G4 Cube 450 CPU Upgrade?

I added a geforce 6200 to my cube to replace the Radeon 7500 I had in there, did it more for the Core Image support

 

Can i reopen this thread from here?
I want to upgrade my cube 450 MHz. The links to cubeowner seem to invalid .
What do I need to upgrade my cube to let's say a G4 1,25 Ghz?
(Single or dual)

Is the following any good?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/152436690718

 

That G4 CPU will not work in your Cube.

 

G4 Cubes have a 100MHz FSB (like the Sawtooth) so 1.25ghz upgrades aren't possible (with stock apple hardware at least) as far as I know. Not sure about heat from such a fast CPU either. 1.25GHz CPUs are only found in 167MHz FSB Macs so good luck with that... (Kinda sad how CPU upgrades are such a pain in the Mac world)

 

There's not much available these days. You can get a single 533MHz card, adjust the multiplier and plug that in pretty cheap:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/331740626123

The 533 will usually do 600 reliably while using less power than the original 450. It's not the best, but it's a 33% boost and you can say fanless if you like a quiet cube. Next best, you can get a dual 500 card and this will fit pretty well except for the inductor that sticks up:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/322409585999

You can re-solder it with a bit of an extension to lay it flat, or cut out a hole in the cube heatsink for clearance. Then you just need a couple squares of copper or aluminum between the CPU dies and the cube heatsink. This upgrade starts to stress the VRM though, so you'll want a base fan and possibly some heatsinks added to the 5v section of the VRM.

Then there are cards like this:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/292024266084

These, (along with the dual 533) don't fit well because they are offset the other direction and hit the IDE connector. I've seen them wedged in before, but you have to bend the board some... plus modifications for the multiplier, inductor, cooling, etc. Later apple oem cards still use the same CPU connector, but they'd be quite a project. They don't really fit, need a lot of power, and customization.

What you'd really want is a card made for the cube. I have not seen one of these for sale in quite a while and they're expensive. If you can find a later version of the tower upgrades from powerlogix or newer technology, these can usually be modified for use in a cube.

There used to be a lot of good info at cubeowner. It may be archived somewhere....

 

If it were to even work. As far as I know, the CPUs from regular PMG4s can't be swapped into the Cube, at least not the Quicksilver and MDD ones. The 1.25GHz is an MDD one, so that's never even going to work at all.

 

Non-Cube G4's can work in a Cube. Quicksilver's need an extra 12 volt supply though. MDD G4s will not work. It is also not recommended to use a non-Cube G4 in a Cube as it stresses the VRM board.

 

Wow, this was nearly two years ago!

I actually now own the 1.5ghz upgrade referenced earlier in this thread-I bought the Cube from Gavin into which he had installed it(thank goodness he quit buying Cubes, as he turned into an enabler and I ended up buying 3 from him ).

In any case, as the great and mighty Intell said the CPU board linked above will not work in a Cube.

It's really best to get a Cube-specific aftermarket upgrade. You don't want to overload the VRM.

 

Thx for fast replies, guys, very much appreciated!
I start with the first mentioned 533 CPU
What tool is need to "multiply" or tweak the CPU to 600 MHz ?

 

The G4 cpu speed is set as a multiple of the bus speed. The cube has a 100MHz bus, so the stock 450MHz cpu is set at 4.5x with a set of jumpers called pll_cfg. The 533MHz cpu is from a machine with a 133MHz bus, so if you put it straight into a cube it would run at 400MHz. Make sense? So you want to change it from 4.0x to 6.0x, and if you google something like "G4 pll_cfg" you can find stuff like this:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G4ZONE/sawtooth/SawtoothCPUdesign.html

http://power-mac-g4.com/g4digitalaudioclockup.html

 

Makes sense with bus speed and clock speed.
Having said that, do I then also need to replace my 1,5 Gb Ram with 133 MHz Ram?

 

I found some old pictures that I thought I'd put here since cubeowner.com is dead now. This is a dual 500MHz card modified for use in a cube:

 

I have a friend with a dual 1.6 CPU in a Sawtooth that he might sell to you.

I'm 99 percent sure the CPUs on the Sawtooth and the Cube are interchangeable. See if you can get a fan from Sonnett, or my friend might actually still have one.

He probably will want to sell you the Sawtooth in total and let you do the work. He's upgraded it with full 2.0 ram etc but hasn't used it in years.

 

I just converted one of the 533 cards for use in a cube so I took some measurements while I was at it. It would boot at 650 but was not stable. I didn't tweak any voltages. The cube running the stock CPU (28v input, 7400 at 450MHz):
0.8A idle
1.5A max load (power fractal)

7410 at 600 MHz:
0.8A idle
1.2A max load (power fractal)

A few benchmarks at 600MHz:

nbench:
MEMORY INDEX : 5.759
INTEGER INDEX : 5.040
FLOATING-POINT INDEX: 5.975

TenFourFox45 javascript:
Richards: 1392
DeltaBlue: 2365
Crypto: 1167
RayTrace: 3493
EarleyBoyer: 1780
RegExp: 204
Splay: 1149
NavierStokes: 1289
Score (version 7): 1280

Powerfractal w/262k max count:
2563Mflops

Skidmarks GT
54 71 58

geekbench (because for some reason this terrible program is popular):
425

 

My G4 Cube runs a (normal, not a special one for the Cube) Sonnet Encore ST G4 at 1.8 GHz. The catch is the VRM was also upgraded to accommodate this, and those are just as rare / expensive if not more so than the CPU upgrades themselves. If you don't also upgrade this, you take the risk of overloading the original and that's one reason why there were never dual CPU upgrades sold for the Cube (another reason is they won't make good contact with the Cube's heatsink, although I have seen workarounds such as this one and using a copper plate).

 

Did it run stable at 600? I have acquired a 500 card:
Apple Power Mac G4 Processor Module for 533Mhz Digital Audio 820-1175-A 661-2403

 

Ouch! That'll run at 400MHz as the Cube has a slower FSB (100MHz vs 133MHz). You'll have to change the multiplier to get full speed. Ask people around here for instructions but it needs soldering :/

About overclocking: Not all CPUs are made equal and overclocking with an air cooled system might not be the smartest of ideas.

 

Yes, flyrod in this forum offered help with soldering as my soldering skills are suite bad

 

Aah cool. I'd like some help too because I want to fit a DA CPU in my Sawtooth.

 

There were Cube dual CPU upgrades. They weren't as popular as they were rather extensive, but they existed.

 

Yes. It runs perfectly stable at 600. I even stressed it as much as possible and let it get pretty hot, as I was just running it with no fan and only the copper heat spreader attached to it (not installed in a cube with the main heat sink contacting).

Powerlogix (NewerTech) made a variety of cube CPU upgrades (single and dual) that were powered by the 28v main input instead of 5v through the VRM. I think they called this a "VRM bypass" and some of their other CPUs had a 12v molex for power which is basically the same thing. In fact most of these cards can be installed in cubes with some mods. For example, any of the CPUs that look like this will work in a cube:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/162422268410

You can run dual 500's or a single 1GHz with some cooling upgrades. A base fan and VRM relocate and/or strategic heat sinks on the VRM works for this. Sanding or machining the cube heat sink flat helps too. See my posts above. I ran a dual 1.92GHz 7447 CPU for a number of years. This was the most extreme in terms of heat. Now I run a dual 1.8GHZ 7448 CPU which is much cooler, but still requires a fan. The 7410 at 600MHz is a nice, cheap, easy boost and can remain fanless. In fact they run cooler than the original 450. With a SSD the cube can be completely silent.

Jumpers are pretty simple to set and I don't mind doing it for people, but there's shipping involved and I'm not set up to test every possible configuration.

 

No problem for the shipping , I will cater for that
I would like to start out with the 600 mod and see how that works
I can send the card to you

 

Since cubeowner.com is dead I thought I'd try to keep some cube info alive here. This is a dual 1.7GHz G4 upgrade card from a tower that I modified for use in a cube. I had the chance to mill some heat sink parts and use them to install the card in a cube. The copper blocks thermally connect the CPUs to the large cube heatsink, and I've found that adding some cooling to the power supply section helps too. The upgrades originally made for the cube had a large aluminum "heat spreader" but I think this is actually yielding lower temperatures. Of course a base fan is installed.

 

I converted a dual 500MHz card for use in a cube so I took some pictures showing the inductor relocation. On this one I re-wound the toroid core with thinner wire to make it a little flatter. The picture doesn't show it well, but when installed in the cube the inductor has a few mm clearance all around it. This seems a bit more elegant than wrapping it in tape an cramming it in there with the boards bent around it.