Power Macintosh G5/2.7 DP (PCI-X) (Early 2005).Power Macintosh G5/2.5 DP (PCI-X) (June 2004).Apple only used this technology when it was needed, and only three SKUs came with a radiator: Note that not all G5s were liquid cooled after it was introduced. The G5 split its I/O between the front and back panel, with a USB and FireWire port joining a headphone jack on the front of the tower and everything else out the back.

The G5 was twice as quiet as the “Wind Tunnel” Mirror Drive Doors G4 it replaced. The enclosure was divided into four separate thermal zones, and those fans did their job. By putting the fans right precisely where they’re needed and independently controlling them all, we can make it a lot quieter. “You might think, ‘Oh my God! Nine fans means its going to be nine times louder!’ The cooling system was far more complex than a bunch of little holes, though. Those openings were key to keeping air moving through the case. With the capacity for dual processors, 8 GB of RAM and multiple PCI cards, the system could generate massive amounts of heat. The new case would be dubbed the “Cheese Grater” due to the large number of holes in the front and back. This gave users faster access to their files and media, making all of OS X feel smoother. On the board, Apple supported PCI-X for its slots, and used SATA for connecting spinning hard drives and the SuperDrive. The original G5 used 400 MHz RAM, which sported twice the bandwidth of the memory in the outgoing G4.

In practice, these numbers meant that the Power Mac G5 ran circles around the G4, but Apple took the opportunity to improve more than just CPU performance. The G5 processor was designed was to be put into multi-processor machines, which Apple sold at the upper end of its product range. Clocked up at 2 GHz, it was the fastest 64-bit processor ever shipped, and with a 1 GHz front-side bus and support for up to 8 GB of memory out of the box, it blew away the system built around the G4. Created in partnership with IBM, it was the first 64-bit processor to be put in a personal computer. It was bigger, more expandable and faster.Īs his “One More Thing” at WWDC 2003, Jobs spoke about the chip, the system, then the product, building a story of power and capability unrivaled in the PC world.Īt the heart of this new Mac was the PowerPC G5 processor. In every way, the Power Mac G5 was more than the G4 it replaced.

Mac pro in power mac g5 case