P4 Mac - Pentium 4 in a Mac G4 Case (Case Mod)

First off, this isn't actually my computer, I was actually just helping a friend build himself a new system for his house, the advantages of that are that I didn't have to buy anything, but I didn't have anything to show for it either, that's why i'm posting this page just for fun.

The project started while we were discussing how much Mac's suck, mostly because of the price, and how they are for the most part much better looking then pc's. Now before you mac people get all offended, you might think that pc's suck, or visa versa, but I don't really care. Both mac's and PC's have there place.

So after a few minutes on eBay, the worlds largest paying trash can, we found you can buy a g4 case for around $100. After a few quick google search we saw that a few people have already done the same thing, only with old pc hardware. My friend bought the case on a impulse and the project was officially underway.

eBay pic	Ebay Pic	Ebay Pic	Ebay Pic	Lackey

On arrival of the case we looked over it for a while, and wondered why pc's never caught on to the motherboard tray being mounted to the opening side, instead of in the back of the computer where you have to reach around a dozen cables and various pointy objects. If you ask me it's a thousand times easier to work on that type of setup then the standard pc type. I know that dell is starting to put out the book style cases, although they aren't much better then the old standard type, just different.

The mac g4 case is basically a mini-atx case, with out the mounting bolts in the right place or the standard square hole in the back for the atx bezel. It has space for 1 cdrom and floppy, two hard drives and a 120mm fan.

After about a month of waiting around for parts and such we flopped the new motherboard into place to see how much editing to the case we would have to do to get everything to fit in correctly.

Cutting	The removed plate	Cleaning	The atx bezel installed
Drilling new mounting bolts			New mounting bolt for motherboard

After the basic modding to get the motherboard to fit, the next thing we did was replace the stock 120mm fan with a new 110v high air flow fan. Later we found out that all the holes in the side of the case that look like a fan exit are there for no particular reason, the outside plastic seals the side off more or less. I don't have a problem with that, but why make a large exit hole if you can't exit? Eventually we ended up taking it out grudgingly and putting the stock fan back in that draws from the back of the case.

At this same time we drilled a new fan exit for the water cooling kit's radiator, as you can see in Picture 3.

Luckily the power supply fits right into the case, all the screws line up and everything, with the bottom of the power supply facing the wall. The black power connector on the power supply ended up sticking out too far for it to sit flat in the case, so we were forced to remove it and re-solder it back in on the inside of the power supply as you can see in the picture.

Also, there was a small plastic flap that needed to be notched about an inch or so to get both the switch and the power connector accessible.

120mm exhaust	New 120mm	New 80mm	Checking	Power Supply
PS power connector modded	Notch to be removed	Putting the plastic back on	Chad posing with his new case	Ready for PC parts, with water cooling

Now the easy part, installing all the hardware.

The motherboard was a bit of a tight fit, there's plenty of room on the mounting side, but unfortunately there's really no room on the other side for a Cdrom, which sucks, because we got a really nice DVD burner. As you can see the cdrom is sitting on top of the computer for installing windows, but eventually we found a USB 2.0 external cdrom enclosure that vaguely matches the mac case.

The water cooling also posed a minor problem, there was a huge LED stick thing that evidently was there only to get in the way of things, we ended up cutting it off and using the LED for the front button.

We came really close on the video card though, it was just blind luck that it was just the right height to not hit the drive bay support.

Hooking up the fans	Motherboard installed	Water cooling	All wires connected	Glowing Power supply
Video Card installed	The video card clearance	Installing Windows	Installing Windows	Switch / Led
Motherboard clearance	Motherboard clearance

And after several days of slaving over a hot processor, here's the end result:

Complete front	Complete back

I'm sure that eventually we'll get ahold of some drive bay bezels to cover up the gaping hole, but other then that it turned out really well.