Ok - I have an idea. I have an old G5 dual with one dead CPU. I haven't been using it much lately, and it's all but obsolete. Seems a shame to waste that gorgeous case.

Long ago, I hacked an NVIDIA GeForce 6800 GT into the thing, using some creative ROM flashing. With stock drivers, the video has never given me a moment's trouble.

How feasible would it be to perform the ultimate hack on this thing? What combination of mobo and OSx86 distro would get me the closest to a real quad-core MacPro using every possible scrap of hardware that's already in the case? My ultimate goal would be for this to be almost indistinguishable from stock. Can it be done, or would such a Frankenstein's Monster be an affront to god and man, escape to ravage the countryside, and ultimately result in my decapitation by an enraged crowd of teutonic peasants with torches and pitchforks?

It is possible, you should be able to find all the info you need here

If you decide to make a project of it, make sure you let us all know how you get on! I would love to do this myself, i'm waiting on one of the G5's at work to kick the bucket..

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 Mac OS X 10.6.4 Retail || Intel Core2 Duo E8200 2.66GHz || Gigabyte G31M-ES2L || GeForce 6600 GT 128MB || Realtek ALC883 Audio || Realtek RTL8169 LAN || Samsung SpinPoint F1 1TB HD || Sony Dual Layer IDE DVD RW DW-D22A || Apple Aluminium Keyboard || Mighty Mouse

 MacBook Pro || 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo || 200Gb HD || 2Gb Ram || NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT

 iPhone 4 || 16Gb

Woah. Since posting this, I found like a TON of forum chatter out there. People seem to be doing this right and left. I actually have the rudiments of a plan forming. If I decide to gut my reliable old Mac and replace the innards with pure ATX evil, I'll totally post it all here.

So far, I've got a GA-EP35-DS4 mobo, a GeForce 8800GT, and a Q6600 SLACR cobbled into an old Dell PowerEdge 1500SC enclosure, and able to boot as far as the Chameleon loader on a 1GB USB stick. So far, I'm impressed and encouraged.

Well, I now have a perfectly functional hackintosh in a temporary, generic, beige, boring case. The whole thing really works brilliantly, though. Aesthetics is indeed everything, however I'm wondering if it's worth the hacking and hassle. While most of them are dreadful, vulgar things, there are a few decent ATX cases out there that don't have weird spiky bits and garish LEDs. I may just go that route instead.