Powermac G5 slow from sleep

jamiem1987 said:

hi guys, pretty new to here, just picked a second hand g5 up which runs like a dream! one thing i have noticed recently after putting the machine on sleep is that it takes forever to respond after been woken,

the display and desktop come on instantly but when i click a program all i get is the beachball, the hdd doesnt appear to spin up

then about 5 minutes later you hear the hdd spin up and away we go back to normal

it doesnt do this all the time though!!

any ideas? cheers

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Your hard drive may be dying. Hard to diagnose this on a PM G5. Used computer? ALWAYS get a new hard drive. you have no idea how long that drive has been in use.

In preferences somewhere there is an option for when to put hard drives to sleep. I think in Energy Saving somewhere it says "Put hard disks to sleep when possible". Try unchecking this option and see if it still does the same.

I can't believe that California didn't recommend changing the processor to highest performance settings either! I'm shocked!

Do that in the Energy Saver in system preferences.

Can I ask why you guys all recommend "Highest" over "Reduced"? I have it set to "Reduced" in an attempt to prolong the life of my LCS; will this make a difference as opposed to "Highest" or am I needlessly restricting my processing power?

It kind of makes me nervous to see it idling at 65-70C, 70-80C under load on Highest when the specified upper limit for the thing is 83C I think.

OrangeSVTguy said:

I can't believe that California didn't recommend changing the processor to highest performance settings either! I'm shocked!

Do that in the Energy Saver in system preferences.

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Dear OSVTguy:

I think I learned that trick from you originally!

Anyway, looks like the op needed a new hard drive.

As to the guy that thinks he is preserving his CPU by keeping it on reduced?

No, you are not preserving your G5 by putting it on reduced. In fact, I think it has more swings in temperature up and down when on reduced.

what do you think of that newbie theory, OSVTguy?

California said:

No, you are not preserving your G5 by putting it on reduced. In fact, I think it has more swings in temperature up and down when on reduced.

what do you think of that newbie theory, OSVTguy?

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So it's the temperature swing that puts strain on the liquid cooling rather than absolute temperature? In either case, on my machine the swing on Reduced is, under normal usage 53-60, under load up to 66, so call that 13. On Highest I think it's actually a little more. I'll run it a couple of days on each and see what Hardware Monitor shows.

Is there any way as well to kill the process that controls the fans, or disable that in the kernel, so they go "jet engine" the whole time?

Chuck Fadanoid said:

So it's the temperature swing that puts strain on the liquid cooling rather than absolute temperature? In either case, on my machine the swing on Reduced is, under normal usage 53-60, under load up to 66, so call that 13. On Highest I think it's actually a little more. I'll run it a couple of days on each and see what Hardware Monitor shows.

Is there any way as well to kill the process that controls the fans, or disable that in the kernel, so they go "jet engine" the whole time?

Click to expand...

I remember reading on the Apple site that is was recommenced to run it on performance as there were all sorts of problems. Something to do with the throttling fans and CPU which I guess added more strain to the system. Only the DP 2.5ghz, DP 2.7ghz and Quad 2.5ghz G5's were liquid-cooled.

As far as I know there is no process that controls the fans but I may be mistaken? If you want to run the fans full blast, just remove the side panel and then the clear acrylic air deflector and the fans will run full blast, AKA jet plane taking off.

I heard that the bus slewing puts a strain on the system: constantly switching from throttling (2.0 Ghz) to flat out (2.7 Ghz) and that one should choose either Highest or Reduced.

But I was thinking that Reduced = Less Heat = Less work for the liquid cooler = More usage out of machine before liquid coolant of Damocles falls on it.

If Highest and Reduced have the same end effect on the liquid coolant, or the difference is negligible, then I may as well use highest, because that machine is still fast.