I just breathed new life into our old G5 iMac!

joelovesapple said:

Hi all,

I recently bought 2GB of RAM for my families' G5 iMac with no iSight. It has made so much difference with the day to day running of the computer. It's a shame that it is held back by not being able to run new software due to it being a PowerPC machine, but I am happy. It is the 2GHz model and she now rocks with 2GB of RAM as opposed to 1GB.

I've also installed TenFourFox on it and websites just load up much smoother and pretty snappily actually. I feel so glad that I've been able to prolong its life for another 2 or more years

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Try installing the Mountain Leopard Theme by AQUADock. It was posted on this forum and will make it feel like a brand new computer! Another good update step is to upgrade to a 7200 RPM hard drive or SSD if you do not already have one!

Altemose said:

Try installing the Mountain Leopard Theme by AQUADock. It was posted on this forum and will make it feel like a brand new computer! Another good update step is to upgrade to a 7200 RPM hard drive or SSD if you do not already have one!

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I second that

I have added the theme and it looks really good.

If you have only 1 space would a SSDH like the momentus XT work?

andyrugbyref said:

If you have only 1 space would a SSDH like the momentus XT work?

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On new Macs with 6GB SATA connectors, SSDs make a massive difference, and SSHDs make a noticeable difference.

On older Macs with slower SATA (or even IDE) connectors, the difference is less obvious.

If you're still using the iMac's original hard drive, it might be worth an upgrade to an SSHD just because hard drives don't last forever and hybrid drives aren't that much more expensive than normal hard drives. But don't expect a massive difference in performance.

I have a 2009 Mac Mini with a slower SATA connector and a hybrid SSHD drive. It's a little bit faster, but iTunes still takes a few "bounces" to open and it still takes about 30 seconds to boot up.

Also, replacing the hard drives in G5 / white Intel macs is a total bastard. You literally have to remove the screen from the body to get to the hard drive.

YanniDepp said:

Also, replacing the hard drives in G5 / white Intel macs is a total bastard. You literally have to remove the screen from the body to get to the hard drive.

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His is a non iSight, so it takes less than 5 minutes.

MisterKeeks said:

His is a non iSight, so it takes less than 5 minutes.

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Nice catch. I've never worked with non-iSight models. Never knew they were so different internally.

If the original hard drive is still in that iMac, it's almost 10 years old. I'd probably replace it next. When you can get a 2TB hybrid drive for £90 or a 4TB hybrid drive for £140 (both with 8GB SSD) it makes perfect sense to go for a hybrid drive.

The SATA channel in those machines is only 1.5Gbps, so don't expect massive performance improvements. You won't get an immediate performance boost, but over the first month, the SSD will "learn" to put core components of OS X and applications you use most often on the SSD, so there will be a bit of a difference.

You might want to check compatibility with someone who's already upgraded the HDD in one of these machines. I know that iMac G3s have trouble with hard drives over 128GB. Someone told me that the white G5 / Core Duo iMacs had trouble with 2TB drives, but I've got a Core Duo iMac with a 2TB drive in, and it's fine.