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The 4K Dell OptiMac - 9020 MT - Core i7-4790 - Radeon RX 570 - LG 4K IPS Monitor

Which PCIe card do you recommend for the NVME drives?
Will you be using your 9020's x16 slot or the x4 slot for an NVMe drive ? The x16 slot gives you slightly faster read/write speeds. It also opens up more choices for which adapter will fit in that slot.

Most all of them work equally well. Find one with the best price and build quality. I had previously made one recommendation but now it's no longer produced. https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/inateck-m-2-pcie-ssd-adapter-for-nvme-ssds.302521/

Here's one you could try in your G5 Mac case. I've not tested it but if you have enough airflow it should keep the drive cool enough. Doesn't come with any heatsink.


If you want a heatsink it costs about 4 dollars extra.
 
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@craighazan what do you have to add about cooling in the G5 case. Any experience you can share ?
 
I saw @Toyo72 9020/G5 build, vey nice!. I put a Dell 7010 inside a G5 and was really happy, so happy that I'm going to put a 7040 inside over the next couple of weeks. I didn't cut the rear of my G5, so I mounted two fans to the rear and two at the front. I think the hottest part was where the graphics card sits under the top shelf, so I mounted another fan at top keep that cool. I still have that Inateck m.2 adapter, shame it's not available anymore, that was a great find and works brilliantly.

 
Not sure which slot I'd use, just mulling over ideas. My boot drive is SSD of course, I've had the user account and data on a spinning drive for ages (since maybe Snow Leopard!) which makes backups, changing to new system hardware, testing new versions of macOS etc much easier. I just realized when putting this one together that I hadn't swapped in a 4TB drive (3 yrs old) for the 2TB drive (7 years old, yikes!). Was using the 4TB drive for clone backup of that data drive. I thought for some reason that I had replaced the data drive more recently. So, need to do that, and looking at temps that one can run in the upper 40s if I'm doing data intensive tasks as it is in the upper section of the case with no active fan. I thought an SSD might be better in that position, but then I thought about NVME in a PCIe slot might even be better, of course at a higher price. The CPU, by the way, runs nice and cool, low to mid 30s all the time.
 
I still have that Inateck m.2 adapter, shame it's not available anymore
If I knew those were going extinct I would have bought a case load of them. Really a great and valuable purchase.
 
I replaced the 2TB HDD data drive with a 2TB SSD. Runs much cooler, temps peak around 50-51 (with no fan on the drives) during write-intensive activity but then it cools down very quickly into the mid-30s. And of course the computer is faster and quieter. This 9020 really is a great machine.
 
This 9020 really is a great machine.
I agree. With a 4790 and SSD boot drive I can't tell much difference between one and a new 9th or 10th gen Intel system. You can get a lot more cores (6-10) but they don't get used that much by the average PC user.
 
Agreed!, I’m a big fan.
Speaking of Big Fans, here's the Tt Pure 20 200mm ARGB

I wonder if you could make these all Saffron Yellow ?
The crazy high prices of ($70+) makes me not that excited
about an RGB focused build.

1631382897052.png


It looks like you can make them all one color but I think the software is Windows only.

1631383389021.png
 
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Here's a fan update with my G5 case @trs96 :
I connected the Noctua NF-R8 redux instead of my beQuiet rear case fan, just to see if it would operate, using the same 5>4 adapter cable for connecting to the Dell board that is used for the beQuiet fan. BIOS spit out the "rear case fan failure" error and held up boot. I then installed a PWM fan splitter cable https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01EF9OI0O/?tag=tonymacx86com-20 and connected both the beQuiet and the Noctua and it booted. I assume that the fan speed signal is coming from the beQuiet, so my fan speed reported in Macs Fan Control is that 120mm fan and I'll have no idea the speed of the Noctua. The Noctua doesn't seem to start up fast enough for the BIOS check.
 
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