Mac G5 problem? Anyone had this experience.

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dfrbrowne

New Member
Hi,

I have been running a G5 Dual 2.3 GHz for a few years now with no problems. I very, very rarely shut it down, only when on vacation really. Otherwise when the days work finished I put it into sleep mode.

I came home after a few hours out the other night and the noise from my mac was scary, it seemed like the fans had gone mad and were racing like a jet engine! I could not bring the mac out of sleep and had to hold in button for a few secs to reboot. Its been fine since but I am worried about a potential future problem and if I need to be aware of anything? Anyone come across this before?
Thanks
 
Happened to my G5 quite alot but only in the 6 months or so and I've had it around 5 years too. But to be fair it works fine, might be just getting alittle hot in its old age!
 
Funnily enough I was told off the other day for putting my work mac on sleep, because of the same problem. Allegedly it was making this noise on the Monday, so I'm guessing it was performing a little show over the weekend. I personally never really saw any real problems with putting the mac into sleep, but I now have to wait ages when I startup each day, just to keep my employers happy. I have experienced problems where the logout function times out, and requires a power button press, although it is running 10.5.5, which may be the cause of some issues.

My MBP is always on sleep at home and I use insomniaX frequently, no such problems there though.
 
Sorry to be a killjoy guys but it's best to shutdown. There's certain things that load into the mac system on startup. Font's etc and it's good for the environment to shutdown! I suppose the mac could also be susceptible to a virus if left on.

Regards


Greg
 
As I understand it, shutting down the mac interrupts the regular system maintenance that needs to happen in the early hours of each day, which is why apps such as IceClean are out there to help keep the mac ticking over.
My mac sometimes does this fan-thing, but just make sure you have regular backup routine in place and just restart it.
 
There is no need to shut down, all the maintenance things the mac needs to do are done automatically.

You can put it to sleep if you want, or set it to auto sleep at a set time.

The loud fans on a G5... there are a couple of reasons for this one that is easily fixable, one that is less so.

There is a SMU reset button on the motherboard:

How to reset the SMU on a Power Mac G5 (Late 2004) or Power Mac G5 (Late 2005)

May work

The other more permanent issue is with the fluid cooled twin processor G5's, sometimes the o ring in the cooling system is faulty and the coolant leaks so one or both sets of chips overheat. You may see a little red light show up inside the machine. if you look closely you'll see it says overheat!

The only solution is to get it repaired, sometimes getting new machine may be cheaper.
 
I have had this problem, and usually after a system update, there are a few system updates that I think play with the fan system. The cure I have found seems to be check for more system updates, if any update..

I have found this cures it for me whenever it happens here.

Neil
 
I second the not shutting down method. OS X runs a daily, monthly and weekly series of scripts at stupid o'clock. My old iBook G4 was probably shut down 5, maybe 6 times in 4 years before I retired it.

The fan issue sounds like a firmware update. Apple like to throw in little 'tweaks' like this. You can try and download Cocktail, run your maintenence scripts from there and clean up any unnecessary files. It might be worth checking your activity monitor to see if any programs are running in the background.
 
Have a look inside it, it may just need a good vacuuming out. Mine did this for a while and when I opened it up it was just caked in dust and fluff. Once carefully cleaned out, it's been fine since. I don't turn mine off either, I sleep it.
 
Agree with the posters above, you don't need to shut down your computer, alot more damage can be done to your computer with components warming up and cooling down... I don't think they really use that much power either. The only time I've also had this very loud fan noise was on a firmware update also, I would just do regular checks to make sure there isn't too much dust build up on the inside of vents and maybe download one of those apps that tell you the running temperature of your processors.

You haven't heard fan noise until you've owned a G4 Mirrordoor.. it wasn't appropriately nicknamed the wind tunnel for nothing!

Warren
 
GibbW said:
Agree with the posters above, you don't need to shut down your computer, alot more damage can be done to your computer with components warming up and cooling down... I don't think they really use that much power either. The only time I've also had this very loud fan noise was on a firmware update also, I would just do regular checks to make sure there isn't too much dust build up on the inside of vents and maybe download one of those apps that tell you the running temperature of your processors.

You haven't heard fan noise until you've owned a G4 Mirrordoor.. it wasn't appropriately nicknamed the wind tunnel for nothing!

Warren
Click to expand...

Aye no word of a lie there, I once had to sit in the middle of a row of three, ear defenders in the studio time.
 
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