Anyone here have their 3 - 4 year old Dual G5 Die?

[Catoogie]

My 3-year old (January 2006) Apple Dual 2.0 G5 died a couple of weeks ago. After only three years of flawless service it just wouldn't start one day. Black screen and fans kick into TURBO 747 Mode.

Took it to the Apple Store and after trying some fixes the genius diagnosed it as having a bad logic board ($700) and/or a bad processor ($400). I took the machine with me to think it over as I felt it was unbelievable that a $2,000.00 computer would need nearly $1,000.00 of repairs. Especially seeing as I treated it so well and it had such light use.

I researched G5 logic boards and came upon a couple of forums where it turns out an astonishing amount of people who own 3-4 year old Dual G5s have also had their logic boards fail.

I called and spoke with Apple and they refuse to do anything for me (that's not true, the genius offered to waive the labor). Their response is anything after 3 years is considered to be on the onus of the customer. I asked the tech what the life expectancy of a $2000.00 Apple computer is and he couldn't give me a straight answer.

So, I'm curious as to whether any of you out there have had similar problems with your G5. If you're interested, I can forward to the links to the forums regarding this. All of us who have spent our hard earned money on Apple products that have failed after only a few years of use should unite!!

Thanks everyone!!

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[Gentleman Jim]

I haven't had this happen - yet. My G5 is from early 2005, so I hope I'm not jinxing myself by saying anything.

While I'm not ready to join your Pitchforks & Torches Brigade, I suspect that one day I will be.

Great, one more way I can annoy my wife with righteous indignation...

[chris harris]

Everything new is PCIe now anyway. It sucks.... but, I'm probably gonna replace mine pretty soon anyway so that I can use the new UAD-2.

Not defending planned obsolescence here... But, 3 years is a pretty decent lifespan for a computer.

[protoolsman]

3 years? On a Mac? I am still using my G4/400 as a server and stopped using it as a TDM set less than 2 years ago. I think it is from '99 (or maybe begin 2000.)
But at a studio I work in, we also have a 2005 model with problems. We're having the power transformer (sdat what ya call it in english) replaced.
I bought a 400Mhz model last year for 80 euro to be used with a digi001 for a friend. Not a single crash yet!
This message is made with the help of an 8 core 2.8 : it already crashed twice since last year, and has had some minor temp freezes.

[hiddendriveways]

There are no guarantees with Apples, or any computer. My friend and I both bought dual 1.8 towers in 2004. His was a total lemon, it had all kinds of trouble and he eventually replaced it after a couple of years.

Mine refuses to quit. I had to replace the little system battery recently. The optical drive died last year, but other than that it keeps chugging along. I've been wanting to upgrade to an RME card system as opposed to a firewire interface, so for a long time I was waiting for the G5 to have a problem. Last month I got tired of waiting, bit the bullet and bought a MultiFace II with a PCI-X card. It was a little unnerving performing the card installation on a 5 year old computer, but it works perfectly.

Your experience is pretty standard. It's a crap shoot. If you want to switch to Windows, jump in and have fun. I'll be be buying a Mac Pro next time I need a computer.

[Jeff White]

I've got a Dual 1.8 GHz G5 from June of 2004. Purchased used in August 2004. I've done a lot of upgrades (RAM, Optical Drive, etc) but the only thing that has been a problem has been the 500GB drive that I put in it in 2006 that died quick and painlessly in December. The G5 was behaving weird for a bit, but I realized it was the OWC firewire card that I put in it last spring. Not sure why, but having my externals on that thing locked up the computer from time to time. I think that my 828mk2 is running off of that bus now. Anyway, power (voltage) in the new house runs a little hot according to my Furman voltage meter. I've been paying close attention to that, but it is out of my control. Running the G5 on a battery backup that's supposed to be a voltage regulator as well (I think), and the Furman is also on that. Might be too much. I don't have any other grounded outlets in the basement though, so I'm kind of stuck until I can afford to have an electrician out to the house to evaluate and upgrade. The G5's been making some weird noises as a result, so I am totally expecting it to have an issue sooner than later.

i also have a Powerbook from April 2005 that is still in use. Some issues like the sleep light is inconsistent, but aside from that, all is well.

My whole family is on Macs, and some have had issues, but the only dead computer outside of warranty was my brother's iBook. He just abused the shit out of it, dropped it a few times, etc.

Jeff

[armanbohn]

I work as an IT guy and support scores of Macs. Macs of your vintage may be subject to the Capacitor Plague.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

I have an entire lab of iMacs that are constantly in disrepair due to bad caps in the power supply and mother board. They were the last batch of G5 white iMacs and are about four years old. All of the 30 machines have failed at least once and many have been repaired multiple times. This reminds me ... another one just died and I need to go replace it with an ancient (but reliable) G4 tower.

You may want to take a look at your motherboard and and see if any of the caps are bulged.

Apple has acknowledged the capacitor failure and has only offered to replace the faulty part with another faulty part. They are all past the "Apple Care" warranty point and are headed for the scrap heap.

My Intel iMacs all run fine.

[RoyMatthews]

I work as an IT guy and support scores of Macs. Macs of your vintage may be subject to the Capacitor Plague.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

I have an entire lab of iMacs that are constantly in disrepair due to bad caps in the power supply and mother board. They were the last batch of G5 white iMacs and are about four years old. All of the 30 machines have failed at least once and many have been repaired multiple times. This reminds me ... another one just died and I need to go replace it with an ancient (but reliable) G4 tower.

You may want to take a look at your motherboard and and see if any of the caps are bulged.

Apple has acknowledged the capacitor failure and has only offered to replace the faulty part with another faulty part. They are all past the "Apple Care" warranty point and are headed for the scrap heap.

My Intel iMacs all run fine.

Wasn't the whole capacitor problem isolated to just iMacs though? At least as far as Apple is concerned. I think Dell used the same bad caps too for a while.

[armanbohn]

There has only been speculation about what was effected by "The Plague". The iMac camp was apparently the most vocal. It sounds like another group of people from that same time has hit some serious issues. I wouldn't put it past any of these manufacturers (Apple, Dell, ect.) to stay off record about major manufacturing problems.

Apple has never "officially" stated what products were effected by this. There was never a recall. We just had huge numbers of machines go down and were able to get them to recognize the problem. I'm just saying the OP should peak inside and see if there are any bulged caps on the logic (mother) board.

Just a hunch.

[jeddypoo]

I don't know, but I still have a 1999 sawtooth G4 and it still runs PERFECTLY, and it's been exposed to incredible amounts of dust, cigarette smoke, humidity, spills, etc., continuously for almost 10 years. It's even been dropped. My MDD dual core G4 from several years ago functions perfectly and has been exposed to much of the same as the older computer. It's still my main recording computer. My 19" Lacie monitor also from 1999 only kicked the bucket recently, and mostly because of a bad cable. The only thing that makes sense is that maybe they don't make em' like they used to. It's bizarre.

[touched1]

This sucks, and I feel your pain, but....

I fixed Macs for years. Applecare often pays for itself.
If you never have to use it, great. If you do, you will saved yourself several times the cost of Applecare.

I had a G5 that ran like a tank, until it didn't. Then I replaced it. I also have a small army of older G4's doing various tasks, most have had processor or logic board replacements at some point. Some out of warranty, some under Applecare. I don't know why, but the cost of repairing the G5 logic and processors is significantly higher than the same repair on older G4's. The cost of progress I guess...

I would say 3 years is the expected lifespan of a computer. If it is still running after 4 years, great. But at that age, it starts to rapidly fall behind as software and hardware advances.

The caps issue, at least on the Mac side was specific to Imacs and a few emacs. Not the G5. I 'm not saying the G5 never had bad caps, just saying of all the G5's I worked on (hundreds), I never saw the same issue as the Imacs had.

As for people reporting similar issues on the internet, I could do a search and find information supporting the suggestion that Barack Obama (or John McCain) is not a legal citizen and therefore not qualified to be Commander In Chief. There is useful info out there, but take it all with a grain of salt. Most of the people people posting about their broken computers are under informed and pissed off, and looking to form a lynch mob to head to 1 Infinite Loop. And honestly, at a certain point in my life, I would've been right there with them.

I have probably said too much. And I am not discounting your frustration. I think I am just trying to say that you are not alone in your frustration, and anyone on a budget who is dependent on their machines (all of us!!) feels exactly what you are feeling sooner or later. Don't think it is just you or your model of computer. All computers will fail no matter how good they are built or treated. They were, after all, designed and built by humans. And we are inherently imperfect.

[touched1]

Please tell me I did not just come off like one of those jerks on the .rec.audio.pro newsgroup. I hate those guys.

I was trying to be supportive and lend some perspective. If it came off like a sermon, I apologize.

[DryCounty]

Please tell me I did not just come off like one of those jerks on the .rec.audio.pro newsgroup. I hate those guys.

I was trying to be supportive and lend some perspective. If it came off like a sermon, I apologize.

I used to fix Macs as well, and saw "tens" of eMacs come in with the same leaky gooey capacitors. They were all the later revs, which is odd because you'd think Apple would fix issues with later revs and not introduce new issues. The fact that Apple extended the warranty is nice, but they should have just done an outright recall. Apple recently ditched their "extension" on free repairs for those machines that exhibited the cap leaks. I guess they thought they'd fixed them all? I see at least one of these machines a week and you guessed it, the leaks just started...

I tell most folks that Macs are generally more reliable and last a fair bit longer than most PCs out there, it's all in how people are using them. I've always recommended Applecare, definitely with portables. I have a client that checks their AOL (their rural = dialup) and does minimal research online with their 1st rev. iMac. I also have clients who have dual 2.0s that are slowly dying like the OP, but for them the machine is much more valuable. It's all in how they're being used.

[getreel]

Have you tried re-seating the RAM and CPU in their sockets? I found this would occasionally work with both Macs and PCs for me. Maybe the Apple dude checked for this though. Just saying...