Thread
PPC G5 Halts, Panics, Crashes - heat related?
Hiya all, some of you might of notice I recently acquired a very, very cheap PPC G5 2Ghz (DP), sub $150 system).
Now as far as I'm aware this model doesn't have liquid cooled CPU's and thus those crashing ain't related to leakages, or are they?
So.. here's my dilemma, kinda odd behaviour if you ask me. :
In a cool room, the entire system seem to boot up fine, be it a little slow, but that's because it's old :beige: everything will operate as expected. Running heavy applications with test documents open in photoshop and première is fine, no problems at all! It'll be happy running all day all night! Even past a 72hour soak test!!
However, when my studio gets warmer, usually when the central heating kicks it's a whole new ball game! After starting the system, it'll completely finish booting, then on the odd occasion it'll just halt xx( . Clock stops, mouse playing with it's beach-ball and so-forth - you get the picture. And other times, it'll panic and show a screen full of text over the desktop wallpaper..
Does anyone understand those errors? To me it looks like CPU0 is faulty.. but most crashes show that too!
Now as far as I'm aware this model doesn't have liquid cooled CPU's and thus those crashing ain't related to leakages, or are they?
So.. here's my dilemma, kinda odd behaviour if you ask me. :
In a cool room, the entire system seem to boot up fine, be it a little slow, but that's because it's old :beige: everything will operate as expected. Running heavy applications with test documents open in photoshop and première is fine, no problems at all! It'll be happy running all day all night! Even past a 72hour soak test!!However, when my studio gets warmer, usually when the central heating kicks it's a whole new ball game! After starting the system, it'll completely finish booting, then on the odd occasion it'll just halt xx( . Clock stops, mouse playing with it's beach-ball and so-forth - you get the picture. And other times, it'll panic and show a screen full of text over the desktop wallpaper..
Does anyone understand those errors? To me it looks like CPU0 is faulty.. but most crashes show that too!
It does sound like a bad CPU or bad RAM, unfortunately. If you have spare DDR anywhere, I would try that first. The heat-related symptoms does lead me to suspect that it's probably the CPU though. 
Well, there's 4Gb of ram in there spread over six sticks - that's how it arrived.
Four of them seem to be stock Samsung stuff (what Apple seems to use) and the other two are Kingston modules.
Will it work with only two sticks in there? Or does it need a minimum of four?
...I think I need to spend some time with the machine for fault finding...
Kinda a waste to discard it, cost so little and it's almost working.. :lol:
Four of them seem to be stock Samsung stuff (what Apple seems to use) and the other two are Kingston modules.
Will it work with only two sticks in there? Or does it need a minimum of four?
...I think I need to spend some time with the machine for fault finding...
Kinda a waste to discard it, cost so little and it's almost working.. :lol:
Oh....
Does anyone have a copy of SMCfanControl for pre-intel machines? I'd like to bump up the fan speed see is it due to heat... might be a dry joint.
Does anyone have a copy of SMCfanControl for pre-intel machines? I'd like to bump up the fan speed see is it due to heat... might be a dry joint.
Good thing is that the processors aren't too expensive.
http://cgi.ebay.com/PAIR-OF-APPLE-POWERMAC-G5-2-0Ghz-PROCESSORS-630-6425_W0QQitemZ270463905178QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCPUs?hash=item3ef8e7ad9a
http://cgi.ebay.com/PAIR-OF-APPLE-POWERMAC-G5-2-0Ghz-PROCESSORS-630-6425_W0QQitemZ270463905178QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCPUs?hash=item3ef8e7ad9a
Thanks JRL. Before I dash out and buy them.. or one's what will ship to the UK. I wanna try problem solve it, even if that means grabbing the soldering iron.
Surely if the processors are faulty/dead, those crashes would happen continuously, on every single boot!!
But that's not the case, it only seems to be happening when it's running hot! Care to explain?
check for dust in the heatsinks. Also, you may have to reapply CPU Grease, that may be the main issues if it's not dust when there is overheating
the heatsinks could have lifted from the cpu's during shipping, you could check that.
Here's a Macintouch page discussing "G5 Thermal Runaway". You might find something helpful in it.
On an advisory note, I had a 2.0 Ghz G5 Xserve for a while, which I understand uses basically the same CPU modules as the original G5 Desktops just with shorter heat sinks. I was warned at the time by the Apple engineer who gave the system to me that that the CPU modules were exceedingly delicate and that removing the heat sinks was a good way to destroy them. (Supposedly the naked CPU dies are *very susceptible* to being cracked or otherwise damaged by applying uneven pressure by over/under torquing the retention bolts.) For the record the Powermac G5 Service manual also claims that you *will* damage the processor if you separate it from the heat sink. Not "may", *will*.
If you Google you'll find people that *have* apparently gotten away with it (largely people trying to fix leaking 2.5Ghz watercooled models), but just be advised that from an official standpoint the magic smoke lives under the heat sink, no deeper. Of course, if it's broken anyway you don't have that much to lose.
The other thing to note that is in theory if you start swapping CPU modules you're *supposed* to run a "Thermal Calibration" program on them which is only officially available to licensed Apple servicemen. Undoubtedly there are... other ways... to find it, but that's an exercise for the reader. If you don't run that you may end up, among other things, with your CPU fans running at 100% speed *all the time*. (The Xserve I had would do that if it detected *any* anomaly in the cooling system, such as an unplugged fan on the other side of the case that had nothing to do with the CPU coolers.) Something to keep in mind if you start eBaying replacements.
In short, there are reasons the PowerMac G5 has a reputation of being something of a lemon. It is.
On an advisory note, I had a 2.0 Ghz G5 Xserve for a while, which I understand uses basically the same CPU modules as the original G5 Desktops just with shorter heat sinks. I was warned at the time by the Apple engineer who gave the system to me that that the CPU modules were exceedingly delicate and that removing the heat sinks was a good way to destroy them. (Supposedly the naked CPU dies are *very susceptible* to being cracked or otherwise damaged by applying uneven pressure by over/under torquing the retention bolts.) For the record the Powermac G5 Service manual also claims that you *will* damage the processor if you separate it from the heat sink. Not "may", *will*.
If you Google you'll find people that *have* apparently gotten away with it (largely people trying to fix leaking 2.5Ghz watercooled models), but just be advised that from an official standpoint the magic smoke lives under the heat sink, no deeper. Of course, if it's broken anyway you don't have that much to lose.
The other thing to note that is in theory if you start swapping CPU modules you're *supposed* to run a "Thermal Calibration" program on them which is only officially available to licensed Apple servicemen. Undoubtedly there are... other ways... to find it, but that's an exercise for the reader. If you don't run that you may end up, among other things, with your CPU fans running at 100% speed *all the time*. (The Xserve I had would do that if it detected *any* anomaly in the cooling system, such as an unplugged fan on the other side of the case that had nothing to do with the CPU coolers.) Something to keep in mind if you start eBaying replacements.
In short, there are reasons the PowerMac G5 has a reputation of being something of a lemon. It is.
G5's seem to be hot running chips, which is why Apple built the case around cooling them with massive airflow, multiple cooling fans, and temp sensors. When you resort to water cooling at the factory you know you will have issues down the road.
I guess if the computer lasted long enough to be out of warrenty then Apple did a good job?
I guess if the computer lasted long enough to be out of warrenty then Apple did a good job?
My iMac G5 of the same gen as your PowerMac using the same proc had this problem. It turned out to be RAM
Yeah. I suppose the real thrust of my post would be I would definitely try ruling out RAM and any other possible cause before ripping the CPU modules apart.
First thing I'd do is pull out the non-Apple RAM. I never added any RAM to that Xserve but some *extremely bad* experiences with PowerBook G4s of that vintage say you should always blame RAM first. I thought the SDR Macs were picky about RAM until I dealt with the first couple generations of Aluminum PBs. Ye gads. If you have the diagnostics/hardware test CD I'd definitely try running multiple cycles of the memory test program. (With those awful Powerbooks it wasn't unusual to have it pass once or twice before blowing up.)
(Of course, the "Bad RAM" would always work perfectly in a Dell notebook...)
While you're in there, blast some compressed air through the CPU heat sinks. Apparently they're quite effective lint traps.
Only the water cooled G5s had huge problems. The other G5s didn't have nearly as many issues. The problem is that people only post when their computer is having problems. Nobody registers on a forum to say, "My G5 works fine".
A little bird *very much in the know* once told me about a number of skeletons in the G5's closet, particularly the first generation (1.6-2.0Ghz) models, but that's about all I can say. It's probably just enough to warn anyone considering them that they're essentially exotic UNIX-workstation technology done on a shoestring budget. (At two grand-plus they may of seemed expensive, but a SUN Sparc machine in the same speed class would of been in the five figures.) And like anything done on a shoestring budget, there are... compromises.
Basically, they're the poster children for why Apple had to switch to Intel. Take that for what you will.
The tower model G5s didn't have the same issues with the exploding capacitors, did it? If new RAM doesn't fix it, you might want to take a look at the caps, particularly those in the power supply regions of the logic board, and the power supply itself.
Is it just me, or was Apple's best quality from about 1997-2001? This time period produced some amazing machines (2400, 3400, 9600, G3 desktops and notebooks, G4 towers), whereas after that, many problematic models (iceBooks, TiBooks) were introduced. Sure, there were some issues with the Rev. A B&W G3s or iMacs with bad flyback transformers, but nothing on the scale that filled forums like the dead-GPU iceBooks or leaking caps in the iMac G5s. I did like the AlBooks, though, because, aside from the whole failing lower RAM slot thing, they were solid, fast machines, very unlike the seemingly self-destructive TiBooks.
Apple must do most of their engineering on a shoestring budget anymore, since there are also reports of problems across their post-PPC lineup, but mostly from the portables and the iPod/iPhone camps. I seem to remember the "mooing" MacBooks (among other issues with the 1st gen models), iPod nanos recalled due to exploding batteries, overheating iPhones, strings of iPhone updates that broke more than they fixed, display artifacts on the dual-GPU MacBook Pros, and stories of casing issues (cracks, warpage, discoloration, etc) across their product line. I guess swiching platforms can't fix half-assed engineering or cut-rate manufacturing and component sourcing.
Is it just me, or was Apple's best quality from about 1997-2001? This time period produced some amazing machines (2400, 3400, 9600, G3 desktops and notebooks, G4 towers), whereas after that, many problematic models (iceBooks, TiBooks) were introduced. Sure, there were some issues with the Rev. A B&W G3s or iMacs with bad flyback transformers, but nothing on the scale that filled forums like the dead-GPU iceBooks or leaking caps in the iMac G5s. I did like the AlBooks, though, because, aside from the whole failing lower RAM slot thing, they were solid, fast machines, very unlike the seemingly self-destructive TiBooks.
My G5 motherboard has SMT capacitors that look exactly like the ones on older Mac motherboards which tend to leak after a while. I guess I've got another 10 years and then I'll have my G5 apart in pieces, replacing the capacitors xx(
The whole bulging capacitors thing isn't really Apple's fault. I think almost everyone was affected by that in some way.
Power supply issues in general - the power supplies are all made by third parties so you can pretty much blame those third parties. What didn't help though is when the PSU is in some funky proprietary shape (G4 MDD).
Thanks for the wise words. I don't plan to dismantle the machine unless it's a last resort. Why? Because for 90% of the time it's booting fine and it seems to work. The fans ain't ramping up at all.. though they are working. So naturally, i'm thinking those system panics are related to something else.
I had a 1.6 until recently... that thing was utter garbage. It was easily beaten (performance-wise) by a 1.5 GHz G4 PowerBook I used to have. Terrible, terrible desktop performance. It also had annoying fan issues and strange power supply noises.
Ehh, I wouldn't be so quick to say that...if anything, I'd say that Apple's best quality would've been from somewhere between 1987 and 1993. I remember my 1997 PowerBook 1400 had its logic board replaced twice under AppleCare, and its power adaptor replaced three times. It also went in for the issue with the CD bezel breaking off. That was just within the first three years. Then there's my iMac...which although has been trouble-free for most of its life, has had a couple of serious issues, mostly involving Open Firmware chucking a wobbly on a couple of my attempts at upgrading to 10.3. On the other hand, my MacBook is coming up to its 2nd year of ownership, and apart from the hairline crack near the rear vent, and a screw falling out about last year (which was replaced at the Apple Store when I was in Sydney), its been completely trouble free. I dunno, luck of the draw I guess.
OK.. mines not a 1.6.
But dude, considering this is like my sixth machine floating about the house, I won't be too arsed about it's lacking in performance.... I just want the stupid thing to work and not crash every so often. LOOL
You have to remember, for it's time and age, it used to be fairly powerful workhorse.. if not the most powerful consumer desktop. For the cost of the machine today, it has more horses under the hood than the latest MacBook Air.
No, not really. The G5 was actually an atrocious chip, even by the day's standards. Even fast P4s were generally better, and that's saying something. I would be willing to bet that even just one core of a MacBook Air's C2D would be faster than that G5 I had. Hell, even my 1.5 G4 PowerBook was faster. Explain that one.
In geekbench tests, the original macbook air (1.6GHz C2D) whups the pants off of all G5 systems except the dual2.7 and the dualdual2.5. This test is admittedly only of CPU and ram speed performance, and isn't necessarily indicative of the fact that even though there are no 64-bit apps for PPC macs, you could hypothetically cram sixteen gigs of ram into one of those faster G5s, or an nVidia GeFORCE 7800GT or whatever.
BTW, how has the ram swapping/testing been going?
After having read through this thread that's unfortunately the only thing I can think of in terms of what may be causing the system to be unstable, unless it really is just a faulty or mis-seated processor or other logic board component.
BTW, how has the ram swapping/testing been going?
After having read through this thread that's unfortunately the only thing I can think of in terms of what may be causing the system to be unstable, unless it really is just a faulty or mis-seated processor or other logic board component.
The system's problem is really weird, for instance, I've had the machine up and running for days, almost a week even, and it's been fine... then restarting the machine booting into leopard will make it crash! xx( ... taking out the user upgraded (Kingston crap) seems to make the G5 systems more stable but slower...but it'll still misfire on occasions plus there's no LED warning light inside (unless i'm looking at the wrong place) but i'm not really sure right now. Would like some diagnostic software to prove it's... what's available?
So you're saying there are no 64-bit Mac PPC apps at all ever made in the history of PPC Macs? WTF?
I think benchmarks are shit too, and they favor Intel Macs over PPC Macs somehow.
Everything is optimized for x86, many times more effort has been put into optimizing x86 compilers compared to PPC compilers. Imagine if the same effort was put into PPC compilers.
Legend says that one day a hero, True of Heart, shall seek and find the One True PowerPC Compiler and pull the installation DVD from the stone block in which it's embedded. Once this noble deed is achieved a New Age Of PPC Wonder shall dawn, and the world shall finally be cleansed of all sinful x86 wickedness. Rainbows will dance all day with the sun in the sky, and Unicorns and Care Bears will once again frolic with the My Little Ponies in our pastures. The rivers shall overflow with fish, the forests with game, and the fields with wheat and plenty. And Steve Jobs himself shall descend from the heavens and walk amongst mortals, enlightening them all with love, understanding, and shrewd marketing dogma forever and ever and ever. Amen.
It's amazing how thoroughly Apple managed to brainwash its customers with the "PowerPC is better" gospel. I'm sorry, but it just isn't true. There just isn't this huge conspiracy out there constantly working to make PowerPC CPUs suck at application benchmarks. (If anything, the infamous Photoshop benchmark suite that Apple used to advertise as showing that G4s were *so much faster* then Intel's Pentiums was heavily rigged.)
My take on the performance of the G5 from the time I had with one is that the CPU itself is a competent number cruncher. The 2.0Ghz Xserve was significantly faster per clock then the (P4-based) Xeon servers I had to compare it with on various UNIX-y floating point benchmarks. (The 2.0 G5 could edge out a 2.53 Ghz Xeon on most tests and came close to the 2.8s.) Also just for laffs I sic-ed it at SETI@home as well, and I recall it being able to churn out a work unit in a little under 3 hours on average while the Intel servers were more like four. (the exact times I'm a little fuzzy on, it's been a while.) These were all tests that measured the output of a single CPU. So when G5 is compared to P4/Netburst it comes off pretty well. However, the first time I tested an AMD Opteron it was close to a dead heat on the UNIX benchmarks and at SETI the Opteron could shave almost another half hour off the work unit time. The Opterons ran at basically the same clock, so... the G5 as a number cruncher is good by 2003 standards. Not "the best", but still pretty awesome. It's not 2003 anymore and the Intel Core series is better per clock then the Opteron, so the G5 is looking sort of mediocre now. But it *was* good.
The real problem with the G5 is it's a lousy desktop CPU. It's floating point performance was good/awesome, but its integer unit is comparatively weak even compared to the G4e's, let alone the P4's. (Look for the Ars Technica article about the PPC 970 for more details. Its integer unit was basically lifted straight out of the Power4, which was optimized for a huge frontside cache and properly-ordered 64 bit code. The 970 had a much smaller cache, and of course Mac software was distributed as 32 bit binaries. Recompiling can help with the latter but not the former.) Integer performance is what counts for desktop performance, and the G5 didn't have it. It also of course had poor thermal management compared to CPUs designed for desktop applications. In the Xserve it seems to work fine, but then the Xserve sounds like a bit like jet engine even sitting idle. Apple's constant problem with the desktops was balancing fan speed against CPU throttling, and they just never figured out how to make the machines consistently quiet enough without them either crashing or performing terribly.
Finally, it was a big mistake for Apple not to include ECC memory support in at least the "Pro" desktops. IBM has good engineers, but they come from a background that assumes that anything with a large amount of RAM uses ECC as an engineering best practice. Apple felt they "needed" to save the 15% or so ECC adds to the memory price tag so they special ordered a Northbridge not supporting it for the desktop machines. (Smart move, guys.) Intel *should* probably push PC makers into using ECC in their desktop machines, but since they don't they've gotten pretty good at making memory controllers reliable enough to do without it.
In short, the G5 is "exotic" technology crammed into an environment where it doesn't really fit. It's akin to, say, the Chrysler Turbine Car. It's certainly possible to scale down a jet engine to replace a reciprocating internal combustion one, but it takes a lot of engineering to make it work, and the end result might at best be only *arguably* superior to what it's competing with. ("Is it more powerful? No. Is it more fuel-efficient? No. Is it more reliable? Probably... once we get the bugs worked out.") If Apple's/PowerPC's desktop market share were such that it could sell as many CPUs as Nintendo and Microsoft can sell game consoles then PowerPC would be alive and well in the desktop market. Lacking that, IBM/Freescale don't have anywhere near the patience or goodwill necessary to spend their own money designing something very expensive for one noisy customer who *might* be able to sell a million units a year, and Apple couldn't/wouldn't pay enough to make them do it. Instead, Apple went to Intel so they could stop throwing money down the sewer every time they needed a new generation of CPU performance to keep up with the competition.
Which was the right choice. Instead of worrying about hard technical problems Apple can keep doing what it does best: chiseling blocks of aluminum into fancy shapes and marketing the living **** out of them. :^b
Anyway.
It's sort of a dumb thought, but have you tried removing the stock ram and running it just with the Kingston crap? An article I saw about G5 desktop reliability said that some people had experienced the stock ram getting flaky over time. I'd be skeptical, but it's worth remembering that PC3200 RAM was quite new on the market when the first-gen G5's came out. A lot of what was sold as "PC3200" was essentially factory-overclocked.
If it's consistently always crashing shortly after booting that's an "interesting" symptom. Are the crashes almost always after a cold boot? If it tends to be reliable once warmed up that might point to something not being seated well and thermal expansion being an issue. It's also possible that some piece of motherboard hardware is getting flaky and failing initialization sometimes. Do you use wireless? I've seen bad Airport cards cause crashes after bootup.
It's maybe an exaggeration to take the statement "there are no 64-bit PowerPC apps" and add all of those extra qualifiers to it. There may be a few, I don't know whether or not Aperture is a 64-bit app, and while LightRoom is a 64-bit app, I don't know if it can run in 64-bit on PPC. Beyond that, is Maya a 64-bit app on PowerPC? If Maya or anything else isn't, then there are no commercial 64-bit apps for PowerPC. Photoshop CS4 for Windows is 64-bit, and the first 64-bit version of Photoshop on the Mac, CS5, will not run on PowerPC processors at all, so unless you're writing your own code, or there's some other app I have never heard of, then I stand by the accuracy of my statement.
As far as the benchmarks go, they favor the Intel chips because the Intel chips are better, that's pretty much as simple as it is.
As the compilers go: Apple distributes the compilers for both PowerPC and Intel Macs, so if you think something is wrong with the PowerPC compilers, and it's very possible that different compilers could help the G5 out a bit, even though it's only really great at certain things, and even then only by the standards of 2003, then it would be a good idea to bring it up with Apple.
As far as the benchmarks go, they favor the Intel chips because the Intel chips are better, that's pretty much as simple as it is.
As the compilers go: Apple distributes the compilers for both PowerPC and Intel Macs, so if you think something is wrong with the PowerPC compilers, and it's very possible that different compilers could help the G5 out a bit, even though it's only really great at certain things, and even then only by the standards of 2003, then it would be a good idea to bring it up with Apple.
Ermm... Guy's you have a whole forum for the G5... Yet you choose to hi-jack this thread.
So in light of 64bit applications, how does your discussion contribute to my problem solving? Would it be too much to ask, If I say start a new thread for 64 bit applications?
I apologize for contributing to the problem. It just rubs me way the wrong way when people completely lacking evidence to support their beliefs start flinging their "PowerPC IS THE ONE TRUE GOD" dogma around. It's a personal failing of mine.
As I noted in the bottom in my last post... I find it curious that (as you describe it) the crashes tend to come shortly after booting. I also think it's interesting, looking at the kernel panic, that it references the "kextcache" process. Do you have any "extra" hardware hooked up to this thing, like an external hard drive, USB scanner, anything, that might be failing to initialize properly and panicking the machine? Do you have any extra PCI cards, like a USB card? And finally, are you using Airport? I've seen both bad USB devices and bad Airport cards cause panics. And I guess to add to that, I've also seen a panic from a dying hard drive.
I also repeat... do you have the original disks, specifically the hardware test/diagnostics? (Depending on the vintage of the Mac that may be a stand-alone CD, or it may be on the "Restore DVD". Hold down the option key and select it from the menu.) A few cycles of the memory test should root out bad RAM. If it's a built-in hardware device that's failing it may catch that as well.
Well.. the G5 tower is pretty much default or stock with the exception of the hard-drive. The originally sell for some reason (i suspect security) didn't ship it with the tower. So right now I've installed a spare drive but new in to the lower bay. Installed Leopard directly of the retail disk cause again the seller didn't include any software! Not to worry... I have tons of unused MacOS System software... Just missing system 6 retail and system 7.01 retail :beige:
The Apple diagnostic disks/programs are pretty machine specific. Most of my experience is with G4 Powerbooks, and the basic rule I've seen is that the disk for a machine one or two revisions newer then yours (in the same family) *might* work to test your unit, but an older disk will never work on a newer one.