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733mhz Quicksilver PSU

eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
30,404
30,172
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?
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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
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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.
 
Last edited:
Thanks all for the comments and the links!

Really appreciate the help!
 
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