Pismo with G4 550mhz Getting a tad warm

[haemogoblin]

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to land myself a Pismo with a XLR8 G4 card inside. I took the card out and installed it in my existing Pismo, keeping the other laptop for spares, should i ever need them.

I use the Pismo for writing my block on Wordpress, surfing etc. I noticed last night that the bottom of the case, roughly under the "E" key, became very warm. To warm in fact for me to keep the laptop on my lap, not unless i wanted to cook my thigh.

Was wondering if anyone else had this experience with the Pismo.

Cheers

James

 

[Byrd]

Hi,

one of the shortcomings of the Pismo is providing adequate (stock) cooling on an upgraded CPU. The stock G3 doesn't need much heat disipation and I only once recall the cooling fan coming once on a very hot day in all the years I used mine. When you add a G4 into the mix (or a Powerlogix G3 900Mhz which never lived long due to overheating), the little aluminium plate the sits on the top of the CPU along with a tiny heatpipe going to a 15mm fan is woefully inadequate.

Therefore you need to look into some sort of custom cooling for the G4. First I'd take apart the heatsink investigate your options - you could potentially beef up the heatsink with a copper slug, or make the tiny little fan run all the time, not once in a blue moon. A PCMCIA cooling fan might also be a possibility.

JB

 

[J English Smith]

I agree. Even the stock 400 and 500mhz CPUs run pretty hot for me. And the 400mhz in the Lombards run very hot too and both of mine have case cracks right below the CPU as a result.

Seems like you will need to do something to help more heat dissipate!

 

[haemogoblin]

When these CPU cards came out, you would send them off for upgrade. I wonder if they altered the internals. I might have to dig out the pismo this card came installed in.

Thanks guys, I might try applying some fresh thermal paste to the heatsink

James

 

[Byrd]

I know the Powerlogix G3 card came with a copper shim + thermal paste. It sucked - the heatsink was woefully inadequate and in the one I bought, the CPU core cracked from overheating! Reapplying thermal paste will improve cooling, but it'll run just as hot as ever.

 

[Hugh]

Just come across this - I am currently running a Pismo with the G4 550, 1 GB RAM, 100 GB 7200 rpm hard drive as my main laptop. The backside cache has been boosted to 219.7 MHz.

I've managed to get Leopard installed and working nearly perfectly, and from memory on the XLR8 MACh Speed Control app rarely see CPU temps above 49 °C or hard drive temps above about 43 °C in iStat Pro.

Currently, typing this, I have 44 °C CPU and 38 °C HDD and both my legs are getting quite warm through my jeans.

I have the standard heatsink and pipe, and rarely hear the fan kick in. I did clean the old paste off and applied some new silver stuff to the CPU before installing the G4 daughter card.

Can you tell me what you were running to make your Pismo hot + over what time period and I'll try to duplicate and report back with temps.

Cheers

Hugh

 

[haemogoblin]

I'm visiting relatives at the moment, but I will let you know when I get back. Usually it is Facebook or ebay that gets the fan working after an hour or more after being switched on.

I don't believe I have the same software as you, I don't recall there being a temperature monitor with the software I downloaded for the CPU card. I'll have to check.

I'm running Tiger on my Pismo BTW.

 

[Hugh]

OK, no problem.

These Pismos go very well in Tiger with the G4, but I had to go one step further and experiment, hence the Leopard.

As for temp monitoring, I downloaded the XLR8 software from their website - it also boosts the backside cache to increase performance. I can always share it with you if you can't find it.

If you have the same app, I dragged 'XLR8 MACh Speed Control' out of Applications/Utilities into the dock - Thermal Monitoring is under the Processor tab.

I also have a G3 Pismo which I keep at work (on Tiger), plus a spare in the loft with a broken screen, so parts are not a problem.

Cheers,

Hugh

 

[haemogoblin]

Hi Hugh

I've not been able to find the software, so any help in that area would be greatly appreciated!

James

 

[Hugh]

https://xlr8.com/machspeedcontrol-osxandos9combo.aspx is the place for the software, and you need iStat Pro for hard drive temp monitoring - 4.71 is the last free version but I can no longer find it on the net.

I have it backed up so I will pm you my email address so I can send it to you ...

Cheers

Hugh