Building a Powermac G4, Suggestions?

Joined
Jan 30, 2005
Messages
100
Reaction score
1
Points
18
Your Mac's Specs
MBP 2.4ghz SR, 256m 8600gt, 640gb HD, 3gb RAM
Ok, so, I got my hands on a free B&W G3 motherboard, and I am planning on using it to build a G4 system. Its the Rev 1 board, which sucks, but I can get around its shortcomings with a PCI IDE hard drive card, no biggie.
Please, no suggestions on buying a mac mini with the money I could use to upgrade this system, the system I'm planning could rape the mini in so many ways, it has absolutely no expansion.
The motherboard currently has a little less than 500 MB RAM, the sh!tt! Rage 128 card.
I am planning on giving it 1 GB RAM, a Radeon 9200 128 MB PCI video card, 2 hard drives linked to a PCI IDE card, a 1 GHZ Sonnet G4 upgrade ZIF, wireless, bluetooth, and a superdrive, all thrown into a nice aluminum ATX case.
I've looked over a few websites about this and its completely possible and looks decent, does anybody else have any construction suggestions or advice?
Thanks in advance.
When I'm done with the project hopefully I'll be able to put up some pictures of the consruction and completion on my new monster.
 
Joined
Jun 25, 2004
Messages
1,779
Reaction score
65
Points
48
Location
Luxemburg, Europe
Your Mac's Specs
PowerMac G5 Dual 2GHz (June 2004), 2.5GB, Airport, black 5G iPod 30GB, white MacBook 2.0 2GB
Allthough it definitely is possible to build that up, it doesn't make much sense...For all the money you're investing, you could get a Quicksilver G4, which will, by anytime, beat that system you want to build. The slow bus speed of the B&W motherboard will be a terrible bottleneck, and there's no way to change that. The PCI bus for graphics will also limit the Radeon's capabilities, cc speed.

But it's your money, and you do what you want with it. :cool:

I'm not very familiar with the B&W, but I 've read somewhere a workaround to use a standar ATX power supply, unfortunately, can't find the link anymore...but you should find that with Google.

Good luck!
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top