G4 Haswell Quicksilver

[Mörkö]

EVGA GTX 660Ti was too noisy so I changed it to the Gigabyte GTX 760 OC model. Something needs still to be done to improve the ventilation of the housing.

 

[Mörkö]

Updated Z87MX-D3H motherboard bios from F3 to F6 and Mavericks to 10.9.2.
Had some freezing earlier but now under short test period everything has worked fine.

 

[Mörkö]

Bios update from F3 to F6 didn't helped at all.
I raised DRAM voltage from 1.5 to 1.55 and so far everything has worked fine.
Uptime 22 hours and no freezing.

 

[Big-L]

Great work! I really love the look of the Quicksilver housing, I prefer it over the other G4 Powermac Models. I had one several years ago (when OS 10.4 was still some kind of competitive ;-) - I had installed Front Row together with RemoteBuddy and an IR-Receiver, utilizing the Apple Remote and had built in some quiet fans so I could use it as a media center - that was really great at that time. And then came Apple TV and I sold the Quicksilver on eBay...
Now someone gave me one with a defective motherboard and missing HDD ... I stumbled over this page and then it was clear, I would use it to build a CustoMac

You did a really good job with a very clean setup inside, I think even Steve would be happy

Regarding the CPU temp: My i7 Mac Mini is at 76°C while I am just writing these lines, but fan is at 1800 rpm, so not to be heard. It only spins up to 4000 rpm for a while if I do something with video. So, I think there's no need to worry.

When I look at your PSU, it must have the fan on the backside ... I am facing the same situation with mine. So you made some holes in the metal housing I assume ...

Keep up the good work!
Lilly

 

[Mörkö]

Thanks Big-L

And yes, PSU have fan on the backside but I didn't made any holes to metal housing because it works as exhaust fan.
There is about 10mm space between backside of PSU and metal housing.

 

[Big-L]

Had a closer look to it yesterday and I saw that gap behind the PSU. Wonder if that gives enough ventilation. Temp of my CPU is at 35*C while testing my setup outside the housing, admittedly without doing much. Will surely go up when everything is cramped together in the box, with the CPU sitting directly opposite the PSU. I would really prefer to have that fan on the front...

 

[Mörkö]

I messed something with this machine and freezing came back

Updated bios to latest version (F7), memory profile is set to Profile1 and everything seems to work perfect and so far no freezing.

Memory sticks are not on Gigabyte's list of supported memory (4 x 4GB) 2 x F3-12800CL9D-8GBXL (http://www.gskill.com/en/product/f3-12800cl9d-8gbxl).

 

[Mörkö]

Temp of my CPU is at 35*C while testing my setup outside the housing, admittedly without doing much. Will surely go up when everything is cramped together in the box

After 6 hours usage, CPU speed continuously 3.5GHz because of EyeTV running and Safari (CPU idle 97%), temp of my CPU is at 38°C.

With Geekbench CPU Stress Test (CPU idle 5%) temps varies between 69-81°C. I never have that much load on CPU with normal usage.

 

[Mörkö]

Not a single freeze after bios update to F7

 

[Mörkö]

After over half year use without problems, suddenly restarts (restart loop) and freezing started about three months ago.
I had to change my G.SKILL Ripjaws (4 x 4GB) to Corsair (2 x 8GB) memory sticks and now everything is working nice again.
These Ripjaws sticks works fine with GA-Z77X-UP5TH motherboard