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.
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.