Over the past few years I have built two Sleeper PCs. I've always enjoyed taking these old cases and giving them hardware and capabilities far beyond their original specs.

PowerMac Z3

The PowerMac Z3 is a Sleeper PC built into a PowerMac G5 case. It features a Zen 3 Ryzen 5 5600X CPU (Hence the Z3 Name) and RTX 3070. I modified the case using a kit from The Laser Hive and parts from my at the time current PC.

The biggest hurdle I faced was with the front IO board. I wanted to maintain all of the front I/O including the FireWire port. However, the PCIe card I purchased only worked in the topmost slot, where the GPU would traditionally go. That is why the GPU was moved to the bottommost slot with suboptimal airflow. Overall, it was quite a successful build.

Niveus Media PC

Niveus Media was a company that made high end home theater PCs in the early 2000s. I found this specific unit, a Niveus Media AVX Center, at a Thrift Store in late 2022, non functional. I really enjoyed the case and decided to turn it into a sleeper PC.

Originally the AVX Media Center, like other Niveus Media products, was designed to be passively cooled. The original computer used relatively standard PC components with heat pipes running into the the sides which then radiated through the exterior spikes.

For my build, I chose to instead use low power components to reduce both cost and complexity of the conversion. As such I chose a Ryzen 5 4600G and Nvidia RTX A2000. My main challenge was fitting the new Power Supply. The original power supply was mounted at the front of the case in a non standard foot print.