With the cutting done, it was time to see if the mobo would fit. Additionally I needed to measure where the mobo would be positioned in order to mark the drill points to mount the acrylic mobo backplate.

Took the 7800GTX cards out of the workrig and marked out the mobo position required for the PCIe cards to line up correctly with the G5 case slots.



Replaced the Apple Harddrive bay and Top bay seperator/fan holder in order to see how all the parts fit.



Realized that part of the plastics of the drive bay and separator will get in the way of the motherboard.



Marked these areas for cutting. Got to get the Dremel out again....

Now a Dry Fit to see how if all the components will sit where I plan them to go.

Essentially the principle is this: Divide the case into Four Compartments.

The top compartment is already there. Here reside the drives: Optical and harddrives. Am considering mounting a floppy too, but this is not essential. This is a low heat-generating compartment so could do with a small, slow fan for cooling

The second compartment will house the 7800GTX SLi config. This is a warm compartment and will be cooled by a 12cm Fan mounted close to the cards for maximal cooling. It will be separated from the third compartment by a sheet of clear acrylic cut to shape to fit both the mobo and the Apple acrylic panel.

The third compartment will house the processor and the RAM. The processor will be cooled by a Coolermaster Aquagate Mini (Cheapest I could find: RM250 @ Cycom, LYP).



I like this cooler. It's simplicity (no reservoir and integrated pump/heatsink) makes it an elegant cooling solution. The radiator will NOT be in this compartment.

The fourth compartment at the base of the G5 case and separated from it by another acrylic panel will house the PSU and the Aquagate mini radiator.



The radiator has a coolermaster 8cm Aluminum fan (RM40 @ Robyncom, LYP) cooling it.



The PSU already has fans in a push pull position and will be mounted towards the front of the case. I realize that I will be blowing hot air onto my radiator (from the PSU) but as I do not have sufficient space to place the PSU at the rear of the case (it will hit the RAM cards), I do not have much of a choice...



So once I cut the acrylic into shape, I will have four compartments dividing the G5 Case into four thermal zones, with fans of corresponding speed to cool each compartment.



Well, that's the plan anyways...

Pictures perhaps explain things better...

It's a DRY FIT. Meaning I still have a lot of work that I have not done. I am just checking to see if the components fit where they are supposed to be. I've not done the backplate for the mobo, the backplate for the PSU, the compartment separators, the fan mounts, the list continues...

...that's why it's a worklog

Actually, that is a good idea , but with a custom designed acrylic PSU case which is long an flat rather than square... Will need to change out the fans with quad 6cm ones (2 inflow and 2 outflow)...

Hmmm...

OK, next mounted the Mobo backplate. Made out of 5mm Acrylic. Thickness is required as the backplate is held on the G5 case by the Apple Mobo standoff screws. In order to maintain the necessary depth/distance of the DFI mobo to the PCI slots, I had to drill holes in the acrylic backplate. The Apple Mobo standoffs were then trimmed to a height of 5mm in order to be flush with the acrylic backplate. The backplate was then screwed down with specially shortened screws.

A lot of dremel drillwork required hence the delay. Some pics:





With that done, regular PC motherboard standoff screws were postioned on the acrylic backplate in order to securely hold the DFI board



Position fits perfectly, and as you can see in the next few photos, the PCI slots align very nicely. The uppermost PCI slot however is unusable unless I sacrifice the harddrive bays, which I do NOT want to do.







This post has been edited by MacDaNife: Oct 18 2005, 09:58 PM

Next: The PSU.

Choose a Enermax Coolergiant 600W PSU. This is for the whopping 600W and also for Enermax's excellent showing in the THG Torture Testing. However a regular PC PSU is too wide/high to fit in the base of the case where I intended it to go. It would hit the RAM and having a hot PSU against my potentially overclocked RAM is NOT a good idea...

Option is to put the PSU towards the front of the case but that would mean that it would be blowing hot air into the case. While I intend to make a acrylic divider that would isolate the lowest 'hot' compartment from the rest of the case, in reality, hot air rises. This would warm up the whole case.

As Sniper suggested, it was time for a total rethink:

And time to completely void the Enermax 5-year warranty. Oh well....

The layout of the Enermax Coolergiant 600W is very good, with a beefy heatsink and components all well laid out for maximal airflow.





However, it can be improved...

The plan is to make the PSU long rather than wide, with the on off switch at the top to facilitate switching on and off from within the case (I want to avoid cutting the G5 back if I can). The fan control knob will also be mounted at the top.

THIS is how I want the PSU to sit within the case...



And to do this, I'll need to make a custom acrylic enclosure:







Since I've already voided the warranty, might as well cut off the unnecessary wires too...



Have not decided how to put the acrylic together... Glue? Screws? I've got the glue ready, SuperGlue is NOT a good idea as it will discolor the acrylic at the point of contact. Have tested the Selleys MultiGrip Contact Adhesive and while it takes longer to set, it provides a strong bond and will not discolor the acrylic.

... cos I've developed an allergy to 'bling'....

Great link! Very informative. Thanks.

I get what you mean. I've considered this even prior to your well illustrated post. It's a very valid point.

Don't have much of a choice as I need the PSU to be long rather than wide and that means changing the orientation of the board. It's the whole point of the acrylic enclosure.

I am making it a little taller to account for this. Will it be enough? Time will tell...

Actually, I've not yet fabricated the top and sides of the PSU acrylic case... Have been considering the heat/bend technique but descriptions on the web (have obviously not done this before myself) make it seem rather difficult....

Also it needs two people: One to apply heat with the gun, another to bend and as a solo modder... this may prove to be a little difficult. Can't trust my sons with either the gun (they are likely to burn me instead) nor with the bending...

So I guess the bottom line will be: screw it.

Looks more restrictive to me...

Ain't no way I'm drilling through any fins. Anyways, completed the PSU mod the way I want it. thanks for the suggestions guys but if you were to see this in person, you will realize that airflow is really quite good. The wires had to be carefully folded out of the way in order not to block the intake fan.

Note that I've place the fan control rheostat and the on/off switch at the TOP of the PSU. This is intentional as I do not intend to cut the back of the case for the PSU switches. The layout of the
G5 will be such that the side of the case would be most accessible so this placement suits the case just fine...

Without further ado, here are the pics... Now to find some nice small (but longish) screws....

Got the screws, will see if it's too thin tomorrow... Actually, the base, front and rear sides are 5mm acrylic. The top and sides are 2mm acrylic. Thinner acrylic is easier to cut. Will be screwing through the thin acrylic to anchor it to thick acrylic so should be theoretically a secure fit.


We will see...

Ian, you must be psychic...

I've already glued the fellow. Tried the screws, too problematic. Will only be using screws for the top lid. Need to get access to the innards to clean/change fans if necessary. Gluing the rest of it though.

Pics will follow...

Completed the PSU mod.

Figured that in order to gain access to the innards of the PSU, I really need only place screws at the TOP of the PSU. The other sides can be glued and this was duly done with Selley's Multigrip Adhesive (About RM5 from Ace Hardware). Screwed the top acrylic down with six small screws and the result looked pretty neat.









Now I began to worry....

What if I screwed up the PSU somehow... Better do a test run. So I connected the fellow up to the WorkRig...



Works fine. VERY quiet, and good airflow through to the back fan. Did not do any extended testing though... Perhaps a temp probe might be a good idea. Actually if I ever go the full watercooling route, this PSU would be an ideal candidate for a watercooled PSU....

And here's how it would sit in the G5 Case...

Bought the acrylic from a sign making shop along Jln Pudu. Not sure the exact location but it was about midway between the Pudu/Imbi intersection and the turnoff to Jln Pasar. Actually - all sign making shops sell the stuff. They come in various thickness and are sold per square foot.

If you have the exact dimensions of your window that would be best as they will have the tools (a bandsaw) to make a neat cut (better than I'm able to do with my Dremel anyway).

Mounting the CoolerMaster Aquagate Mini Radiator.

Rather than drill into the case, I will mount the radiator onto the Apple G5 fangrille. Actually the grille is made of plastic but painted a dark aluminum color:



As with everything in this case, the grille is held on with multiple screws. In this case a total of nine fine screws. Once removed, the grille looks like this:



Flipping it over, the inside of the grille looks like this:



Note the foam vibration dampener on the grille edges. This case is full of neat details like this. With my trusty Dremel, I drilled some holes and mounted the radiator to the grille:



And a side view:



Also took the opportunity to take the DFI NB fan off (being very careful this time not to remove the square foam backing as this provides support for the DFI heatsink - the NB core being raised from the surrounding PCB), cleaned off the yellow gunk that DFI regards as thermal tranfer paste to apply some nice ArcticSilver5. Also found the time to apply some nice shiny heatshrink to the fan wires...









As a side note: I got a honking big FedEx box today. Inside was a NVidia SLi poster and this: Sticker, Case badge, 8cm Fan Grille and a wristband. Apparently the benefits of joining Club SLi. All the way from the USA. Not bad nVidia!



This post has been edited by MacDaNife: Oct 25 2005, 06:16 PM

Some updates...

Decided to go without the stock 8cm fan for now.... Will need to test out what the four wires do. Don't want to burn the fan and need to get the Apple Tech Docs for the G5 to find out the voltages for each wire. So for the meantime, put a nice Aluminum CoolerMaster Fan in the bay provided. Nice rubber fan mounts btw. which fit perfectly.



And here's how it looks installed in the G5 case. I've sleeved the wires and run it down to hide behind the Mobo tray. I will be installing modding a Sunveam 4 Fan controller. The stock one is supposed to fit in a 5 in bay, I will be making a custom acrylic mount. Gosh now I'm getting adept at cutting acrylic I'm finding all sorts of uses for the stuff...



Here are how the cables run from the harddrive bay, The optical drive bay, The top compartment fan. Note that I've made a side branch floppy connector off the power cable that goes to the optical drive. This is to supply the floppy connector on the DFI mobo. This way I'll avoid having a cable crossing the front of the mobo, it will now pass unobtrusively from the back of the mobo near the bottom PCI slot.



And with the Mobo in place, the wires pass behind it to connect to headers coming off the PSU.



With the PSU at the bottom, the wires pass around the front (to avoid blocking the intake fan) and connect below the PSU. I've removed the unnecessary connectors from the PSU in order to maintain neatness. I'm planning to make an aluminum baseplate so the wires will then all go below the aluminum plate with the PSU above. All wires/connectors will then be invisible. I've not however identified where to buy an Aluminum plate. If I don't find one, I might need to sacrifice my LianLi (non window) sidepanel (that I replaced with the windowed one in my v1000b).





This post has been edited by MacDaNife: Oct 26 2005, 09:08 PM

The next step: Cutting the back of the case to fit the backpanel connectors.

The advantage of the DFI LanParty NF4 SLi-D board is that all of the frequently used connectors are concentrated in one position so I won't have to cut that much of the back of the case. Of course, if I change mobos, I might have to get the dremel out again. For now however, this is how it looks with the CoolerMaster Aquagate Mini in position. I've pencilled out where I will be cutting...

Three problems with this:

1. It's a lot of work
2. The G5 only has two USB ports. The DFI board has six. I need all six.
3. It's a lot of work

It's NOT finished yet lah kawan.... . As I said in the post, I'll be making a floor for the case so the wires will be COMPLETELY hidden. Patience please...

Acrylic cheapo? If I could I'd go with a titanium finish. Plus gold plated connectors too. Unfortunately there are two major limitations:

1. Cost
2. Ability/skill at modding

A modder must confine himself not only to the materials at hand but also to that which he is able to do. Suggestions are fine, but please at least try to confine them to what is possible (unless you are skilled at working with Aluminum - then if you wanna help me fabricate a case I'd be grateful!)