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The fan is also somewhat loud and old, so I replaced it. Apple's connectors and colors are completely backwards from industry standards (Black is 12V, Red is Ground and the fan out is a 3pin Male connector, not Female). A Case fan is needed in addition to the cpu fan. The cpu has a directional fan on the heatsink and I did not want to remove it. A USB port is what activates a 5V switch which turns on the 24V line in the native PSU, I use the power and ground of the USB to supply 5V to the PSU.Ģ) No Power or Port for a Case Fan or Molex/SATA power for the optical drive: The addition of another hub or a larger one is likely. It will still be tight, but I have some wiggle room to address the problems that this board does have.ġ) Few USB Ports: A USB Hub is needed, but even a 4 port USB Hub leaves me with only 1 spare USB port, but solves the problem. This is because, there are less port extenders needed and no SSD is required at the bottom of the dome. With this fitting at the top of the dome, I should have even a little but more room for components than I did with my previous mod. It's quiet and low power and works great with mountain lion. It pretty much fits into the grooves in the drive chassis requiring no alternation. This board fits into the slot left vacant by the 3.5" HDD (the mSATA is on the mobo itself). Because I wanted to use the native PSU, I did not believe fitting the optical drive was possible, but with this board it looks like it is going to fit. In my previous ECX mod, the board only fit with the optical drive because I did not use the native PSU. Here is an update: I have decided to go with the NUC board, with a few exceptions, its very well suited for this project. Happy to answer any questions and will keep updating as I go. Thank you for reading, advise and suggestions are appreciated. The question will be the thunderbolt, which I am hopeful will work natively. As this board is nearly identical, I suspect I will have similar success. I have installed this Crucial 128GB mSATA, as well as a broadcom half height wifi card. I did not go further as a mSATA is required and I did not have one large enough until now. With the help of mikeboss' tip (thank you mikeboss for saving me hours of frustration), to set the graphics to 128mb, this board was able to post. This is the "higher end" model because of the inclusion of a thunderbolt port. On the forums I have seen successful builds using the sister model which has ethernet and two monitor support. Even a quality 7.1 Realtek Audio Chip is included. This is likely the build I will keep as this board has everything I need, Core i7 Quad Ivy Bridge with HD4000 graphics, Enough USB 3.0 slots and 2 SATA 6.0 ports. #GRIFFIN IFIRE FIREWIRE AMPLIFIER UPGRADE#I will have to see what might be needed from a cooling perspective, but I may need to upgrade to a larger heatsink, but can not be sure until the computer is fully assembled. I am still trying to devise a use for this and to somehow incorporate a usb powered motor to open and close the door revealing a hot plug or extra ports. Its getting harder to justify what is really a cosmetic feature at this point. Although this is cleaner as there is no power brick, I have mixed feelings about loosing the aesthetics of the drive. #GRIFFIN IFIRE FIREWIRE AMPLIFIER MOD#This build eschews the optical drive which was in my previous mod for the native PSU. I am still tweaking the multibeast settings somewhat, but will report them with final recommendations shortly. Interestingly, I had trouble getting the USB to function from a USB 3.0 port, but when I plugged it into the apple keyboard's USB via the USB 3.0 it worked fine. Changing the SATA from IDE to AHCI was the only change I had to make in the bios, otherwise it installed natively. #GRIFFIN IFIRE FIREWIRE AMPLIFIER INSTALL#I used the Unibeast/Multibeast install method (Thank you again tonymac). I have decided to do an updated version with an Ivy Bridge Chipset, HD400 graphics, and running 10.8 Mountain Lion, I have made significant headway and am using two different small form factor boards/systems and will incorporate the best one into the final build.īoard #1: Mobile Quad Core i7 Ivy Bridge EPI-QM77 Board running Mountain Lion 10.8This is the EPIC board, at 4.5" x 6.5", it is slightly larger than the ECX board, but much smaller than a mini-itx, and it fits easily within the dome. I had previously posted my 20" iMac G4 Case Mod which used a Core i5 Sandy Bridge small form factor ECX board and ran OS 10.7 Lion. Building a CustoMac Hackintosh: Buyer's GuideĢ0" iMac G4 Mod - Updated for Ivy Bridge and Mountain Lion - Completed ![]()
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