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Really Cool G4

Really Cool G4

Want to make a cool G4 with out changing your stock case or adding a bunch of expensive fans?
Want to make a cool G4 with out changing your stock case or adding a bunch of expensive fans? Read on.

You’ve probably seen more articles on cooling and quieting the MDD g4 than any other in Apple history. This is how I modded my G4 to run COOL and keep the case in stock form. This is a June 2003 MDD that came with dual 1.25 cpus,256 MD of ram and an 80 GB hard drive.

ets look at what needs to be cooled and how.

The CPU – Apple Copper G4 heatsink with Arctic Silver 5 compound and an 80mm case fan on the outside of the case (Because the stock fan only cools half of the heatsink). I decided to overclock it too, to 1.42 per cpu. Its a little nerve racking but not too bad. I used the guide on www.bitsandpieces.info.

The Hardrives – I have 3 hard drives. I put my main HD in the 2nd optical bay and removed my combo drive. I added a Zalman heatpipe cooler to it and the optical fan blows across it. The first drive in my SATA RAID 0 is in the front bay and needs no extra cooling because the 120mm fan draws air across it. The second drive is in the rear bay, set backwards with a heatsink/fan on it. I removed one fan to help with the noise. The remaining fan cools the chips bThe Power Supply – I removed the useless front speaker to aid in cool air flow to it. I am looking into a clear air deflector to aid in cooling. I also put in a pci fan to evacuate upper case hot air.



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So how did it turn out you ask. I have done a battery of tests and my conclusion it that these are very effective. It runs cooler than factory stock and is much faster too. My final temps are 50.4 degrees C for the CPUs and 37.0 degrees C for the main HD. My room temp was 21.0 degrees C. This is under heavy use. Under normal daily use it is at 46/32 C. I am unable to test my SATA drives as of yet becuase I cannot find the sensors. Of course it runs louder, but I will address that in part 2 of my mod. I also have some plans to make the cooling even better, so I will update those too as time goes on.

My real world test software included: Photoshop 7, DVDSP 1.5, AOL, iTunes, iMovie, mpeg append suite. I also use CPU Monitor, Hardware Monitor, and a manual temp gauge. Using xBench, I am in G5 territory with a score of 185.46. You can see it on XBench site under Maestro.

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