Hello everyone. My girlfriend got me a beautiful 450 MHz G4 Cube. It has 10.4.11, a 40 gig hard drive, and 768 mb of ram. If I understand correctly the Cube can take 2 gig of ram? If i go from 768 to 2 gig will I notice an improvement? Also, what are some other minor things I can do to help the speed? I do not want to do anything extreme to this computer, because it's not my main one. One final question, where would I go about getting speakers for it? I've looked online, but I'm not finding much. Thank you for all the help!
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Quick G4 Cube Question Regarding Ram
- Thread starter ilovemyibook
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The G4 Cube has three ram slots and can take a maximum of 1.5Gb. A good way to get better speeds on the cheap is a new hard drive or SSD for it. For even more speed, a CPU upgrade is needed. But remember, this machine is 10+ years old. CPU upgrades for it are getting expensive. For speakers, you can either get the G4 Cube USB speakers or almost any USB sound card. I've used a Griffin iMic with mine in the past. Note: Only the G4 Cube's USB speakers make the startup noise.
Thank you very much. I can see myself doing a hard drive upgrade and ram, but I don't really feel the urge to drop that kind of money on a CPU upgrade. Will a SSD make it much faster along with the 1.5 gig of ram? Am I just looking for any hard drive that will fit a G4 Power Mac? I am kind of confused as to the the sound card issue? The internals in the Cube are so packed I don't see how that can be a standard sized card?
For the SSD/hard drive upgrade you want a PATA/EIDE/IDE hard drive, not SATA. Preferably one that's 120Gb or less. Otherwise, you'll have to do some modifications to get a bigger drive to work. By USB sound card, I mean a USB device that plugs into the Cube and provides a headphone out or speakers. Like the Griffin iMic: http://store.griffintechnology.com/imic And if you're planning on running Leopard on it, a CoreImage video card would work wonders for user interface speed.
Well I know what I'm spending my Christmas money on. lol. With the information you gave me I am going to do a lot of research. So if I did the SSD, ram, and video card I would have a fairly capable machine? I know it was made in 1999 and it's PowerPC, but I love this computer so much. I am content with running Tiger on it, because that's what I have. I've never personally used Leopard so I don't know what I'm missing out. Thanks again!
If you're not going to be running Leopard, the video card upgrade isn't really worth it. Tiger's eye candy is tame enough for the Cube's stock cards. A good source of Cube information is http://www.cubeowner.com They have everything you could ever need that's related to the G4 Cube. PS: The Cube came out July of 2000 and left production July of 2001. Use this link to find out exactly when your's was made: http://www.appleserialnumberinfo.com/
I do love the cubes, I've got 2, a stock 450 with a modified pc graphics card, an ati 9700 I think, and one with a 1.2ghz g4 upgrade and a stock graphics card. I've lent the 1.2ghz one to my mum and she loves it, still looks gorgeous on her desk with the cinema display and usb speakers + isub.
You can modify a pc graphics card to work in the cube and they are a lot cheaper than buying a mac specific card, a good site for info is http://themacelite.wikidot.com/
You can modify a pc graphics card to work in the cube and they are a lot cheaper than buying a mac specific card, a good site for info is http://themacelite.wikidot.com/