Saturday, July 3, 2010

Apple PowerMac G5 High Speed fan fix? Boot issues

Apple PowerMac G5 High Speed Fans. Possible Temporary Fix.

PowerMac G5 won't boot in to OSX.

I know this PowerMac G5 system is a few years old, and you get what you pay for.... but I knew the system had issue when I was buying it ...

But how could I pass up a PowerMac G5 Dual Processor unit all clad in Aluminum.. By the way I have not had the opportunity to pick one of these up till now much less play with them so this whole system is new to me.

The symptoms that were explained to me by the previous owner were classic to what I have found on the web.

The PowerMac G5 will turn on but after the classic Apple Ding it will ramp up the fans to full speed, the gray screen with the apple on it will show with the spinning wheel, and the PowerMac G5 will act like it is booting up will go to a light blue

screen and hang. After about 5 min. on the light blue screen the PowerMac G5 will shut down.

After searching the web for these issues with the PowerMac G5 I have found many Apple users experiencing similar issues (and other issues) but I could not really nail it down to a specific fix for these. There was mention that a company out in Germany could do a Re-Flow .. but there was no mention of which chip needed the repair.

Most posts that I read for fixing the PowerMac G5 were to replace the LogicBoard. Well if you know me ... (read any of my posts) you know I am cheap and will try a DIY repair before going out and spending more money.



After a couple of hours poking around the PowerMac G5:

Cleaning the Fans
Cleaning the Processor Heat Sinks (cool Dual 2.3GHz G5 Processors :) )
Re-Seating the Video Card
Swapping Memory
Re-Seating Fans

Nothing invasive to the system...

Not one of those items fixed the Boot issues with the PowerMac G5..

So.... what to do next?? Well I know these systems were built in China or some other area that may or may not have the same quality standards of a Swiss Watch (lol)...

BGA issues on video chips have plagued the HP Pavilion entertainment Laptops, and the whole Apple Mac iBook series... it must be a cold solder joint or a BGA on one of the bridge chips...

After poking and proding the system for another couple of hours.. eureka I may be very close to fixing it ...

On the back side of the PowerMac G5's LogicBoard there is another set of heatsink's and heat pipes... these cool the chips on the back side. Sorry don't have a picture just yet...

These chips on the PowerMac G5 are the chips that are causing the problem

With my trusty Heat Gun in hand I warmed up the G5 Logic board between the memory chips... (not very hot we are just testing here) not hot enough for a re-flow like the systems in the DV6000 no video fix.



And Voila the PowerMac G5 sprun to life and booted directly in to OS X....

Add a bit of pressure on this chip and the PowerMac G5 appears to be stable ....



(a full sheet of copy paper for now)

This is a very temporary fix this may only last for a day or so ... maybe longer who knows... but it got my system up..

The pressure on the chip is a sheet of paper folded many times and shoved under the PowerMac G5 processor heatsink .... applying pressure to the back side of the chip (bridge chip not sure which one) ...

As soon as I have more time I will take the logicboard out of the PowerMac G5 and perform a Re-Flow on those chips and let you know.


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2 comments:

Have you tried the reflow? Any details? I seem to have the same problem...

This worked!!! Thank you very much!!!

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