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yfan · Jul 24, 2004, 02:28 AM

Hey Gang, starting today I am a new g5 1.8dp owner. I bought it used and it was cosmetically in awesome condition plus the addition of applecard for $1900 was a steal. Anyways, I have two questions..

1) the G5 has already crashed twice with the fans spinning up in speed after the crash. Any suggestions on the reason? It is a fresh reformat and reinstall of panther.

2) My g5 came with 512mb ram. Has anyone mixed different brands of ram and been successful. I am pondering purchasing 2x512 crucial ram from Newegg. Will I be able to keep the existing 512(2x256) ram and have 1.5 gigs of ram?

pat++ · Jul 24, 2004, 05:21 AM

Fan runs at full speed after a crash because they are computer controlled. When it crashes, fans cannot be controlled anymore, so they run full speed (this is normal).

But the computer shouldn't crash very often. Do you have any non-Apple hardware or additional RAM installed? This might be the cause of your frequent crashes... Try to remove them and see if it helps.

Concerning RAM, I buy from Crucial only. They rock.

yfan · Jul 24, 2004, 10:44 AM

well, its acting a bit strange right now. Its crashed 3 times since yesterday, everything locks up including the time and then the fan speeds up. Everything is completely stock inside the computer.

Briareus · Jul 24, 2004, 10:47 AM

Yes, you can keep your existing RAM and add more in matched pairs. My G5 came with a pair of 256s and I almost immediately added 2 sticks of Crucial 512. Makes a big difference.

driven · Jul 24, 2004, 12:55 PM

FWIW: Something may be amis. A crash on a mac running OSX is extremely rare.

My G4 Cube only crashed 3 times in 4 years. My G5 (DP 2.0) has yet to crash once.

t500 · Jul 24, 2004, 03:11 PM

The first thing I would do is a clean install of OSX. Then make sure you apply off off the updates. Bough a 1st gen Dual 1.8 and I cant recall the last time the system crashed.

You could always try to run Mac Janitor (versiontracker.com. It may be able to fix the problem.

Just buy brand name memory from a dealer that supports Macs. I added 2x512 sticks from ramjet immediatly after my purchase.

Good Luck....

yfan · Jul 24, 2004, 03:37 PM

thanks for the great help! Now what seems to be the problem is that the video does not always come on when I do a cold boot. I hear everything booting up, the hard drive and fans spin up but no video. This doesn't happen on a reboot though. However, after a couple of shutdowns via the power button, the video will come on and everything is normal. Hmm...starting to wonder if I got a lemon?

But its nice to know I can add in additional different branded ram without taking the original ones out.

Briareus · Jul 24, 2004, 04:13 PM

I've seen your video symptoms before after rearranging my studio, and it was due to the video card becoming unseated in it's slot. Check for this and also see if the cable to the monitor is not fully secure.

BurpetheadX · Jul 30, 2004, 01:03 AM

Originally posted by yfan:
thanks for the great help! Now what seems to be the problem is that the video does not always come on when I do a cold boot. I hear everything booting up, the hard drive and fans spin up but no video. This doesn't happen on a reboot though. However, after a couple of shutdowns via the power button, the video will come on and everything is normal. Hmm...starting to wonder if I got a lemon?

But its nice to know I can add in additional different branded ram without taking the original ones out.

Your a patient person. Thanks for not throwing your first Mac out the window!

Do a clean install. Zero the drive when you format it. Then run all updates without doing anything on the computer.

If it still crashes after that, your likely have a bad machine and need to start thinking of returning it..

bstone · Aug 4, 2004, 09:04 PM

Run the hardware test CD. However I feel from what you said that this sounds more like a hardware problem. Bring it back to where you bought it and hopefull you have AppleCare (if not it's ok, it's still very soon into the purchase).

I apologize you are having such problems so early into the purchase. Hopefully they will exchange your G5 instead of making you wait for a repair.

By chance do you have the Radeon 9600 Pro video card? I have noticed many, many problems with these cards. Crashing, no video upon boot, failure to wake fromsleep....