Forums | MacLife

lord_uranus · 2009-06-29 9:14 pm

Got a powermac g4 mirror door that I'm still happy with. Only problem is heat. It didnt used to overheat but now that I have 3HDs in there and all 4 RAM slots full it gets hot and crashes.

I can run most apps no problem but if it's CPU intensive such a imovie or even just burning a CD, the CPU temp just climbs--- 45C, 47C, 49c, then around 50C boom, it crashes.

Installed a pci slot fan -- seems to help a little but instead of crashing after 10 minutes it crashes after 15.
I think the problem is the slot fan is basically keeping my video card cool (which wasnt the problem) but due to the design of the case, the really hot air from the CPU is not favorably affected by the slot fan at the top of the case. for this reason i dont think removing the speaker would make much difference. If I had a gaming machine with a hot video card maybe but not in my case, er, situation-- all the trouble is at the bottom of the box.

Anyway, my main question is about the big main CPU fan. With the case open, machine on and my hand next to it, I could barely feel a breeze. And with the case closed, can't feel anything coming out of the back of the tower, even when it's hot and the fan should be at max.

According to the stats I've found about the big cpu fan, it spins fast and moves a lot of air. (Contributing to so many g4 noise complaints)

I looked for replacement fan but none come close to the amount of air that the apple (pabst) cpu fan can supposedly push out of there.

So my question are:

1. is it true? does it really move that much air? you would think that by now there would be new fans out there that can move as much air but they are hard to find.

leading to question 2--

2: so maybe my fan has bought it? It still spins (and makes noise) but maybe it doesnt hit full rpm and expel as much air as it used to. it is 5 or 6 years old and i use the machine a few hours a day.

I would just put in a new fan but I'd rather not stick one in at a lower rating. thing is I've read some sites such as xlr8 and most fan issues dealt with noise - people put in fans with **lower** ratings than the original but still didnt have heat problems.

Graphic Autist · 2009-06-29 11:13 pm

It's my least powerful computer, but I LOVE my MDD G4.

There is also a side-fan beneath one of the two panels. On my old Yikes G4 I popped the side panels off and it was caked with smoke residue (I smoked inside at the time.) The fan may be clogged, but I never experienced known issues due to heat with the Yikes or the MDD.

My current MDD has 4 hard drives, and is maxed out at 2 GB.

I'll install a temp gauge on it, and see if my temps are below yours. Perhaps what you think is going on isn't really the issue. Its happened to me before.

lord_uranus · 2009-06-30 3:16 am

Wow, thanks G.A. that would be a big help. Yeah it's a great machine, I love it.

The fans are a little dirty but they seem to function ok. The front vent is clean. I'm using freeware called "temperature monitor" and "temperature monitor lite" to keep track of the temp and cpu load.

I'm open minded about the causes of the problem but I have a few reasons for thinking it's heat related. Here are some:

1. I never had the problem in the winter but had the exact same problem last summer. I used imovie for hours at a time no problem until about a month ago when it started getting hot here. Weather here is comparable to Florida. Hot and humid.

2. Last summer I "solved" the problem by cranking the a/c in my house, popping open the case and sitting a 16" room fan on top of the opening. CPU temp stayed down and crashing stopped. I could use imovie no problem then, but only if I took that extreme measure.

3. machine runs fine under every circumstance but like I mentioned ,something CPU intensive and the temp skyrockets- it's that magic number of 50c, maybe 51c -- as soon as the CPU temp gets there it freezes. Ha ha, what a misnomer. I've watched it when I burn a CD: I'll click burn, watch the numbers go up and at 50c it crashes. I can surf the web all day (cpu load 10 to 30%) and it will stay at 36-44C but try and burn a CD, CPU load gets up in the 80-90% range, and within 3 minutes it's up at 50 degrees C and frozen.

I've seen people talk about running their machines at 58c no problem. But another guy on another forum said "what? 50c? why so hot? that's crazy"

My machine is very similar to yours. 1.25 ghz , 2mb RAM but due to heat trouble I gave up on making it dual cpu.

A couple of aside questions for you:
1. do you find the dual cpu machine to be faster?
2. you're not really in antarctica are you? I feel dumb for asking.
3. How did you get os10.5 on a g4? I thought they were limited to 10.4

Graphic Autist · 2009-06-30 7:04 am

1. I haven't had access to a single CPU MDD to compare it to.

2. No. You're not dumb.

3. I just popped the DVD in, rebooted from it, and installed. 10.5 will be the last OS supported on PPC architecture.

I'll try and get a reading tonight for you on the temp mine runs at.

Graphic Autist · 2009-06-30 7:01 pm

I'm getting 58.3 degrees celsius on the MDD. And that's just while it's idle.

I don't really do much heavy lifting with it these days.

lord_uranus · 2009-06-30 8:34 pm

Yeah, I've heard the 58c figure from others before. I dunno, I've never seen my machine get that high. It crashes before it reaches that point.

Graphic Autist · 2009-06-30 10:12 pm

Perhaps it's something else? I wish I could be of more assistance. Good luck to you.

Mr. T · 2009-07-02 11:20 am

I don't think you have a heat issue at all. I suspect either a bad hard drive or bad RAM. Pull out all of the extra RAM you've added. If the OS isn't installed on one of you new drives, pull out all of the extra drives as well. Try to boot the machine.

Don't put anything back yet. If your machine still experiences the same symptoms, pull out all but one memory stick. If that doesn't work then start to test each stick one at a time. I suspect that one (perhaps even two) of your memory sticks may be bad, but it's almost impossible to have four bad sticks.

Put everything back the way it was. If the RAM test fails, then you may have a failing drive. Especially in OS X, a failing drive can lead to a crash when your swap file becomes corrupted. If possible, try installing OS X on another drive, and remove (or disconnect) all other drives. If installing OS X on another drive is not practical, then disconnect all of your drives except for the optical drive, and boot from your OS 9 CD. Launch a bunch of programs and try to make the computer crash.

If you're unable to make the computer crash in any of these tests, then you've likely pinpointed the problem. Post back with your results.

Graphic Autist · 2009-07-02 8:52 pm

If you have it, boot from the Apple Hardware Test CD that came with it. It detected a bad RAM stick that no other diagnostic discovered in my MDD.

I mentioned this in some other thread very recently, and forgot it wasn't THIS one. I'm so sorry I forgot.

But Mr. T knows what he's talking about. I doubt its a heat issue as well.

Forums | MacLife

#1 2009-06-29 9:14 pm

G4 fan crapped out?

#2 2009-06-29 11:13 pm

Re: G4 fan crapped out?

#3 2009-06-30 3:16 am

Re: G4 fan crapped out?

#4 2009-06-30 7:04 am

Re: G4 fan crapped out?

#5 2009-06-30 7:01 pm

Re: G4 fan crapped out?

#6 2009-06-30 8:34 pm

Re: G4 fan crapped out?

#7 2009-06-30 10:12 pm

Re: G4 fan crapped out?

#8 2009-07-02 11:20 am

Re: G4 fan crapped out?

#9 2009-07-02 8:52 pm

Re: G4 fan crapped out?

Board footer