[bbt]

ok here they are in no particular order

apple changed the color coding for the drive power wires from the usual red, yellow and black to all black (nice to look at but hard to tell which wire is the 12v one and which is the 5v one)

there are 2 spaces for hard drives that go in on rails - the upper drive needs to placed in at an angle since the upper part of the tower case blocks the drive from going straight in

and yes these drives are serial and not parallel so you can not use the drives that you have from you older macs, even with these after market parallel to serial adaptors (there's not enough space to accomodate the adaptors and these adaptors need there own power inputs usually a 4 pin plug that is normally used to power floppy drives in PCs)

the heat sinks for the G5 chips are so heavy that they are bolted to the tower casing this is usual since heat sinks are normally cliped on the logic board

the heat sinks if you have dual G5s will take a good 1/3 of the space of the logic board

the 80mm fans that apple uses have 3 blades instead of the usual 4 blades that unique

the fans for the PCI slots and the hard drives are noiser than the fans for the heat sinks

and the sensor for the plastic "window" is in one of the slots for the tabs at the bottom of the plactic "window"

so you can open the window without activating the higher rpms of the fans unless you remove the window altogether

[idyll]

Good observations.

[Spliffdaddy]

Might be enough space to use one of these IDE/SATA hard drive converters >

http://www.american-media.com/Produc...t/DK-SATA.html

$20 at www.newegg.com

This one is similar>



If all else fails, suck it up and get one of these external enclosures. Connect your IDE hard drive (they even have an enclosure for 2.5" laptop drives) externally while still using the G5's SATA interface. No, I don't know how you're gonna route the cable to the outside of your G5. Drill a hole or something. Just kidding. Remove a cover from a empty PCI slot.

[Link]

I believe apple has been bolting the heatsink to the side of the case for a while.. some PC manufactures actually have done this before.

[zigzag]

Originally posted by bbt:
and the sensor for the plastic "window" is in one of the slots for the tabs at the bottom of the plactic "window"

so you can open the window without activating the higher rpms of the fans unless you remove the window altogether

Yeah, you have to remove the plastic liner completely before the fans rev up. I was holding the liner partly open at the Apple Store and a salesman asked me to either close it or remove it completely to avoid overheating the machine.

He said that if you remove the liner completely, the processor also powers down to a maximum of 1.3 mhz or something.

Apparently the plastic liner is vital to the cooling process and you don't want to leave it only partly open because the protective mechanisms don't kick in unless it's removed completely.

[mac freak]

Wait, so I won't be able to move my DP450's hard drive into a G5 when I get one? Ack! I don't want to have to transfer 30 GB over my network...

[cowerd]

Wait, so I won't be able to move my DP450's hard drive into a G5 when I get one? Ack! I don't want to have to transfer 30 GB over my network...

Firewire disk mode.

[Eriamjh]

Knowing how tight Apple case designs are, I doubt there is much room for a parallel to SATA converter. The machine will probably WORK with one, but the drive won't physically FIT back in the case.

Bite the bullet and get a SATA drive if you need more space or put that P-ATA drive in a FW800 case.

I have thre IDE drives in my DP800 and would love to move them to a new G5, but I can't. So I wait until a G5 with more room... Rev B? Rev C? It would be nice if Apple could find a way to squeeze in two more HDs even if they required a PCI slot to run 'em (SCSI, IDE, other).

I wonder if the G5 has built in overheat protection? On a P4, you can remove the heat sink completely with the processor RUNNING and it throttles down to protect itself. G5s could do that... It's simple.

[fireside]

Originally posted by zigzag:
He said that if you remove the liner completely, the processor also powers down to a maximum of 1.3 mhz or something.

macaddict states that it goes to sleep mode. maybe it does both?

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by zigzag:
He said that if you remove the liner completely, the processor also powers down to a maximum of 1.3 mhz or something.

1.3 MHz? Wow, that's slower than a Mac Classic

[KidRed]

Originally posted by fireside:
macaddict states that it goes to sleep mode. maybe it does both?

Don't think so, I also read it throttled down to 1.3ghz.

[tooki]

Originally, someone said it goes to sleep when you remove the plastic. Well, at least on the single-CPU models, it definitely does not. Inside the hole for one of the tabs on the plastic air guide, there is a little switch... pull out the plastic, and a little red light on the motherboard goes on, and then it spins up the fans as fast as they'll go. (I forgot to check ASP to see if it actually dropped the CPU speed, and displays that change.)

tooki

[reactor]

This is an excerpt from Apple's tech document
- - - - - - - - -
Processor and Bus Slewing

To lower power consumption, heat generation, and fan noise, the Power Mac G5 computer incorporates an automatic power management technique called bus slewing. Bus slewing is designed to run at high processor and bus speeds and high voltage when the demand on the processor is high, and to run at low processor and bus speeds and low voltage when the demand on the processor is low. Switching between different processor/bus speeds and voltages is achieved by a gradual transition that does not impact system or application performance and operates seamlessly to the user. In slewing, the bus runs at half the speed of the processor.

The ranges of the slewed processor speeds are listed below:

Configuration Processor range
1.6 GHz 1.3 GHz to 1.6 GHz
1.8 GHz 1.3 GHz to 1.8 GHz
2.0 GHz 1.3 GHz to 2.0 GHz

In addition, the Power Mac G5 computer allows the user to control bus slewing mode. The options for specifying either high, reduced, or automatic processor and bus speeds are located at System Preferences>Energy Saver>Options; then select Automatic, Highest, or Reduced.

If the Power Mac G5 computer detects a system temperature that is too high, due to high ambient temperatures or other factors, it will automatically enter bus slewing mode regardless of the selected setting.
- - - - - - - - -

So here it is

[roders]

It's great to know that we can control this speed ourselves, goodwork Reactor!

[Spliffdaddy]

and potentially very good news for those who want to overclock their G5.