About time! Found myself a 450MHz Cube with a 15" Studio Display

[gavinstubbs09]

Each year I come to my grandma's house during Christmas break and during this time I look on the local Craigslist for Sacramento. Upon my Saturday-night looking at listings, my cousin was playing GTA5 on my Xbox while I was seeing what I could buy.

I was looking at a 700MHz iMac G4, a 2008 MBP with a faulty logic board, or a Mac mini (C2D + 23" acrylic ACD). Digging a bit deeper I came across a Cube for $100 that was 15 minutes away from my grandmothers house. Texted the guy, and within 45 minutes I was at the house and walked away with it for $80.

Still a good chunk of money, as I didn't get a keyboard or the speakers. The one thing that sucks on the display is that the back leg is broken so I need to find the piece to fix it.

So the specs on this thing? Made in August of 2000, 450MHz low end model, 1.25GB Ram, stock Rage 128, 80GB Hard Drive, CD-RW drive, and OS X Panther 10.3.9. This thing originally shipped with 64MB Ram, 20GB Hard Drive, and a DVD-ROM drive. I kinda wish that it still had the DVD drive as I am in a pickle and want to get Tiger on the thing, and I don't even have a FW400 cable with me to get Tiger on it from my iBook

Either way, I am glad to finally own a Cube as I have never seen one in person. Now the only model of NWR macs I haven't owned is a TiBook, toilet seat iBook, and the Xserve G4/G5!

 

[Gav2k]

£50 for a working cube is good really. I plan on getting one this year and bastardising it!!

 

[gavinstubbs09]

I shouldn't be complaining about the price too much, I almost bought one during the summer for $150 and that was just the cube!

I've read up a bit and a dual CPU swap is definitely a possibility. SuperDrive, max the Ram out, SSD, then a decent graphics card. Maybe I'll be happy at that point

In other news I'm stoked that I am getting Tiger on it. I have to use CDs, and if anyone gets the issue that the image isn't recognized, burn it under Windows using Imgburn and write till the end of the image. Works for me when every other program refused to use the image

 

[Intell]

Finding a dual Cube G4 now days will be slightly difficult. When you do find one, it'll be worth about 2-3 times the Cube's value without the upgrade. For a video card, I suggest the Nvidia 6200. There's a special slim model that works very well in the Cube. One thing about the 6200, it is not a gaming card and does poorly whe playing games due to its 64-bit bus.

 

[gooser]

welcome to the club. i just got mine a few days ago. i just loaded tiger on mine this morning using firewire target mode with my macbook.

 

[128keaton]

Congrats man, glad you found one. I love mine, even with the random power off issue. Sleek machine.

 

[bunnspecial]

Very nice find and I'm jealous! That's a more than fair price, too.

The Cube is one of two G4-based desktops I'm missing from my collection-the other being the original Yikes! tower.

 

[PowerMac G4 MDD]

Nice!

I didn't realize how valuable these were when I found a complete Cube in my school's e-waste bin... sadly that was one of many that they threw out, but I wasn't aware of any of the other ones. Prior to that, someone had given me his Cube, which had a corrupt HD and dead DVD-ROM drive. I use that as my show piece---some screws are missing, so the whole Mac is sort of wobbly inside its casing... I kinda took it apart one day; I really hadn't known the value then.

The Cube from my school functions fine, but is not the most appealing, considering it had been in a school environment all that time. The speakers looked as if someone had poked pencils through it, but otherwise they work. I have a 500Mhz version running Tiger, but I was having trouble with updates, and when the OS began acting weird, I turned it off and quit. I think I'll start it up again soon and play with it. It would definitely be a neat computer to use, assuming I COULD use it for anything. It suppose it would be nice as a light-use work computer. Thanks to the PSU being external, mine didn't seem to exceed 100F, however I am sure the PSU itself was also around that temperature!

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Congrats man, glad you found one. I love mine, even with the random power off issue. Sleek machine.

Hmm, I may have a similar issue with mine; I don't know whether it's my PSU or the connection to my Cube itself, but it shuts down when I tilt the cube forward... maybe there is a loose wire somewhere. It's definitely not random, but it's concerning and a little annoying, as I plugging-in a device is like defusing a ticking bomb.

 

[Intell]

A common problem with Cubes is with their power switch. They can become oversensitive and think your finger is on them and force the machine off. A fix that some people have done is put a piece of paper over the power switch assembly in the Cube, then put the case down on top of it. This helps cut down on the sensitivity of the power switch.

 

[gavinstubbs09]

I've noticed you guys all seem to have a problem with your cube. Mine has been running stable for the several hours I ran it, the only slight issue is I have to press the power button twice before it lights up and boots.

I'm thinking the first mod regardless of what will happen with it is a black shell. That would look sick! I've been looking at pictures of cube aquariums too and those look amazing.

 

[weckart]

I'm thinking the first mod regardless of what will happen with it is a black shell. That would look sick! I've been looking at pictures of cube aquariums too and those look amazing.

Dunno. Based on that snapshot, the black looks a bit cheap. Sort of a downgrade from the silver-grey.

 

[Goftrey]

For a video card, I suggest the Nvidia 6200. There's a special slim model that works very well in the Cube.

I've got a 6200 in my Cube - and it is a beastly little card. One thing you absolutely HAVE to do though is make sure you've got a fan on the thing. Mine originally came with a passive cooler which, in a normal case wouldn't be an issue. However in the Cube, under load I was seeing temperatures close to 100 degrees celsius which scared me sh*tless. I popped in a little VGA cooler fan running off a molex splitter and now I not seeing the temps go over 70 degrees.