Resolved Heat is the enemy, was: $4 and I'm happy!

[eyoungren]

So, an explanation of sorts today. Found here: https://www.reddit.com/r/VintageApple/comments/o3ioj9
The case design of the G4 Macs before the MDD are a remnant of the G3, which produces far less heat than the G4 and therefore is more balanced. Apple did not update the G4 case to handle the increased heat output of the G4 - until the MDD.

The MDD Windtunnel effect is Apple's final attempt to resolve the heat issues of the G4 thermal design. It's why the stock fans on the MDD are so loud. So, I was right in that Apple didn't account for the thermal design of the G4s.

This does not make up for all the time and effort I lost in a quixotic pursuit of trying to make cooling work, but at least it shows me that I was on to something and that no matter what I did (short of running the Mac with the door down) it was doomed to fail.

Thanks Apple for putting form over function in this instance.

 

[G4fanboy]

4 years ago I bought a sawtooth with dual 1.8 G4 with Cu heatsink and It came with a rage 128 pro and 2 5400rpm drives. I installed a Digi 001 on It, a seritek 2se4, a m-audio AP 24/96 and a GeForce 4 MX...
Also SATA drives + 7200 rpm drives.

Then It became unstable and even fried a Digi 001 card.
Without an upgraded PSU best to use oldest graphic card supported ( rage 128 ) than a Core Image card that will eventually fry inside.
I ended just using the sawtooth with the GeForce 4 + 001 and It ended hanging every hour. And that under AC turned to freeze the room.

I Will do the repaste to the CPU soon, but this machine is way less stable than the MDD 867 dual I have or the upgraded DA GHz dual.

I use the G4 for recording in the same room, and It has to have the case closed.

Now I am rethinking the setup as I dont need CPU power and putting the 001 on a G3 B&W as It is quieter, aside putting the G4 farm on other room. I just need the 001 to do analog to ADAT (8 Channel audio) conversion.

The summer in south Spain os similar to Phoenix.

 

[ervus]

This seems like the most detailed thread related to G4 tower cooling so I thought I'd post here instead of making a new thread: I noticed that the early G4 towers have a 120mm fan that blows from outside the case and onto the PCI cards. Then later G4 towers also have a 120mm fan in roughly the same place, but it blows the other direction. Has anyone experimented with just flipping this fan to see what the effect is?

 

[eyoungren]

This seems like the most detailed thread related to G4 tower cooling so I thought I'd post here instead of making a new thread: I noticed that the early G4 towers have a 120mm fan that blows from outside the case and onto the PCI cards. Then later G4 towers also have a 120mm fan in roughly the same place, but it blows the other direction. Has anyone experimented with just flipping this fan to see what the effect is?

The main 120mm fan that takes hot air from the inside and pushes it outside the case is vital in its orientation. I am not sure I've ever seen one blowing air IN, rather than OUT - and I've had access to an early G4/350mhz as well as two other G4s (one that is mine) with the same case.

With the fan set to pump air IN there is nowhere for the hot air inside to go OUT. I'm sure you could pull one of the metal plates off the PCI slots, but that's a narrow gap. I imagine the Mac would overheat in short order.

Part of the cooling problem with the side fan of the G4 case is that hot air must make a 90º bend before being vented outside. This is what I meant by Apple putting form over function.

 

[ervus]

I am not sure I've ever seen one blowing air IN...

So in these two pictures you can see the exhaust side of a 120mm fan above the hard drive. This is the fan I'm talking about. In the towers up through the Digital Audio that fan is installed as shown, but in the Quicksilver it's flipped.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Question - what was the internal FW port used for ? No one seems to know if anything worked with that port ?

 

[Amethyst1]

Question - what was the internal FW port used for ? No one seems to know if anything worked with that port ?

With one of those... a hard drive maybe.

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[mode11]

I Will do the repaste to the CPU soon, but this machine is way less stable than the MDD 867 dual I have or the upgraded DA GHz dual.

I know no one wants to make their Mac slower, but have you tried reducing the speed of the CPU upgrade by 100-200MHz? It's unlikely to make much difference in use, and might be more stable. Some of these upgrades stretched the G4 chips to their max, and weren't entirely stable.

Could also just buy a modern external HDD and run it off a USB 2.0 card. Given current capacities, even a cheap 2.5" drive might replace all your internal drives. Worth putting a 120GB SSD on the Seritek for OS / application use though.

 

[ervus]

I've been trying some more stuff with these fans, but it's complicated by different fan speeds. It seems the fan has a temperature controller...