Sleeper PC: Mac Pro Part Five

Last time I left off with the build up running and posting. Since then, I spent some time polishing up the build and adding in a few more components. This is the finished build, at least for the time being.

The front features an entirely new I/O from Laser Hive that has 4 USB 3.0 ports, a LED power button, and front audio ports. The simple design fits perfectly with the aluminum chassis of the Mac Pro.

While the front is mostly intact, the rear of the case had the most alterations. The most of rear was cut out to fit a custom plate for ATX rear I/O, power supply mount, and fan mount. The only original part in the rear of the case is the side panel latch which I wanted to preserve and would have been likely a whole new mess of work to make a custom replacement for.

At the top, there’s an EVGA SuperNOVA 650w GT that is both 80 plus gold and fully modular. Just below that is a wifi card from ASUS I had around from old builds for the flexibility of wifi or ethernet.

Moving further down the rear, there’s a USB hub and a GeForce GTX 970 AMP! Extreme from Zotac. The USB hub is for the second USB 3.0 header for the front I/O since the motherboard only has one.

Moving to the inside of the case, there’s the finished layout with some acceptable cable management.

So last time I was having some issues with fitting the PSU cable for SATA to the 2.5 SSDs tucked away behind the motherboard so I did end up ordering some SATA power extensions to fit behind. It worked out nicely enough that I opted to route a majority of the cables behind the motherboard. All of the front I/O cables go straight behind the motherboard and come back out from the top, completely out of sight. The CPU power cable, the CPU cooler cables, and SATA cables from the SSDs also go the same route which only leaves a single column of left over cables running along the side.

The Corsair H80i AIO CPU cooler seems to be more than enough to cool the rather tame Ryzen 5 3600 with only a single stock fan, but it does also leave room in case of later upgrades such as a more powerful CPU. You might also notice it is also the only case fan in the case aside from the PSU which mostly off. I haven’t figure out a good design or way to run more fans in the front yet, but it seems sufficient even when under load from benchmarks.

All in all, this build has been great fun in both doing something out the ordinary. A custom case with no wire management needed creative solutions. In the future, I’d consider adding some sort of front fan mounting system, custom air filters for all of the mesh sections, sound damping, a repaint of the whole case and maybe even a custom side panel. I was playing with the idea of a custom side panel that was a color tinted tempered glass that would be a throwback to the old G3 Macs that had the fun various colored sections with the frosted panels.