G5 died on my father.

F

Firepoet

Registered
My father owns one of the original G5s, so its power pc not intel. Today while browsing an excel spreadsheet he says part of the screen turned black, then the monitor shut off, then the monitor came back on but not video. Mean while the fans started spinning out of control. Now when he tries to turn it on, he gets power, but all that happens is the fans spinning faster and faster and faster until he turns it off. No video or anything. Just speeding fans. He fears the CPUs died since they control the fans. Any suggestions? He also says the fans were spinning unusually fast these last few days.
 
The CPUs do not control the fan speed. Mac OS X (the operating system software) controls the fan speeds. When no operating system is controlling the fan speeds, then they spin as fast as they can to err on the side of caution (because spinning as slow as they can would be silly and cause the CPUs to possibly overheat).

First things first: have him boot from the hardware test CD that came with the computer, and run it in a loop for a while. See if any error messages come up about failed hardware.
 
Ah... well, I think the only other course of action is to get a specialist to look at it. Are there any Apple stores close to him? Also, Apple seems to be replacing a lot of liquid-cooled G5s out-of-warranty due to some of the liquid cooling stuff leaking out and/or pumps failing. Does he notice any signs of liquid coolant leaking inside the G5's case?
 
No, there doesn't seem to be any leaking.
The HD is accessed for a few moments, but then I don't hear it again. But, the fans don't go crazy until just about the right amount of time for the OS to boot. So I'm thinking maybe the OS is still coming up.
 
That sounds about right, although without sitting directly in front of the computer it's tough to diagnose a possible hardware problem.

Is there another monitor he can try with? Can he try re-seating the video card?
 
Something similar happened to my father's 1.6 GHz Power Mac G5 some years ago. I had tested everything....RAM, video card, connections, everything. Still, all I would get is the power light and then nothing. Gradually, the fans would go to full speed. I took it to the Apple Store and they told me that it was either the CPU or the logic board that was the issue. My father did have the tower in a desk cubby hole, so I assume that it wasn't getting enough ventilation, causing the system to overheat. Was your father's PMG5 in a similar location where there was not enough ventilation?
 
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