The best PowerPC CPU temperture?

[PrinterJelle]

Hello everyone,

I heard it is important to replace the thermal paste on the processor of an older computer. My PowerMac G5 is from 2005 and has a 2.3 G5 Dual Core processor. For normal tasks it is between 50 and 60 degrees. Many thanks in advance for your advice.

Many greetings,
Jelle

 

[B S Magnet]

The best temperature for your setup is, I tend to follow, the lowest temperature you can make for it. Some systems — PPC, Intel, AMD, or whatever — will run hotter than others. The G5s tend to run hotter overall, on average, than other PPC chipsets. It can vary dramatically from machine to machine.

The best advice I can offer is preventive in nature:

The first thing I do is check inside the system/case and clean out any dust and grime. Then I move the device somewhere it’ll receive ample fresh, room-temperature air. Then, more intensively, I clean away the original CPU thermal paste/pads and replace these with modern paste/pads.

Doing these has, in some cases, brought down idling CPU temps on my systems by 3–5°C, and with some of the outliers, temps have dropped by over 15°C (as with what happened with a unibody MBP I cleaned out and re-pasted).

Your 50–60°C for an idling dual-core G5 sounds reasonably good. My DP G5 2.0 running as a file server (with multiple 3.5" HDDs in front of the CPU intake fans, pre-heating intake air) idles at around 59–61°C and spikes at about 68–70°C when processing a lot of data.

 

[amagichnich]

Hello everyone,

I heard it is important to replace the thermal paste on the processor of an older computer. My PowerMac G5 is from 2005 and has a 2.3 G5 Dual Core processor. For normal tasks it is between 50 and 60 degrees. Many thanks in advance for your advice.

Many greetings,
Jelle

I try to keep my G4s (with G4 fan control) at between 45 to 55°C - some keep very cool (14" iBook 1.33 for example at 45 to 50°C with normal use and room temperature), some run quite hot (PB 15" 1.67 at 55 to 60°C and the 12" 1.5 even a bit more). Others I cannot measure and have to rely on Apples preconfigured thermal profiles, namely the Mac Mini, eMac and TiBook. But at least their harddrives are usually between 35 and 50°C, depending mostly on the room temperature.

In general I think we can agree on "keep temps as low as possible as well the fan noise at a reasonable level"

 

[eyoungren]

My G3 and G4 operate around 120º to 140º when the fans kick on to bring it back down.

My G5s tend to operate in the 130º to 150º range, although I've seen spikes to 175º before. Both my Quad and my 2.3 DC tend to idle around 118º.

All the temps mentioned above seem to be normal.

 

[PrinterJelle]

Thank you very much for all the valuable experiences! Sometimes my Power Mac touches almost 80 degrees. But this is only with very heavy calculations.

 

[Amethyst1]

My 12" PowerBook performed an emergency shutdown when the CPU hit 75°C. Time for a clean-out and new thermal paste.

 

[eyoungren]

My 12" PowerBook performed an emergency shutdown when the CPU hit 75°C. Time for a clean-out and new thermal paste.

I had that happen, once…twice…uhhhh no less than three times.

When you go to repaste, remember to put the heatsink back on. I swapped out displays and left that out a few years back with my wife's old 12" PB.

The 12" PB can go for about 2-3 minutes without the heatsink.

Oh, and remember where the screws go. A hacksaw got involved at one point with me.

 

[Raging Dufus]

A hacksaw got involved at one point with me.

LOL

I remember thinking about how an Apple engineer that designed my once-$2,500 PowerBook would cringe at the thought of some Bubba going at it with a Leatherman...while I did just that

 

[B S Magnet]

LOL

I remember thinking about how an Apple engineer that designed my once-$2,500 PowerBook would cringe at the thought of some Bubba going at it with a Leatherman...while I did just that

Or Red Greening it with a bunch of duct tape.

 

[Amethyst1]

When you go to repaste, remember to put the heatsink back on. I swapped out displays and left that out a few years back with my wife's old 12" PB.

I'm afraid I need to replace that "when" with a very big "if I can summon the courage"

 

[eyoungren]

I'm afraid I need to replace that "when" with a very big "if I can summon the courage"

Totally get that.

I broke a key and ripped out the wiring from the sleep light when working on it. Both parts got replaced but it meant three times I opened the damn thing. I hate working in them.

 

[z970]

12" PowerBooks -
"I hate working in them."

Quote of the month.

 

[bobesch]

12" PowerBooks -
"I hate working in them."
Quote of the month.

 

[davisdelo]

My DC G5 2.3 runs about 55-65º under normal usage and gets up to about 70º with peaks at 74º under very heavy loads of video encoding or benchmarking. I know new thermal paste could improve that a bit, but until it gets to peaking at 79º or so I'm going to leave it as-is. For comparison, my Early 2009 iMac C2D 2.93 runs about 5-7º hotter than my G5 under similar conditions (perhaps it's due for new paste as well).