Power Mac G5 Bottom Right Cooling Fan Unit Replacement

Remove all the cables, including the power cables before opening the unit.

Lift the tab to unlock the side panel.

Remove the air deflector (the clear plastic cover) by pulling on the handle.

The cooling fan unit is located on the bottom right of the Apple G5 Desktop.

Remove the G5 metal cover from the processing/cooling unit of the computer. NOTE: Apple inserted a rather fragile plastic pin that inserts through the top divider shield and clips into a tab on the hidden ledge of this CPU shield. Removing this pin, certainly voided Mac's warranty - but more appropriate for now, voids most after-market insurance plans. A replacement pin (new) is hard to get ahold of, and very few are talented and patient enough to remove this pin without damaging it. Just something to keep in mind. If you have no warranty any longer or don't care, please continue...

Pull the metal plate to the left and outward to remove the plate from the processing/cooling unit.

Locate the bottom right fan.

Unplug the fan's power cable from the upper rightmost corner of the motherboard (connection J45). If there is a video card in place, carefully pull the cable plug down between the back edge of the video card and the motherboard. Note, the photo shows the unplugged cable and the area it plugs into outlined in yellow. No video card is shown in this photo.

Locate the tabs on the fan unit.

While pushing in on the tabs, highlighted in yellow, pull the fan back towards the cooling unit.

After the latches are out, pull the fan out.

After removal of the bottom right fan the space should look like this.