Powermac G4

#1 Wed, 14 Dec 2011 - 20:42 68kMLA

Liberated today Powermac G4 MDD 1.25Ghz DP, 2GB RAM, 120+160GB HD, DVD-RW, Ati Radeon 9000 PRO. This thing is noisy! Needs to clean it up from dust and replace the HD's. The noise gets higher and higher and then comes down later. Unbearable. This machine feels faster than G5 1.8Ghz with stock graphics card.

#2 Wed, 14 Dec 2011 - 21:07 68kMLA

That's because it is. The dual 1.25 G4 is far quicker than the single 1.8 G5. They're loud, but awesome. I have one as my main desktop Mac.

#3 Wed, 14 Dec 2011 - 21:22 68kMLA

It's worth the time to do some Googling about solutions to the fan noise. The usual suggestions involve various fan swaps; a common one is apparently to replace the large temperature-controlled fan (the variable rate you are hearing) with a constant speed one. I also found an interesting suggestion to place some padding between the fans in the power supply and the metal of the case (the fan housings are exposed on the hidden side and supposedly resonate with the sheet metal of the case).

I just recently got my own dual 1.0 MDD (thanks again, William) and am loving it.

#4 Thu, 15 Dec 2011 - 02:55 68kMLA

That's what I did. I replaced my 3 blade fan with a 8 (or 9?) blade fan that is MUCH quieter. I wired it to run full speed. Not only is it quieter, but it runs at about 42-45* instead of 58-62*.

#5 Thu, 15 Dec 2011 - 05:24 68kMLA

Wow, that sounds really good. Do you have more information about this, what brand and model you replaced? Are you talking about the two fans inside the PSU?

#6 Thu, 15 Dec 2011 - 12:28 68kMLA

No, he's talking about the big fan which blows across the CPU heatsink. That's the variable rate one.

You can poke around the reports on Xlr8yourmac.com and you should find specific recommendations.

#7 Thu, 22 Dec 2011 - 20:58 68kMLA

This was given to a friend who will upgrade his sons desktop Mac.