Rubbered G5
I was looking over the ArsTechnica review of the dually 2.5GHz G5, and it's pretty close to spot-on against my experience with playing with one of them for a bit. The Ars review is solid and worth a read, although I wish they'd harp even sharper on some of the limitations... like the two drive limit and the wimpy graphics card. Plus you can see their new layout, which doesn't have black-on-white type... yay!
Again, remarkably little has changed in these machines from when I've harped on it in The Squandered G5 and Gimpy Towers, and they aren't going to change the poor sales problem. This dog don't hunt, but it will go out to the forest and kinda stare at the trees. Some people like dogs like that.
When you can buy a shuttle PC that is 1/3 the size and comes with bays for four SATA hard drives something just isn't right. There are a few other things I'd throw in that weren't mentioned:
- The firewire performance on the G5 is problematic and abysmal and hasn't been fixed with these revisions. It isn't something that often gets benchmarked, but if you look around at various sites you can see allusions to it, but the Ars review doesn't do any benchmarks in that vein. Basically, a powerbook outperforms the G5 handily when it comes to firewire. Unacceptable.
This is just an absolutely broken area for the G5. There aren't any real hardware RAID-5 cards for the mac anymore (yes, there are boards, but these basically just have the software in the firmware and are about as fast as software RAID), and while you can go and get a Firewire PCI card that will have the ports on separate channels, it still won't have the bandwidth that SATA will. But, hmm, Apple did build in a nice FiberChannel port on the G5, and they do sell that nice Xraid, that starts at ~$5k. So you're spending $5k to solve what would be a sub-$1k problem on other platforms. Broken.
- It's water-cooled, but there are fans, and they are noticeable... especially the CPU fans when they kick on. And when they kick on, such as when the water-cooling needs a kick to get going or when it wakes from sleep, the G5 goes from a relatively-quiet machine to sharply noisy real fast, and the key word is sharp. In terms of decibels it probably isn't that loud, but the specific noise is extremely piercing.
If you use the machine for long enough, you'll probably get used to it and when they're going to kick on and freak you out. Any pets won't, and will wig out. A coworker, or significant other in the same room will probably be startled.
That damnable noise. I notice it about computers now, primarily because it's all Apple's marketing talked about for awhile, and yes, I used a Quicksilver nightmare for awhile. Those things were just horrid in terms of noise, although there are some x86 tower cases that are assuredly worse. But the ones I've used that were really worse were monstrosities that were as tall as my desk with drive bays to spare. But I've also used x86 PCs that were quieter than any mac model.
Noise is basically vibrations. You dampen the vibrations, you kill the noise. And this isn't that hard to do; there are easy, simplistic things Apple could do with the G5 that are dirt cheap and would take it that one step further... like rubberized mounts.
Optical drives are especially prone to vibration and are noisy as hell. Rubber-mount them (these are often rubber grommets) and you kill the vibration which kills the noise. The G5 has neato drive mounts, as you can see in the review above, and the simple addition of some rubber would take it to the next level.
Because the case is metal, when the fans blare or any noise does emit from the drives and such, it basically bounces around and comes right out. Simple... add a tiny layer of noise dampening material to the inside of the case (this stuff is dirt cheap, the equivalent of foam) and you've killed the noise that much further.
And before you say "Yes, but it's already expensive...", the stuff I'm talking about, in volume, costs about the same amount as it costs to have those plastic Apple logos embedded into the G5 processor shield.
I.E., basically zero at the end of the day, but they make all the difference. It's the stuff you can get in a ton of PC cases that care about noise, so I'd expect them now from any computer that claims to care about noise.
Posted by drunkenbatmanOctober 07, 2004, at 12:33 PM
Comments (8)
Posted by: Mindflayer at October 7, 2004 04:33 PM
I use silicon grommets in my computers - and used them to great effect in my dual G4-500. My LanBoy case - which is a thin Al case, and prone to noise - is now very quiet.
Posted by: craig at October 7, 2004 05:21 PM
Not to be rude Aco, but with regard to adding to the cost, did you read the post?
"the stuff I'm talking about, in volume, costs about the same amount as it costs to have those plastic Apple logos embedded into the G5 processor shield. I.E., basically zero at the end of the day but they make all the difference."
Posted by: Aco at October 7, 2004 10:42 PM
Craig those are materials costs not manufacturing and putting them together. For analogy paint is cheap but having someone do a mural is expensive
Posted by: Elissa at October 9, 2004 03:33 AM
If 10 cents of rubber would make as much difference as you say it would, don't you think Apple would have done it? I am sure they thought of this...
Posted by: losof at October 9, 2004 12:57 PM
Sometimes it's the obvious you don't see, and, after all, Apple != perfect - It's far from it. It is better than ..., it's even ok, but it is not too difficult to imagine something better. Sometimes, most of the time it is development time that is missing. I don't say those peeps aren't clever, but they still (despite all the evangelism) work under capitalist conditions.
Posted by: Patrick at October 10, 2004 03:19 PM
I didn't like the old Ars style either, white on black is bad! I think their new design looks too much like everyone else now I wish they could have kept some feel.
Posted by: IEatApples at October 12, 2004 11:36 PM
I was so excited to find a blog about apples, but then I find out they are not my kind of apples, dissapointing. Gwenyth Paltrow had a daughter and called it APPLE - coincidence? - you can bet the ranch on it - hey DrunkenBlog how bout' a blog about the real kind of apples?
First I have heard on the slow firewire problem. But at least you are being constructive about the noise. Some rubber mounts would be nice, and they are cheap parts. But would they add to the assembly cost?