upgrading a B&W: need advice

misticmayhemmisticmayhem
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Well i'm in the proccess of rebuilding a B&W 450. I'm also thinking about upgrading the CPU. I have searched this website for advice but all the posts i find about upgrading a B&W are very outdated. So i have a few questions: Which upgrade is the best and why? can i use an actual apple G4 from a newer powermac? Please keep in mind i am new to the mac world; don't assume i know anything. Thanks for any help.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    mpls244mpls244 Posts: 61member
    I don't believe that you can use the CPU's from later G4's - IIRC they are soldered onto a proprietary daughtercard that wasn't used/doesn't fit into the Blue & Whites.



    What you can use is ZIF processors, G3 or G4. Check out OWC at macsales.com for various options. Sonnet makes a 1 GHz G4 for the B&W which is rather pricey ($350ish, I think), and has the drawback of slowing down the bus speed to 66 MHz. PowerLogix has a 1 GHz G3 that works quite well, is somewhat cheaper, and is very fast -- the only drawback is that a G4 is either required or highly recommended for much of the iLife suite.



    Given the Mac Mini's at $500 (1.25 GHz G4) it's hard to justify spending $300-400 to upgrade a Blue & White to a lower spec, since you'll need a monitor, keyboard, and mouse in both instances.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    cj171cj171 Posts: 144member
    take a look at powerlogix's 1ghz g3 upgrade...gives a lot of raw power, but no altivec is the drawback, so if you don't use programs that use that as much, it would make a nice speedup for about $200
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