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733mhz Quicksilver PSU

eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
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I can foresee in the future that I am going to need a more powerful PSU. Or am I wrong?

Ultimately I intend to be driving 5 displays, all 5 having their own power supply. But my additional fan and the Radeon 9800 Pro AND my two SATA drives are drawing power from splitter cables. I also intend to try a mod at some point to have a second optical drive (replacing the ZIP drive).

So can the stock PSU handle all this or am I going to need something more powerful? And if so, what will fit? Do the later model Quicksilvers have a more powerful PSU and would they fit? My objective would be to find a PSU where I don't have to modify anything.
 
jrsx said:
Just curious...are you going to be running Leopard on this with LeopardAssist?
Click to expand...
Sorry, should have been more clear…

I said 733mhz because that's the model that the Mac originally is, so that's the PSU for that model that is in there right now. But when I got it it came with a 1.2Ghz Sonnet upgrade. I've since replaced that with a Giga Designs 1.8Ghz uprade (dual processor).

I put Leopard on it the day I got it and my SATA boot drive had it already, it was just a matter of getting a SATA card in there.

The Mac will be using a Radeon 9800 Pro which has a molex connector to draw power. I've got two more drives in there (SATA) than normal, courtesy of a splitter and the 9800 will also draw power from another splitter.

I just don't want to overload the system.

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gavinstubbs09 said:
Looks like these have a 360w power supply, and if you decide to upgrade you'll probably be good with a 500w or a 600w upgrade. That should leave you plenty of more room for power!

It looks like you will ultimately be hacking it, and here is a page that has the wiring stuff.
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/ATX_G4_AGP_conversion/G4_AGP_to_ATX_case_pg2.htm
Click to expand...
So…essentially then, the 360W is not going to cut it? If that's the case, I'm fine with that. I'm just trying to prepare so I can take appropriate action one all this stuff comes together.
 
I think you'd be alright to be honest. Sure an upgrade would give you more breathing space, but when you think people have dual 1.42GHz MDD's with 4 hard drives, 2 optical drives & numerous fan mods all running off as low as a 360 watt PSU I think it should cover all bases pretty well.

However if you are going above & beyond with all of these mods then it's only natural to recommend some sort of a modded ATX solution anyway.
 
This link shows the PS connector for all G4 towers. Any ATX PS however, will not have 28vdc for the ADC connector. I have modified an ATX for use in an AGP G4, but ADC is not supported so it is no big deal. I have also fitted a mini ATX into a MDD, but don't use the ADC.

Finding a drop in replacement would be ideal. But I am not so sure I would trust a 10+ year old power supply of unknown history.
 
It's really easy to modify an ATX extension cable to have a regular PC PSU work in the Quicksilver machines - see http://atxg4.com/quicksilver.html . This guy even sells pre-made adapter cables if you're feeling especially lazy. You won't get the ADC power, but you wouldn't need it anyway once you go with the Radeon 9800 and external monitor PSU you mentioned.
 
Goftrey said:
I think you'd be alright to be honest. Sure an upgrade would give you more breathing space, but when you think people have dual 1.42GHz MDD's with 4 hard drives, 2 optical drives & numerous fan mods all running off as low as a 360 watt PSU I think it should cover all bases pretty well.
Click to expand...
Agreed. A couple of SATA drives and a couple of fans will use barely anything (15-20 watts?).
 
eyoungren said:
I can foresee in the future that I am going to need a more powerful PSU. Or am I wrong?

Ultimately I intend to be driving 5 displays, all 5 having their own power supply. But my additional fan and the Radeon 9800 Pro AND my two SATA drives are drawing power from splitter cables. I also intend to try a mod at some point to have a second optical drive (replacing the ZIP drive).

So can the stock PSU handle all this or am I going to need something more powerful? And if so, what will fit? Do the later model Quicksilvers have a more powerful PSU and would they fit? My objective would be to find a PSU where I don't have to modify anything.
Click to expand...

As long as all those displays have their own power, I think 360 watts will do fine.

My 1.25GHz dual FW800 MDD has four hard drives, one optical drive, a flashed 9800 pro video card, a scsi card (yes, I still use a 20 year old scsi scanner once in a while :eek: ) a pci usb 2 card and I haven't had any problems with it's 360w power supply.
 
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Thanks all for the comments and the links!

Really appreciate the help!
 
IMO not worth of a new thread so I'll continue this old one. So, here is my new Quicksilver 733MHz's bad AcBel 344W PSU.

Nice how tightly packed it is and how much they used the white goo everywhere. :confused: And Apple sure likes screws, parts do not fall out by accident. ;) EDIT: I see there are several revisions or models of this PSU which are little different in layout and components.

So, I'll give a recap a try. Didn't find a cap list for it so I'll have to take them out and find out. The ones I can see in situ look the same spec as in MDD AcBel PSU.

I do have an old 450W ATX PSU as a backup and I did order a 20pin to 24 pin wire adapter for it. I didn't find the ready made ATX to Quicksilver -adapters anymore so I'll have to do it myself, if I cannot get the original psu back to operational.

Quicksilver-PSU-Ac-Bel-344-W.jpg
Quicksilver-PSU-Ac-Bel-344-W-2.jpg
 
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ToniCH said:
IMO not worth of a new thread so I'll continue this old one. So, here is my new Quicksilver 733MHz's bad AcBel 344W PSU.
Click to expand...
I forgot I even made this thread!

Considering how things ultimately turned out though, interesting to see where my thought process was in early 2014.
 
Wild Hare said:
There’s a related topic over on MacOS9Lives.com (three pages currently) that might be helpful.

Pictures and capacitor lists, etcetera. And I think that Andy down in Austin Texas is still re-capping them… as well as selling ATX conversion harnesses as well.

Have big fun.
Click to expand...
Yes, I have read that and many more threads searching for info. There are several revisions of the QS AcBel 344W PSU and mine doesn't match the cap lists I've found.

Compared to the pics on page 1 and the list on page 2 mine has 1 more TEAPO cap and the fan controller board only has 2 caps instead of 6. Well, I went the old way and mapped the caps manually. There are couple I cannot see until I take them out but I have now ordered the rest.
 
eyoungren said:
So can the stock PSU handle all this or am I going to need something more powerful?
Click to expand...

I don't know what exact model my QS is but I have it running with the stock PSU and the following HW:

- Sonnet 1.8GHz (was 2x1.8GHz for quite some time)
- Radeon9000 with 22" ADC display
- NEC based USB2 card
- SIL3112 SATA card
- SBLive! (that is a hot card)
- Voodoo3 (another hot one)
- CF card on the IDE
- IDE DVD Writer
- SATA SSD

Never had a problem with the PSU. What was a problem was the noise generated by getting some airflow in the original case. Thats why I moved it into bigger ATX tower (Commodore-Gaming one).

HDDs and optical drives shouldn't use much power while idling, some with GFX cards that aren't pushed hard in 3D mode, so you should be o.k. Testing power usage at the outlet may also be an idea. Doing "normal" stuff like compiling I got mine to 83W so there should still be enough headroom with a 300+W PSU.
 
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Bug-Creator said:
I don't know what exact model my QS is but I have it running with the stock PSU and the following HW:

- Sonnet 1.8GHz (was 2x1.8GHz for quite some time)
- Radeon9000 with 22" ADC display
- NEC based USB2 card
- SIL3112 SATA card
- SBLive! (that is a hot card)
- Voodoo3 (another hot one)
- CF card on the IDE
- IDE DVD Writer
- SATA SSD

Never had a problem with the PSU. What was a problem was the noise generated by getting some airflow in the original case. Thats why I moved it into bigger ATX tower (Commodore-Gaming one).

HDDs and optical drives shouldn't use much power while idling, some with GFX cards that aren't pushed hard in 3D mode, so you should be o.k. Testing power usage at the outlet may also be an idea. Doing "normal" stuff like compiling I got mine to 83W so there should still be enough headroom with a 300+W PSU.
Click to expand...
Don't worry about the thread being old. I resurrected it and IMO everything anybody inputs here about QS PSU:s is welcome and serves the future generations. 👍

BTW. are you running OS X only or OS 9 too?
 
Bug-Creator said:
Neither.
Obviously.

SATA, SBLive! and Voodoo wouldn't even work.....
Click to expand...
Well, ok. 🤨 Sorry, I don't yet know the limitations of the QS. My G4 MDD FW800 (Leopard) has a SATA-card and a Sound Blaster too - and a G5 Radeon 9600 Pro though but yeah, it's a different beast.

I am toying with the idea to make an OS 9 machine out of this QS. That was the reason for asking.
 
Honestly no idea whether the SBlive! has Mac driver support, but the SATA is an unflashed PC version so no dice there.

Running MorphOS exclusively, got plenty of Intel and 1 AS Macs...
 
Bug-Creator said:
Honestly no idea whether the SBlive! has Mac driver support, but the SATA is an unflashed PC version so no dice there.
Click to expand...
Thanks, I do not have need for a SB in the QS (I have Audigy 2 in the MDD), To the QS I'll install M-Audio Audiophile 2496 which should work in OS9. And the SATA SIL3112 -cards do work after being flashed.

What I am interested is the USB2-card. They also do work with OS9 but some of them break sleep ie. the G4 no longer wakes up when running OS9. No problems with OS X. So, if anybody has any input on this I welcome it.
 
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