Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Overclocking And Cooling Apple's MDD G4's

Posted by timothy on from the that-mirror-needs-some-gum dept.

Currawong writes "At AppleTalk Australia, one of our members, unable to upgrade his production mirrored-drive-door G4 to a G5 due to software & hardware incompatibility, has instead has both over-clocked and made significant cooling modifications to his machine. He replaced most of the fans, including adding 4 ultra-quiet Verax fans, so the machine would run quieter, as well as cooler, in his studio. For those interested in how he over-clocked his machine, we've also posted his guide on how to do it."

4 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Re:fan based cooling by agent+dero · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Paying $3k for the latest cool thing is so the 90's
    Making do with what you have is in, get with the program

    --
    Error 407 - No creative sig found
  2. am I missing something? by jbellis · · Score: 4, Insightful

    he says he overclocked a 1.42 GHz g4 to 1.5 GHz.

    who the hell cares?

  3. not a big improvement by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I doubt it would help much.. The biggest bottleneck in G4 systems is the bus speed, not the processor speed. Sure the processor is a bit faster, but what does that matter if the bus couldn't feed it fast enough in the first place? I'm sure it will help in some situations, but the biggest thing the G5 has over the G4 is that big fat bus.

  4. Reduced noise is more important in this case by ZiggyM · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I own a dual MDD too. The machine is extremely (50 dBA+ @ 1 meter) loud, its driving me crazy. The fact that he made it quieter would be enough for me to attempt a mod (he has not posted actual dBA values for comparison, though.) I have just been researching such a reduced noise mod, and, for anyone interested, the best one Ive found (there are many in there) is at G4Noise.com (yes there is actually a website dedicated to this issue.) In there, someone managed to reduce the 50 dBA to 30 dBA, making simple modifications. The guy gave a lot of thought to the heat dissipation issue and found very clever ways to improve apple's design, such as a simple cardboard mod that makes a huge difference to cool air intake.