AppleBronyG4

Q: Thinking of going crazy with my G4

So here's what I'm thinking of doing. I recently bought a 2002-03 17" iMac G4. But I feel like it's BEGGING for more power. What I was thinking is ram upgrades and a hard drive swap but i need to know first if that's even possible, if so what are the best and fastest parts I can get for this machine? Thank you very much! P.S. What else can I do besides ram and HD?

iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Feb 16, 2014 12:00 AM

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Q: Thinking of going crazy with my G4

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  • by Allan Jones,Solvedanswer

    Allan Jones Allan Jones Feb 16, 2014 8:48 AM in response to AppleBronyG4
    Level 8 (35,141 points)
    iPad
    Feb 16, 2014 8:48 AM in response to AppleBronyG4

    All you can change are RAM and the hard drive. Neither will make a speed demon out of your G4.

     

    No amount of upgrading can change the fact that modern web pages are no longer optimized for G-deries processors. We have a number of G-series iMacs here and none are coping well with the Internet.

     

    What you can and can't do depends on your exact iMac G4 variant. A lot happend in 2002-2003. In mid 2003, the logic board was changed to provide USB 2.0 ports and a 67-percent faster system bus. It also gained (unofficially) the ability to handle twice the RAM of the earlier USB 1.1 iMacs.

     

    If yours is a USB 1.1 model, I doubt anything you did to it would show as a perceptible speed increase. If its a USB 2.0 unit, maxing RAM to 2GB may help considering the faster bus. A solid state hard drive might help but it would cost more than any used G4 iMac is worth.

     

    "Legacy" SSD for older Macs are available. See here:

     

    http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Extreme_Pro/Legacy_Edition

     

    Also please research the takeapart of the G4 iMac--it is not a trivial matter. If done incorrectly you can fry the computer. Search for "imac g4 takeapart" and see if you are up to the strigent reassembly steps.