It's finally done. I bought a Quad!

[tevion5]

Some of you might know I've been looking for a Quad for quite a while. But being in Ireland they are uncommon and expensive when they do show up. Importing them from overseas is usually too expensive. However, as luck would have it, a German E-Waste company on eBay recently listed 3 separate G5 Quads, for only €220 and €12 shipping. To me that deal was as good as any I was going to get for the foreseeable future. So I took the plunge and bought it!

The one I picked was the best, as it was the only one of the 3 that came with a 7800GT. It also has 250GB HDD and 4.5 GB Ram, but that can all be improved cheaply. It also only runs Tiger, but that can be fixed as well.

Now funny enough, I had already purchased a 7800GT a while ago in anticipation for my new Quad. So this begs the question, what do I do with 2 of them? I don't believe they would both work as I have never seen it, but could I perhaps split the internal power connection and power both? A dual 7800GT Quad just sounds wicked. Lemme know what I can or should do.

I'll update you as it arrives!

 

[0007776]

Congrats on finding a quad. I remember when those came out and thinking it would be awesome to have one. I kind of wish I had a reason to get one now that they are old and cheap enough for me to actually afford.

 

[bunnspecial]

Very nice! I love my Quad!

 

[eyoungren]

I will PM you my address for shipping. You're paying for that right?

Congratulations!

 

[MacCubed]

I'm getting a Quad soon also, it needs some parts and I'm upgrading the RAM to 8 GB and the HDD is coming from my DP. I'm also getting another 1 TB HDD for the DP since I'm giving it to my brother. Should I get a better graphics card than the stock one? It needs a card, RAM, and HDD

 

[tevion5]

I'm getting a Quad soon also, it needs some parts and I'm upgrading the RAM to 8 GB and the HDD is coming from my DP. I'm also getting another 1 TB HDD for the DP since I'm giving it to my brother. Should I get a better graphics card than the stock one? It needs a card, RAM, and HDD

Yeah I think I'll bump mine up to 8GB too. Regarding Late 2005 G5 GPU's, as Japamac said "by all means replace the 6600".

There is a great thread around here with Openmark benchmarks on all PPC cards. I've got the common but pricey stock 7800GT in mine. Other popular options are the X1900 I believe, and the FX4500, although these are very pricey.

If you can, you can flash a GTX 7800 with an FX4500 Rom (correct me if I'm wrong here), as long as you can find an appropriate card to flash. This is the cheapest method of you can manage it.

(Here is the thread: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/some-ppc-openmark-benchmarks.1848060/)

 

[tevion5]

--Update--

It arrived already this morning! The Germans live up to their efficient name. Surrounded in a plethora of bubble-wrap, it was perfectly intact, relieving my major fears. I brought it down and swapped it into the place of my DC 2.0. It had a fresh Tiger install on the 250GB drive, and I had to set it up in german before getting to the desktop and changing it to english.

Wanting to use Leopard asap, I swapped the drive for the one in my old G5. Weirdly, the SATA power cable for drive two in the quad has some sticky hard substance inside it, meaning I can't connect a drive there for the moment, so one at a time for now. It looks strangely like it was done on purpose, to prevent anyone from adding a second drive. Also the bottom of the Quad has a sticker that says "Finger Weg. Mac Barovit Backup". So it may have been used for some odd specific purpose in it's past life.

Anyway, Leopard booted straight up with no issue from my old drive and all my apps and files are ready to go! I fired up Webkit and got HD youtube videos playing without a problem and iTunes accesses my homeshare great. I havent tried a game yet but I can fire up Quake 4 or AOEIII soon. I did run Geekbench and my score lived up to the average score seen in Mactracker. (I got 3463). While the benchmark was running, the Quad went full throttle on the fans and sounded like a helicopter. But alas, it's stuff like that that adds to it's charms. I'll run Cinebench too.

In conclusion, this is a happy ending. Fast delivery, no damage and it works perfectly! I'm officially a Quad owner! Woot woot!

 

[bunnspecial]

Glad that everything worked so well.

I actually did the exact same as you when I got my Quad-I pulled the two drives out of my 2.0DC and popped them in. My Quad didn't come with an air deflector, so I borrowed that also from the DC-the DC is out of commission until I get another deflector.

Enjoy! I can't begin to say how much I love my Quad. If I could run a more modern version of OS X on it, I'd probably ditch my MP 1,1 completely(even though the MP does have an edge in Geekbench).