I suspect that your SSD issue may be the SATA 1 on the G5. SATA 2 is backwards compatible to SATA 1, but SATA 3 is not. But hey, you got it working! My G5 is a dual 1.8 GHz from 2003. It's a tank. I use it every day.
@@ActionRetro Yes, while SATA is theoretically forewards and backwards compatible, in practice these G5s are extremely picky about 6Gbps drives. I know older drives like Intel x25-M or 320 series work in them.
I remember switching from my iMac G4 800Mhz to a Dual 1.8Ghz G5 when they came out and being totally blown away - by both performance and the noise of the fans (especially my graphics card!)
Couple minor corrections for you. The single core dual processor 2.5GHz and 2.7GHz systems were the first to have liquid cooling and they were also the ones notorious for leaking. Of the 3 last generation dual core models, only the 2.5GHz Quad system used liquid cooling, and it was of a different design that rarely leaked. The 2GHz and 2.3GHz dual core systems used air cooling and are known to be the most reliable G5’s made.
I own 2 G5's and love them. I have 1 dual core and 1 quad core both late 2005. These G5's are louder than a house fan when they are cooling. When I bought one of mine, when you turned it on it did not make the apple chime at startup. It turned out that one of the two memory cards was damaged and once I replaced it I never had a problem from it. I mainly use them for storing and backing up family pics. The safari browser still connects to some sites, but I found that tenfourfox works far better. I always loved the style, build quality and craftsmanship of the G5 and the Mac Pro.
The insides of those machines are just so gorgeous. I love the clear plastic layer and the huge G5 badge... just great looking machines all the way around. I need to fire mine up. It's been a while ;)
You made a really great point how Apple really screwed over anyone who bought a new powermac G5 just before the release of the Mac Pro around 2010. Im a proud owner of a Powermac G5 with the 30" Apple monitor. I have maxed out the memory and it has an ssd with a quadra soundcard.
FYI- I was a manager at CompUSA, miss the old days too. But people don't love and hate them, they love to hate them and some hate to love them. You need to gut that case and put in a Raspberry Cluster. I also miss Ultra-Wide SCSI 3 and Adaptec, I can still count/add/subtract to 15 in binary without having to actually think about it. You could have more than four drives with SCSI, incredible! I had to 2 15k baracudas in Raid 0 and three 7,200 Maxtors in Raid 5, a ZIP drive, a Jazz drive (1GB!), a DVD, CD, and a writable CD then DVD drive. I could write CDs! I was a tech god at the time. I had a PC that could play videos on my TV via composite, a Sony Trinitron of course, a tech god I tell you!
A friend just gave me two of those to scrap. One of them is the one with the water cooling. I am not a MAC user, but I am blown away by the build quality. I cant believe the size of the power supply!
Around 9mins in as you're installing the drive, there are 4 spare screws on a vertical post between the optical drive and the SSD drives that screw into your hard drive, and guide it into these tracks that slide it in and up. Then the rotating level holds the drive in place.
I think it’s pertinent to note that there were 3 G5 models that used liquid cooling. The 2004 dual 2.5, the early 2005 dual 2.7 and the late 2005 quad 2.5. Basically any G5 that had a 2.5GHz or faster CPU was liquid cooled. All others, including the 2.0 and 2.3GHz dual-core machines, were air cooled. (Note: the quad has two dual-core chips while the dual cores have one dual core chip). The 2004 2.5 and early 2005 2.7 were the most problematic. Most had cooling systems from Delphi (part of General Motors) which were not meant to last even the service life of the machines. Some had better built Panasonic coolers which could still have problems but the failures were greatly reduced. I had one of each and I wish I had kept the Panasonic, but when I moved I had to liquidate all my G5s including my dual-core. The quads had the best system and I’ve only heard of a few failures. But they too were designed by Delphi and their reputation is intertwined with the earlier coolers.
I'm writing this on my Powermac G5 dual core 2.0Ghz. The video isn't smooth on TenFourFox G5. The framerate is quite low even on 360p, but if you live in terminal, it's great and it still has the looks.
upon release of the intels the g5 boxes wernt obsolete right away by a long shot. This was long before software as a service and your copies of adobe and all ran great. the quad g5 was a beast into the intel age. not for very long but long enough that power users got their monies worth for sure. great video
Someone else may have already pointed this out, but the Power Mac G5 wasn't the only PowerPC Mac with SATA hard-drives. The iMac G5 also used SATA hard-drives; I know this from experience, as I installed an SSD in mine. :D
I wanted one of those G5's back in the day soooo bad. Excellent video! Also -- I miss OSX looking like that. I loved the colorful 3d interface & skeuomorphic elements. It was really something *different* , you know? I still love OSX, don't get me wrong, but it's just not as visually appealing as it once was.
Back in the day (2005) I also dreamed of having one... but only a few years later, these machines had become completely obsolete... being not particularly powerful, a huge power hog and running only old software. Sic transit gloria.
Intel Mac pro was released in 2006 but ppc was well supported thru 2008 at least. Bought a used g5 in 2009 and I was running Photoshop cs4 ppc. the thing was receiving some updates till 2011, if I remember correctly.
I was offered two G5s a few years ago and turned them down because I was moving. Still wish I had taken them. They were in great shape and already fully upgraded to 8GB of RAM.
I was in London when this machine was presented and with my hourly work rate, was it inaccessible. An dream realised later. I even danced at Paris in an flat near Louvre Luxembourg parc near arcades where was on floor one. I felt strange on ground an computer with no furnitures around. An very rich person I feel remenber made this fest in an luxury flat. I am remenber not finding my keys in my coat and found them on my car door parked. No, I wasn't drunk but probably tired to have forgotten my key on my door car. Sometimes, am I believing someone took my key in my coat and placed on my door car during night but I have no response...Or key stayed on door all night parked in middle of Paris in front of Luxembourg park with many people walking around at saturday night without any stole. I was so happy to find it after searched in all my coat put on floor as many others at entrance flat for the occasion all night...I was an little bit schocked because property person accepted to make an party with carpet in whole of flat. I didn't know him but invited by an friend. I thought he was enough rich to make again carpet after party due crowd inside.
I love these machines a lot and would still use them even at 20 years old today because they are so special and they look and feel really really good. I mean, that still looks new to me am I the only one?
14:52 You forgot to change the partition type to Apple... That's likely why that SSD didn't work right. You used the defaults, and a PC drive like that usually defaults to DOS partition. :) Ran into exactly the same issue with the exact same model of drive in an identical G5! Lol!
As other people point out. The G5 does NOT support Sata III drives to boot from at all. I have the latest Quad version of the G5s with PCI express, and I have tried different controllers and different drives. but booting from them does not work. I does however find the drives in the OS and can be used to store data on, but not boot. And if I am not mistaken it has to do with the AHCI controller that those computer used. However, finding SATAII drives on eBay is easy even today, and they are cheap :). I have two 128GB in Raid0 in mine.
Yeah they really are beautiful, and I love that era of Mac Pro. I think they'll be usable for a long time still - they still blow a lot of modern mid-range PC's out of the water.
@@ActionRetro Yup absolutely, although the old mac pros are not that suitable for commercial usage but for a average user who likes to do some photo editings and FHD Video editing etc. this machines are still good because of the upgradability.
How is the machine holding up in 2020? I am curious to know! I have a Mac Pro early 2009 I still use it to this day and it's still good and fast for my work.
@@junaid9957782027 I have a G5 also and it was my main rig for a few months and I still use it. Its still snappy surpirsingly I only have 3gb of ram in mine and I can max it out to 4 but I don't have another at the moment. If you do get a G5 get a 2005 one with better cpus and 8gb of ram. But back on topic mine handles internet browsing alright but wasn't' great. RUclips was a bit hard to run but I was also using a newer monitor with a newer resolution so if you got a period correct display probably could do youtube. Browsing the Internet was decent for simple searches or sites. I could listen to Soundcloud and do some browsing but it was slow. But for older software its great like iMovie and GarageBand. I enjoy my unit but wouldn't recommend one unless you like collecting older tech like I do.
@@jasontevepaugh I can pick one of this just to test it! Although I use Mac Pro 5,1 for my editing works, I can definitely give this machine a shot, its sold dirt cheap nowadays lol
Junaid Siddique Dope just becareful some of the 2005 models have water cooling. So make sure if you come across one it hasn’t leaked all over the parts. One thing I will admit is the machine looks so nice once you take the side panel off. I’ve actually been looking into getting a older Mac Pro myself but right now all the prices are insane. So i got myself a cheap 2011 iMac to use instead.
@@jasontevepaugh Alright! So I would have to open the case and look inside for any leakage... thanks for telling that I didn't knew it. Well right! Older Mac Pros especially 4,1 and 5,1 quite expensive even for today. And we also need to upgrade that lol! Most of them comes with a GT210 or a HD 5770 which is terribly out of date and underpowered for a person who is into content creation and also in a tight budget.
I sold my single cpu 1.8GHz 2003 G5 last year, now I do everything on a hackintosh. It's really been a good computer, I even replaced the thermal compound to improve thermal performance (with mixed results). My only gripe about it was the thermals, it runs HOT
I really prefer Tiger, it has classic, and I can carbon copy clone between all my G4 and G5 macs with no issue for booting, even between the various ATI and Nvidia gpus. 10.4.11 is the way to go on those machines. So at work I have only 2 os versions : tiger and mojave.
I kept Tiger on my Quad G5 for that very reason; there are still a few Classic programs that are useful to me, and the Quad G5 Mac is the fastest Classic-compatible machine ever made. Interesting side note: I bought mine on eBay, and supposedly, it was used by a company in a render farm that worked on the movie Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.
I have a 2.5 ghz, 2 processor G5 with 16 GB of Ram and two 8 terabyte hard drives....maybe I should do a video of my maxed out Cheese Grater....love these video's. you have done a great thing bringing this beauty back to life sir!!!
I'm surprised people that deal with retro computers don't have an assortment of drive bay converters.. EG 2.5 -> 3.5, 3.5 -> 5.25 etc. Would make mounting drives like SSDs into old computers much easier and more stable. All the videos I've seen just have it taped or hanging about haha.
I bought a dual-G5 when they first came out. 2GHz. The computer was 3G'ws and the monitor, the middle one, was 2G's. It lasted quite a while.. I get I burnt a few hundred DVD's on it, NTSC stuff taken with a handy-cam. Then, one day, there was no video. Restarted, worked. That was the beginning of the end. It became more and more unstable. Ultimately, it must have been the power supply. Mine was never noisy, but when I started swapping things around, and the computer knew it, I had a vacuum cleaner in the box! There was a utility that I must have downloaded specifically for that computer model, that tested the thermal profile I guess, took hours, and suddenly was nice and quiet again. That didn't fix the problem. I eventually changed the video card, which worked maybe for a month, and did the same thing. Then I got to the nitty-gritty. I found access to a voltage adjustment in the power supply. When I was able to get it up and working, while it was working, I started cranking down on the 5V supply. The computer locked up at 4.65 volts. I cranked it back up to 4.75, and it went flawlessly for another couple of years like that. It eventually got to where the hard drive was having errors. I found a dual-dual core G5 (water cooled) on line for rather cheap. Nothing leaking. Memory was all different types and reporting wrong size. I was surprised it worked at all.. I got a even number of the same type in both banks, and that fixxed the memory. Then, I though I'd put my now-crashed drive from my older computer in this one. It was carrying-on for a while, then miraculously, it fixed every error on that hard drive by itself! BTW, on that old mac, I even changed the mother board! Same problem. About singling out a bad power supply, which I couldn't find anywhere. I think it was a trend that these went bad. Thanks for the video!
Since nobody has said anything yet, it’s probably a reference to a very old joke on the internet. I can’t remember all of the details as it’s been over a decade, but a man calls for help (maybe 911) and when they ask him what the problem is he just keeps saying he “accidentally a whole bottle of coke”.
I was gifted two of these - they both had the drives, ram & GPU removed and had suffered from coolant leaks. I simply didn't have the space or time to work on them. Something I am still regretting now!
I’ve always had a soft spot for these, but just in a “last gasp of PPC” way when compared to the Mac Pro. Of course the outward industrial design is the same for both, but the Pro seemed much friendlier to quickly upgrade a component and then close it up again. I also contest the insides of the Mac Pro looked nicer too. Even the interior beauty of the big G5 covers is outdone (IMO) by the Pro’s drive bays, the removable RAM drawer, the socketed Xeons, the extra slots, and the increased I/O. But then, I’ve always found that acrylic airflow cover annoying, while I know some folks absolutely adore it. And there is something deliciously extra about the G5’s heatsinks.
I remember when these came out, they were the bees knees and so awesome. When I went to a technical college, called TAFE, in between jobs, they had a big lab of them. I can't recall what models but I think they were first generation G5s. I don't think they allowed them to run very fast tho, it seemed like the power management settings were set quite low, something that was changed. At the time I had a G4 Quicksilver that was on its way out and couldn't handle the same large files I was dealing with in Illustrator. I upgraded to the Core Duo Intel Mac mini, as it was 2006 at the time, and it handled my large files like it was nothing! But there is something about the G5 machines that's very appealing and well thought out when the CPUs ran so hot.
I have a Quad G5 that I still use today! (August 2024). It has some older programs that work great for me, and I use it to produce artwork and technical graphics. I purposely bought the Quad G5 bc I knew that I would continue to run some of my legacy PowerPC programs, and the Quad G5 is the fastest PowerPC that Apple made, so I got one when people had abandoned them years earlier for newer tech. Now, Quad G5s are hard to find, and expensive. Again. I knew that would happen, glad I thought ahead for once.
Next, find a dead 2.7 dual, shuck the CPU cards and install them into the 2.0 machine, running them with air cooling. More modern thermal compounds and better application of it may make this the best screamer PPC Mac you can build. I've been wanting to do a single air-cooled 2.5 GHz dual (late 05), but still have a working quad so am reluctant to disascemble it unless I'm refilling the LCS and cleaning it out.
I have the same machine. Lots of fun squeezing performance out of them. My mods (so far..): - Gentoo Linux, 6.12.3 kernel - Samsung 840 128gb boot ssd - Samsung 870 1TB swap / archive ssd - Samsung 990 Pro NVME drives (2 x 2Tb) on 2 x pcie riser cards (ZFS pool for portage / applications / general file share) - 16Gb ECC RAM (re-purposed from an old riverbed appliance) - Nvidia Quadro FX4500 512mb (hp oem reflashed to mac ppc) Lots of fun 😊
I still have a 2.30 GHz G5 in my basement. But I don't know why I should set it up and turn it on again today. My Mac mini is quieter and faster. Thanks to eGPU also in terms of graphics performance. SATA3 SSD, faster RAM, USB 3.0. Everything is actually a bit outdated even today, but still significantly faster than the G5. In addition, the power consumption is much lower.
Sooo...funny story...Apple has announced they are going to a new processor series right after they finally released the first useful Mac Pro in almost a decade. I'll bet the people who shelled out the cash for those are thrilled!
History repeated itself. The G5 came out just before Apple announced the switch to Intel. And OSX dropped support for PPC after only one more version. 10.6 was intel only even though the first intel processors were 32 bit only. It was a mess. But Jobs wanted laptops and there was no way a G5 was ever going into a laptop.
@@mikespangler98 They sure did. I went through the Rosetta debacle the first time around. I'm sitting this one out. I still have a G5 2.3 DC...I'm in no hurry. :D Ironic that they now have a bunch mobile chips not worthy of a desktop!
3:48 You have this whole thing exactly backwards. The older dual processor models above 2.3 ghz were water cooled, the dual core models ram MUCH cooler, and only the very top end quad 2.5 was water cooled. The LCS was garbage though, that's absolutely accurate!
I have 2 of these machines I bought for $40 each waaay back in 2011. Still have not been able to power them on as they came with no video cards, or drives. I have no clue what AGP card works on them since all the ATI and NVIDIA cards I have tried fail to be recognized. I thought maybe pci-e? Nope! I may remove the G5 system and just use the cases for intel mini itx systems that actually work!
You can use many different agp gfx cards, there is a list out there. I just use stock nv fx5200 for the adc port,however I did flash a 7800gs leadtek that works perfectly on the G5. Could also try a 9600series ati flashed card. For pciexpress a GF6x00 safest bet.
I have the exact same PowerMac and the exact same PNY SSD, and had the same problem trying to boot from it (grey screen). Was really hoping you found a solution for the last half of the video.
Another gripe for the G5 is the placement of the PSU. Because it was low to the floor, it would collect a lot of dust and fail. But then again, I had a MMD G4 and Mac Pro that blew out the PSU's and they were on the top?
I know I'm late to this party, but I'm jealous... I can't wait for it to be safe again to go thrifting... it'd be so cool to snag an older PPC Mac to take home and tinker with again...
i found a pair at a thriftstore today, wish i could have snagged both, i did grabbed one and i think it has anywhere from 8-16gb of ram, whatever stock gpu it came from the factory, dual cpu's, and no hdd. im just sad i don't have a copy of leopard
I'd love to put a modern PC in one of these cases, I think they are very nice looking cases, peak Apple design IMO, before they "jumped the shark" so to speak with the silly "trash can" Mac design.
The problem is SATA 3. I had the same problem on an upgrade and I had to set some jumpers on the SATA 3 drive to work as SATA 1. There are no a lot of SSDs nowadays that support SATA 2. I usually install a SATA 3 card and use this for the G5s
I got a broken water-cooled G5 decided to save the beautiful case and strip the insides out cut an atx motherboard mounting plate out of an old pc case and put it in the g5 case and now I have a i5 7600k system running in it with a rtx 2060
I wouldn’t say the G5 ppc became worthless and obsolete overnight. Now, I would’ve felt bad seeing how powerful the intel Mac pro was compared to my G5 but it’s still a good machine.
I have two 1TB SSDs in my Late 2005 G5. One has Leopard and one has Debian. I had to get SATAII SSDs from OWC to have them boot reliably, I've tried new Samsung SSDs but they just don't boot reliably in a G5 for some reason.
Great video and thank you for sharing! I remember buying one at Comp USA around mid-2005 for around $1499. I felt pretty bummed when Apple made the jump to Intel because suddenly my investment went down the tube. Mine still has 3GB of RAM and a 500GB regular SATA drive. I'm ready to give it some TLC and max out the RAM and upgrade to an SSD drive. Any recommendations on an upgrade for a video card?
can You show us performance of maxed G5? In oldschool software (power pc soft) and also in modern tasks as 1080p video editing or RUclips, music production etc ?
I think Broken Electronics got that rightThe first two SSDs were too modern. I have one of the same computers and after reading about how upgrades are doneI'm glad I saw your demo. I have a OWC SATA II 120 GB SSD I was planning on trying. I'm going to try cloning the boot drive since I don't have an install image. Is there a version of FCP that will run on this platform? I am assuming that the software needs to be created for Power PC. If I can't get it configured for legacy video editing, out it goes!
What about other upgrades? Is there the possibility of putting USB 3.1 capability into this machine? How about a more modern graphics card - do they make any in AGP? How about a Bluray burner?
What are some cool things you can do with a dual core G5 using the same OS? I have one but thinking of gutting it and using the case to create a custom pc. Any ideas?
Some ssds will work and some wont, its a trial and error thing to get a backwards compatible one with a compatible controller. I got an older ssd to work in my G5
i had a very cheap G5 to experience it but for the love of the design but i couldn't not find a single thing to make it actually do anything useful in 2020 nor how to upgrade the software. I donated the parts and kept the enclosure to make a server but that motherboard blew up :( now its a paperweight.
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
I actually sold you these! Cool to see them in a video.
Haha hey man!
👍
Lol this is cool to see
I suspect that your SSD issue may be the SATA 1 on the G5. SATA 2 is backwards compatible to SATA 1, but SATA 3 is not. But hey, you got it working! My G5 is a dual 1.8 GHz from 2003. It's a tank. I use it every day.
Oh I didn't know this, thank you!
Action Retro You are most welcome. Druaga1 has a funny video about trying to put an SSD into a G5, that’s what tipped me off.
Has to be then a G5 specific SATA controller problem. Cause SATA I , II, III is 100% compatible generally.
BlueStreaxxx You may be right, the only SATA I devices I have ever worked with are the Power Mac G5 and an iMac G5.
@@ActionRetro Yes, while SATA is theoretically forewards and backwards compatible, in practice these G5s are extremely picky about 6Gbps drives. I know older drives like Intel x25-M or 320 series work in them.
I remember switching from my iMac G4 800Mhz to a Dual 1.8Ghz G5 when they came out and being totally blown away - by both performance and the noise of the fans (especially my graphics card!)
Important history :)
Couple minor corrections for you. The single core dual processor 2.5GHz and 2.7GHz systems were the first to have liquid cooling and they were also the ones notorious for leaking. Of the 3 last generation dual core models, only the 2.5GHz Quad system used liquid cooling, and it was of a different design that rarely leaked. The 2GHz and 2.3GHz dual core systems used air cooling and are known to be the most reliable G5’s made.
I own 2 G5's and love them. I have 1 dual core and 1 quad core both late 2005. These G5's are louder than a house fan when they are cooling. When I bought one of mine, when you turned it on it did not make the apple chime at startup. It turned out that one of the two memory cards was damaged and once I replaced it I never had a problem from it. I mainly use them for storing and backing up family pics. The safari browser still connects to some sites, but I found that tenfourfox works far better. I always loved the style, build quality and craftsmanship of the G5 and the Mac Pro.
The insides of those machines are just so gorgeous. I love the clear plastic layer and the huge G5 badge... just great looking machines all the way around. I need to fire mine up. It's been a while ;)
Yeah they really are industrial art!
You made a really great point how Apple really screwed over anyone who bought a new powermac G5 just before the release of the Mac Pro around 2010. Im a proud owner of a Powermac G5 with the 30" Apple monitor. I have maxed out the memory and it has an ssd with a quadra soundcard.
FYI- I was a manager at CompUSA, miss the old days too. But people don't love and hate them, they love to hate them and some hate to love them. You need to gut that case and put in a Raspberry Cluster. I also miss Ultra-Wide SCSI 3 and Adaptec, I can still count/add/subtract to 15 in binary without having to actually think about it. You could have more than four drives with SCSI, incredible! I had to 2 15k baracudas in Raid 0 and three 7,200 Maxtors in Raid 5, a ZIP drive, a Jazz drive (1GB!), a DVD, CD, and a writable CD then DVD drive. I could write CDs! I was a tech god at the time. I had a PC that could play videos on my TV via composite, a Sony Trinitron of course, a tech god I tell you!
A friend just gave me two of those to scrap. One of them is the one with the water cooling. I am not a MAC user, but I am blown away by the build quality. I cant believe the size of the power supply!
Liked for cat.
Hahahaha
Around 9mins in as you're installing the drive, there are 4 spare screws on a vertical post between the optical drive and the SSD drives that screw into your hard drive, and guide it into these tracks that slide it in and up. Then the rotating level holds the drive in place.
Watching this as I'm trying to learn as much as I can with the G5 that I recently got :)
You'll learn you can't do much with it
This beast has 21 gigaflops of compute performance, while a modern iPhone cpu has around 2,000 gigaflops of compute power!
Unfortunately a lot of gains in modern processors is offset by "Gigabloat" with massive, heavy OSs.
I think it’s pertinent to note that there were 3 G5 models that used liquid cooling. The 2004 dual 2.5, the early 2005 dual 2.7 and the late 2005 quad 2.5. Basically any G5 that had a 2.5GHz or faster CPU was liquid cooled. All others, including the 2.0 and 2.3GHz dual-core machines, were air cooled. (Note: the quad has two dual-core chips while the dual cores have one dual core chip).
The 2004 2.5 and early 2005 2.7 were the most problematic. Most had cooling systems from Delphi (part of General Motors) which were not meant to last even the service life of the machines. Some had better built Panasonic coolers which could still have problems but the failures were greatly reduced. I had one of each and I wish I had kept the Panasonic, but when I moved I had to liquidate all my G5s including my dual-core.
The quads had the best system and I’ve only heard of a few failures. But they too were designed by Delphi and their reputation is intertwined with the earlier coolers.
Oh wow, very interesting that the quads have a reliable cooler - I'd love to find a working example.
I'm writing this on my Powermac G5 dual core 2.0Ghz. The video isn't smooth on TenFourFox G5. The framerate is quite low even on 360p, but if you live in terminal, it's great and it still has the looks.
upon release of the intels the g5 boxes wernt obsolete right away by a long shot. This was long before software as a service and your copies of adobe and all ran great. the quad g5 was a beast into the intel age. not for very long but long enough that power users got their monies worth for sure.
great video
Someone else may have already pointed this out, but the Power Mac G5 wasn't the only PowerPC Mac with SATA hard-drives. The iMac G5 also used SATA hard-drives; I know this from experience, as I installed an SSD in mine. :D
Fun fact. these powermacs with the water cooler use automotive coolant, same with early dell xps desktop water coolers.
Wow
Man, watching the old UI makes me pine for the old PPC days.
Jobs / Ive / Forstall dream team.
0:50 cat steals your shot
Commenting for the algorithm - great content!
Hahaha thanks!
I wanted one of those G5's back in the day soooo bad. Excellent video!
Also -- I miss OSX looking like that. I loved the colorful 3d interface & skeuomorphic elements. It was really something *different* , you know? I still love OSX, don't get me wrong, but it's just not as visually appealing as it once was.
Back in the day (2005) I also dreamed of having one... but only a few years later, these machines had become completely obsolete... being not particularly powerful, a huge power hog and running only old software. Sic transit gloria.
Intel Mac pro was released in 2006 but ppc was well supported thru 2008 at least. Bought a used g5 in 2009 and I was running Photoshop cs4 ppc. the thing was receiving some updates till 2011, if I remember correctly.
I was offered two G5s a few years ago and turned them down because I was moving. Still wish I had taken them. They were in great shape and already fully upgraded to 8GB of RAM.
I was in London when this machine was presented and with my hourly work rate, was it inaccessible. An dream realised later. I even danced at Paris in an flat near Louvre Luxembourg parc near arcades where was on floor one. I felt strange on ground an computer with no furnitures around. An very rich person I feel remenber made this fest in an luxury flat. I am remenber not finding my keys in my coat and found them on my car door parked. No, I wasn't drunk but probably tired to have forgotten my key on my door car. Sometimes, am I believing someone took my key in my coat and placed on my door car during night but I have no response...Or key stayed on door all night parked in middle of Paris in front of Luxembourg park with many people walking around at saturday night without any stole. I was so happy to find it after searched in all my coat put on floor as many others at entrance flat for the occasion all night...I was an little bit schocked because property person accepted to make an party with carpet in whole of flat. I didn't know him but invited by an friend. I thought he was enough rich to make again carpet after party due crowd inside.
I love these machines a lot and would still use them even at 20 years old today because they are so special and they look and feel really really good. I mean, that still looks new to me am I the only one?
Nope, theres a reason why people clutch on to this design when they updated it to Intel.
14:52 You forgot to change the partition type to Apple... That's likely why that SSD didn't work right. You used the defaults, and a PC drive like that usually defaults to DOS partition. :) Ran into exactly the same issue with the exact same model of drive in an identical G5! Lol!
This is my new go to channel. Top marks love it
As other people point out. The G5 does NOT support Sata III drives to boot from at all. I have the latest Quad version of the G5s with PCI express, and I have tried different controllers and different drives. but booting from them does not work. I does however find the drives in the OS and can be used to store data on, but not boot. And if I am not mistaken it has to do with the AHCI controller that those computer used. However, finding SATAII drives on eBay is easy even today, and they are cheap :). I have two 128GB in Raid0 in mine.
Thank you!
These are beautiful machines
Yeah they really are beautiful, and I love that era of Mac Pro. I think they'll be usable for a long time still - they still blow a lot of modern mid-range PC's out of the water.
@@ActionRetro Yup absolutely, although the old mac pros are not that suitable for commercial usage but for a average user who likes to do some photo editings and FHD Video editing etc. this machines are still good because of the upgradability.
Probably a long time. The rate of hardware progress is getting slower and slower each year.
I still have a single 1.8Ghz G5 hanging around.
It's my main photoshop rig, music making rig and.... I do have some games on it too
How is the machine holding up in 2020? I am curious to know! I have a Mac Pro early 2009 I still use it to this day and it's still good and fast for my work.
@@junaid9957782027 I have a G5 also and it was my main rig for a few months and I still use it. Its still snappy surpirsingly I only have 3gb of ram in mine and I can max it out to 4 but I don't have another at the moment. If you do get a G5 get a 2005 one with better cpus and 8gb of ram. But back on topic mine handles internet browsing alright but wasn't' great. RUclips was a bit hard to run but I was also using a newer monitor with a newer resolution so if you got a period correct display probably could do youtube. Browsing the Internet was decent for simple searches or sites. I could listen to Soundcloud and do some browsing but it was slow. But for older software its great like iMovie and GarageBand. I enjoy my unit but wouldn't recommend one unless you like collecting older tech like I do.
@@jasontevepaugh I can pick one of this just to test it! Although I use Mac Pro 5,1 for my editing works, I can definitely give this machine a shot, its sold dirt cheap nowadays lol
Junaid Siddique Dope just becareful some of the 2005 models have water cooling. So make sure if you come across one it hasn’t leaked all over the parts. One thing I will admit is the machine looks so nice once you take the side panel off. I’ve actually been looking into getting a older Mac Pro myself but right now all the prices are insane. So i got myself a cheap 2011 iMac to use instead.
@@jasontevepaugh Alright! So I would have to open the case and look inside for any leakage... thanks for telling that I didn't knew it. Well right! Older Mac Pros especially 4,1 and 5,1 quite expensive even for today. And we also need to upgrade that lol! Most of them comes with a GT210 or a HD 5770 which is terribly out of date and underpowered for a person who is into content creation and also in a tight budget.
Thank you for SUCH a nice story-telling manner of telling the story . . ha-ha . . of this great machines
*I worked at CompUSA in the upgrade/tech counter department, the sales department and the tech department at different times from 1999 - 2004.*
I love to see that you are already up to power PC shenanigans even years ago
I sold my single cpu 1.8GHz 2003 G5 last year, now I do everything on a hackintosh. It's really been a good computer, I even replaced the thermal compound to improve thermal performance (with mixed results). My only gripe about it was the thermals, it runs HOT
I really prefer Tiger, it has classic, and I can carbon copy clone between all my G4 and G5 macs with no issue for booting, even between the various ATI and Nvidia gpus. 10.4.11 is the way to go on those machines. So at work I have only 2 os versions : tiger and mojave.
I kept Tiger on my Quad G5 for that very reason; there are still a few Classic programs that are useful to me, and the Quad G5 Mac is the fastest Classic-compatible machine ever made. Interesting side note: I bought mine on eBay, and supposedly, it was used by a company in a render farm that worked on the movie Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.
There are literally 4 spare mounting screws for the hard drive right next to the bay inside the case at 9:29
there are 4 black screws in the empty drive bay , screwed into the vert. strut
You can use some velcro if you don't like dangly drives, SSDs are light enough
I have a 2.5 ghz, 2 processor G5 with 16 GB of Ram and two 8 terabyte hard drives....maybe I should do a video of my maxed out Cheese Grater....love these video's. you have done a great thing bringing this beauty back to life sir!!!
Nice! Thanks man!
I'm surprised people that deal with retro computers don't have an assortment of drive bay converters.. EG 2.5 -> 3.5, 3.5 -> 5.25 etc. Would make mounting drives like SSDs into old computers much easier and more stable. All the videos I've seen just have it taped or hanging about haha.
I bought a dual-G5 when they first came out. 2GHz. The computer was 3G'ws and the monitor, the middle one, was 2G's. It lasted quite a while.. I get I burnt a few hundred DVD's on it, NTSC stuff taken with a handy-cam. Then, one day, there was no video. Restarted, worked. That was the beginning of the end. It became more and more unstable. Ultimately, it must have been the power supply. Mine was never noisy, but when I started swapping things around, and the computer knew it, I had a vacuum cleaner in the box! There was a utility that I must have downloaded specifically for that computer model, that tested the thermal profile I guess, took hours, and suddenly was nice and quiet again. That didn't fix the problem. I eventually changed the video card, which worked maybe for a month, and did the same thing. Then I got to the nitty-gritty. I found access to a voltage adjustment in the power supply. When I was able to get it up and working, while it was working, I started cranking down on the 5V supply. The computer locked up at 4.65 volts. I cranked it back up to 4.75, and it went flawlessly for another couple of years like that. It eventually got to where the hard drive was having errors.
I found a dual-dual core G5 (water cooled) on line for rather cheap. Nothing leaking. Memory was all different types and reporting wrong size. I was surprised it worked at all.. I got a even number of the same type in both banks, and that fixxed the memory. Then, I though I'd put my now-crashed drive from my older computer in this one. It was carrying-on for a while, then miraculously, it fixed every error on that hard drive by itself!
BTW, on that old mac, I even changed the mother board! Same problem. About singling out a bad power supply, which I couldn't find anywhere. I think it was a trend that these went bad.
Thanks for the video!
“I accidentally 2 power Mac G5s”?
I'm guessing "I accidentally bought 2"
Since nobody has said anything yet, it’s probably a reference to a very old joke on the internet. I can’t remember all of the details as it’s been over a decade, but a man calls for help (maybe 911) and when they ask him what the problem is he just keeps saying he “accidentally a whole bottle of coke”.
I accidentally the cat
12:37 *Impossible Cat*
Nice G5s Good Upgrade
Thanks David!
I was gifted two of these - they both had the drives, ram & GPU removed and had suffered from coolant leaks. I simply didn't have the space or time to work on them. Something I am still regretting now!
I’ve always had a soft spot for these, but just in a “last gasp of PPC” way when compared to the Mac Pro. Of course the outward industrial design is the same for both, but the Pro seemed much friendlier to quickly upgrade a component and then close it up again. I also contest the insides of the Mac Pro looked nicer too.
Even the interior beauty of the big G5 covers is outdone (IMO) by the Pro’s drive bays, the removable RAM drawer, the socketed Xeons, the extra slots, and the increased I/O. But then, I’ve always found that acrylic airflow cover annoying, while I know some folks absolutely adore it. And there is something deliciously extra about the G5’s heatsinks.
I remember when these came out, they were the bees knees and so awesome. When I went to a technical college, called TAFE, in between jobs, they had a big lab of them. I can't recall what models but I think they were first generation G5s. I don't think they allowed them to run very fast tho, it seemed like the power management settings were set quite low, something that was changed. At the time I had a G4 Quicksilver that was on its way out and couldn't handle the same large files I was dealing with in Illustrator. I upgraded to the Core Duo Intel Mac mini, as it was 2006 at the time, and it handled my large files like it was nothing! But there is something about the G5 machines that's very appealing and well thought out when the CPUs ran so hot.
I have a Quad G5 that I still use today! (August 2024). It has some older programs that work great for me, and I use it to produce artwork and technical graphics. I purposely bought the Quad G5 bc I knew that I would continue to run some of my legacy PowerPC programs, and the Quad G5 is the fastest PowerPC that Apple made, so I got one when people had abandoned them years earlier for newer tech. Now, Quad G5s are hard to find, and expensive. Again. I knew that would happen, glad I thought ahead for once.
Same here, Still run mine and no subscription based softwares that today needs monthly payments ! based on that alone it has ROI that keep giving !
Next, find a dead 2.7 dual, shuck the CPU cards and install them into the 2.0 machine, running them with air cooling. More modern thermal compounds and better application of it may make this the best screamer PPC Mac you can build. I've been wanting to do a single air-cooled 2.5 GHz dual (late 05), but still have a working quad so am reluctant to disascemble it unless I'm refilling the LCS and cleaning it out.
Ram must be installed in pairs - the positioning is listed in the manual , mismatched sizes and speeds will not be recognized.
This channel is awesome!
I still have one laying around. Dont know what to do with it, but i'm not throwing it away because i like the design and the feel of it.
I have the same machine. Lots of fun squeezing performance out of them.
My mods (so far..):
- Gentoo Linux, 6.12.3 kernel
- Samsung 840 128gb boot ssd
- Samsung 870 1TB swap / archive ssd
- Samsung 990 Pro NVME drives (2 x 2Tb) on 2 x pcie riser cards (ZFS pool for portage / applications / general file share)
- 16Gb ECC RAM (re-purposed from an old riverbed appliance)
- Nvidia Quadro FX4500 512mb (hp oem reflashed to mac ppc)
Lots of fun 😊
I still have a 2.30 GHz G5 in my basement. But I don't know why I should set it up and turn it on again today. My Mac mini is quieter and faster. Thanks to eGPU also in terms of graphics performance. SATA3 SSD, faster RAM, USB 3.0. Everything is actually a bit outdated even today, but still significantly faster than the G5. In addition, the power consumption is much lower.
Sooo...funny story...Apple has announced they are going to a new processor series right after they finally released the first useful Mac Pro in almost a decade. I'll bet the people who shelled out the cash for those are thrilled!
History repeated itself. The G5 came out just before Apple announced the switch to Intel.
And OSX dropped support for PPC after only one more version. 10.6 was intel only even though the first intel processors were 32 bit only. It was a mess. But Jobs wanted laptops and there was no way a G5 was ever going into a laptop.
@@mikespangler98 They sure did. I went through the Rosetta debacle the first time around. I'm sitting this one out. I still have a G5 2.3 DC...I'm in no hurry. :D
Ironic that they now have a bunch mobile chips not worthy of a desktop!
sorry if you already know this, but M.2 can be SATA or NVMe. NVMe cannot be converted to SATA or USB the same way.
3:48 You have this whole thing exactly backwards. The older dual processor models above 2.3 ghz were water cooled, the dual core models ram MUCH cooler, and only the very top end quad 2.5 was water cooled. The LCS was garbage though, that's absolutely accurate!
I've got the same exact G5, it's got 1GB of RAM and its original 160GB hard drive
I’m currently installing Leopard on the PowerPC G5 I bought for $50.
I have 2 of these machines I bought for $40 each waaay back in 2011. Still have not been able to power them on as they came with no video cards, or drives. I have no clue what AGP card works on them since all the ATI and NVIDIA cards I have tried fail to be recognized. I thought maybe pci-e? Nope! I may remove the G5 system and just use the cases for intel mini itx systems that actually work!
You can use many different agp gfx cards, there is a list out there. I just use stock nv fx5200 for the adc port,however I did flash a 7800gs leadtek that works perfectly on the G5. Could also try a 9600series ati flashed card. For pciexpress a GF6x00 safest bet.
I have the exact same PowerMac and the exact same PNY SSD, and had the same problem trying to boot from it (grey screen). Was really hoping you found a solution for the last half of the video.
And I'm here with 16gb ram, 32GB mSATA SSD with spare 1TB SATA HDD and added 40GB IDE HDD with the SuperDrive, duel core G5 with air cooler 😎
I can give proof if you want
Niiiice
Another gripe for the G5 is the placement of the PSU. Because it was low to the floor, it would collect a lot of dust and fail. But then again, I had a MMD G4 and Mac Pro that blew out the PSU's and they were on the top?
I know I'm late to this party, but I'm jealous... I can't wait for it to be safe again to go thrifting... it'd be so cool to snag an older PPC Mac to take home and tinker with again...
i found a pair at a thriftstore today, wish i could have snagged both, i did grabbed one and i think it has anywhere from 8-16gb of ram, whatever stock gpu it came from the factory, dual cpu's, and no hdd. im just sad i don't have a copy of leopard
I'd love to put a modern PC in one of these cases, I think they are very nice looking cases, peak Apple design IMO, before they "jumped the shark" so to speak with the silly "trash can" Mac design.
The problem is SATA 3. I had the same problem on an upgrade and I had to set some jumpers on the SATA 3 drive to work as SATA 1.
There are no a lot of SSDs nowadays that support SATA 2. I usually install a SATA 3 card and use this for the G5s
These machines *feel* new to me, and yet we're probably gonna have to start worrying about batteries exploding in these.
Retro fitting some Noctua fans would probably prolong the life of this computer greatly.
Weren’t these also sold by Sweetwater Music as a recording studio computer?
This is my dream Mac.
The one I stil want. I have the next step up, a 2006 mac pro, which is no doubt better.
But I stil want a Powermac G5 one day.
I got a broken water-cooled G5 decided to save the beautiful case and strip the insides out cut an atx motherboard mounting plate out of an old pc case and put it in the g5 case and now I have a i5 7600k system running in it with a rtx 2060
I wouldn’t say the G5 ppc became worthless and obsolete overnight. Now, I would’ve felt bad seeing how powerful the intel Mac pro was compared to my G5 but it’s still a good machine.
I have two 1TB SSDs in my Late 2005 G5. One has Leopard and one has Debian. I had to get SATAII SSDs from OWC to have them boot reliably, I've tried new Samsung SSDs but they just don't boot reliably in a G5 for some reason.
i just like the design of that case
Your video has great information.
Great video and thank you for sharing! I remember buying one at Comp USA around mid-2005 for around $1499. I felt pretty bummed when Apple made the jump to Intel because suddenly my investment went down the tube. Mine still has 3GB of RAM and a 500GB regular SATA drive. I'm ready to give it some TLC and max out the RAM and upgrade to an SSD drive. Any recommendations on an upgrade for a video card?
can You show us performance of maxed G5? In oldschool software (power pc soft) and also in modern tasks as 1080p video editing or RUclips, music production etc ?
Look at final cut pro and the formats it can handle. With a fast raid system you can edit 1080p without any problems.
Any chance you done or plan on doing a video on how you created your “tool kit” drive? I’d really love to duplicate one for my herd.
I kinda want to get one of these to see if my Radeon X800XT Mac Edition that I got as a part of a lot a few years back works.
I think Broken Electronics got that rightThe first two SSDs were too modern. I have one of the same computers and after reading about how upgrades are doneI'm glad I saw your demo. I have a OWC SATA II 120 GB SSD I was planning on trying. I'm going to try cloning the boot drive since I don't have an install image. Is there a version of FCP that will run on this platform? I am assuming that the software needs to be created for Power PC. If I can't get it configured for legacy video editing, out it goes!
I found one on the side of the road and I'm trying to see what I can do with it
as much as i dont like Apple as a company for their overpricing, i will admit these cases were so ahead of their time they still look brand new today.
where’s the cheapest place to buy the maximum amount of ram for one of these? i was thinking about picking one up myself!
To 14:30 - maybe you choose the wrong Partition type in the PARTITITION / format process… it must changed to GUID for Power Pc based macs…
Hi ! Can we have a video on how to create your ultimate boot disk with all OSes on it ?
I don't quite get the point of using an m.2 sata ssd and an adapter if you can just use a regular 2.5" sata drive?
So how are you going to prevent the cooler breaking down and killing your mac?
What about other upgrades? Is there the possibility of putting USB 3.1 capability into this machine? How about a more modern graphics card - do they make any in AGP? How about a Bluray burner?
I have a early 2008 mac pro but I really want a g5
What are some cool things you can do with a dual core G5 using the same OS? I have one but thinking of gutting it and using the case to create a custom pc. Any ideas?
Same!! But maybe a Mac server for creating a computer that I can access remotely for files. Is this possible?
I have five of the Max Pros with similar chassis, circa 2008ish, that I'm deciding what to do with. Found in a dumpster lol.
Isn't it a waste to slot an m2 SSD into a normal m2 to sata SSD adapter? I don't know I'm just curious
I just got one of these what is leopard? And do I have to get an SSD drive for it?
I have the 7.3 G5 as well.
Some ssds will work and some wont, its a trial and error thing to get a backwards compatible one with a compatible controller. I got an older ssd to work in my G5
amico , nao consigo instalar snow leopar porque diz que precisa de um processador intel??? é verdade?
i had a very cheap G5 to experience it but for the love of the design but i couldn't not find a single thing to make it actually do anything useful in 2020 nor how to upgrade the software. I donated the parts and kept the enclosure to make a server but that motherboard blew up :( now its a paperweight.
CompUsa is not dead. They have an IT department that is a sub contractor for AT&T. They handle firewalls and other things
Where do you find those clock batteries ??