The purpose of this mod was to put a Windows PC in a Mac Case. Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty of other Macs, and the Quicksilver case was purchased on Ebay for the power supply to fix my dual 450 Gigabit. With an extra Mac case, (and a bonus Superdrive) I decided to hide my ugly PC in the very nice Quicksilver case. The challenge was getting the full-size PC motherboard into the Quicksilver. Case volume was about half on the Mac as the original PC case. (ugly beige tower) I also wanted to maximize the clean look of the original Apple case. No extra holes. No CD’s coming out it’s rear, ports in the right place, and not too noisy or too hot.
Gutted Case
The only way I could get the ram and processor to fit properly was to flip the front bezel and move the optical drive to the bottom of the case. Time to get out the Dremel!
 
PC Port Knockout (left), New Standoffs (right)
Stripping the case down to sheetmetal was easy. Next was cutting out the Apple external port bank, and fabricating a new port area with aluminum sheet and matching it up with the PC motherboard. The G4 motherboard standoffs were removed, and new ones for the PC were aligned and fitted. The scary part was clipping off the top left corner of the PC mainboard with the Dremel. Thankfully, I checked and there were no circuit traces in that area, and it nipped off with out any problems. I taped it over with electrical to prevent any shorts from occurring. The power supply had to be relocated, and new power supply plate was fabricated from the dead Gigabit power supply case. Clear vent fan was added, and wiring was linked from stock plug location to the power supply located at the front of the case.
Rear Fan/Power Assembly
The DVD-RW was fitted in the original Apple mounting bracket, and the top bracket inside the case wase removed, and relocated lower to provide a secure mount for the drive. Hard drive location would remain the same from Mac to PC, but clearance forced the second HD left, not stacked as a typical G4 installation.
The PC power supply was disassembled, and mounted securely to the inside of the case. The fan guard was clipped off, for more airflow, and a new offset guard with less restriction was installed. I also replaced the noisy cheep-o power supply fan with the Gigabit fan. Whisper quiet.
The processor needed a fan, since the heatsink is pretty pathetic. (well, compared to a duatl G4). The original setup was with this Thermaltake fan mounted directly onto the heatsink, but it sounded like a hair dryer to my mac-using ears. A larger fan than a normal case fan was procured from within the original PC case. (don’t ask) It was secured to the inside of the case with a funnel to guide air to the heatsink. A hole was cut in the case to allow cool outside air in. I figured the deadspace between the steel case and the curved plastic would allow air to flow properly, but I was wrong. The case is almost airtight, and I ended up turning another case fan backwards in the original CPU fan bay to force air into the deadspace. Basically, cold air flows in from back vents, and is forced outside the case (but inside the plastic) and back onto the AMD Athlon XP with the CPU fan. Pretty sweet engineering if I say so myself.
Cutting The Fan Hole
 
CPU Fan Placement
The front speaker is just for show, but I made the power switch functional. The original clickey PC power switch was rigged to meet the white power switch, and the white Apple LED was clipped and re-soldered to the PC power light. It’s inserted into the hollow white power switch, and lights up G4-esque. The power switch needs a little more push than normal to operate the long mechanical stroke of the PC switch, but it works good. No reset though. I mean, why would I ever have to restart Windows?
DVD Drive/Speaker/Power Switch Arrangement
The zip bay is squared off inside, and USB, and sound in/out was pulled off the beige case and placed there. I painted the plastic black, and trimmed it with more aluminum sheet. Some coated steel cable, knotted on the back, allows the blockoff to pulled off, and pushed in. A small magnet holds the door securely when closed. (with a small piece of sheetmetal double sticked to the door.
USB & Audio On The Front
Of course, a lot of cutting and reconfiguring was done to realign the CD door, but I like how it works so Apple-like. I do have to right-click the CD drive shortcut on the desktop to eject, but no biggie.
The motherboard aligns pretty good. Card space is tight. The AGP board has full case length, but other PCI cards are short, and fit just behind the optical drive bay. The sound card just clears. The last PCI slot is unavailable.(I have five, with the AGP Radeon 9500 128 included) PS2 ports are hidden, but who gives a rip about a few lousy PS2 ports?
Rear Ports
The door closes mac-like, with the mobo mounted to it, but the power supply cable had to be lengthened to reach it’s destination. It all tucks in nicely, but the G4 latching mechanism had to be sliced off to fit the tall PC board in there. But hey, Apple thinks of everything, and all that needs to be done to secure the door is to pull the security latch. Of course, keeping the security latch pulled required something classier than my screwdriver, so I stuck a carbineer (warning: not to be used for climbing) in there to hold it nicely.
This thing took me a couple of months to do. I wasn’t in any hurry. Just a little tinkering here and there, and a few Saturdays. It powers up great, and runs Windows as well as can be expected from a three-year old PC. I use it for iTunes, watching DVD’s, and a little bit of Counterstrike on the weekends. All of my PC friends think it’s the coolest. But they use PC’s, what do they know about cool?
Additional Pictures:
Internals
AMD Mac (left) Dual 450 G4 (right)
Powered On & Superdrive
The Setup
Setup Again
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