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Watercooling G3/G4 Powermac

V

VAmin

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 1, 2004
60
0
Does anyone here have experience watercooling the G3/G4 powermacs? I'm thinking of picking one up off ebay to play with (and by play I mean overclock). However, I've been having trouble finding water blocks designed for mac cpus. Since they probably don't exist, does anyone know of one designed for PC socket that might work?
 
I applaud your tinkering. :)

I would suggest one of the Powermacs with the 7450. Mine overclocked very well at 20%... with water cooling who knows what you could get!

My guess is you'll have to make one. Make sure you tell us what happens.
 
As long as you can secure the heat exchanger to the chip with Thermal paste filling in the gaps, it should work.

You could even use a rubber band to "piggyback" the unit onto the CPU card, though with more time and thought no doubt a better solution could be obtained.

Jordan
 
I'm no chip expert, but seeing as how the G3 runs cool enough as it is, I doubt you'd need a water-cooler for it :confused: Maybe if you were over-clocking it, but is that even possible? (if it is, let me know!)
 
redeye_be said:
it's not even that hard: google
;)
Click to expand...

No, it is not very hard at all. However, the difficulty and expense of WATERCOOLING definitely is outweighed by the overclockability of these chips. I am very happy with someone taking the initiative to tinker with their mac, but its really not worth the trouble. Depending on your model, you will be lucky to get a 100mhz over clock, regardless of the cooling method.

G3's are passively cooled, and adding a decent heatsink w/ fan will give you some overclockability. Nothing outstanding, mind you. But please use your head, a decent watercooling setup is going to set you back 100$ +, and you could get a G4 upgrade chip for that price, which would wipe the floor with your overclocked G3 no matter how you look at it.
 
Dont go with watercooling...

A friend had me and another friend build him a water cooling setup... We tested it time and time over again, it worked perfect, we even put a torch to the custom aluminum water block and the temperature barely rose... So then it was time to install it into the custom case, everything was setup just needed to plug the hoses in, one hose somehow didnt get plugged in all the way and due to the pressure it sprayed water everywhere... What we ended up with was better than you can buy water-cooling system, and a fried processor.

The water cooling system did not cost much at all either, about $50 if I had to estimate. The radiator we made custom from cooper pipes, leak tested them and all....

Just my opinion. The G3s dont even have a cpu fan.
 
Hey guys- thanks for the repies. An update: got a B & W mac running at *edit* 400 mhz off ebay. Don't know when it will be coming in, but I've already started to think about the parts to the cooler. The only thing I've decided on for sure is an Eheim 1048 pump.

As to whether it's worth it or not, I'm a tinkerer at heart and I enjoy doing this. It's also about gaining experience, since I've never set up a watercooling system before, and I might as well do it on an older peice of hardware.

And G3 chips are very overclockable in my experince. I'm typing this on a blueberry iMac that's been pushed from 400mhz to 500mhz with passive cooling alone. I'm pretty sure I could get something like a 50% overclock with watercooling.
 
VAmin said:
Hey guys- thanks for the repies. An update: got a B & W mac running at *edit* 400 mhz off ebay. Don't know when it will be coming in, but I've already started to think about the parts to the cooler. The only thing I've decided on for sure is an Eheim 1048 pump.

As to whether it's worth it or not, I'm a tinkerer at heart and I enjoy doing this. It's also about gaining experience, since I've never set up a watercooling system before, and I might as well do it on an older peice of hardware.

And G3 chips are very overclockable in my experince. I'm typing this on a blueberry iMac that's been pushed from 400mhz to 500mhz with passive cooling alone. I'm pretty sure I could get something like a 50% overclock with watercooling.
Click to expand...

Good luck to ya, but if ya think your gonna get 600mhz out of a 400mhz G3, I think your kinda dreamin. Watercooling just does not make that much difference. I know from experience. But, good luck to ya!
 
BillHarrison said:
Good luck to ya, but if ya think your gonna get 600mhz out of a 400mhz G3, I think your kinda dreamin. Watercooling just does not make that much difference. I know from experience. But, good luck to ya!
Click to expand...

Now if you could get a hold of some liquid nitrogen..... :rolleyes:

I've got a 450Mhz B&W tower and I've thought of overclocking it, but I've just never gotten around to getting a hold of some jumpers, or messing with the stock jumper block. I would think it could go to 500 or 550 with stock cooling without any problems. 600 even maybe? Anyone whose done this, stock cooling or adding a CPU fan?
 
AppleAce said:
Now if you could get a hold of some liquid nitrogen..... :rolleyes:

I've got a 450Mhz B&W tower and I've thought of overclocking it, but I've just never gotten around to getting a hold of some jumpers, or messing with the stock jumper block. I would think it could go to 500 or 550 with stock cooling without any problems. 600 even maybe? Anyone whose done this, stock cooling or adding a CPU fan?
Click to expand...

Got an old spare HD lying around? Do like I did and use the jumpers from that, rip off that Warranty sticker on your G3's mobo WITH GLEE and take off the entire jumper block. Then just use the jumpers from the spare HD to your heart's content.

I overclocked my Yikes G4 from 400MHz to 450 that way with no problems. Maybe I'll try for 500 one of these days since I don't use it as my primary computer anymore.
 
Hey guys- an update. Went on spring break, and when I got back, my B&W was waiting. Watercooling kit is coming in Friday, as is a new power supply. I've often found that on PCs, a cheap power supply can limit the overclock, so I thought it might be good to get a new one. Not that Apple necessarily uses cheap power supplys, but I think that there have probably been imporovements since the G3 era in terms of how clean the power is. Plus, the new power suply is 300W as opposed to 230W.

One thing (or two, actually): I need a good utility for OSX that will tell me real time what my FSB and PCI bus are running at. Also, has anyone seen jumper settings to enable PC133 floating around online? Low end mac doesn't list one, but I get the feeling that one exists because none of the configurations listed there use the 11th jumper. Anyways, if I can find a good utility I'll try to find it myself.


Thanks
-Victor
 
dont mix metals, make your water clean but anti freeze and chlorine in it, run the system for 24 hours outside the system to check for leaks.

i wouldent bother with it for a G3.

7455's are the best overclockers period

i just stuck a thermalright slk800 on it with a giant ass fan and modding the case for it to fit i got 550MHz stable with a bump on vcore from a 400MHz cpu
 
Hector said:
dont mix metals, make your water clean but anti freeze and chlorine in it, run the system for 24 hours outside the system to check for leaks.

i wouldent bother with it for a G3.

7455's are the best overclockers period
Click to expand...

Thanks for the advice, I'll do that. I know it's not really going to scream, just wanted to get some experience. Which powermacs came with the 7455?
 
MDD G4's a dual 1.25GHz G4 normaly hit's 1.5GHz maybe 1.58 on stock cooling,
 
Hector said:
MDD G4's a dual 1.25GHz G4 normaly hit's 1.5GHz maybe 1.58 on stock cooling,
Click to expand...
That sounds totally awesome- I just wish they weren't so expensive.
 
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