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My first mod to my Powermac...

rhpenguin

rhpenguin

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 10, 2003
929
0
London, Ontario
So I got brave on the weekend and decided to take the dremel to my Powermacs case and add some better cooling into it. My plan since i got this machine was to overclock the snot out of it and just have the machine as a playtoy but ive actually found a great use for it as a workstation and just wanna crank out as much performance as i can.

Enter this mod... I mentioned it in an earlier post about what I wanted to do to my Mac, and finally got around to doing it on the weeknd. I purchased a Thermaltake Volcano 7 (becuase just about any Socket 7/370 cpu cooler from the x86 world will work) which is a beautiful copper heatsink with a 7000RPM fan on it. This fan is freakin' huge and moves a ton of air! The other thing i had to do was cut out parts aroudn where the clip connects the HSF to the board and make a new custom clip to make this beast fit...

Also as some of you know, when you attach a new, taller fan to the Powermac, the case wont close because the Zip bay gets in the way. So what did I do... Chop out the zip bay :) The end result looks pretty much like it came from the factory like it is now and it provides a LOT better cooling.


Here are the results of my mod.. Any comments are welcome!
Link to pictures!
 
patience ;D

im making a switch box so i can change frequency with the flick of a switch vs. playing with the jumpers.. Tomorow ill have some results :) But if you note there is some overclocking results in my sig already :p
 
Childsplay or not, there doesnt seem to be many people who will consider doing things out of the ordinary to thier Macs or those who do consider doing anything get told their foolish for it.

Was just hoping to maybe spark some interest in others... btw, im currently in the process of making carbon fibre bezels for my case, so theres more mods to come.
 
I just purchased a B&W and I am looking into modding it and OCing it. You say you have the FSB at 420 MHz then what do you have the Processor running at? What upgrade kit did you buy (if you did get one)? Where did you get the fan? And could you provide any other general details.

EDIT: I see I read it wrong the processor is at 420 MHz and the FSB is at 120MHz. What did it start at 300MHz?
 
This B&W Powermac started its life as a 350MHz BTO unit with zip drive, 128mb of ram and a 10gb hdd. I still have the stock processor in it, and have tried to overclock the core frequency to 4.5, but can only get it stable at 4.0. So what i did was put some PC 133 SDRAM in there and overclocked the FSB to 120 and it seemed quite stable!

So i got every last bit of performance out of the machine with this processer as i could. The only FSB overclock i would do is to 120MHz because it allows the PCI bus to run at the speed closest to what it was meant to be run at. Any other frequency will cause your onboard peripherals not to function correctly.

As for what fan i used, its a Thermaltake Volcano 7+. In order to get it in there, i had to nibble out small sections on either side of the copper part of the heatsink because the base of the beatsink is way bigger than the slot for the processor. Next i had to make a custom clip for the heatsink because the Thermaltake one is far too big. That was the hardest part. Getting the new clip to line up exactly over my G3 core for maximum cooling. You can probably do this by hand but i have a metal bender, so i utilized it for this project. Next i had to chop out a section of the support bar in the case and part of the zip bay. If you look at your Mac and the pictures of mine, you will see exactly what i did.

Since your in Canada, order your fan from Bigfoot Computers. They have good prices.

As for the actual overclocking, you just need to replace your jumperblock on the motherboard with single jumpers to get the frequency you want. All that information can be found here.

Any other questions feel free to PM or IM me..
 
hehe 7on.. Mines soon to be carbon fibre, shelby blue and have backlit glowing apples on the sides (like on the laptops :)).

My last few pcs have been red, so having a blue pc is going to be a change...
 
7on said:
I want to mod my B&W and make it a Red&White ;P
Click to expand...

Anything other than that awful blue. It looks terribly cheap, esp. on my $4000 machine. Well, it was $4000 in 1999. :D
 
jackieonasses said:
better than beige of those days i might add...
Click to expand...

I disagree, the 9600 looked very nice, if blocky. If they had chosen Lime from the iMacs, it would have been less conspicuous than that horrible blue. Still, the magic was in opening the door and being able to leave the computer running. Then again, it wasn't until the QuickSilver models that I thought that the newer case looked right.

Thankfully, I watch the monitor and not the case.
 
bousozoku said:
I disagree, the 9600 looked very nice, if blocky. If they had chosen Lime from the iMacs, it would have been less conspicuous than that horrible blue. Still, the magic was in opening the door and being able to leave the computer running. Then again, it wasn't until the QuickSilver models that I thought that the newer case looked right.

Thankfully, I watch the monitor and not the case.
Click to expand...
Technically i was making a blind joke towards PC's in that era. Oh and i still agree with you. That blue is Ugly!!!
 
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