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Power Mac G4 Cube

iSaygoodbye

iSaygoodbye

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 2, 2009
747
0
a boat
My brother and I were thinking about buying a powermac g4 cube and were wandering if it was easily upgradeble. We would probaly only upgrade the ram and maybe the hard drive. Also does anyone know what os it came with
 
Here's info on the Cube.

Upgrading the RAM and hard drive are easy. There are tons of upgrades available for the Cube and forums dedicated to it.
 
ironspider said:
My brother and I were thinking about buying a powermac g4 cube and were wandering if it was easily upgradeble. We would probaly only upgrade the ram and maybe the hard drive. Also does anyone know what os it came with
Click to expand...

It is very easy to upgrade a Cube.

To max out a Cube this is what you need: 3 sticks of PC133/100 512mb ram (168pin) (I have a couple of 256mb sticks to start you off)

There is a limiter on the hard drive space on a Cube of 128gigs. You can override this (ask someone on MR how to do this) but until then, try to find a 120gig 7200rpm hard drive.

Sonnet sells Cube upgrade CPUs.

The video card on the cube can be upgraded as well with a little fiddling around.

Cubes shipped with OS 9.
 
so if i upgraded to the max ram(which i believe is 1 gig?) and upgraded the hard drive to like 120 gigs would OS X run on it? would it require any other upgrades
 
1.5 GB is the max RAM. You can certainly run OS X; I wouldn't go any higher than Panther with a 450/500 MHz G4.
 
I've been looking for a cheap cube to gut and then toss in my Mac Mini like that amazing one that popped up a year ago (timeline correct?). Was very, very cool.

The only old Mac that interests me is the G4 iMac. Now THAT was cool.
 
ironspider said:
would it just be terrible slow? and is there any way to upgrade the proccesor
Click to expand...

there is a link with a shop who sells processor upgrades for the cube.
I don't think it will be sloooooowwwww my ibook g3 in the sig is running 10.4.11 and it isn't that slow..just sometimes..but it has less ram..
 
thanks everyone. does anyone know how to do the over ride thing where i can get more than a 120 gig hard drive. Also what type of ram does it use? links to purchase some?
 
ironspider said:
thanks everyone. does anyone know how to do the over ride thing where i can get more than a 120 gig hard drive. Also what type of ram does it use? links to purchase some?
Click to expand...

you can get a 120gb hard drive anywhere.
I don't know how the g4 is,but the g3 128gb limitation was passed by making the first partition in the hdd 8Gb..for the OS..it works that way for old pentium 1/2/3 computers so maybe it is the same in g4..but search for it..
 
 
 
ironspider, just wanted to make sure that you knew that for probably less than an upgraded cube you buy a intel mac mini that will surely be much faster.

some people love the cube, some people just love upgrading.

At this point, some things aren't worth upgrading unless you really love them. The cube is one of them.
 
ironspider said:
My brother and I were thinking about buying a powermac g4 cube and were wandering if it was easily upgradeble. We would probaly only upgrade the ram and maybe the hard drive. Also does anyone know what os it came with
Click to expand...

Not worth it, IMO unless you are just using it as a collectors piece. G4's are next to useless.
 
it's a collectors item. People who actually use them are few and far between.
 
ironspider said:
im not trying to make any money or anything. were just trying to do a little projec thing.
Click to expand...

Then have fun :)

I find making an old computer fast again is always pretty rewarding. I just get bored again in a few months, though.
 
I am actually amazed by how fast these little old computers run when maxed out, they are better than most people will think. I tried to do a cube upgrade very similar to you just for fun to give me something to do and it worked great until the board fried out on me :(. My latest little project was an old 600 mhz imac g3 with dead HD. Its now maxed out and since i didnt have a desktop it works great as a simple internet machine, im actually typing this on it right now. I dont really know how the cube will run since i didnt get to play very much with it before it died, but i wish you luck and have fun.
 
Ram Compatibility

Hello,

I have a G4 Mac Cube and 2 Samsung 1gb (2rx8 pc2-5300S-555-12-E3) of 1GB each I took of from a mac book pro that I have upgrade.

Can I put this RAM in the CUBE without blowing it up?

Thank you!
 
The Cube takes only PC 100 or PC 133 RAM. I don't think that laptop RAM would even fit physically. Wrong size, wrong number of pins.
 
Slow? No.

I have a snow iBook w/ a 500 mhz G3 in it. It only has 128gb ram, and it can surf the internet and do fine w/ the office suite.

Of couuse, you can forget about photoshop. :p
 
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