhaust ports.
Here is a template for the front coverplate......
from a slightly different angle....
short update to follow
Ok, so this part will fit on top of the sidepanel in the shots above.....
Like so....don't worry if it doesn't make sense, when it is fitted together you will see what I intend....
After completion, it will look like this.....
Then, the top 120mm rad fan will allow airflow across gfx like shown in blue, while the pink arrows represent the airflow into the channeled area, where cpu and ram etc are located.
The hole shown on top for the fan will actually be a square one, where I will fit a very neat AC Ryan single 120mm square fangrill...
Finally, it should look like this template, with a slight difference where the cpu heatsink will be replaced by Swiftech Storm cpu waterblock....
and a close-up shot, bear in mind I still have to cut-out the hole where the AC Ryan radgrill will fit to allow airflow from rad to gfx cards.
Template is of 1mm carton, mobo cover will be made from 1.6mm aluminium plate, same as what I have used as mobo mounting tray....should look decent, with a nice logo on the sidecover facing you, similar as G5 cpu covers, but with neat AMD logo.
This is the fangrill I will use venting from top radiator fan onto graphics cards.....should look decent.
Ok Boys and Girls, Done a little bit of work again, all 2 hours worth of it .... finally got into making the bottom cover plate for the PSU, because the std version looks like bleh....
and a close-up shot....
Now, one of my main goals was to replicate the original G5 interior, and make some improvements if I could.....so I came up with this....
and a different angle over here......
and a close-up, to show how well the bottom plate fits with the rear motherboard tray......
Now, here is a few shots with psu cover in place, but also with the side plexi baffle-tray fitted.....
and another one here.....
Now, basically the photo Ettienne posted earlier of the G5 at the expo made my mind up for me....I will use the G5 plexi baffle-tray in my setup too....I will move rad a little forward towards the front of the case, and that will allow plexi baffle to fit without problems.
Then, a small re-design of my motherboard ducting system, to fit in with the groove in the plexi baffle, and it should look stunning.....at least as good as intended, and very close to the original....
Put it this way, die-hard Mac buffs will have a look at this, and realize something is not exactly 100% kosher with this "G5 PowerMac" - until they delve under the hood, and make the shocking discovery...rofl....
Another shot of the cover in place, angled from above, to give you a better idea.....soz, forgot to post this one earlier....
Anyway, now with the psu cover finished, I need to secure it somehow....and fortunately, there were these 2 holes where Apple had their cover plate secured to..... see the 2 areas with blue circles....all the other holes are to tigthen the psu lid down to the psu casing...
after very careful and meticulous measurements, to keep everything square, and aligned, here is the front in place.....
and the rear, these countersunk allencap screws really make it look neat and pro.....
and here is a view of both, with psu cover plate secured to psu housing....
Of course I will have to remove it again, to mark the 2 areas where the psu cables will come through the lid to supplu gfx, and mobo withjuice, but, rest assured, there will be virtually no cables visible, and just enough to power peripherals anyway....
No excess like with normal psu's, 1x short atx mobo psu cable, 1x cable to power 2 harddrives and optical drive, and 1 to the gfx cards....
Well, I always wondered what the "inside" of the G5 watercooled looked like.....here's a few shots, not mine, just some I found of the internet, showcasing G5 internals....
You must luv the MCP350 pumps
Single cpu with heatpipe cooling underneath cpu - very neat....
a different angle....
The twins....
One fully assembled cpu, with the other showing the waterblock on top of the cpu die......cpu will fit on top of the block....neat...
And here's the complete watercooling solution.....
and a last one...enjoy....if those little rads can keep a IBM CPu cool, then we are overdoing things a little, aren't we?
Still need Abit AW9D-Max for this Project, together with 6800Xtreme. With solder iron, I am sure I can turn one of these into the monster my previous Abit Max3 Intel board was....a real killer.
Awaiting arrival of mobo to resellers, as it has been launched by Abit on the 16th of Aug.
So yeah, a short way to go but, getting there.
This is one seriously fekkin expensive mod, lemme tell ya...
a Small change of scope if you like: I have set my mind on the one board that will do this system justice, the just-announced Abit AW9D Max:
The reason for that being I had great success in the past wiht Abit Max-Series mobos, so much so that I actually owned 3 of them at 1 point in time, 2 of them with the then-famous VTT-Autoregulating vmod.
I am positive this board will be a great board, and if needed, yes, I will apply a few vmods no prob
So, this change the hardware portion of this mod dramatically, I never was going to be happy with a 4800+AMD cpu if I could fit a 6800X Conroe in here? Don't you agree? hehe - thought so.
Ram will be these parts here, OCZ Titanium Alpha VX2 PC2-8000 XTC 2Gb, to give me good bandwidth, but, with tight timings. Even though the new Conroes are not benefitting as much from tight latencies as old Netburst cpus, due to large 4M shared cache, it will still give extra few points when chasing records.
What does all this mean for the mod, and one of my main goals, ie not to hack the case to pieces....
Well, I will have to re-adjust my thinking a little, and do away with Apple 600W psu - this will not provide 7950 quad with decent power. So, psu will relocate to the top, ala new Mac Pro style, I will probably use my new 1kw PC Powe&Cooling in here, if this doesn't fit, then the 750W Toughpower must do - should be good, so no problem there.
Harddrives will relocate to the bottom, well-hidden, dont worry, and I have to redo new motherboard mounting tray.
With the std ATX form-factor mobo, I will have to do a little cutting on the back of the case, to mount a new alu IO plate, which I already have. Should look very good, exept that I deviate a little from original intentions of retaining original Apple IO Plate with custom PCB/sockets....
Cannot be helped.
Take note that I will not use complete removeable motherboard tray/IO Plate combo like Lian-Li's, I will only use backplate. Tray will be same as one I made earlier, just covering full-length inside case.
Lot of extra work, but I am looking forward to it.
I have to make these changes to accommodate the new 30" ACD I ordered, I want to game at 2560x1600 native. Hence the new hardware specs.
Will keep you posted, obviously I have to await arrival of new motherboard before I can do much more - at least I will redo new motherboard tray, so it's ready for mobo and IO plate fitment.
Here is a quick pic, just showing a size comparison next to my 19" HP 1955 LCD, unbelievable.
In the background is my PC70 Lian-Li case, another idea of the size of this 30" monster. Even my wife could not believe it, she says it's as big as our 74cm TV...rofl.
Well, I installed 91.36 drivers, and they cause funny highlights on the display, like pinkish/blue/white pixel lines, so uninstalled, and used 91.31's, which works great.
I have to say, sitting 1m away from the display, you have to literally turn your head side to side to view 2560/1600 goodness. Probably the best money ever spend - yay!
Hehe - going to fit in nicely with my G5 mod, which will ultimately end up being my racing sim setup.
Hello Everyone, Yes, it's update time, and although not a huge update, it is one that took a lot of thinking, and careful planning, measurement, and some dremelling and filing action.
What was I busy with, well.....interesting...remember this shot I posted at the beginning of this project:
I was going to use the eVGA Micro ATX board with this case, but since then, I managed to get a few Conroe cpus, and even more motherboards. I decided to cancel the eVGA Micro ATX AMD 64 4800 setup, and rather make this a decent gaming rig by mounting the Asus P5W DH Deluxe board in this case, together with the X6800 cpu of mine.
Well, obviously one of my goals was to try and keep the back of the G5 original, as in above photo, but that would have only worked with 4-slot micro-atx board.
So, I had to make a plan, and in the end, the final result came out very well, near-factory look, or maybe even better than factor look. By making new backplate/IO-plate, I can of course now mount any ATX motherboard in future, and not limit myself to micr-atx only
So, this is what I started of with, a 199mm x 391mm aluminium, this was cut from one of my spare Lian-Li PC70 sidepanels.
This is what I want to do away with, in 2 steps, I need 2 steps to make accurate markings on the new donor i/o-plate.....
and, after some high-speed dremel work, I end up wityh this - the top piece is original G5 i/o-plate, and the bottom one I removed from a cheapish alu case - I got the case specifically for this i/o-plate, as I did not want the bigger and bulkier Lian-Li PC65 unit.....
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