PowerMac G4 AGP/GE/DA, additional drives and PSU?

[Cox Orange]

Hi,

I lately read an article saying the G4 Gigabit's PSU will be destroyed, when using 4 HDDs.
I have 4 SATA Drives installed on a G4 AGP for quiet a while now and never had problems so far *knock on wood*, so I wondered what you were experiencing. Nor had I read of this as a reason for PSU failure on this forum or else.

Here is the link http://www.mechriki.de/wordpress/?p=8

It sounds right what he is saying about the 12V rail, but on the other hand I never heard of died PSUs because of HDDs.

What do you say?

 

[Intell]

Don't the 2nd generation PowerMac G4s have room in them for six hard drives? If they do, how would running four hard drives destroy the power supply?

 

[zen.state]

No need to be concerned at all. The writer of that article clearly has some facts mixed up in his head.

Even a power hungry drive like a WD Black only consumes about 14 watts so even if you had 4 of them thats only 56 watts. An average drive is only about 11-12 watts and an energy efficient one like the WD Green only uses 8-10.

The only thing that would overload it is if you had a power hungry video card like a Radeon 9800. Thats why I have a 430W ATX PSU in my main Sawtooth so it can provide enough power as a 9800 needs a 300 watt or higher PSU.

 

[Cox Orange]

Thank you (also for the extra information)!

 

[alexreich]

No need to be concerned at all. The writer of that article clearly has some facts mixed up in his head.

Even a power hungry drive like a WD Black only consumes about 14 watts so even if you had 4 of them thats only 56 watts. An average drive is only about 11-12 watts and an energy efficient one like the WD Green only uses 8-10.

The only thing that would overload it is if you had a power hungry video card like a Radeon 9800. Thats why I have a 430W ATX PSU in my main Sawtooth so it can provide enough power as a 9800 needs a 300 watt or higher PSU.

Sorry to hijack this thread, but I figured I should just ask here instead of starting another. Will my G5 be fine with a Radeon 9800 Pro and two HDDs? I don't wanna blow my PSU.

 

[zen.state]

Sorry to hijack this thread, but I figured I should just ask here instead of starting another. Will my G5 be fine with a Radeon 9800 Pro and two HDDs? I don't wanna blow my PSU.

The lowest powered G5 PSU is 420W and as I mention in that post a 9800 Pro has a spec of 300W+ PSU so you are at least 120 above that. No need to be concerned at all. This is is why I strongly encourage everyone to at least know their own Macs like the back of their hand. Knowing the specs well can help you get a lot more out of a system because you know exactly what you're working with and any limits.

Cox:

I forgot to add in my first post that you shouldn't put the DA in with the Sawtooth and Gigabit models in terms of power supply. They only have 200-237W vs the 338W in the DA's.

Pretty much any video card that needs additional power like molex or others needs a 300W PSU or better. For drives though you simply couldn't even fit enough in your tower to overpower the PSU as long as your video card wasn't too beefy. What card do you have BTW?

 

[alexreich]

The lowest powered G5 PSU is 420W and as I mention in that post a 9800 Pro has a spec of 300W+ PSU so you are at least 120 above that. No need to be concerned at all. This is is why I strongly encourage everyone to at least know their own Macs like the back of their hand. Knowing the specs well can help you get a lot more out of a system because you know exactly what you're working with...

Thanks for the info. Guess I'll have to take a trip to EveryMac and read up on my Macs. Any other sites that you'd recommend?

 

[Cox Orange]

Cox:

I forgot to add in my first post that you shouldn't put the DA in with the Sawtooth and Gigabit models in terms of power supply. They only have 200-237W vs the 338W in the DA's.

Oh, right! I forgot it, because I just remembered that the GE and DA have the same Pin layout.

Pretty much any video card that needs additional power like molex or others needs a 300W PSU or better. For drives though you simply couldn't even fit enough in your tower to overpower the PSU as long as your video card wasn't too beefy. What card do you have BTW?

An ATI 9200, flashed PC card I found in a "defective" Mac (that in the end turned out to be not defective). It's AGP instead of the actual PCI-"Mac version" and has a small form factor, so I could use it in a cube, if I had the use for a cube. The 9200 is enough for my needs, so I actually just keep it - at least till I get a well priced 9800.