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I am selling my Quad-Core Computer in G5 enclosure.

 

Enclosure:

The enclosure was bought new from allmac.com 2 years ago. After two years of use its condition is 9 of 10. There are only 2 minor scratches and one tiny dent (see photos). They are barely seen but I am still advising of their presence. The enclosure was modified to be able to accommodate a mAtx motherboard.

 

Components:

- Intel Quad-Core Xeon X3220@2.4GHz CPU (Server equivalent to a desktop Core 2 Quad Q6600)

- Gigabyte G33m-ds2r mAtx Motherboard

- 4x1GB A-Data Vitesta Extreme Edition 4-4-4-12 DDR2 800MHz RAM

- 1 TB Samsung Spinpoint F1 HDD

- Asus nVidia GTS 250 1GB Dark Knight VGA

- Pioneer DVD-RW optical drive

- Corsair VX 450 Watt PSU

- Swiftech Apex Ultra Plus water cooling kit (Google for review)

- Conceptronic Bluetooth dongle

 

System:

I have built a cooling system around a Swiftech Apex Ultra Plus water-cooling kit (http://www.swiftnets.com/products/H20-220-APEX-plus.asp). MCW60 Universal GPU water block was changed for a full cover EK water block for nVidia GTS 250, as I found that memory chips were getting pretty hot with MCW60 and it did not look very nice. The MCP655 pump’s original top was changed for EK D5 X-Top Rev. 2 top for better performance, decreased vibrations and noise, reduced pump size. The pump is mounted on top of a custom foam pad to eliminate noise and vibrations. The loop cools CPU, GPU and Chipset. Radiator is cooled by 4 silent 12cm Nexus fans. A Zalman Fanmate fixed with Velcro strip near the DVD drive bay can adjust their speed. There are 3 more Nexus fans in the enclosure – 2x92mm in the back and one 8cm in the HDD bay. As a result the computer runs cool and is very quiet.

 

Corsair 450 Watt PSU is mounted inside of the original G5 power supply enclosure. DVD and HDD are mounted with original Apple’s heat resistant screws.

All front ports are working (Sound, USB, Firewire 400). Button and LED all work.

Unlike most people, I did not cut the back of the enclosure in order to be able to access motherboard’s IO ports. The idea was to preserve the original design. StickMac kindly provided a dead G5 logic board, which was cut to get original IO ports. Unfortunately I did not have time to finish the mod, so it was fitted without making adaptors to the motherboard IO. The board is there, you only need to make adaptors if you want to have working IO ports (Soldering required. Just follow Pirloui´s guide - http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...p;#entry977693). Instead I bought a Netgear GA311 Gigabit network adapter and a 4 Port USB 2.0 Adapter.

 

OS X performance:

Latest OS X Snow Leopard works great on that computer.

Sound (front I/O), Sleep, Automatic Sleep, Bluetooth, Speedstep, Timemachine, OpenGL, QE, CI, resolution change all work. USB is set as Built-In in DSDT, so there is no warning of USB drives removal and I can use Wireless Mighty Mouse straight away. There is an internal USB port behind DVD drive made initially to hold Bluetooth dongle, but I do not use it as I found that Bluetooth signal is getting very weak while the dongle is located inside.

I still prefer wired network to wireless, as all the cabling is routed inside the walls in my apartment. Netgear GA311 works out of the box. You do not need any to apply any fixes to get Bonjour working (unlike with the vast majority of onboard NICs. I cannot live without Bonjour, as I own an Apple TV that relies on Bonjour for Sync and Stream).

Boot loader and necessary kexts are located on a hidden EFI partition. There is a restore partition with OS X Install Image you can boot from in case something goes wrong or you just want to reinstall the OS. Dual-Boot is effortless as long as Windows is installed on a different HDD.

 

Despite CPU and VGA are not the fastest available on the market, the system is still a very decent performer.

 

Geekbench scores:

 

http://browse.geekbench.ca/user/aed0101/profile

 

7151 – CPU runs @ 3.0GHz. Stock Voltage, 333MHz FSB (2.0GHz is displayed due to Speedstep).

5772 – CPU runs @ 2.4GHz. Stock Voltage, Stock FSB (1.6GHz is displayed due to Speedstep).

 

Included: Computer itself, Wireless Mighty Mouse, Buffalo 54MBps PCI wifi adaptor (In case you prefer Wifi to wired. Works OOB), Xilence PSU tester (required to fill the loop with coolant), MCW60 Universal GPU Water block, MCP655 Pump’s original top, bottle of Hydrx coolant (It is green. I recommend Feser instead – I use Feser Black right now), special adaptor used to fill the loop, Swiftech Apex Ultra Plus manual and OS X Snow Leopard DVD.

 

Price:

- 720€ - Local pickup in Barcelona, Spain.

- 750€ - Posted within Spain insured.

- 800€ - Posted within EU insured.

 

Notice: If I’ll have to post the computer, it will arrive with an empty water-cooling loop. You’ll have to fill it on arrival.

 

Photos:

 

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More Photos:

 

http://s1026.photobucket.com/albums/y329/aed010101/G5%20Mod/

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