Dual 800, 1GHz and 1.2GHz Cube

[MacRumors]

Of interest to cube owners, CubeZone (http://www.cube-zone.com/) reports that Powerlogix will be releasing Dual processor upgrade cards for the discontinued Cube.

When asked about speeds, the Powerlogix president answered "Yes, we intend to be able to offer dual 800 and faster for Cube, including 1.2GHz."

[vniow]

..........droooooooolls........

Why oh why am I broke and cubeless?

[Phaedrus]

These processor upgrades for the Cube are so tempting. I've wanted a cube for some time now, but every time a reseller offers a batch of refurbed cubes I just don't seem to have the $. Oh well, there's always ebay--no warranty though.

[DarkNovaMatter]

Nice- so they got the new dc/dc cards coming? now all I need is a video card............

[uberman42]

Where are these resellers @? I wanna see if I have the money to buy a refurb cube.

[Dj Kioto]

dont the new DPs put out tremendous amounts of heat??... are they still moto chips?... or another PPC maker (enlighten me)

I know the power supply for the cube is seperate, but does the cube vent enough heat to let the processors run cool enough?

also... where the heck do they put another processor! (jk) There's little room in there already

it's good to know about these upgrades, and please do give us a name of a vendor that sells refurbed cubes.... I would LOVE to get one and add a DP upgrade to it....

also, do they offer ANY video card upgrades for the cue, or is it still stuck at the older radeons?

[LethalWolfe]

Heat was my first thought too. I have a DP 1ghz QS and she kicks out some major heat.

Lethal

[Phaedrus]

Originally posted by uberman42
Where are these resellers @? I wanna see if I have the money to buy a refurb cube.

Check out: www.macofalltrades.com

They've got two configs at the moment.

[beatle888]

Originally posted by edvniow
..........droooooooolls........

Why oh why am I broke and cubeless?


wait, i thought you made a screen capture
of your mac desktop the other day...but didnt
you tell me you didnt have a mac?

your waiting to get a cube right?

[Phaedrus]

Heat: The processor upgrades include a fan, which the cube was designed to accomodate, though Apple did not include one.

Graphics: You can uprgrade to a GeForce 3, if you like.

For these and other related issues: www.cube-zone.com

[RandomMacGuy]

When these come out, I would love to see pictures of the melted interior and possibly exterior of the cherished, modified cubes.

Seriously, I don't know if there is enough room in a cube for some of these upgrades. I mean, these fast dualies generate a lot of heat and you need a fan or a huge heatsink or at least a lot of room for the heat to dissipate and the cube doesn't have any of these things (IIRC).

Thoughts?

[vniow]

Well, I was waiting, but this Blueberry iBook came up for sale for a pretty good price and a laptop would be really handy for me in the near future so........

Still want one though, even now that I'm broke even more. Ah well.

[beatle888]

Originally posted by edvniow
Well, I was waiting, but this Blueberry iBook came up for sale for a pretty good price and a laptop would be really handy for me in the near future so........

Still want one though, even now that I'm broke even more. Ah well.


OOHHHH, well congratulations! :)
do you like it? is it fast enough for you AND
can you run jaguar on it?

[gotohamish]

Originally posted by LethalWolfe
Heat was my first thought too. I have a DP 1ghz QS and she kicks out some major heat.

Lethal

Can you feel it on the outside of the case? I have a G4 500 Graphite and it's always positively cold. The cubes used to get quite warm though, at the same speeds. Must the be the killer heatsink.

I need a newer mac - save on the heating bills here in northern england!

[BenderBot1138]

I know some don't like the Apple Cube, but I like the concept of the uniqueness of it.

I've always wondered exactly how the Cube started at Apple Computer Inc., and it's history there. I know about the NeXt cube a little, but it would be interesting to hear from someone in the know about this unique and interesting part of our collective (Apple Community) history.

Powerlogix may just have created a Cube customer... isn't that funny that the second hand cube market might heat up!!!

:cool:

[Falleron]

I am SO tempted to go out and find a dual 1.2Ghz CUBE!! Wow, I like the idea of that.

[syntax]

um ... but aren't powerlogix processor upgrades notoriously unreliable?

[Wickedkitten]

I actually have one myself. It's 1ghz, with 1.5gb of ram, a radeon 8500, 120gb wd caviar with a 8mb cache, and its not that hot at all.

It's got a panaflow fan in it that manages to keep things quite cool in addition to the fan that is on the radeon.

True it might not be silent but its quite novel having a 1ghz cube downstairs and then a 500mhz one upstairs in the bedroom.

[DarkNovaMatter]

For the people wondering how they get 2 processors into the cube- they are verticle (If I remember right) so non-used space is used. Next is the heat- I am sapposing with the new cards they have to use less power- thus less heat and anyway you have the fan which with the cubes great design for convection makes it very capable of releasing heat. Question to the guy with the 8500 in the cube- How much better is the speeds etc. with games? and did you have to do the mod for the board and/or case?

[Ateazz]

I'm very curious about that as wel, Darknova.
I'm very happy with the standard Radeon inside.
But an 8500waouw.

greetz

Ateazz

[Wickedkitten]

Originally posted by DarkNovaMatter
For the people wondering how they get 2 processors into the cube- they are verticle (If I remember right) so non-used space is used. Next is the heat- I am sapposing with the new cards they have to use less power- thus less heat and anyway you have the fan which with the cubes great design for convection makes it very capable of releasing heat. Question to the guy with the 8500 in the cube- How much better is the speeds etc. with games? and did you have to do the mod for the board and/or case?

actually I'm a girl but nm.

Most people actually file off a corner of the card to be able to fit it in but instead we just took a dremel tool and filed a tiny wee bit out of the chassis itself so it can also fit any gf upgrades that might come out. Here's a pic of it.



http://ebay3.ipixmedia.com/abc/M28/_EBAY_b6a71eabf7d4f2aeeb5f8b20a7e4e294/i-3_B.JPG

Had to make a new face plate as well for the radeon since there was no place for svideo out and heres a pic of that

http://ebay3.ipixmedia.com/abc/M28/_EBAY_b6a71eabf7d4f2aeeb5f8b20a7e4e294/i-4_B.JPG

it's up to par with pc speed when it comes to running programs and things and actually the 1.5gb of ram didn't speed it up all that much more since we have the l3 cache on the cpu turned on as well

[gotohamish]

I've just won an AGP 32MB Radeon on eBay - would this work in a Cube?

What card did they come with originally?

Hamish

[Wickedkitten]

Originally posted by gotohamish
I've just won an AGP 32MB Radeon on eBay - would this work in a Cube?

What card did they come with originally?

Hamish

It originally came with a gf2mx but you can use a radeon, you just need one with a fan i think.

[Bandit]

You can also check out www.cubeowner.com They offer advise and news on everything cube related. They also have a nice support forum. I have a stock 450mhz cube with 768MB RAM and 120GB Hard drive. I absolutely love it. I run Jaguar on it and it flies compare to my Graphite iBook. I've been saving my pennies for awhile for a dual processor upgrade. Plus now that there is a slot loading superdrive, if they ever came out with an upgrade I could have a dual 1.2 that could burn DVD's and any PCs out of the water. I have a friend that is a PC guy and he loves my cube. He was surprised at how upgradable they are and how easy it was. (Pulling the enclosure from the case really wowed him.) My only complaint is that there is not a video card out that will fit in the cube that allows dual apple flat screens. I have a 15" studio display and would love to buy another to put side by side.

[Wickedkitten]

Originally posted by Bandit
You can also check out www.cubeowner.com They offer advise and news on everything cube related. They also have a nice support forum. I have a stock 450mhz cube with 768MB RAM and 120GB Hard drive. I absolutely love it. I run Jaguar on it and it flies compare to my Graphite iBook. I've been saving my pennies for awhile for a dual processor upgrade. Plus now that there is a slot loading superdrive, if they ever came out with an upgrade I could have a dual 1.2 that could burn DVD's and any PCs out of the water. I have a friend that is a PC guy and he loves my cube. He was surprised at how upgradable they are and how easy it was. (Pulling the enclosure from the case really wowed him.) My only complaint is that there is not a video card out that will fit in the cube that allows dual apple flat screens. I have a 15" studio display and would love to buy another to put side by side.

can you give the link to the place that sells slot loading superdrives please?

[Frobozz]

This is great news for cube owners. It makes sense they will offer the 1.2 to regular g4 mac owners, too. I've found that the overall speed of my machine these days is much more dependant on the bus speed, hard drives, and memory architecture, though. At home I have a 2 x 1 GHz QuickSilver, and at work I have an Upgraded Sawtooth 2 x 0.8 GHz. My Quicksilver is much faster. The upgrade card really made a big difference, but if you're a person who needs every last second, your better off saving your money for the next revision of Macs due in February.

Again, I ain't nockin' the upgrades-- they're great, but for the cost it can make sens to just save up your cash. On the upside, you don't have to re-install all your apps, backup your data, and haul out your old hardware. To some, that can be all the difference in the world.

[Frobozz]

Originally posted by syntax
um ... but aren't powerlogix processor upgrades notoriously unreliable?

I've had 2 PowerLogix upgrade cards and consider them to be of the highest calibre. Unless some other people got a bad batch or had a particular type of card go bad, I would be shocked to learn otherwise. So, take this from the horse's mouth, I've never had a single problem.

One of my upgrades was a G3 220!! It was the slowest one available, and I put it in a Power Computing 603e 200 MHz Clone.... and I overclocked it to 255 Mhz. It's now almost 4 years old and still kicking! It's on it's 3rd owner. I just got a dual 800 G4 for a Sawtooth, and (so far) it's running totally transparently.

[LethalWolfe]

Originally posted by gotohamish


Can you feel it on the outside of the case? I have a G4 500 Graphite and it's always positively cold. The cubes used to get quite warm though, at the same speeds. Must the be the killer heatsink.

I need a newer mac - save on the heating bills here in northern england!


Stick my hand behind the case and it feels like a hair dryer set on "low". It's now where near hot, but is is very warm air.


Lethal

[@HomeNow]

These G4 processors have to be a new generation. Probably manufactured on a smaller process. The original PowerLogix dual 800 was burning out DC to DC cards in the Cube. They were going to make a "heafteir" DC to DC card for the Cube, now we get this anouncement. It also states that they is NOT a need to replace the DC to DC board with these, so they HAVE to have a lower power requirement than the current batch of 800's that PowerLogix is able to get.

[Hawthorne]

This is great news. I've always thought a Cube would make a great media-centeric home computer working as a PVR and MP3 server.

[daRAT]

Originally posted by RandomMacGuy
When these come out, I would love to see pictures of the melted interior and possibly exterior of the cherished, modified cubes.

Seriously, I don't know if there is enough room in a cube for some of these upgrades. I mean, these fast dualies generate a lot of heat and you need a fan or a huge heatsink or at least a lot of room for the heat to dissipate and the cube doesn't have any of these things (IIRC).

Thoughts?

Yup, they work fine, people have done the dual 800's before the dc/dc board problems. Some odd reason, the fan in the bottom keeps these cool, while the towers sound like jets. this is possibly due to the volume of area in a tower case as opposed to a Cube.

As for room, if they are making it for a Cube, it stands to reason these and other upgrades for the Cube will fit.

After xmas, and I will add a dualie to my already modified Cube :]

[cr2sh]

As a cube owner I love the idea of a dual 1.25, but seriously... its going to cost like $1500. (A current model, the dual 1GHz goes for $1200) If they could get prices of a dual upgrade at $500, I would buy it - but right now the single powerlogix cube-upgrade of 700mhz is like $400. I understand that this is new hardware and that they can't give it away, so my complaint is much more valid as a criticism. If you're going to offer these, you have to do it where the decision between upgrading or buying an entirely NEW powermac, is to upgrade the cube. right now, its not even a question for me... you can get a refurbished PM1GHz with superdrive from apple for $2100!

[LimeiBook86]

Heh! Who ever thought those Cubes weren't expandable just got kicked in the butt, :D

[MacusGeekus]

Before you buy from PowerLogix, check out this report from Macintouch on problems people have had with PowerLogix and there PowerBook Bluechip upgrades.

http://www.macintouch.com/powerlogixblue.html

My own experience with them is very similar:
I bought one in July 2001. It was dead on arival. I sent it back (and I had to pay for the shipping). They said it would be about 2 weeks. It took them 6 months to replace it. Then the replacement was bad and it took another month to get another replacement. They said they would send me a 500 G3 instead of the 466 that I bought. Well after waiting 7 months I still ended up with the 466. It works now, but PL's customer support is very bad. My calls and e-mails were usually unanswered. I finally found out that the problem with the boards is the manufacturer that they hired to build them was screwing up... yes that's right -- PL may design the boards (and I'm not even sure of that) but they don't make them. As you can tell, my opinion of them is very low and I will NEVER buy from PowerLogix again.

End result for me was that I ended up buying a new TiBook a few weeks ago.

[vniow]

Originally posted by beatle888



OOHHHH, well congratulations! :)
do you like it? is it fast enough for you AND
can you run jaguar on it?


Yep on both accounts.

No speed demon, but plenty fast for my needs.

May end up selling it and get a new combo drive in the future, but it all depends on how little money I have.

[sehix]

Originally posted by DarkNovaMatter
Nice- so they got the new dc/dc cards coming? now all I need is a video card............

Read the article. Powerlogix says they've found a way around the problem and can use the standard dc-to-dc converter.:)

[Yellow99Stang]

OK, an aquantance, who is a corporate saleman for Apple, claims that there is a warehouse full of Cube parts out on the west coast and that there is gonna be an limited edition Cube in the next few years with updated materials. I am not sure if this guy is lying or not. I think he "thinks" he is right and is just trying to pass off his speculation as fact. Any opinions on this? Or can anyone confirm this?

[sehix]

Originally posted by RandomMacGuy
When these come out, I would love to see pictures of the melted interior and possibly exterior of the cherished, modified cubes.

Prepare to be disappointed.


Seriously, I don't know if there is enough room in a cube for some of these upgrades. I mean, these fast dualies generate a lot of heat and you need a fan or a huge heatsink or at least a lot of room for the heat to dissipate and the cube doesn't have any of these things (IIRC).

There is room (the CPU itself is quite small).

There is provision for a fan in the base of the Cube, and that is included in the upgrade kits.

It has already been done by some hobbiests, and heat rejection turns out to be quite easily handled.

Upgrading the graphics card at the same time brings things closer to the edge, but still workable.

[kiwi_the_iwik]

I'm still baffled as to why graphics card manufacturers (namely ATI and nVidia) insist on producing FULL-SIZED cards, and in some cases, BIGGER than full-sized, when the future should be miniaturisation. There would be a significantly larger client base for them to produce these cards on a 7" board, much like the OEM Radeon Cube, Rage 128, GeForce 2MX and GeForce 3 cards.

Just look at eBay - when these cards DO come on the auction lists, they are bombarded by bidders - and inevitably, they go for outrageous prices. That means these cards are highly sought-after, and therefore it stands to reason there is a huge demand for them.

As it is, us Cube owners have to make do with a GeForce 3 card (when we can get our hands on them) if we want to upgrade our computers to their maximum video capacity, and use our ADC monitors, without resorting to "doctoring" the chassis...

;)