Why Is My Power Mac G5 So Hot? Really. It Is HOT!

The screaming fast dual 2.5 ghz PowerMac G5 may have been the most anxiously awaited Mac ever in this household. Well, there was the 17” PowerBook. I thought the PowerBook was hot enough on the bottom to fry thighs. Not chicken. Mine. How hot is the new G5?

This new PowerMac G5 is one hot machine. And it runs fast, too. It’s remarkable that such a cool looking device runs as hot as it does. Thank IBM for those new 90nm PowerPC chips. Whew.

What’s different about this PowerMac G5 is that the chips are cooled by a liquid cooling system; a radiator with coolant. Just like your car. Chips are so hot these days (AMD, Intel, IBM) that new cooling methods had to be introduced.

The first PowerMac G5s had all kinds of fans and cooling zones inside. Frankly, from the outside the dual 2.0 ghz machine was really cool to the touch. Inside, well, there didn’t appear to be too much heat unless your hand got near those G5 chips.

The dual 2.5 ghz machine is faster and hotter. Leave it to Apple to introduce something so cool that’s so hot.

How hot is it? Hotter than Cameron Diaz dancing in Mask. Hotter than a shuttle re-entry. No, that’s wrong. That’s cookin’.

I wanted to know how hot these new Macs are so I did a search for temperature software. Guess what? There’s a way to check the inside temperature of the “thermal zones” in the new generation of PowerMacs and PowerBooks.

Using VersionTracker, I found Temperature Monitor. Duh. Once installed, Temperature Monitor (TM from here on out; I want to avoid carpal tunnel syndrome, CTS, for as long as possible) gives you a read out of your PowerMac’s thermal heat zones.

On the dual 2.5 ghz PowerMac G5 with 4 gigs RAM, TM lists these temperatures:

Interestingly, Temperature Monitor shows different temperatures and different readings for the dual 1.8 ghz PowerMac and the dual 2.0 ghz PowerMac. Both machines have similar RAM, similar hard drives, and report similar temperatures:

In some respects, the dual 2.5 ghz PowerMac G5 is actually COOLER than the dual 1.8 or the dual 2.0 PowerMacs.

That Memory Controller Heatsink is hot on the dual 2.5 ghz PowerMac. Very hot.

All machines are running in the air conditioned room with good ventilation, steady temperature.

Do the temperatures change?

Yes.

During processor intensive actions (Photoshop, Final Cut Pro), the fans come on, rev up and stay running for awhile. The dual 1.8 ghz PowerMac is a server and the fans seldom come on.

In summary, is the new 2.5 ghz PowerMac G5 a hot machine? Yes. Both in speed and temperature.

Your mileage may vary. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of Temperature Monitor but the temps change a bit from time to time (cooler at night, warmer under heavy use, actually HOT when rendering in Final Cut Pro). The slower PowerMac temperatures vary less, the dual 2.5 varies the most.

Have you tried Temperature Monitor? I can get temperature readings from the new PowerMacs and the PowerBook. What I’d really like to know is, “what are normal PowerMc G5 temperatures?” What should they be. Yes, I’m sure that depends on a variety of factors; room, air conditioning, usage, etc. Still, it would be good to compare.

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