G5 Hardware

Does the G5 use industry standard hardware? As in, can I use regular PC3200 memory in it as an upgrade? What about the SATA hard drives. Are they the same as regular SATA HDs you can buy in Best Buy? Thanks for the help.

Yes, everything is standard. The only difference is graphics cards, you have to get a mac designed graphics card due to the PPC architecture.

Some memory doesn't work in the G5, but i herd crucial works. I use Ultra however and it works great.. i got 4 gigs inside right now PC3200 400mhz

Avid6eek said:

Does the G5 use industry standard hardware? As in, can I use regular PC3200 memory in it as an upgrade? What about the SATA hard drives. Are they the same as regular SATA HDs you can buy in Best Buy? Thanks for the help.

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Pretty straight forward on the hard ware with exception of graphics cards. I am using Corsair Pc3200 400 ram, a logitech wireless mouse, a Ms wireless keyboard, a Western Digital 10k raptor sata drive and a Samsung 213T flat screen and Creative sound system with my G5..(G)

sivp said:

Some memory doesn't work in the G5, but i herd crucial works. I use Ultra however and it works great.. i got 4 gigs inside right now PC3200 400mhz

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Macs in general are more sensitive to defective memory than other machines. Even tiny, intermittent memory problems will cause instability and kernel panics on a Mac.

Crucial has a relatively strong guarantee/return policy, so it's usually a safe bet.

technologist said:

Macs in general are more sensitive to defective memory than other machines. Even tiny, intermittent memory problems will cause instability and kernel panics on a Mac.

Crucial has a relatively strong guarantee/return policy, so it's usually a safe bet.

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Even for PCs it mostly depends on the mainboard. Some boards accept any memory stick you put in, other's are more picky and only accept a few one's...had that kind of trouble ever since I've started building up PCs.

Avid6eek said:

Does the G5 use industry standard hardware? As in, can I use regular PC3200 memory in it as an upgrade? What about the SATA hard drives. Are they the same as regular SATA HDs you can buy in Best Buy? Thanks for the help.

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As another user replied earlier, Crucial is great RAM to use in macs. Micron (which owns Crucial) also makes good RAM which works well in macs. Corsair memory is known to work perfect as well.

Buying more expensive memory with tighter timings is definitely a no... you will notice absolutely no difference since G5's default all memory to 2.5-4-4-8.

As a side note, I'd like to mention an annoying little marketing move Apple made advertising their flagship dual 2.5 G5 with a "faster" 1.25GHz FSB which seemed to make quite a few people think they would get higher memory throughput. What several people failed to notice or understand is that the speed of the RAM itself is the same it is in every other model, so that additional 250MHz offers absolutely no performance enhancement, and I really am not entirely sure why they even have that.

As for SATA drives, only spend your money on bridged SATA drives. Don't bother with Native SATA - the G5's do not support it or NCQ. As far as I know, Native SATA drives will still work in G5's, but will forfeit the additional functionality and performance basically defaulting the HD to the same as bridged SATA, and will of course turn the extra money you spent for a Native SATA drive into a complete waste.

74GB Raptors (10k RPM) offer NCQ functionality, which as I just stated is not supported by macs, HOWEVER you will still benefit from the additional RPMS.

I hope the next generation of G5's will feature compatibility for faster RAM, and Native SATA support (which is huge, especially for serious large-scale video editors.)

technologist said:

Macs in general are more sensitive to defective memory than other machines. Even tiny, intermittent memory problems will cause instability and kernel panics on a Mac.

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Ever time I buy new RAM in my house it usually instigates a couple of days of shuffling RAM mudules around all the various machines to get stability back, PC's suffer from this just as much as Macs the main difference being that any RAM you buy off the shelf is usually far better than the rubbish that came with your PC whereas the same is not true for the Mac RAM.

When I upgraded my daughters Emac with a 256 stick it wouldn't work with the 128 already in there so I took the 128 out and put it in my PC thinking hey I'll get have more in the PC as well. The PC didn't want to know so I took out the existing RAM in the PC (a 256 stick I put in there a few months back after swapping it out of my iMac for a 512 one) and swapped it with a 128 stick I had sitting around. The PC was now happy with two 128 sticks but this left me with a 256 spare so I put it in the emac (remember this originally came out of my iMac) and that now worked. So everything was fine until a few months later I bought a 512 stick and had to do the whole thing over again, now the 512 is in the iMac with the original 128 from the eMac and I've completely lost track of what is in the eMac and PC's.

Amen-Moses

Avid6eek said:

Does the G5 use industry standard hardware? As in, can I use regular PC3200 memory in it as an upgrade? What about the SATA hard drives. Are they the same as regular SATA HDs you can buy in Best Buy? Thanks for the help.

Click to expand...

Well from personal experience the G5 PowerMac takes off the shelf RAM and HD's, I must admit I didn't buy the cheapest but it was the most expensive either.

Putting in a new SATA drive was one of the most painless and rewarding computer experiences I've ever had, when I powered up nothing appeared different until OSX laconically notified me that "hey dude, like by-the-way you've got another hard drive man". Then it just works. (OK so there was a box popping up asking me if I wanted to install it but it didn't really detract from the painlessness. )

Amen-Moses

Thanks for the info guys. That may actually help me to save money since the Mac defaults to some pretty crappy timings (by the PC standard anyway). I am still debating whether to use the 160GB HD that comes with the system as the main drive, and add another 160GB, or to use a 73GB WD Raptor as the main drive. Tough decisions.

falltime said:

flagship dual 2.5 G5 with a "faster" 1.25GHz FSB which seemed to make quite a few people think they would get higher memory throughput

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Quote often the processor bus and memory bus are considered to be the same thing. That is not the case. This bus is most likely the speed at which the two processors can communicate with eachother. The higher the processor bus, the easier, and faster it is for the two processors to share information. This adds to the efficiency of the two processors working together.

How long has the Mac been a dual processor system? Is this something new with the G5, or has it been this way for many years?