Franken Mac 8600/G4

dang, not bad if I might say. Grats on a successful pull-off of the project. nice to see some new hacks around here

Impressive! Are you using those large opening bezels on the front because of cooling?

I would assume he used those large bezels because they were what he had.

That would be an accurate assumption.

Peace,
Drew

Actually, with that dual 1ghz in there you'd want as much cooling as possible, and you could do something interesting with those openings--put an aluminum screen across them or plex with a bunch of holes in it and use some led colored lighting like you see many others using on their mods. Could be wild. Have you seen Excalibur's 6500?:
http://www.voy.com/8627/15400.html
mac0s9user cut away a B&W's case wall, and eeun his G4, so you could see inside:
http://www.applefritter.com/node/20491*
Some plex and that way you could show off your handywork to any passers by.

*(watch out--I get some pretty overbearing popup ads when I click on macOs9user's pics to enlarge them)

That 6500 is awesome. I picked up a 6500 of my own thinking I might try to copy it, but I haven't gotten around to it.

I wanted the 8600 to look as close to stock as possible. The idea is to make it a "sleeper." You don't realize it's a speed demon until you fire it up and see that it's really a dual G4! So other than a little bit of blue light leaking through the cracks on the case and a blue power LED, it should look absolutely stock.

Unfortunately, it doesn't _sound_ stock. The MDD PSU is a noisy sucker. So is the fan on the case door. The original Apple fan on the case door is actually pretty good, and I might put it back in. The Apple fan has a thermistor on it to control the fan speed... As the temperature goes up in the case, the fan spins faster. The replacement fan I bought doesn't have that feature. Also, the fan I put on the heatsink (not really sure I needed it, but I want to be safe) is pretty loud. With that fan in place, the heatsink is actually cool to the touch even after an hour of Quake 3. I haven't got a termometer on it, but I would wager the heatsink stays in the high 32 - 37C (90 - 100F) range or lower, so cooling doesn't appear to be a problem.

All the hard drives are SMART and have heat sensors. According to them, after some heavy use, they get up to about 42C (~108F). I would expect that to go up if I close in the drive bezels, of course.

Peace,
Drew

Very nice looking, Drew! It's been a long haul...glad you've reached the photo stage!

I was wondering if you couldn't dremel the side panel slats from the inside to create a bit more airflow, without it changing the outer appearence. That might solve any circulation problems once you track down some front panels.