Back from the Low End Mac mailbag is a heavily customized Dual 800 Quicksilver G4, which looks like a custom B&W G3 on the outside. This community member also swapped out or modified some of the plastic pieces up front, added a gauge cluster, made the colors match, and threw in some upgrades. They write: […]
Category Archives: CustoMacs
Back from the Low End Mac Mailbag is an interesting custom Power Mac G4 Cube from a new contributor in our FaceBook group, Chris Tee. He spray paints it, modifies it, upgrading it into space… and beyond! Chris: “For my first post here…I wanted to share something I’ve been working on since 2023, and I […]
In Late 2023 I purchased and heavily modified a Late 2006 24-Inch iMac, outfitted with a PCIe eGPU, a modified display, some spliced cables along with cable additions, and a newer macOS to match. Today, 2 years later, I decided to crack open the iMac to give the GPU some new thermal paste, […]
Some of us like to tinker around with our Macs – upgrading, modifying, even pushing the machine well beyond what it was ever meant to do. As a longtime technology enthusiast who likes to explore and experiment, I’ve tried tons of impractical things with my Macs over the years. Sometimes to attempt adding new functionality, […]
A YouTuber by the name of SURGE?? posted a video back on July 6th 2025 upgrading a 2018 Mac mini to an 9-core i9 CPU. . . The Intel chip appears to be an I9-9980HK, the same which is used in the 2019 16″ 2.4 GHz i9 MacBook Pro. . (Above: MAC MINI 2018 i9 […]
Fresh from the Low End Mac tech Mailbag is a CustoMac submission from one of our community members, Dan Schnur. He put together “The newest 2025 model year Macintosh IIci”, and this thing has a completely brand new, purple logic board! Gives it a strong Sonnet upgrade kind of vibe, the way it looks. . […]
A while ago, I assembled a pile of 20-Inch 2006 iMac parts into a fully functioning Mac, albeit fixated to an L-shaped shelf contrivance. It worked for the time being, it’s been working pretty steadily for a while now, so I’ve been thinking about putting it into more of a case. I thought for weeks […]
The 2003 Power Mac G5 was the first in a line of controversial 64-Bit PowerPC Macs, which suffered from above average hardware failures. While not the most popular Mac in the lineup of PowerPC Macs overall, the Power Mac G5 still packs a punch. . . Unfortunately, in addition to sometimes defective hardware, the Power […]
Back from the Low End Mac Mailbag is an interesting hardware experiment from a rising contributor in our FaceBook group, Architecture. Enjoy this interesting One Stop Systems P7R4 7 Slot PCI Expansion Unit – and how it works with a Beige Power Macintosh G3! Introduction “Testing an 13 slot PCI Expansion Chassis on a G3 […]
Timothy de Denaro is a longtime tinkerer of Macs from our LEM FaceBook and put together one of the most decked-out and modified Macintosh SE 30s ever! Housed wholly in a clear case, wielding two monitors (an external one of course), and.. it even has a USB port..?! . . The USB port is adapted […]
Xodium from BlueSky has a beige Beige Power Macintosh 9600, which he once took to VCF West 2023. The name of this machine is “A Madman’s Dream v2”, and it comes with many upgrades as well as some internal lighting! “I unfortunately don’t have fresh pictures, but it has been shown off at VCF a […]
An introduction and some history A bit over a decade ago, Apple released the 2011 MacBook Pro with the now infamous Radeon 6000 series discrete Graphics Card. Both the Early and Late 2011 models were prone to spontaneous failure which has been well documented online starting with initial complaints in the Apple Support community. Eventually […]
Certain older Macs are able to take advantage of adding an external graphics card through modification. This is article is broken up into 3 parts, as it contains a lot of information and pictures. Please refer to part 1 of the article for hardware/parts prerequisites. Sections 1 through 5 are contained in part 1, Sections […]
Certain older Macs are able to take advantage of adding an external graphics card through modification. This usually requires external power, the corresponding adapters, can be done via the mini-PCIe slot or MXM slot, and come with case-by-case caveats as most of this was never intended to be a thing. Once installed and properly connected, […]
We’re all familiar with silver, space gray and now space black.. but what about all the other colors? This wasn’t enough, as colorful Macs started trickling back in. We had gold and rose gold with the late intel MacBook Airs and MacBooks, and finally had colorful iMacs again with the M1 iMac. Ryan Anderson made […]
The following is an article about a story of what happened to a LEM group member’s peculiar Power Mac G5, as well as the experiences I had troubleshooting my own. I was browsing our Low End Mac FaceBook group a few nights ago, when someone posted about having issues with their Power Mac G5 potentially […]
Nearly 20 years ago, this was a white Late 2006 20″ iMac. Today, it’s fastened to two wooden shelf pieces, supported by a… shelf bracket. Modifications done: Ripped out the Radeon x1600 chip, Bluetooth and wifi antenna is out of a 17″ 2006 MacBook Pro, Thermaltake smart 700W external PSU, A T7600 2.33 GHz Core […]