Poor design G5 liquid cooling

[jimbrady]

I never bad-mouthed your theory, but I'm not sure you've got the goods for a legit "I told ya so." Apple won't release records, but we'd know about it if these things were springing leaks left and right (guaranteed MacFixit would be hot on the trail). My dual 2.5 is running fine, and, just like when jets land safely, you won't be reading about it. EDIT: BTW, I have 4 HDDs in my G5 with room for another.

[DharmaDog]

Small thing here, but there are no new G5 systems. I assume we all know you mean MacPros.

I agree that I'd feel safer to use a machine without liquid cooling because I (like most people) are programmed to believe that liquids and electronics don't mix. I also agree that one of the huge advantages to the MacPros over the G5s is that they give off less heat, thereby needing less cooling. Resulting in more internal space for things like extra optical and hard disk drives.

But I have yet to see any evidence that problems with the liquid cooling in G5s are widespread or even happen with greater frequency than other types of failures.

Maybe 5 years out all liquid cooled systems will spring leaks due to a common component failure, but this just isn't happening right now. I'm certain we'd hear about it. Look at the press iPods that get scratched easily get. Or the press around the faulty iBook logic boards.

It sucks to be one of the people this has actually happened to, but it also sucks when your motherboard fries. I wonder which one happens more frequently. I don't know.

[M A V I C]

I don't see any evidence in your post that the liquid cooling design used in the G5's is "poor." Please show me what you consider a good liquid cooling design.

Apple's designed compared to many PC designs is very good. Most of the unit is contained and a user is not apt to knock a component (eg. hose) lose while working on the machine (adding RAM, storage...) The and connectors used are also very strong and offer a good seal. They are much better than those found in almost all other liquid cooling kits.

In short, not only is the design not poor, it's good.

Expecting a liquid cooling design to never have a leak is like expecting no hard drive to ever die. The fact there are failures is a given. So much so, that when I asked about getting Apple Care on my 2.7, many on the forum said it's a good idea with the machines Apple has today. If they were true Apple apologists, do you think they would be recommending that I hedge my bet for when the Apple hardware fails?

MacInTouch has a decent attempt at gauging Mac reliability. http://www.macintouch.com/reliability/

One blurb from it: The total problem percentage for all these Power Mac G5's seemed reasonable at 10%, and even the liquid-cooled Dual 2.5 models (which we thought might be less reliable) looked fine.

[tortoise]

[quote M A V I C]I don't see any evidence in your post that the liquid cooling design used in the G5's is "poor." Please show me what you consider a good liquid cooling design.
My point was that liquid cooling for a consumer level machine is a poor design and what I consider a good design is the new G5 (MacPro tp the picky) with Intel chips that run cool enough to eliminate the need for liquid cooling and got rid of five cooling fans from the nine in the liquid cooled beast to four in the new MacPro. This frees up considerable space to add two additional bays for HD totalling 4, an additional optical drive, and two additional PCI express expansion slots. Really kind of obvious to me that the liquid beasts were nothing more than a temporary band aid to an unsatisfactory chip that ran far too hot to be practical for consumer level machines.

Liquid cooling has it’s place with the techno-geeks into serious over clocking and gaming on the PC side, but not with the general public. As time goes on and the machines age there will be more leaks and when they leak it is a expensive disaster as the reports are now starting to filter in. I predict there will be increasing frequency as the machines age, and Apple has already demonstrated their unwillingness to help the poor saps that bought one of their short lived experiments.

Contrary to popular opinion the Gods in Cupertino do occasionally screw up and produce some designs that are far from desirable and I maintain that liquid cooling is one of them. To the choir that believes Apple can do no wrong they will rationalize every product as the best no matter how flawed it may be. That is fine with me I own a lot of Apple stock and their loyalty is nothing but good for my stock. I will use some profit from the stock to purchase a really good MacPro next year when they get the second generation MacPro machines out the door.

[M A V I C]

I gotcha. So you're not talking about the design of the liquid cooling, but that its need was the sign of a larger problem with was a poor situation.

I agree.

When it first came out, I often said that so much heat loss was the sign that the chip wasn't very efficient - aka. has problems.

[pRON aHOLIC]

While I am sure there are some problems, with any product you only hear about more so the complaints when things go wrong. Some numbers would help understand the issue. While they are not perfect machines, I am so far so good on my dp 2.5 and it is much quieter than the dp 1.8 I had.