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What are others doing with their G5 Tower?

Lancer

Lancer

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jul 22, 2002
2,217
147
Australia
I've got a new iMac and just managed to upgrade the last of my software for web design (GoLive to Dreamweaver) so I don't have a need for my G5 tower.

I'm not sure if it's worth selling. A few years back I sold my G4 on eBay years after upgrading to the G5, the G4 sat in it's box under my desk for years.

The only thing I can think of doing with it is to import video of a VCR for editing, save to a USB3 HDD and then use the iMac for editing.

Just wondering what others are doing once they upgrade to something newer?
 
Well, I have a Dell Inspiron 1545 and I "upgraded" to a Powerbook G4 Hi-Res. The Dell was used by my brother but then I got an iMac so my Dell desktop was free to use and he uses that for gaming and internet use. I used the Dell laptop to try out Windows 8 and Ubuntu but now it just stays in a drawer unless my cousins come up and want to use it.
 
One thing is for sure...

It's not nearly as good a cheese grater as I was lead to believe :(
 
Daily Driver!

Sure it may be retired, but still it is a powerful Mac in terms of what version it runs!

My PowerMac G5 runs as my daily driver with 2* 1TB WD Caviar Blues, 2GB of RAM, and a Radeon 9600XT driving a HP 20" widescreen and an ADC Studio Display.

I do have Leopard on here using BDAqua's ML theme, and it runs all of the software from its generation beautifully.

In your case I can see why you upgrade, but people seem to think my G5 is less than capable of my job as a video editor. It seems once YouTube runs slow, the computer is useless and is not good for anything. It makes me sick!

Good to see you are trying to find a use for your G5, what a fantastic Mac!
 
I sold all my G5s and I won't certainly get one anymore. I've found them boring.
G4s and G3s FTW ;)
 
My g5ppc w/Adc 23"cinema display sits beside my 2012 Mac mini with TB display. Since the ADC Cinema Display cannot be used as a second monitor on the 2012 mini I found a program called synology that allows me to control both computers with the same keyboard/mouse. To get it to work I had to install synology KM version on the g5 PPC running 10.5.8 and the regular synology version on the mini.
 
Last edited:
jpcoelho said:
You can, with the Apple ADC->DVI adapter and the HDMI ->DVI adapter that came with your Mini... it will not be cheap though, if you do not already own the adapter!
Click to expand...

Is this new news? As recently as December people in the know on this forum went deep into apples technical department and got a "no" for "ADC" cinema to 2012 mini and maybe other late 2012 machines as well. The consensus then was 2011 and earlier would work with the adapter you mention but not 2012's.
 
jwjsr said:
Is this new news? As recently as December people in the know on this forum went deep into apples technical department and got a "no" for "ADC" cinema to 2012 mini and maybe other late 2012 machines as well. The consensus then was 2011 and earlier would work with the adapter you mention but not 2012's.
Click to expand...

Sorry for the misinformation, I was not aware of different behaviour between the 2011 and 2012 Mac Mini... my experience is with a 2011 version.
 
Thanks for all the replies.

I wasn't looking at taking the G5 apart but I might give it a good clean out now I have a new main computer. I was tossing up between finding a job for it or selling it on eBay.

I used to have a G4 which original came with a 400Mhz CPU, it eventually ended up with a 1.6Ghz, 2x 120Gb HDDs, SuperDrive, USB2 card and 1.5Gb of RAM. It's a shame the G5 is less upgradeable without turning it into a Hackintosh.
 
I brought my old dual 1.8 to work, and now it's used as a recording machine for voice over work. It has one task, and it does it just fine, so it will live out it's days doing that until it finally blows up for whatever reason.
 
I mainly use my G5 for storing my iTunes library and backups for all my iDevices. I also have several PowerPC game installed on it. Finally I use I for garage band, final cut, and adobe suite.
 
Mine is waiting in the wings until I get fed up with my imac G5. Heh, it will be my upgrade!

Yes, so sad.
 
I actually still use my Quad daily as my primary workstation. It had the unfortunate fate of being so powerful that it's still totally usable and fast 8 years later, beating my '08 MBP at many tasks, but Apple cut off PowerPC support in the OS, and thus developers started dropping it too. :(

Although there are some awesome exceptions, like the Rapidweaver folks who keep doggedly supporting those of us who build stuff on our PowerMacs. Much love to them.

Unless you need a brand new piece of software, it's completely functional. I throw a lot at it and even so it's rare that I've got all four cores running flat out.

That said, if you've got something newer and you don't have any emotional attachment to it or any need to run PowerPC software, you might as well just let it go to someone else who might have a good use for it. For the amount of electricity a G5 pulls, you're blowing money on power if you just use it as a media server or working on text documents something. Sell it and get an older Mac mini for that.
 
I agree using the G5 (or early MacPro) as a media server is a waste of power and the noisy fans make it almost useless for the task. But on top of that there is also the capacity of HDDs. I already have 10Tb (5x 2Tb) HDDs attached to my iMac through a USB Hub, There is no way to cram that into a G5 and pointless doing it via USB.

The main reason I was holding on to the G5 was for Adobe GoLive and my website but I've since made the switch to Dreamweaver which was a lot easier than I thought but still learning how to do things new that I've done for years with GoLive.

I was considering adding SSD but maybe that money would be better off going to another project?

As I said in the opening post the only thing I can think of using the G5 for is importing video from VHS on to a USB2/3 drive, then attaching that to my new iMac and use iMovie to work on it. Would SSD help this task on the G5.

My iMac has Fusion.
 
If I had the money I'd look at getting a Mini to replace the G5 but that kinda defeats the point of using what I have or selling it off to someone who can make good use of it.

What are early 2005 G5 towers with dual 2Ghz going for now?
 
Frost7 said:
It had the unfortunate fate of being so powerful that it's still totally usable and fast 8 years later...
Click to expand...

That was one of the reason Jagex pissed me off. When they required java 6, I had a machine that was as powerful as any windows machine you could purchase, but couldn't do runescape or even facebook.

Both my G5s get regular usage.
 
My Quad Powermac is more than enough to be my daily driver.

emails, web browsing, CAD work, Illustrator, Photoshop work, a little of garage band, a little of final cut/imovie, video edits and conversion, watching movies, itunes, chat over skype or skype call, facebook, word documents, spread sheets, almost anything that you can throw at it...

unfortunately no gaming here...
 
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