Jump down to the Dual CPU Mod.

 

Jump down to the Cube Fan Mod.

 

Jump down to the Radeon 7500 upgrade.

I had my brand new G4 cube system for a week before I decided to mod it. I didn't care for it's drab grey exterior at all and I wanted to make it something much nicer. I thought about it for a few days and this is what I came up with:

What do you think?

I would like to spend a few minutes describing the creative process now.

The first and most difficult part was finding a texture that was both wrappable and close to the size of the cube. The sides of the cube are 7.25 inches tall, and 7 inches wide. The top is just a smidgen bigger than 7 by 7. After searching the net for a while, a friend pointed me to Michael Coyle's software hacking site, Resexcellence. This site is really cool. It has lots of neat info about how to customize your system. Anyway, there is an archive of textures on there called "Propaganda" containing the works of Mr. Bowie J. Poag. There are hundreds of textures there to choose from, and if you end up like me, and don't like the color combination of a particular texture, you can change it in photoshop. You should offer the modified texture back to Resexcellence afterwards. What makes this archive invaluable, is that almost all of the textures are 7.25 inches square and are wrappable on all four sides.

You will need the following:
1. #2 Philips screwdriver.
2. T-10 Torx screwdriver.
3. 5 pages of printed texture.
4. 1 roll of glossy clear tape.
5. Exacto knife (and a surface to cut on).
6. Patience.
7. Bravery.

Now for the steps.

Step 1. Take your cube all apart. This can be tricky. Remove the core and set it aside someplace safe. Inside the shell you will find 2 philips and 4 T-10 Torx screws. Remove all 6 of these. Now you must remove the black screen that covers the vent slots on top. This is that tricky part. I found the easiest way was to unhook the screen and then lift up the shell. The grille should drop away. Now removing the screen will be much easier. Once the grill is gone, you can remove the metal shell from inside the plastic shell. Set the plastic shell aside someplace safe. Be careful not to touch the inside of the plastic shell or you'll leave fingerprints in it.

Step 2. The hardest part of this excersize will be the top piece. This part is optional and you may want to skip it. Fortunately Apple was kind enough to provide a template. On top of the metal shell is a plastic sheet with all the slots and holes located in it. You can lay this on top of your printed texture and use it as a template to carefully cut out the openings with an exacto knife. The smaller holes should be traced with a pencil or fine point marker and then cut out later. The top sheet will not interfere with the operation of the touch switch. In fact, the white LED is still visible through the texture, although somewhat less so.

Step 3. Take the magic marker and run it all around the top and bottom edges of the metal box. This will conceal your seams. It's impossible to get it to line up in such a way that nothing is visible. You can see my blue marks on this pic below:

Step 4. As you can see, I have already cut out my textures. Two pages were cut as shown above, and the other two were cut with no tabs. I taped on the two sheet with tabs as the front and rear pages. I made certain to pull it pretty tightly. Next apply the two remaining panels for the sides, lining up their edges with the front sheet. Tear off a piece of tape longer than is needed to cover the entire seam. Cut the jagged ends off of the tape, and trim to length. Your seams will be on the corner and thus much less visible. This is also why you want to use glossy tape. Below is a close up of the finished seam.

Step 5. After every sheet is secure, carefully lower the metal box into the shell. You might wish to run a clean cloth around the inside of the shell to remove any smudges or lint in there first. There will be a little more overlap on the rear panel so the textures won't line up properly. I did it on the back to cover up this fact. Hey, I can actually read that white text now!

Here are a couple more pictures for you

The Dual 500 CPU upgrade:

Now would be a good time to skip to the fan upgrade section.

The Fan Upgrade:

Go back to the dual CPU hack, step 7.

The Video Card Upgrade:

I decided that it was time for a video card that was more powerful than my GeForce 2MX. The problem is, more powerful cards, well, draw more power. My main system fan does not blow at all into the card area, and the 2MX got extremely warm in there. Originally, I wanted to use a GeForce 4MX, but the card is mechanically too tall to fit in there. So I used the Radeon 7500 card that came with my new G4 tower. This card uses 50% more power than the 2MX, and it's heatsink is about 1/4 the size. I knew I'd need a fan, and I knew just the fan for the job. I found a little Sunon squirrel cage blower at a local surplus store (Halted). It was very quiet and the perfect size for this. So I put a shim on the memory chips, and glued the fan to the end of the card. My goal was not simply to stir up the air in there, but to expel hot mass directly from the box. I also had to cut down the card's fence with a sheet metal nibbler to match the fence on the old card. Then I just drilled and tapped the holes to match the mounting screw holes on the case. Here is a picture on the completed install:


Powering the fan was another issue. I found a 3.3V terminal on the card right next to the fan location, so I just tapped that, with a diode inline to lower the voltage to about 2.7V. Now the fan moves a noticeable amount of toasty warm air out of the box, but is almost completely silent. Below is a close up of my wiring job with annotations.


This upgrade improved my frame rates in all accelerated games by an average of 80%.