01-17-2007, 09:21 AM

Plan to use it while at school and hoping to save some money. If this doesn't work out, I might just save up for the iMac. Looking to build an intel-based Powermac with individual parts and was just looking for some advice.

I'll be using this mac for After Effects, DVD Studio Pro 4, FCP, Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, etc... so my main concerns are what types of video cards should I be looking at? Should I be OK with a 32mb, 64mb, or should I just look for something 128mb?

Also I have experience building custom PCs, but not macs. Are all Powermac spare parts compatible with each other to a certain extent? Or are G4 parts only compatible with G4 and vice-versa with G5 parts? I'm looking to build something with 512mb ram (which I will upgrade to 1gb later), Superdrive, 1.5ghz at the least, Intel platform, etc. Are there any links out there to a parts list that I should be building off from? Thanks in advanced.

01-17-2007, 10:03 AM

my advice, dont botherr trying to custom build... buy straight from apple or an apple dealer.

01-17-2007, 11:00 AM

If you want an Intel platform, you will have to buy from Apple. No home-built PC you can build will be able to run OSX because you won't have all the drivers. If money is tight, just get a Mac Mini, they are great little machines.

01-17-2007, 11:33 AM

i think he meant building his own mac

01-17-2007, 11:49 AM

I understand that it is not possible to custom build a Mac OS X compatible platform (i.e. a custom built Mac) because Apple includes Apple proprietary hardware on their machines that Mac OS X looks for and uses. Because the hardware is proprietary, and not available for sale, Mac OS X simply won't run on a custom built platform. This is why you don't see Mac clones out on the market.

01-17-2007, 01:29 PM

wow, I thought it was possible. I was reading an article/tutorial on someone already doing the same thing, let me see if I can try to find the link.

So it's impossible even if I purchase a cheap G4 powermac or so to build off-of and just replace parts with?

My reason for staying away from the Mini is because of it's videocard. I plan to render a lot on this machine with FCP, After Effects, etc. and I heard the Mini could only support FCP HD.

01-17-2007, 02:38 PM

I haven't read these articles, but it sounds shady to me. You will be building an illegal box.

01-17-2007, 04:25 PM

what about just purchasing a used powermac of some sort and upgrading the parts on that to the specs I'd need? will OSx run smoothly on a buildup like that?

01-17-2007, 05:25 PM

Absolutely! This is in fact commonly done. The G5 and G5 boxes are very upgradable, and you will find plenty of support on these forums for any questions you may have. That would be an excellent course of action.

01-17-2007, 05:30 PM

you cant build i mac because it has a motherboard thats uses EFI instaed of BIOS. You cant buy a board like this.

01-17-2007, 06:30 PM

Originally Posted by mac57

Absolutely! This is in fact commonly done. The G5 and G5 boxes are very upgradable, and you will find plenty of support on these forums for any questions you may have. That would be an excellent course of action.

so starting off with a cheap $100 g4 or g3 powermac and switching out the ram, harddrive, a dvd-rw drive, etc is perfectly fine then? any links or resources to this type of project? i use macs all the time at school and have put together custom PCs and external harddrives, but something like this I haven't done before.

01-17-2007, 11:41 PM

As long as you stay within the originally designed maximums, you should be OK. The G4 may be best, since I understand that you can buy processor upgrades all the way up to 2.0 GHz. That would be quite a box for a G4.

This guide looks like just the ticket for you:

http://www.2ndchancepc.co.uk/g4-mac-upgrade-guide.html

You will find pages of such guides if you Google "g4 upgrading".

01-18-2007, 02:31 AM

Don't buy a G3 tower, or PCI graphics G4. They are cheaper, but are very limited as far as graphics cards, and they have different processor cards that only support up to 600mhz G4's.

01-18-2007, 07:13 AM

Those links were very useful, especially the search terms Mac57, thanks!

Thanks Bluesmudge, I'll keep that in mind. Looks like I have a lot of reading to do :headphone

01-18-2007, 06:53 PM

Ok so I've decided to do this process, but put everything inside one of my old Alienware cases. I noticed everyone who puts their G4 inside a case has issues with the Peripherals (USB, Firewire, etc.) and the power supply.

My quesion is wouldn't it just be possible to find some sort of usb cable extension and run that from the G4 internals and hardwire that to the USB port on the case? same going for the firewire?

Also about the power supply, are there any PC power supplies that would work with the G4 if the original one isn't long enough? Are there any other solutions to the power supply issue?

Thanks everyone for the advice.