How can I upgrade my powermac g5???

[mjacob]

I had recently gotten an old PowerMac g5 from a local school of mine and loved it as I used to have one when they first came out. It needed a hard drive and a good cleaning, so I installed a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo I had laying around, and got a 10.4 tiger disk from an old local mac store and downloaded it onto the SSD, the pc now works fine, but I don't really know much about these computers but I'm quite experienced with windows machines and was wondering what upgrades I can do it to make it as powerful and fast as possible. other than the SSD I put in, everything else is factory, as far as I know, it currently has dual 1.8 GHz processors and 2 GB of ram. Any input is appreciated and I can try to answer any questions.

 

[Project Alice]

Should be able to do 8GB of Ram. The SSD was a good upgrade already.
The other thing is the video card.
The best video cards are the Geforce 6800 Ultra, and Radeon x800.
The X800 is pricey and hard to get. I purchased a geforce 6800 on eBay last year for not too much (like $150 I think) and it’s been great.
A Radeon 9600 is a good budget option if you’re just looking to replace the geforce 5200 that’s most likely in it. Radeon 9800 Pros are good too but a little over priced so it makes more sense to get a Geforce 6800.

 

[mjacob]

Should be able to do 8GB of Ram. The SSD was a good upgrade already.
The other thing is the video card.
The best video cards are the Geforce 6800 Ultra, and Radeon x800.
The X800 is pricey and hard to get. I purchased a geforce 6800 on eBay last year for not too much (like $150 I think) and it’s been great.
A Radeon 9600 is a good budget option if you’re just looking to replace the geforce 5200 that’s most likely in it. Radeon 9800 Pros are good too but a little over priced so it makes more sense to get a Geforce 6800.

thanks for the recommendations, I seems like this model is one with a more lacking processor, is there anything I can do about that?

 

[Project Alice]

thanks for the recommendations, I seems like this model is one with a more lacking processor, is there anything I can do about that?

I actually have the same model. It’s honestly fine. I also have a Dual 2.0GHz and I actually replaced it with the 1.8. The 2GHz one I had only has 4 ram slots (even though it is indeed a dual CPU model). I can’t tell that it’s 200MHz slower. But it also holds more ram so.

There’s not a lot you can do on CPU upgrades anyways.

 

[elise_s1]

a bit of lateral thinking here...
you can ditch all the internal and make a hackintosh with new components and preserve the G5 look.
Not a puristic choice but you will have a more useable machine, either with MacOS or Windows.

Edit (as it seems a bit of a blasphemous opinion on here): My personal advice is to keep it as it is and enjoy it as it was intended to run.
Only if you cannot live with the actual performance you may think about replacing all the internals, as any partial and non destructive modification will NOT improve performance significantly by today's standard.

 

[Project Alice]

a bit of lateral thinking here...
you can ditch all the internal and make a hackintosh with new components and preserve the G5 look.
Not a puristic choice but you will have a more useable machine, either with MacOS or Windows.

Not on a working machine.

 

[cosmichobo]

I had one of these; was my main machine for a number of years after I picked it up at a pawn shop. It should be moderately capable in today's world - web browsing, word processing etc... and play games of its own era like a pro. But they are 15 years old... running at best Mac OS 10.5.8 from 2009. So - go in with low expectations and you'll do fine.

 

[elise_s1]

Not on a working machine.

I see your point there, but it's always a trade off between preserving it and using it.
Even a SSD is some sort of violation of its originality.
The OP asked how to make it powerful and fast... and that's an impossible challenge by today standards.

 

[Amethyst1]

Even a SSD is some sort of violation of its originality.

Nope as it doesn't involve gutting the machine.

 

[elise_s1]

Nope as it doesn't involve gutting the machine.

we're OT here, but a vintage object does lose it's originality even when you just add something that's not contemporary
(like an MP3 player on a 1960 Corvette).
each to their own, I guess.

 

[Project Alice]

I see your point there, but it's always a trade off between preserving it and using it.
Even a SSD is some sort of violation of its originality.
The OP asked how to make it powerful and fast... and that's an impossible challenge by today standards.

There’s a difference between upgrading and throwing away or tearing apart a good working machine.

we're OT here, but a vintage object does lose it's originality even when you just add something that's not contemporary
(like an MP3 player on a 1960 Corvette).
each to their own, I guess.

G5s, and even older Macs don’t apply when it comes to originality like that. I get your point; but there’s no market for that. I suppose some collectors would appreciate say a compact Mac or Macintosh 128k with the original drive. But that doesn’t apply to computer collectors usually.
I consider myself one. For example, I have a Bondi blue iMac G3. It’s been upgraded to a 333MHz CPU card, a new hard drive (I think it’s a 40GB IIRC) and it runs Mac OS X 10.4.11 and 9.2.2. Pretty far off from the original. The only thing as far as “originality” goes for computer collectors is if it comes with the original box or not.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

1. Max the ram. Stick a spinner in slot two that is larger than your SSD.
2. Repartition your SSD drive with three partitions
3. Install Tiger and upgrade to 10.4.11 on partition one
4. Install Leopard and upgrade to 10.5.8 on partition two
5. Install macbuntu on partition three (DL on this forum)
6. Install OSX software. My basic set up is as follows:

a.) Tenfourfox, then tweaks (various methods listed on this website)​

b.) tenfivetube for youtube browsing, Fox boxes​

c.) Fav word processor (mine is Office 08)​

d.) Art apps - FastIcns, sketchup, screenflow​

e.) Benchmark aps - Geekbench2.2.7, xbench etc.​

f.) Teleport, Screenflow, Growl, Carbon Copy Cloner​

g.) file Juicer 4.25, Unarchiver3.2​

h.) menumeters or istat (my pref is menumeters)​

7. Clone your SSD drive to your back up spinner using CCC.

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