G4 Cube CPU Upgrade

[bunnspecial]

Member jbarley recently very generously offered up a Cube CPU upgrade on here(along with some other Cube parts). I finally talked him into at least letting pay him a token amount for the upgrade, although I still can't thank him enough for his generosity.

In any case, I had thought installing the upgrade would wait until after my thesis defense(15 days and counting) but all work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy so I thought I'd tackle it this evening. I've had Cubes apart enough that it really was a quick swap-the whole thing took about 30 minutes. I'd previously installed a base fan-a requirement for all CPU upgrades-so didn't have to mess with that. I took a few pictures and will post them after while.

In any case, the card he sent me was an 800mhz Sonnet upgrade. This is actually the first Sonnet I've had, but it made me appreciate why they are so loved in the secondary market(and why they carried a premium when new). This one-like many of them-is quite literally plug and play. I put the computer back together, booted it(into OS 9 initially) and it was recognized correctly immediately. It's amazing to me how much difference going from 450mhz to 800mhz makes.

Screen shots below, and I'm going to run Geekbench and Xbench in a few minutes. I will report back.

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

That's awesome!

 

[bunnspecial]

Geekbench and Xbench as promised. FWIW, my 500mhz(stock) Cube scored 350, although with less than half the RAM.

I need to benchmark my 500ghz with 1.5gb of RAM, as well as my other 450mhz(factory) Cube for comparison.

 

[gavinstubbs09]

Lucky that you have L3 - I'm out of luck with that. Jealous!

 

[spf2]

Are you going to upgrade the video card as well?

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

Lucky that you have L3 - I'm out of luck with that. Jealous!

But, you have nearly twice the clock speed.

 

[eyoungren]

Yeah, Sonnet is just exceptional. I have a Sonnet 1.2 single in my QS. It's the one it came with when I bought it and it's flawless, never given me any issues.

They are expensive. But they are worth every penny of it.

 

[bunnspecial]

Are you going to upgrade the video card as well?

Yes, but that will be a post-defense project. Jbarley has actually sent me two decent video cards that are already "cubed"-a GEForce 4MX and a Radeon 9000. Unfortunately, both require moving the VRM board, which is more of a project than I want to tackle(or have time to tackle) at the moment.

All three of my Cubes have upgraded video cards-this one and the 500mhz each have a GeForce 2MX, while the other has a Radeon 7500. Every Cube I've bought has come with the stock Rage 128, and both the 2MX and 7500 are big improvements over this card.

I also have a GEForce 6200 waiting to be flashed-again, time.

I'd also love to find a GEForce 3, but so far that has been elusive(at least for a reasonable price).

 

[bunnspecial]

Here are a few photos of the upgrade process. Of course, I did clean the new processor and give it a fresh treatment of Artic Silver 5.

The last picture shows the standoffs that Gavin was asking about last week

FYI, the new processor is a 7451.

 

[Intell]

Is that a Cube specific G4 upgrade?

 

[bunnspecial]

Is that a Cube specific G4 upgrade?

As far as I know...jbarley gave it to me as such. It had the Cube heat spreader attached when he posted it, but I requested that he leave it off since the instructions(for this specific p/n card) instruct you to reuse the stock one. I asked him to leave it off to save a few bucks on shipping.

In any case, as I said the Sonnet p/n on the card leads to a Cube installation manual. The card also has a fan connector on it that was supposed to be attached to an included base fan. I didn't get the fan, but that wasn't an issue as I've had a base fan in this Cube(powered off the Molex cable going to the optical drive) for almost as long as I've had the computer.

 

[iModFrenzy]

Here are a few photos of the upgrade process. Of course, I did clean the new processor and give it a fresh treatment of Artic Silver 5.

The last picture shows the standoffs that Gavin was asking about last week

FYI, the new processor is a 7451.

Carpet! Can't the static kill the board?

 

[bunnspecial]

Carpet! Can't the static kill the board?

If I'd been doing this a month ago when it was 0ºF outside, I'd never lay a board on bare carpet.

As it was, when I was doing this work last night, it was 60º outside with rain pouring down. This is also relatively tight pile carpet, which doesn't tend to be static inducing. In other words, right now it's not such a recipe for disaster. In the winter, it could be.