G5 arrived!

Well, this is the first chance I’ve gotten to post since my Dual 2.5Ghz G5 arrived last Tuesday. Let’s just say I’ve been having a lot of fun with the new machine the past few days. The speed is quite amazing, and it’s faster than I was expecting it to be. This is also my first dual-processor machine (my last 3 Macs were all Powerbooks), so it’s wonderful to have a couple of things going and still have some spare processing power to keep the interface responsive and allow me to continue working. Actually, the only time I’ve really been able to peg the CPUs is when compiling. Speaking of compiling, while XRG takes 3-4 minutes to compile on my TiBook 667, the new machine gets the job done in 22 seconds. 🙂

Some people have had a problem with the amount of noise that the 2.5Ghz models make. Most of the time, the machine is really quiet, and I only hear a slight whooshing sound from the fans. However, there are times when the machine will start to heat up and when the fans kick in they are a bit loud. Of course “loud” is a relative term, and while I can see why some others have complained, the machine is much quieter than my TiBook is when it starts spinning its fan at “hair dryer” volume… 🙂 There is a difference in how long the fans make a lot of noise too. While the Powerbook fan will make a ton of noise for 5-10 minutes before cooling the Powerbook back down to a reasonable temperature, the G5 will spin up it’s fans for 10 seconds or so, and then they will drop back down to a medium level.

Anyway, the Internet is full of pictures of the G5, so I won’t post a lot here, but here a couple of pictures of my setup…

• A picture of the inside of the case. You can see the radiator for the liquid cooling on the G5s. The heatsink on the ATI 9800 XT video card is what takes the extra PCI slot…
• A picture of the machine on my desk. I doubt my desk will stay this clean for long… 🙂
• Another shot of my desk from an angle. The subwoofer behind the monitor makes for some pretty balanced audio output, and I can’t even tell it’s there when sitting at my desk as the monitor does a great job of hiding it.