Personal computing discussed

Moderators: renee, David, Thresher

 
flip-mode
Grand Admiral Gerbil
Topic Author
Posts: 10218
Joined: Thu May 08, 2003 12:42 pm

Just gutted a Powermac G5

Sat Sep 03, 2011 8:28 pm

Someone gave me a Powermac G5. But it didn't have a hard drive and I didn't have the installation disks. I was going to install Linux on the thing, but in reality its extremely underpowered by today's standards and probably also consumes a fair bit of power - especially given its low performance.

So, I gutted it.

I half way regret doing it now that the deed is done because it kinda felt like brutalizing a work of art. But, I'm hoping to mod the thing and stuff it with some PC guts and maybe make a Hackintosh out of it.

But what I really want to talk about is the way the thing was put together. It was built like a tank. It took a long time to take the thing apart. The G5 processor is smaller than a dime and yet the heatsink on the thing is larger than my Scythe Ninja. The motherboard is the largest I've ever seen and it had heatpipes running all over the back of the thing. The G5 CPU was mounted to a duaghter card that had all kinds of other components on it and the daughter card plugged into a socket on the motherboard. The motherboard has 8 RAM slots and what looks like 3 PCI-X slots. Everything was very tightly integrated. The fans are mounted to various different types of mounting brackets that slide into place - those are easily accessed and removed first, but everything else was not so easy to work with.

I was just amazed at how tough it was to get apart and I imagine that sending one of those things into the shop for repairs on something deep inside had to have cost a fortune and probably taken some time.
 
derFunkenstein
Gerbil God
Posts: 25427
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2003 9:13 pm
Location: Comin' to you directly from the Mothership

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Sat Sep 03, 2011 10:19 pm

yet it still only had room for like 2 hard drives. That's one of the things that befuddled all of Apple's followers. The G4 towers that were discounted and later discontinued at the G4's launch could hold like 4 3.5" IDE drives, a Zip drive, and an optical drive. But the G5 never managed to support more than 2 HDDs and single optical drive.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1305

Daughter cards for the CPU had been the order of the day since the first G4 towers. They're pretty marvelous to behold. like a 3" square with a little package holding the actual CPU. On the G4's, there were cache chips - up to 1MB external L2 for the 550MHz chips on down, and up to 2MB of external L3 (L2 was integrated) for the 667Mhz and higher ones.
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
Twittering away the day at @TVsBen
 
End User
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2977
Joined: Fri Apr 16, 2004 6:47 pm
Location: Upper Canada

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Sat Sep 03, 2011 11:41 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
yet it still only had room for like 2 hard drives. That's one of the things that befuddled all of Apple's followers. The G4 towers that were discounted and later discontinued at the G4's launch could hold like 4 3.5" IDE drives, a Zip drive, and an optical drive. But the G5 never managed to support more than 2 HDDs and single optical drive.


When I upgraded from my G4 tower to my Dual G5 2.7 I went with external FW800 drives. FW800 really saved the day back then.
 
flip-mode
Grand Admiral Gerbil
Topic Author
Posts: 10218
Joined: Thu May 08, 2003 12:42 pm

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Sun Sep 04, 2011 6:26 am

Yeah the two drive limit is pure stupidity.

I plan to put up some pictures in a bit.
 
FuturePastNow
Gerbil Elite
Posts: 608
Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 11:28 am

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Sun Sep 04, 2011 6:54 am

I've toyed with the idea of buying one for a long time, just because it is basically a technological work of art. Yet a good one is still going to be $300 or so, for what amounts to crappy but beautiful computer. Maybe someday.
 
Crayon Shin Chan
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2313
Joined: Fri Sep 06, 2002 11:14 am
Location: Malaysia
Contact:

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Sun Sep 04, 2011 9:02 am

I had a dual G5 for some time. It was really wonderful as a general use workstation, and it was the computing equivalent of having Hayden Panettiere sit on your desk all the time. It's not underpowered at all really, it can do everything just fine - why did you think it was underpowered? I sold it for a GTX470 though.
Mothership: FX-8350, 12GB DDR3, M5A99X EVO, MSI GTX 1070 Sea Hawk, Crucial MX500 500GB
Supply ship: [email protected], 12GB DDR3, M4A88TD-V EVO/USB3
Corsair: Thinkpad X230
 
flip-mode
Grand Admiral Gerbil
Topic Author
Posts: 10218
Joined: Thu May 08, 2003 12:42 pm

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Sun Sep 04, 2011 10:15 am

Crayon Shin Chan wrote:
I had a dual G5 for some time. It was really wonderful as a general use workstation, and it was the computing equivalent of having Hayden Panettiere sit on your desk all the time. It's not underpowered at all really, it can do everything just fine - why did you think it was underpowered? I sold it for a GTX470 though.

What makes me think it was underpowered? Darn... I never have any graphs comparing a dual G5 to any recent computer lying around when I need them. Well, I'll just say this: A Zacate E350 system that peaks at 50 watts (25 watts with the right power supply) probably outperforms a dual G5 that idles at 100 watts.
 
End User
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2977
Joined: Fri Apr 16, 2004 6:47 pm
Location: Upper Canada

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 1:43 pm

flip-mode wrote:
Crayon Shin Chan wrote:
I had a dual G5 for some time. It was really wonderful as a general use workstation, and it was the computing equivalent of having Hayden Panettiere sit on your desk all the time. It's not underpowered at all really, it can do everything just fine - why did you think it was underpowered? I sold it for a GTX470 though.

What makes me think it was underpowered? Darn... I never have any graphs comparing a dual G5 to any recent computer lying around when I need them. Well, I'll just say this: A Zacate E350 system that peaks at 50 watts (25 watts with the right power supply) probably outperforms a dual G5 that idles at 100 watts.


I finally found my CINEBENCH R10 scores of my Dual 2.7 G5 and various other computers I had at the time:

Dual 2.7 G5 (2005)
Rendering (Single CPU): 1970 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 3574 CB-CPU

Core Duo 1.66 Mac mini (2006)
Rendering (Single CPU): 1672 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 3150 CB-CPU

AMD Athlon X2 4800+ (2006)
Rendering (Single CPU): 2253 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 4335 CB-CPU

Core 2 Duo 2.33 MacBook Pro (2006
Rendering (Single CPU): 2517 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 4727 CB-CPU

Q6600 @3GHZ (2007)
Rendering (Single CPU): 3365 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 11972 CB-CPU
 
just brew it!
Administrator
Posts: 54500
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 10:51 pm
Location: Somewhere, having a beer

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 4:45 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
Daughter cards for the CPU had been the order of the day since the first G4 towers. They're pretty marvelous to behold. like a 3" square with a little package holding the actual CPU. On the G4's, there were cache chips - up to 1MB external L2 for the 550MHz chips on down, and up to 2MB of external L3 (L2 was integrated) for the 667Mhz and higher ones.

Sounds an awful lot like Slot 1 / Slot A, just without the plastic casing.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
Corrado
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2574
Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2002 7:00 pm

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 5:16 pm

One of these days I'll actually pick up a G5 case or even one of the older Graphite G4 cases to gut and turn into my desktop machine. I say I'd use it for a server, but for the things I use a server for, its a waste since I can just use a Zacate net top and be satisfied.
 
SecretSquirrel
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2726
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2002 7:00 pm
Location: North DFW suburb...
Contact:

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 6:11 pm

just brew it! wrote:
derFunkenstein wrote:
Daughter cards for the CPU had been the order of the day since the first G4 towers. They're pretty marvelous to behold. like a 3" square with a little package holding the actual CPU. On the G4's, there were cache chips - up to 1MB external L2 for the 550MHz chips on down, and up to 2MB of external L3 (L2 was integrated) for the 667Mhz and higher ones.

Sounds an awful lot like Slot 1 / Slot A, just without the plastic casing.


That is something like saying a Camero and a Ferrari are both sports cars. The engineering on the G5 CPU module is something to behold. http://www.chaosmint.com/mac/g5-processor-module

--ss
 
Corrado
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2574
Joined: Sun Feb 17, 2002 7:00 pm

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 6:20 pm

SecretSquirrel wrote:
That is something like saying a Camero and a Ferrari are both sports cars. The engineering on the G5 CPU module is something to behold. http://www.chaosmint.com/mac/g5-processor-module

--ss



CamAro. I am constantly amazed how people that OWN these cars still spell it wrong.
 
derFunkenstein
Gerbil God
Posts: 25427
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2003 9:13 pm
Location: Comin' to you directly from the Mothership

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 7:12 pm

just brew it! wrote:
derFunkenstein wrote:
Daughter cards for the CPU had been the order of the day since the first G4 towers. They're pretty marvelous to behold. like a 3" square with a little package holding the actual CPU. On the G4's, there were cache chips - up to 1MB external L2 for the 550MHz chips on down, and up to 2MB of external L3 (L2 was integrated) for the 667Mhz and higher ones.

Sounds an awful lot like Slot 1 / Slot A, just without the plastic casing.

Yeah, i suppose so. They had some sort of funky socket and you clamped them down with screws roughly the same size as those you'd use in your expansion card brackets. In fact, those kind of case screws would work if you lost one of the originals. In fact, IIRC some of the old Power PC Macs (pre-G3) used CPU slots instead of sockets.
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
Twittering away the day at @TVsBen
 
just brew it!
Administrator
Posts: 54500
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 10:51 pm
Location: Somewhere, having a beer

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:11 pm

SecretSquirrel wrote:
That is something like saying a Camero and a Ferrari are both sports cars. The engineering on the G5 CPU module is something to behold. http://www.chaosmint.com/mac/g5-processor-module

What's the heatpipe for? To cool the VRMs?
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
 
rogue426
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1298
Joined: Thu Jul 21, 2005 9:51 pm

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:17 pm

I have a old G3 and G4, cases are cool imo,I was going to throw them out after reading this thread ,i'll see if they still actually work.
ASUS P5B-E,ConroeE6400,2GB Mushkin DDR2 800,
EVGA 8800GTS,Corsair 520HX,Antec 900,WD320 GB,Samsung 204B
 
flip-mode
Grand Admiral Gerbil
Topic Author
Posts: 10218
Joined: Thu May 08, 2003 12:42 pm

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:43 pm

just brew it! wrote:
SecretSquirrel wrote:
That is something like saying a Camero and a Ferrari are both sports cars. The engineering on the G5 CPU module is something to behold. http://www.chaosmint.com/mac/g5-processor-module

What's the heatpipe for? To cool the VRMs?

If you think that heatpipe is suspicious, you should see the back of the motherboard. There's a heatpipe snaking around that must be 18" long on back of that thing. Crazy big motherboard too. Apple must have had the CPUs and a few more things clocked to the utter limit on these machines.

And the PSU is about 12" long, 6" wide, and 2" deep, approximately. Good for 600 watts. And scarce little of that went to the anemic GPU or either of the two possible hard drives. Me thinks it was all for the CPUs. T'would explain the massive heatsinks.

7 total fans including the two fans on the PSU.
 
Captain Ned
Global Moderator
Posts: 28704
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2002 7:00 pm
Location: Vermont, USA

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:48 pm

Ah, so the G5 ran into the same issues as the P4. Clock for clock's sake means power and heat and lots of difficulty dealing with both.
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
flip-mode
Grand Admiral Gerbil
Topic Author
Posts: 10218
Joined: Thu May 08, 2003 12:42 pm

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 8:48 pm

End User wrote:
flip-mode wrote:
Crayon Shin Chan wrote:
I had a dual G5 for some time. It was really wonderful as a general use workstation, and it was the computing equivalent of having Hayden Panettiere sit on your desk all the time. It's not underpowered at all really, it can do everything just fine - why did you think it was underpowered? I sold it for a GTX470 though.

What makes me think it was underpowered? Darn... I never have any graphs comparing a dual G5 to any recent computer lying around when I need them. Well, I'll just say this: A Zacate E350 system that peaks at 50 watts (25 watts with the right power supply) probably outperforms a dual G5 that idles at 100 watts.


I finally found my CINEBENCH R10 scores of my Dual 2.7 G5 and various other computers I had at the time:

Dual 2.7 G5 (2005)
Rendering (Single CPU): 1970 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 3574 CB-CPU

Core Duo 1.66 Mac mini (2006)
Rendering (Single CPU): 1672 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 3150 CB-CPU

AMD Athlon X2 4800+ (2006)
Rendering (Single CPU): 2253 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 4335 CB-CPU

Core 2 Duo 2.33 MacBook Pro (2006
Rendering (Single CPU): 2517 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 4727 CB-CPU

Q6600 @3GHZ (2007)
Rendering (Single CPU): 3365 CB-CPU
Rendering (Multiple CPU): 11972 CB-CPU


Nice info!
 
SecretSquirrel
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2726
Joined: Tue Jan 01, 2002 7:00 pm
Location: North DFW suburb...
Contact:

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 9:05 pm

just brew it! wrote:
SecretSquirrel wrote:
That is something like saying a Camero and a Ferrari are both sports cars. The engineering on the G5 CPU module is something to behold. http://www.chaosmint.com/mac/g5-processor-module

What's the heatpipe for? To cool the VRMs?



Back side of the VRMs, yes.
 
End User
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2977
Joined: Fri Apr 16, 2004 6:47 pm
Location: Upper Canada

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 9:12 pm

flip-mode wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
SecretSquirrel wrote:
That is something like saying a Camero and a Ferrari are both sports cars. The engineering on the G5 CPU module is something to behold. http://www.chaosmint.com/mac/g5-processor-module

What's the heatpipe for? To cool the VRMs?

If you think that heatpipe is suspicious, you should see the back of the motherboard. There's a heatpipe snaking around that must be 18" long on back of that thing. Crazy big motherboard too. Apple must have had the CPUs and a few more things clocked to the utter limit on these machines.

And the PSU is about 12" long, 6" wide, and 2" deep, approximately. Good for 600 watts. And scarce little of that went to the anemic GPU or either of the two possible hard drives. Me thinks it was all for the CPUs. T'would explain the massive heatsinks.

7 total fans including the two fans on the PSU.

My Dual 2.7 G5 is liquid cooled - http://goo.gl/p2F0P (not my image)

It still runs and is in daily use.
 
Captain Ned
Global Moderator
Posts: 28704
Joined: Wed Jan 16, 2002 7:00 pm
Location: Vermont, USA

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 9:15 pm

End User wrote:
My Dual 2.7 G5 is liquid cooled - http://goo.gl/p2F0P (not my image)

It still runs and is in daily use.

Are you also using a Delphi-sourced auto heater core as a radiator?
What we have today is way too much pluribus and not enough unum.
 
Scrotos
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1109
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:57 pm
Location: Denver, CO.

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 10:53 pm

Captain Ned wrote:
End User wrote:
My Dual 2.7 G5 is liquid cooled - http://goo.gl/p2F0P (not my image)

It still runs and is in daily use.

Are you also using a Delphi-sourced auto heater core as a radiator?


As far as I know, all the liquid cooling systems in the G5s are Delphi. Yeah, I found that odd, too.

edit: I'm wrong, later ones were done by Panasonic and more reliable--the Delphi models tended to leak.
Last edited by Scrotos on Tue Sep 06, 2011 11:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
Scrotos
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1109
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:57 pm
Location: Denver, CO.

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 10:57 pm

flip-mode wrote:
Someone gave me a Powermac G5. But it didn't have a hard drive and I didn't have the installation disks. I was going to install Linux on the thing, but in reality its extremely underpowered by today's standards and probably also consumes a fair bit of power - especially given its low performance.

So, I gutted it.


A pity. You might have been able to sell it for decent: http://www.lowendmac.com/deals/best-pow ... rices.html

But probably more fun to mod it out!
 
Scrotos
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1109
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:57 pm
Location: Denver, CO.

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 11:08 pm

flip-mode wrote:
I was just amazed at how tough it was to get apart and I imagine that sending one of those things into the shop for repairs on something deep inside had to have cost a fortune and probably taken some time.


Oh, you should have tried working on a Powermac 8100/8500 case.

http://lowendmac.com/mail/03/0528.html#6

The steps are similar for just installing more RAM. I wish I had a pictoral guide for that, it's... an adventure.

derFunkenstein wrote:
Daughter cards for the CPU had been the order of the day since the first G4 towers. They're pretty marvelous to behold. like a 3" square with a little package holding the actual CPU. On the G4's, there were cache chips - up to 1MB external L2 for the 550MHz chips on down, and up to 2MB of external L3 (L2 was integrated) for the 667Mhz and higher ones.


I never got the 2-drive limit, either. I think once they went Intel they allowed for 4 internal drives. But still...

And daughter cards were really popular with the PowerPC 601/603/603e/604/604e series, too. I think it was only the G3's that didn't use them since the switch from 68k? Some other mac nut will probably know that off the top of his head. Predated the Slot 1/Slot A tomfoolery on the PC side by several years, I think.
 
Scrotos
Graphmaster Gerbil
Posts: 1109
Joined: Tue Oct 02, 2007 12:57 pm
Location: Denver, CO.

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Tue Sep 06, 2011 11:17 pm

Captain Ned wrote:
Ah, so the G5 ran into the same issues as the P4. Clock for clock's sake means power and heat and lots of difficulty dealing with both.


Yup, and Jobs promised 3GHz at an Apple keynote and IBM didn't get there and BOOM they switched to Intel. Decent info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Mac_G5

And the Ars articles at the bottom under "External Links". Good stuff.
 
MadManOriginal
Gerbil Jedi
Posts: 1533
Joined: Wed Jan 30, 2002 7:00 pm
Location: In my head...

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Wed Sep 07, 2011 12:07 am

SecretSquirrel wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
derFunkenstein wrote:
Daughter cards for the CPU had been the order of the day since the first G4 towers. They're pretty marvelous to behold. like a 3" square with a little package holding the actual CPU. On the G4's, there were cache chips - up to 1MB external L2 for the 550MHz chips on down, and up to 2MB of external L3 (L2 was integrated) for the 667Mhz and higher ones.

Sounds an awful lot like Slot 1 / Slot A, just without the plastic casing.


That is something like saying a Camero and a Ferrari are both sports cars. The engineering on the G5 CPU module is something to behold. http://www.chaosmint.com/mac/g5-processor-module

--ss


So ummmm....where is the interface from the CPU module to the rest of the system?
 
End User
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2977
Joined: Fri Apr 16, 2004 6:47 pm
Location: Upper Canada

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Wed Sep 07, 2011 12:33 am

Scrotos wrote:
And daughter cards were really popular with the PowerPC 601/603/603e/604/604e series, too. I think it was only the G3's that didn't use them since the switch from 68k? Some other mac nut will probably know that off the top of his head. Predated the Slot 1/Slot A tomfoolery on the PC side by several years, I think.


That brought back memories. Back in the day I upgraded my 7300/180 to a G3. I still use the 7300 (monitor stand).

Cripes. I forgot that I have two G4 450's and a second gen iMac behind the sofa!
 
End User
Minister of Gerbil Affairs
Posts: 2977
Joined: Fri Apr 16, 2004 6:47 pm
Location: Upper Canada

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Wed Sep 07, 2011 12:36 am

Captain Ned wrote:
End User wrote:
My Dual 2.7 G5 is liquid cooled - http://goo.gl/p2F0P (not my image)

It still runs and is in daily use.

Are you also using a Delphi-sourced auto heater core as a radiator?


I haven't a clue. What should I look for?
 
just brew it!
Administrator
Posts: 54500
Joined: Tue Aug 20, 2002 10:51 pm
Location: Somewhere, having a beer

Re: Just gutted a Powermac G5

Wed Sep 07, 2011 8:14 am

MadManOriginal wrote:
SecretSquirrel wrote:
That is something like saying a Camero and a Ferrari are both sports cars. The engineering on the G5 CPU module is something to behold. http://www.chaosmint.com/mac/g5-processor-module

So ummmm....where is the interface from the CPU module to the rest of the system?

Looks like there's a connector on the underside of the module, visible to the right side in the upper picture. In the lower picture (top side of the module) you can also see the array of through holes where the pins of the connector are soldered.
Nostalgia isn't what it used to be.

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 1 guest
GZIP: On