heat/power management for G4

[dustboy]

I have an old G4 mirror-door that I use as my PVR. It's stuffed with 4 big drives to record media, but it runs all day and sucks tons of power. Plus, it heats up the cabinet like an oven.

Is there a piece of software etc. that can help the mac better manage its power consumption? I don't like using the OS X drive sleep option because the drives always go to sleep just when you need them..

 

[Mxsix]

No power management software that I know of... specifically what were you looking for besides hard drive sleeping.

Is your cabinet open? I wouldn't let it get too hot in there. That's a hard drives worst enemy.

 

[AlexMaximus]

G4 Power consumtion

I have an old G4 mirror-door that I use as my PVR. It's stuffed with 4 big drives to record media, but it runs all day and sucks tons of power. Plus, it heats up the cabinet like an oven.

Is there a piece of software etc. that can help the mac better manage its power consumption? I don't like using the OS X drive sleep option because the drives always go to sleep just when you need them..

Hi there,

Since the G4 has a 360 / 400 Watt powersupply it shouldn't consume more then any PeeCee. A Powersupply with 400 Watt is pretty standard today.

Those four HD draw power like every other PC, cant change that.
If you have a big budget and a European attitude, you put Solar panels for 100k on your roof

http://www.stahl-sonnenenergie.de/pihtml/huf.htm


Regarding heat I would be carefull. If you have some basic crafts I would integrate a basic cooling fan in you cabinet where the heat of your G4 comes out. You may check out sources like this:

http://www.fullcompass.com/product/240126.html

Runs at 115V so no interferance with the G4.

 

[Qianlong]

ideas to cool down and lower the noise on a G4 - from an older post

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/150012/

 

[dustboy]

ideas to cool down and lower the noise on a G4 - from an older post

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/150012/

good idea..didn't know there was a difference in fans. When I first got the machine there was no speed control for the fans, it always sounded like a 747 in flight. But a firmware upgrade changed that.

However, none of these solutions will keep my power bill from going through the roof. I guess realistically there isn't a good way around it.

 

[GregPacker]

I use a free developer utility called CHUD to enable CPU power napping on my G4 mirror drive door dual 1.25GHz. This method caused instability on old versions of OS X with G4 processors (which is probably why Apple did not make it the default for G4 machines), but more recent versions of OS X seem to have solved the instability problem. I use CHUD 3.5.2 on OS X 10.3.9 Panther and it lowers the CPU temps considerably (without side effects), and I imagine it must reduce the power draw at the outlet too. I can't think of any other way you could lower the power consumed without changing components. If you use Tiger then you can probably use the latest version of CHUD (I think 3.5.2 was the last Panther compatible one). Without CHUD your G4 CPU's are making a lot of heat even when you are doing nothing.
Note: if you do enable power napping on a G4 you may hear a quiet chirruping sound, similar to the early G5's which had power napping enabled by default (and some people used CHUD to turn it off on their G5s!).

 

[GregPacker]

By the way, something else you can do with CHUD is disable one processor (assuming your G4 is a dual processor machine). If you aren't worried about getting maximum performance then this will probably reduce the amount of power being consumed.

 

[dustboy]

By the way, something else you can do with CHUD is disable one processor (assuming your G4 is a dual processor machine). If you aren't worried about getting maximum performance then this will probably reduce the amount of power being consumed.

When I think about it, this is what I really needed. If you look in the case, where are the huge heat fins with a fan blowing across them? On the processor, of course.

Supposedly, the Hauppauge myTV.PVR box has its own processor, but the mac still runs hotter since I got it.