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G5 in an iMac
babbage writes "I recently bought a Power Mac G5, and when I registered it with Apple, I was offered a free subscription to MacWorld. When signing up for the subscription, one of the questions you're asked is which Apple product you purchased most recently, and one of the items on the list was 'iMac G5.' Does the MacWorld marketing department know something that the rest of us don't?" Maybe they had seen the page that incognito writes about: "Over at AppleFritter, there's an awesome mod that changes an ordinary iMac into a mini version of the aluminum G5 tower. There were lots of details in the creator's work that leads to a very polished final product."
While they do run warm (and certainly warmer than the G4s used in iMacs, eMacs and PowerBooks), they are still run cooler than most x86 chips, such as the Athlon XP and Pentium 4. The large heatsinks and elaborate cooling system in the PowerMac G5 are more to do with keeping the system cool quietly rather than trying to deal with some non-existent nuclear furnace CPU trapped inside the aluminium case. Remember, any kid with a screwdriver and $30 can keep a raging 3.6GHz Pentium 4 throwing out 100W of heat cool enough to run stably. However, it sounds like a cyclone.
The challenge with the G5 was not keeping it cool...that's easy. It was keeping it cool and quiet. That is the origin of the G5's elaborate cooling system. Don't misattribute it.