I've been planning to buy a powermac g5 for months, but I'm undecided, initially, I intended to buy the 2.5ghz quadcore, as I found a cool liquid-cooled mac. On the other hand, I was told that they heat up like hell, and my electricity bill would start to come high, due to high consumption. I don't want my electricity bill to go up.
I intend to buy a g5 for its historical value, and because it would be faster than any of my G4, I intend to port some things to mac, so I would be dealing with some tools that require good hardware.
I remember that a few years ago, I had a single core iMac G5 1.8ghz, the performance was very good, the only thing that limited it was the graphics card fx5200 in some games. However, I replaced it with a Powerbook G4 1.67 with radeon 9700 thinking it would do well, and in 2 days of use I noticed a big difference in performance (for the worse).
So, which G5 model would you recommend me?
Well, considering what's been happening for us, I can give you some real info, although not in specific numbers.
From about October to May our electric bill ranges in the $150-$200 range. That's with the following running 24/7, no sleep:
1 PowerMac G5 Quad.
1 PowerMac G5 2.3 DC
1 PowerMac G5 2.7 DP
1 PowerMac G4/500
1 PowerMac G3/450
1 Thinkpad L420
Keep in mind, I have a two-story house and there are three other people (my wife and kids) who also generate power demand.
When I got the Quad the electric bill went up $20 a month. That's not much to me, but I guess it's a lot to others. But I leave my electronics on all the time.
From June to September our electric bill is $200-$450. Why? It's not because of the Macs. I know that before and I know it now because of what happened to us this year. In the middle of June, the central A/C went out. It was still cool enough to leave all my Macs on for the remainder of the month.
Not until July were we able to get our first evap cooler. June's bill was $299. That's because half the month we had central air. Had we had central for the entire month the bill would have been close to $400.
Since late July we have been operating two portable A/C units, and have installed two window A/C units. Only ONE Mac has been operating 24/7 and that was only since the middle of August. The bill has consistently been around $350. All of that has been because of A/C, as again, only one Mac running and my bill is still high!
I live in Phoenix and this year has seen records shattered. It has been the hottest summer that the city has ever recorded, the hottest month (August) and the most days above 110º (51+) and my electric bill is all air conditioning.
My point here is this: The G5 draws power, I will not deny that. But compared to central air, or four A/C units drawing 1800W per hour EACH, this is NOTHING.
The ONLY reason I have had my Macs off is because two are in the garage where it's anywhere from 95º to 110º+ each day and three are in the living room where we struggle to maintain 88º and where it's been as hot as 95º.
I won't deny the heat aspect.
Hope that helps.