The Bricked Mac
Bricking your Mac never felt so good.

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Overview

I was reunited with Lego bricks with a recent trip to Legoland California. I fell in love all over again and began searching for ‘the’ project to really get myself back into Lego building. After some quick searches I found that there have been many Lego PCs built, most notably Nathan Sawaya with his Maximum Lego PC, and more recently Luke Andersen’s Black Linux Box. The only Lego Mac I could find was this tiny Powerbook 5300 powered machine. I felt it wa time for a s ‘real’ Lego Mac, one that would strike fear in all the Lego PCs & Macs before it.

The plan was then hatched to shove a Mac mini and a Hackintosh into a Lego replica of a Power Mac G5/Mac Pro case. 

The Mac mini had been previously modded to accept eSata drive, while the Hackintosh was already humming along in its drab enclosure from the Athlon XP days.

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Specs

2588 Lego Bricks + Steve Jobs Minifig complete with black turtleneck and jeans
Design Based on PowerMac G5/Mac Pro with nearly identical dimensions
1.66Ghz Core Duo Mac Mini with 1GB Ram, 400GB Hard Drive
2.4Ghz Core 2 Quad Hackintosh running Mac OS X 10.5.4 with 2GB Ram, 750GB HDD
Both computers linked over Firewire

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Parts & Supplies

Tools

Mac Mini with external SATA drive modification Nexstar USB + ESATA Enclosure Hackintosh (Kalyway 10.5.2 + .3 + .4) Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L Motherboard Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 Processor Seagate 400GB & 750GB Hard Drives BFG Nvidia 8800GT OC Graphics Card PQI 2GB DDR2-800 RAM Generic Firewire 400 & 800 PCI Card Emprex DVD+-RW Drive Antec Earthwatts 650W PSU Zalman CNPS9700 Cooler Linksys 5-port Ethernet Mini Switch Old ATX Case Lego Bricks…A lot of bricks

Safety Googles / Dust Mask Dremel Hacksaw Metal File Super Glue Screwdriver/Leatherman

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Process

Part 1 - Design/Pre-Production:
The design was done in Lego Digital Designer, which is available for free from Lego.com.
This took about 2 days to do all measurements and brick layout. Measurements were taken using Lego bricks and not with rulers. A physical fit was much more precise and way simpler than trying to convert between a metric and Lego measurements.

Realizing quickly that the external case would be over 2,500 bricks, the replication of the innards using Lego bricks would be limited to purely structural and mechanical design. I felt that the external design is the most eye-catching aspect of the Power Mac G5/Mac Pro case.

Although most Lego artists/sculptors prefer to glue their creations together when strength is needed, I felt that if additional mods are to be made the bricks should be able to be taken apart. This presents a problem of how the handles support the entire weight of the case and computers. Assuming that the handles would never lift the Lego Mac, I focused on supporting the bottom handles. By using clear window elements on the four corners of the bottom part of the case, the weight is diverted away from the delicate handle elements while maintaining the aesthetics of the case.


The removable right-side door is the biggest stand out feature in my mind. To replicate this on the Lego Mac, a combination of standard and technic pieces were used to create the latching system. This includes the flush mount latch lever on the back.



To substitute the sliding optical drive door, a flush tray bezel was made to give the front of the case a more monolithic look.



The logic board of the Power Mac G5 and Mac Pro are wider than they are tall, whereas Standard ATX style boards are taller than they are wide. This forced a redesign of the internal layout of components, mainly the motherboard and hard drives. The optical drive and power supply would stay in the same location as they are in the real case. The Mac Mini would sit atop the optical drive. The hard drives would be reoriented from their normal location beneath the optical drive and power supply, to sit on-end near the front of the case. And the Hackintosh motherboard would be oriented pseudo-BTX style at its normal location at the rear of the case.

The motherboard and expansion card ports, aside from the front two USB ports, will all be housed internally with cables routed underneath the case for aesthetics and cost reduction. The case also has air grilles at the four corners of the case for ventilation.



After the design is created, you can upload it to Lego.com to share and/or order it. According to the website, custom orders take 12-15 days to get to your door.

You can go to factory.lego.com and search for the model I uploaded under the name “Bricked Mac”.

NOTE: Lego Group looks at each request for custom models. They hold the right to cancel your upload/order if your model is found to be obscene or violent in nature. They also can cancel your upload/order if the model is of another company’s product. The easy workaround is to “disassemble” the model before uploading while saving a second copy for you to edit on

Of the numerous Lego computers out there to my knowledge, there has yet to be mounting solution for expansion cards without resorting to drilling through the bricks. My biggest concern was the 8800GT wiggling in its slot. Having such a powerful part of the computer just limply hanging on by its slot is too much of a risk. I came up with using a motherboard tray cut from an old case. This allows a very stable platform for the motherboard and expansion cards to mount onto.

Part 2 - Teardown/Motherboard Tray:

Since all I need from the old PC case is the motherboard tray and the PCI slots, I need to dremel/saw/file the rest away. Start with a perfectly good PC case, remove the side panels, and rip out the switches and lights. Set aside the switches and lights, as they will be reintegrated into the computer later on. As you can see, the motherboard tray has been removed from the rest of the case. I should point out that the rear of the case is going to be screwed back onto the motherboard tray after it is cut away from the rest of the case. The motherboard tray will also be trimmed to be of proper width to fit the Lego case.


Mark out where your cuts will be using a sharpie.

Safety first, kids! Dust mask and Safety Goggles are always important when dealing with tools.

I used standard cutting wheels, although it probably would have been faster to use the reinforced cutting wheel. I had to change wheels about 5 times for just two straight cuts. It’s also a good idea to let the Dremel warm up before you use it as indicated in the manual. It allows the lubricants to spread and make sure the brushes don’t wear out too fast.

Case rear and motherboard tray reattached.
Uh-oh! The space allotted for the motherboard inside of the Lego Mac is only 31 bricks tall (represented by the windows stacked together) and clearly the tray is still a bit too long on either end. More cutting!

The end product
Lego Factory at Home orders ship directly from Lego Group’s worldwide headquarters in Billund, Denmark!
I was surprised to see this when the tracking number came in.
It’s also nice to know that the box weighs 12.4 lbs! That’s a hefty amount of Lego bricks!

And this is where all the problems begin.

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The Bricked Mac - Time-Lapse from RP Cuenco on Vimeo.

Part 4 - Re-Engineering on the fly

As you can see in the video, we end up finishing it, but during building I had to redesign major sections of the Lego case to handle the weight of the computer. The end result is slightly different, but stays true to the Power Mac G5/Mac Pro aesthetics

The weight and stability of the completed Mac was a major factor in deciding whether certain sections of the Lego case should be altered.

The hard drive holders were removed and the power supply put into their place, the hard drives placed on top of the power supply, and the Mac Mini was moved from above the optical drive to above the power supply. Sadly, the best feature, the latching door, was also removed for the sake of stability. The front USB ports and power button proved to be difficult to implement without breaking and will be added at another time when more bricks are available.
Stability of the structure was achieved although the cost of Lego bricks. Unfortunately, time ran out to find more Lego bricks to complete hard drive holders (bulk amounts are hard to find in San Francisco). Below is the optical drive tray, while closed it sits flush with the front, and opens with the tray.

The cables are routed through a single port on the back to maintain a structurally sound rear case while also maintaining the aesthetics of the design. Power cables are routed nearer to the bottom to control interference.
All in all, I feel that the mod was very successful in creating a unique Macintosh.

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Final Thoughts
Special thanks to Mom & Dad for funding the Lego bricks, and Ukiah for helping build it up as well as everyone who stopped by in the lobby and checked it out.