New G5 Hackie - Nearly Done!!

[aquamac]

Hi guys this has been a long time coming - but my new G5 hackie "Supercomputer" is nearly done!













For more - Go aquamac.com - New G5 Hackie

[nikonnut]

Aqua,
That is SO sick! I'm absolutely floored! I doubt "super computer" is an adequate description but it'll have to do. I can only imagine what apps that can use CUDA will do with this bad boy. Way to raise the bar (again)! ;D

P.S. That Cooler Master V10 looks like it was meant to go there!

[reddrag0n]

OMG!!!! That is so sick!!!!!
That's it, i am asking you to make my new Mac.
That is off the hook!!!!!
3 thumbs up!!!

[aquamac]

Thanks for your kind comments guys, I am really enjoying using this and looking forward to the final release of Snow Leopard. Having said that, the latest edition is rock solid and on the right equipment is extremely fast! It does not appear that different to Leo, but the speed boost is worth it, even things like repairing permissions takes around 30 to 40 secs (on this machine).

I do need to get Photoshop CS4 (I love this program!) though as my CS1 runs with rosetta and that is not possible with Snow. Just looked at the price £650!!!!!!! Youre having a laugh adobe surely??

[spooky]

WOW. am speechless.. very nicely done and very clean. im thinking of transplanting my rig to a G5 case which im holding on for months now but dont know if ill be able to finish it or even do it nicely.

may i ask a pic without the aluminum "L" cover if you dont mind, i wanna see how the PSU was done

love that rig!

[blackknight]

Un-Freaking Believable!!! I'm very impressed Aqua. I can't believe it all fit in there. Are you able to use those two other GTX 280s for purposes other than multi-monitor yet? How many custom kexts are needed for that system?

[aquamac]

Spooky and Blacknight,

Many thanks for your comments! This was an incredible squeeze, I have the sore wrists to prove it too! The cover was removed from the Power Supply and the base of the supply was mounted vertically in the stainless steel cage. The lower 140 mm fan blows on the supply then the air is routed into the Cooler Master V10 and out of the pack of the case. All fans are revolving at less than 900 rpm according to the bios and the two 140's are revolving real slow just like a real Mac Pro's. This thing certainly draws some power, when I run Geekbench, the APC smartups 1000 Watt complains and a red light starts to flash on the front till it stops running!!!! Even at idle all 5 bars are lit, compared to the last Quad core Mac Pro conversion I did which only lit 3 or a real Mac Pro only 2! Those GTX 280 have afterburners on board!

Not too many custom kexts needed with snow. You need Chameleon 2, but then that will not fully install on Snow yet, so you need to manually install the "Extra" folder and add your custom kexts, then use Extensions.mkext maker to make a custom mkext.

The custom kexts you need are as follows:

NullCPUPowerManagement.kext
OpenHaltRestart.kext
PlatformUUID.kext
VoodooHDA.kext

You also need:
smbios.plist and your com.apple.boot.plist in your extensions folder.

As Snow works with Intel ICH10, set your motherboard to AHCI & you're away. You can run with the vanilla SMBios as the plist corrects that and vanilla Machkernel.

You need to put a few things in your com.apple.boot.plist, mine is as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Graphics Mode</key>
<string>1680x1050x32</string>
<key>Kernel</key>
<string>mach_kernel</string>
<key>Kernel Flags</key>
<string>_x64</string>
<key>Timeout</key>
<string>3</string>
<key>device-properties</key>
<string>8007000001000000030000007c0200000e00000002010c00d041030a000000000101060000030101060000000101060000020101060000007fff040014000000400032002c006e0061006d0065000000120000004e5644412c446973706c61792d42220000005600520041004d002c0074006f00740061006c00730069007a006500000008000000000000401c0000006400650076006900630065005f0074007900700065000000100000004e5644412c4765466f7263650e0000006e0061006d00650000000f0000004e5644412c506172656e7422000000400031002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c6179100000006d006f00640065006c0000001e0000004e5649444941204765466f72636520475458203238302044444c20000000400032002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c00650000000e0000004e5644412c4e564d616320000000400031002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c00650000000e0000004e5644412c4e564d616322000000400032002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c6179220000004100410050004c002c0073006c006f0074002d006e0061006d00650000000a000000536c6f742d3314000000400031002c006e0061006d0065000000120000004e5644412c446973706c61792d411e00000072006f006d002d007200650076006900730069006f006e000000090000003331373261100000004e00560043004100500000001800000004000000000003000c00000000000007000000000e0000004e00560050004d00000020000000010000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000007c0200000e00000002010c00d041030a000000000101060000070101060000000101060000000101060000007fff04000e0000004e00560050004d0000002000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000220000005600520041004d002c0074006f00740061006c00730069007a006500000008000000000000401c0000006400650076006900630065005f0074007900700065000000100000004e5644412c4765466f7263650e0000006e0061006d00650000000f0000004e5644412c506172656e7422000000400030002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c617922000000400031002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c6179100000006d006f00640065006c0000001e0000004e5649444941204765466f72636520475458203238302044444c20000000400031002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c00650000000e0000004e5644412c4e564d616314000000400030002c006e0061006d0065000000120000004e5644412c446973706c61792d41220000004100410050004c002c0073006c006f0074002d006e0061006d00650000000a000000536c6f742d3514000000400031002c006e0061006d0065000000120000004e5644412c446973706c61792d4220000000400030002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c00650000000e0000004e5644412c4e564d6163100000004e00560043004100500000001800000004000000000003000c00000000000007000000001e00000072006f006d002d007200650076006900730069006f006e0000000900000033313732617c0200000e00000002010c00d041030a000000000101060000030101060000000101060000000101060000007fff04000e0000004e00560050004d0000002000000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000220000005600520041004d002c0074006f00740061006c00730069007a006500000008000000000000401c0000006400650076006900630065005f0074007900700065000000100000004e5644412c4765466f7263650e0000006e0061006d00650000000f0000004e5644412c506172656e7422000000400030002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c617922000000400031002c006400650076006900630065005f00740079007000650000000b000000646973706c6179100000006d006f00640065006c0000001e0000004e5649444941204765466f72636520475458203238302044444c20000000400031002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c00650000000e0000004e5644412c4e564d616314000000400030002c006e0061006d0065000000120000004e5644412c446973706c61792d41220000004100410050004c002c0073006c006f0074002d006e0061006d00650000000a000000536c6f742d3114000000400031002c006e0061006d0065000000120000004e5644412c446973706c61792d4220000000400030002c0063006f006d00700061007400690062006c00650000000e0000004e5644412c4e564d6163100000004e00560043004100500000001800000004000000000003000c00000000000007000000001e00000072006f006d002d007200650076006900730069006f006e000000090000003331373261</string>
</dict>
</plist>

Note that _x64 means you will boot in 64 bit mode. If you want to boot in 32 bit then you would put _x32.

Putting _x64 does seem to give the system a real boost!

Oh Blacknight, I almost forgot, there is still no support in OSX for SLi so at the moment I will connect 6 flat panels on our next Exhibition stand! But I live in hope. Windows 7 (dare I mention it) runs like a rocket!

[nano2nd]

Just seen the new thread - dude, you've done it again. Legendary build man.

And those benchmark scores are outrageous. Are you seeing the GPU used for general computing in Snow Leopard? Or is the extra boost just in the 64 bit operation?

[aquamac]

Hi Nano,

Mostly down to 64 bit I think as the scores drop down to around 10,000 if I boot in 32 bit. I guess 12 gigs of ram helps in 64 bit too. I am not sure if 10a 421a has all the bells and whistles enabled yet for GPU computing but there is lots of Tesla stuff mentioned in IORegistry Explorer.

[jedric]

Hey aqua not sure if you already saw my post on the Apple your BIOS thread, can you please kindly post an update on how you got the Apple to show in the BIOS part of the geekbench.

Great new system by the way.... as always.....

[aquamac]

Jedric,

Put this SMBios.plist in your Extra folder if you are using Chameleon and you need a vanilla AppleSMBios.kext in your Extensions folder. You can edit the file first as it has my details in it.

[jedric]

Thanks Aqua much appreciated

[jaev]

Aqua i'm very tempted to send you an G5 case for modification lol

[aquamac]

Hi Jaev, thanks for the encouragement,

Trouble is they take so d**n long! Well this one took around 2 months thinking time and around 3 weeks to make on and off, evenings and weekends. Well if anything happens to my day job.....

[HackJoe]

HOLY nuts!!!

Dude, you keep raising the bar. STOP IT! :-p Its very clean. I need your advice on how to do the cut and shut from a generic case for the back IO. looks truly great.

WOW!

J.