Trophoto

I just got a 1.5 TB drive. I have a 250GB drive in my power mac g5 tower. My question is this. Would it be better to do a clean install of the OS on the 250GB drive and use the 1.5TB drive exclusively for my music library or do say 60 or 80GB partition on the 1.5TB drive for the OS and Applications and dedicate the remaining partition to the music library. FWIW I will not hit my head on even 1TB of storage space any time soon and I still would need to backup the 250GB drive before doing a clean install. From a sonic or secutiry point of view wil it make any difference. BTW I have 4.5 GB of RAM on the machine too. Thanks

Hi Stephan Glad you had a good result. What cooler did you use. I installed the Arctic Cool accelero X1 last night. It workks great but when I put the case back to gether the plastic shield will no longer fit. I left it out for the time being and all seems fine and quiet. Like you, the hard drive is pretty much all I hear now. Not sure what that plastic shield does. Some have said it helps with air flow from the other fans. But when I ran Temperature Monitor all the temps seemed fine. At any rate, coolers are the way to go to quiet graphics cars.<br /> <br /> Cheers<br /> <br /> Craig

Yes they look interesting indeed. Would love to hear reports on how they work. especially if an attached usb hard drive can be controled by ipod touch or iphone thorough the remote software. Craig

Has anybody seen or used the software at http://www.atvflash.com They claim that by using this product you can attach a usb hard drive to the Apple TV and acess it. Might be cool it if worked. Craig

Hi Stephan:<br /> <br /> I dont know of a passive card fo rthe mac but I just ordered this cooler. http://www.arctic-cooling.com/vga2.php?idx=91<br /> <br /> It was recomended by someone at the apple discussion forums. I should have it in a few days and will post my results.<br /> <br /> Cheers<br /> <br /> Craig

Hi Stephan:<br /> <br /> I spent some time yesterday cleaning out a very dusty G5 but it did not quiet things. Down. I took a chance and booted the machine with the cover off and confirmed virtually all (if not all) the noise was coming from the Nvidia 7800 card. After doing some further research I found that many people (not necessarily audio folks) are using third party "coolers" to quiet their cards. I am going to ry one of these there are cheap $20-40 and see what happens. I will post my results but it will be several days sine I have to order the cooler and install.<br /> <br /> Ill keep you and others interested posted.<br /> <br /> Cheers<br /> <br /> Craig

Hi Stephan: I have a G5 too and have been thinking it was loud. I noticed the other day that the fan always ran. After doing some research I pulled the graphics card and restarted. MUCH quieter. The bad news is that for some reason my grapchics card (Nvidia 7800GT) is causing this problem. I am investigating ways to remedy this short of buying a new card. However, if I make this my server, graphics will not be important and I could get away with a lower performance card that generates little heat thus, less potential for fan noise. Ill keep you posted.<br /> <br /> Good luck <br /> <br /> Craig

Thanks again Chris for all the excellent information. One additional question at the risk of getting off topic. I am assuming from your set up that your Mac Pro is in the listening room. I dont know if the Pros are any quieter than the G5s but mine get pretty loud. How do you deal with computer generated noise (ie fans, disk drives etc)? You mentioned that you limit internal drives to one. How big is that drive and is it only a system drive with all the music files on the NAS? Or does it not get too hot just playing back audio files?<br /> <br /> Keep up the great work<br /> <br /> Craig

Thanks for the clarification Chris. If I end up using my G5 as my server, will the lynx card be that much an improvement over usb or firewire out to the DAC? In other words would I be better off putting the extra money into the DAC as opposed to the lynx?<br /> <br /> Thanks again,<br /> <br /> Craig

Chris:<br /> <br /> Great post as always. I am learning so much from this site. You mention that the Mac Pro is the only mac that accepts PCIe cards. According to the specs on my Power Mac G5 dual core it has 2 4 lane and 1 8 lane PCI Express slots. Is there something in the configuration of the Lynx card that will only work with a Intel based Mac?<br /> <br /> Also, is there any benefit to the Lynx card that has the SRC option to it?<br /> <br /> Cheers to all and thanks for a great site.<br /> <br /> Craig