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Dual G4 Mac Cube
ijx writes: "Those of you with a hardware-hacking bent should enjoy this - a Mac Cube modded to accomodate dual processors, courtesy of AccelerateYourMac. It seems that it uses the same dual-proc module as a Sawtooth G4 Tower. My question: will it melt?"
No, it's RISC-based. You ought to try one. No heat problems that a small fan can't handle. Unlike x86/CISC machines, there's not a huge chip with (around) 100 million transistors generating heat.
CISC chip do put off heat, but it's VERY easy to control, and the wattage is lower than CISC. That's why RISC technology is used in many hand helds.
RISC and CISC aren't technologies, they're design ideologies. And like political ideologies, they have been strayed from in the interests of practicality. Intel/AMD chips all use RISC-ish designs with instruction translation stages. And the PPC architecture has some very complex instructions (alti-vec?)
The reason risc is more common nowadays is because it's easier to design and write optimizing compilers for. Software issues, not hardware ones.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
I agree. If they were offering MP Cubes, I'd be very tempted to have opted for it instead of my single processor minitower.
I'd like to hear what tech support has to say about it when people call up asking why their cube is on fire.
"Uhhh, yeah! Innit the hottest product we've ever sold? Wanna buy some really cool speakers for it? I can transfer you to sales! -click-"
Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
The G4/450's that are in this Cube only use 7-11 watts each. Compare to 50-70 watt Athlons and Pentiums, and you can get an idea of why this works without a fan. Standard Cubes run cool, so there was some room there. He plainly states that he is monitoring the CPU temperature with a utility app and it's cool enough. It may not work in Florida if you don't have air conditioning, but that's why he checked with the CPU temperature utility.
The G4 towers have a fan, but they are there at least partially because the box has room for three more hard drives, one more removable drive, and four PCI cards in addition to the stock stuff, so you have to leave a big margin for error. The fan switches off when the machine sleeps, though, and the boxes don't run hot. Also, the power supply is inside a G4 tower, but it is outside on the Cube.
Ok, enough of the boring stuff. Here are some links to keep you guys semi-entertained. The Cube goes into the Museum of Modern Art. For those without a NYTimes subscription, MacObserver summarizes the article.
Now for the fun stuff. Case mods! Check out the Kleenex Cube and the Blue Smoke Cube. Also, here's an All American Cube.
Apple stopped using ZIF a few years ago.
In the tower machines, pre-cube, it went like this:
G3 Yosemite - zif G3 processor, Blue and White minitower.
G4 Yikes! - Zif G4 processor, Graphite and clear, PCI graphics.
G4 Sawtooth - no zif, Apple used a large D shaped white connector and used screws to stabilise the board that carries the processor. AGP graphics.
G4 Mystic - same processor interface as Sawtooth, first of the DP series, with 450DP and 500DP. Also known as Gigabit ethernet.
G4 V'Ger - 466, 533DP, 667, 733. Same as gigabit ethernet, with 133mhz system bus.
G4 - Quicksilver - 733, 800DP, 867. Same as gigabit ethernet model with 133mhz system bus.
G4's from Mystic or newer won't work on Yikes!.
G4's from V-Ger and newer won't work on Mystic (133mhz bus versus the 100mhz bus...other differences..)
XLr8.com sells a dual G4 upgrade card, but it only works on Yikes! and Yosemite (ZIF).
I wish I had better details on where the modifier of the Cube got the extra processor card from a Mystic, and how he added the extra pad to match the dual processors. Was it just held in place with thermal goo and pressure from the retention of the heatsink?
You did know-
That's a stock heatsink modified to make contact with the two G4's instead of the single one that was stock.
So he's not doing anything other than going with Apple's design decision. It could probably run with a cooler heatsink, but since it's not aided by a fan, and you want it to work in rooms that don't have air-conditioning (thinking of consumers who buy computers and then use them in stuffy offices) there's probably some tolerance designed in so that it doesn't overheat.
Please...
Those "cracks" were faint mold lines in the curves of the plastic. It is extremely difficult to bend plastic like that and avoid some defects.
Of course, as soon as people heard "crack" everyone thought of the unit falling apart. The mold lines were actually very difficult to see. In fact, when ZDnet.com ran an article on the cracks they had to put the unit on a lightboard in order to effectively display them. Only with light shining directly into the plastic were they even noticable.
As always, people overreacted to it and caused a big fuss. The Cube was and continues to be a great machine. Maybe if Apple had priced it a little better from the get-go, it would have seen more success. It made sense to have a Mac that was a step up from the iMac in power and was able to take a monitor of your choice.
This has been an easy thing to do with Macs for years.
Unlike PCs, which are instaled in ZIF sockets, Macs have had a few diferent ways of connecting the processors, but with one unique, and very advantageous difference.
Since the PCI powermacs came out, the PPC processors have been on daughtercards (except a rare few consumer class machines which had it soldered onto the mobo, but thats a different story).
These daughtercards can have several proicessors on it, and can easily be interchanged.
Unlike PCs, which have the entire processor bus on teh mobo itself, with separate traces for each possible CPU, powemacs usually have the processor bus itself as a daughtercard connector, so there is no difference between a mobo for a 1 cpu machine and a 4-way machine (Such as the Daystar Digital mac clones, which used the same mobo as the PowerMac 9500 of the time, just a 4-way 604e CPU)
These daughtercards have seen a few different formats over the past few generations. The original PCI powermacs had a slotted daughtercard which was simply inserted like any expansion card, and could be used to upgrade any of those machines with up to a G4 cpu, made by some upgrade manufacturers. Then with the Beige G3 machines, came the Zif socket, but which also supported multiple CPUs if necessary, although not many upgrade companies made them.
Then, with the Sawtooth G4 machine (the one which finally brought AGP to the mac) the CPU went onto a daughtercard which was connected via a 423(?) pin rectangular socket, which can accomodate several CPUs.
This socket is what was used in the MP G4 machines, making it possible to use the same Motherboard in all their desktop G4s, simplifying the product line.
The iMacs also use a similar, but incompatible socket, which could theoretically support multiple CPUs.
-=-=-=-
Also, for information on how to Overclock these daughtercards, and several different Macs in general, visit http://violet.berkeley.edu/~schrier/mhz.html
for instructions and some interesting reading.
And for those wanting to overclock a Mac....
beware: you need to make motherboard/daughtercard modifications to do so.
Stop over-analyzing your analizations