Dual 2.7GHz G5 worthwhile?

[Cory5412]

Hey all. I recently came across what looked like a good deal to me, as a system on which to run Mac OS X 10.5, FCS 2, Adobe Creative Suite 3, and some other little tools and utilities, all of which I really do have hanging out here with no appropriate system on which to run them. (The main issues are FCS2 and CS3, which are old enough that they haven't been tested with Lion forward and which broke in Snow Leopard, if I remember correctly.) It would end up being a sideboard system for sure, but I figure we're far enough in the future that I can pick up a sideboard system pretty close to the top end of its era.

In a local shop, there is a dual 2.7GHz Power Macintosh G5 in 2.5/300 configuration, with some kind of video card. (I didn't look too closely, although I'm presuming it's the stock Radeon 9650) for about $120(1), which I consider reasonable for picking up such a system, which despite my continuous railing (I truly would run it on a dark-net, by the way) is actually appealing as an application box and as a system to run Mac OS X 10.5, which was one of my personal favorites.

My main question is whether or not this model, which uses liquid cooling, is worth picking up, or if it would require a large amount of physical maintenance. (More than just hitting the bezels and heatsinks with the vacuum's crevice tool, I should specify, like rebuilding coolant pumps and the like.)

I'm not actively looking for a G5, but if I were, I would probably go for the 2.3GHz Dual Core PCI Express model, or the Quad. Should I just hold on until one of those appears?

Also, for those who have a variety of G5 systems. Does the DDR2 memory and other enhancements on the overall platform make the 2.3GHz dual-core system a much better overall performance story than the 2.7GHz dual-chip system, or does the difference in CPU clock speed make up for any enhancements in the rest of the platform?

Also also, as one sidenote, does anybody have any information on hand about how well the G5s handle 6 gigabit SATA disks, such as SSDs and very very large (3TB and bigger) spinning hard disks?

(1) This was last Tuesday. there's actually a reasonably good chance it's gone by now, but it only just now occurred to me to pose this question here.

 

[Cory5412]

Alternately: How good are vmware and parallels at running Mac OS X VMs these days, and how well does Mac OS X 10.5 run in these VMs, and what kind of hardware do you need to get reasonable app performance? It doesn't actually matter to me if I run these applications on a darknet on PowerPC or on a darknet on a virtual machine on an Intel system.

I can reasonably expect to spend about $120 on a second hard disk and mounting kit for my 2.3GHz Sandy Bridge Mac mini which currently has 5GB of memory. Does VMware present a GPU to the OS X VM or would I be out of luck for apps that require GPU acceleration to display content such as iWork/iLife and presumably FCS?

I keep an XP system running on my work box using Hyper-V, but I can pretty reasonably dedicate only a half gig of ram to XP and that exists for the sole purpose of looking at XP and Office 2007 in case a caller has either XP or Office 2007 and something's radically different from 8/2013 or 7/2010.

 

[mac2geezer]

I'm no G5 expert, though there are two of them here, but as I recall from Macworld benchmarks the 2.7 was faster at cpu type tasks than the 2.3 DC (and quad?). However, with the slower Ram it's probably not up to the newer models for other tasks. Not to mention the more reliable LCS on the Quad. If it was me, I would hold out for the Quad, which you can probably get for less than $200 if you're patient.

In fact there was a Quad for $150 on the local CL a few weeks ago.

 

[uniserver]

yeah i think its worthwhile.

personally i would stay away from any of the versions that are liquid cooled.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/faq/powermac-g5-liquid-cooling-info-leaks-issues.html

Sounds like the price is right.

They are a great looking machine, and you can still do 1080P you tubes, Its just the cpu's are going to sit at like 90% and the fan will kick on and sound like a jet taking off.

I think you could have alot of fun with such beast.

 

[mac2geezer]

ts just the cpu's are going to sit at like 90% and the fan will kick on and sound like a jet taking off.

Hmmm. All four cores on my Quad run at near 100% all the time and the fans never speed up much unless the room temp goes to 80, then they will speed up. But never to full bore except during a KP. My experience with the G5 is that they are much quieter than an MDD, for example (and I've owned/own three of them).

 

[uniserver]

Well i'm speaking from experience, I had an Air Cooled DP 2.7ghz G5 … was rather happy to get rid of it (at the time). CL for $400.00

With it sitting there i was using it as my main machine… it was holding me back.

I kind of wish i had it back now. It was a great machine… rock solid.

Gulped down boat loads of watts.

 

[beachycove]

Unless you are prepared to service the lcs, or unless someone has already done it, I'd say don't touch it with a bargepole, because it is likely to fail. Air cooled units are a much safer bet if you want a trouble-free life. The coolant used was corrosive, so leaks are a serious business: inspect carefully before laying out any cash!

On the other hand, servicing a machine that has not leaked (yet) is basically just mechanical, and once serviced, the machine should run fine for another few years.

Somewhere I read that there are issues with large drives, but I have not seen this myself. Realistically, though, a mere 500GB is more than enough for more or less anything you are going to be doing with a G5.

 

[Cory5412]

I hadn't come across this information before. Are there both liquid and air cooled 2.7s? I had been under the impression that the top end models were always liquid cooled.

Is there a visual indicator or a model number that will indicate which is which? The machine had a label (applied by the retailer) implying that it was a 2.7, but I didn't do a closer inspection of the model plate either on the back or inside. I could probably do this, I'll likely be back by that shop in the next week.

I'll certainly go take a look at some point and I'll take a look for any leaking or if maybe it has been mislabeled and is actually a 2.0GHz or maybe one of the PCIe models. (Which I would consider a no brainer, purely for the fact that the 2.0GHz and 2.3GHz PCIe G5 are considered physically reliable, as far as I know.)

Thank you for the information, keep it coming! I'm probably not going to use it online much, (although I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't try it out) but information about that is probably less relevant than information about physical reliability, upgraded configurations, etc.)

 

[jongleur]

Last series of the G5 PowerMacs (11,2) are air cooled with PCIe, and is my preferred G5 beast. I picked up a Dual Core 2.0 (http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/specs/powermac_g5_dual_2.0.html) cheap, and it is doing most of what I used to do on my venerable QS2002, except of course when I those rare occasions I need to boot 9.2 or use 10.4+Classic with more grunt than the Cube450, or iMac800 can provide.

The dual 2.7 was only available in the liquid cooled PCI-X varity.

 

[mac2geezer]

To see what model that G5 actually is, pull the metal side panel off and inside near the bottom will be a label (in small print) that lists the model and the factory specs.

 

[beachycove]

All I meant was that you could just buy a slower machine. The dual 2.3 is a corker.

 

[Cory5412]

Incidentally, I finally went back to the store in question and discovered that the G5 had been sold. I think if I'm ever specifically seeking a G5, I'll go ahead and look for a dual 2.0 or 2.3 GHz PCI Express model, which will be easier on physical maintenance and probably every bit as fast as I'd need for an application box to run 10.5, Office 2004 or 2008, and Creative Suite 3/4.