Powermac G5 2.0Ghz DP (Mid 2004) — Advice on keeping it going

[ArmorAlley]

I have a Powermac G5 2.0Ghz DP (Mid 2004) that I'd like to start using.
From what I have seen online, these things seem to die at astonishing rate, mostly from heat-death.
I don't really know what it will be used for as of yet, probably gaming. It is my PPC Mac OS X machine.
It stands in a cooler part of the house and has room either side of it to allow air to flow through.

What do I need to do to keep it going?
• Are new fans a necessity? How can I measure temperature to check whether new fans are needed?
• I have an Radeon X850 Pro AGP card waiting to be re-flashed with thanks to @joevt [1]. Is this a bad move?
• All 4 slots are filled with: AGP card (stock nVidia 5200), Sonnet Tempo 4XP, ATTO 4ULD (SCSI) and whichever RAID card works.
— LSI Logic 3080X, RocketRAID 2220, RocketRAID 2240, and if none of these work, a Sonnet Tempo-X and software RAID.
• Are fewer sticks of RAM better or does that make little difference. I have 7GB but I doubt I will ever need that much.

Thanks

[1] https://68kmla.org/bb/index.php?threads/id-like-your-help-ordering-a-128k-eeprom.51062/

 

[Byrd]

All G5 towers are pretty rugged in my opinion, an item that Apple over engineered and frustrating to work on but by and large they are pretty reliable (and cheap to source another locally due to their hefty weight!). As with any older Mac, you will want to remove the heatsinks clean all dust and re-paste the CPUs, but don't think they're going to combust any time soon. Once you've done your overhaul I'd run the Apple Hardware Test to recalibrate the fans.

- New fans = no, the stock ones are good if deep cleaned and hard to replace with anything non-Apple
- Sure, go the AGP card there is good cooling for expansion cards
- Max it out with RAM!