I had a 2005 Quad from new until it started overheating and needed the LCS rebuilt sometime in 2012. I hung on to it for nostalgia, and even attempted a rebuild of the LCS system. Epic fail and ended up parting it out. It was a great machine in it's day. I still occasionally run into some audio houses with old G5's tucked in a corner for some random purpose.
I truly believe the 5,1 Mac Pro is the embodiment of all the design and engineering learned that culminated in one of the greatest computer tower designs in recent history. A shame Apple didn't evolve the product again rather than abandon it and risk it all on a tube "lemon". The 4,1/5,1 design is a beauty and a joy to work with and maintain. I hope some of the lessons learned brings back something as functional as the cMP/G5 cheese graters. But...this is one of the worlds largest companies that for some reason needs close to three years to produce a friken computer. From Mac to Z!
Ugh, yeah, I've heard of how infamous the liquid cooled G5's are and were. I wonder if a liquid cooled G5, even if it isn't leaking today or ever leak will still need servicing because of the fact that it's liquid cooled. I've heard that in PC's with water-cooling, they have to clean it out after a few years...
But, I agree... The Powermac G5 tower design was amazing in its day and still hold on its own today. You can see that Apple sculpted and worked on that same chassis for almost decade, from 2003-2012... I think that's unheard of in the computer-space and shows how Apple was/is really dedicated to making computers not just look cool, for looking cool's sake. But, make it practical, useable, endurable... is that a even word?
I think one can see the same sort of sculpting and perfecting something in all of Apple's lineup, from iPhone, iPod to their laptop lineup.
For example, the Titanium powerbooks was the beginning and I see the aluminum powerbooks and the unibody's as evolutionary design changes...
Of course, people are moaning that the laptop progression has gone too thin and too unpractical by requiring dongles.
And, the same sentiment was seen with the trashcan mac pro. There, I think, Apple did something "revolutionary" as oppose to "evolutionary" as they have been doing since early 2000's. I think they did it not just because they could (make things look cool). But, probably because they saw a smaller mac pro as an advantage where mac pro's were used a lot... like in many production houses and professional offices and settings where mac pro's were being moved around the office/studio like some game of "musical-computer-chairs." The older tower Mac Pro's of course had handles for this. But, man, they're heavy and sort of big... size of a typical tower PC! I thought that the trashcan Mac Pro addressed that issue and improved power efficiency and performance at the same time. I didn't really see any compromise that the nMP trashcan had. I mean, thunderbolt is not a compromise to SATA ports. They're just pricier. And, the people who can afford the nMP can probably afford the more expensive way of expanding storage through thunderbolt...
As for not being able to upgrade the GPU... well, I think that was on AMD's court, quite literally, since AMD was the only one who could "upgrade" the nMP trashcan's GPU's!!! And, they didn't have any viable GPU's until recently... But, the longer wait for nMP successor is probably still due to some sort of lack of being able to literally produce actual GPU's at the price Apple needs and quantity? I don't know. Just guessing wildly, here. But, to continue on that same wild thread (pun intended), the iMac Pro is probably a test run of some sort to see if it's logistically possible to produce Macs with the new Vega GPU's? Who knows... I mean, the whole iMac Pro announcement was probably the most surprising thing that has occurred in Apple news since 2013...
Anyway, I'm ranting for way too long... fortunately, the Powermac G5 I salvaged isn't liquid cooled... I went back to Tiger because non of my apps worked in Leopard and now just got EyeTV to work on it for curiosity's sake. It runs it fine and pegs the CPU's usage at 27%-37% each.....
The power from the wall at desktop and idle hovers between 144 watts - 155 watts, which is also in the same ballpark as my Mac Pro 5,1 6-core w/ RX460 at idle....