G5 coolant leak repair results?

lamme102-

Greetings and welcome to the Apple boards.

Results are mixed. If you don't have your drive backed up, or you don't want anyone snooping around in your stuff, just remove the drive before taking it in for service.

Granted, if something is also wrong with the drive they will not be able to do anything about that, but at least you will have piece of mind.

Luck-

-DaddyPaycheck

My G5 sprang a leak yesterday, 25 months old, fried the processors and power supply, and goodness knows what else. Looking on the internet it is clear that this is not an isolated incident. There is a queue for new processor units, which are unavailable at the moment. Doesn't that say something? This is a design fault. Having spent £1700 on this machine in the first place I would expect it to last more than 25 months. What are Apple going to do about it?

Defunct G5 dual 2.5 which sprang a leak Mac OS X (10.4.9) poorly designed

Your liquid-cooled PM G5 may be leaking coolant if is has this symptom.

- Bmer
Mac Owners Support Group
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Humorus, but coolant is usually tinted red or yellow-green.

We have three G5 2.5 Ghz. One sprang a leak on Tuesday. Has certainly blown the PSU - but what else we will find out when the apple service centre call back in the next couple of days with a diagnostics.

Be interested to see if Apple are offering a goodwill extended cover on this problem as have seen posts to this end.

Any comments or tips welcome.

I've had three machines, out of a lab of 20, experience this problem within the last six weeks. The first spent 4 weeks out for repair (motherboard, CPU, power supply), worked for two days, then died. It's back in for repair. The other two went for repair yesterday. One died overnight on Monday, and a cursory inspection turned up another that, while still working, had corrosion on the inside of the case, and coolant under the machine when it was moved. Luckily, we have an on-campus repair facility.

All 20 were purchased in the summer of 2007, the 2.7 GHz model. 15% failure rate so far. I have a few more machines left to open and inspect, and I'll have to keep a close eye on the rest of these. I am also looking at serial numbers, to see if I can find a pattern, and maybe predict which machines may fail in the future. This is a nasty problem when it occurs.

We also have a series of G5s (dual 2.3 GHz, purchased May 2005) dying one by one it seems, due to leaking coolant.

We think we have a third one that died yesterday; have to get to the location and inspect it. Fairly certain it did the same thing as the other two; overheated, shut off, and now we can't reach it via ping or remote desktop.

There's a fourth suspected one as well, showing the same pattern of symptoms before failure.

All of them have this serial # range:
G8517Axxxxx

We own several other liquid cooled G5's (late 2005), but so far it just seems to be this particular range of serial #'s.

This really should be an official recall, as it's very outside normal/expected failure rates.

G5 Dual 2.3 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.9)

From what I can tell, liquid cooling on PowerMac G5 was only on the first dual 2.5Ghz, the dual 2.7Ghz, and the Quad 2.5Ghz.

I've got a Quad G5 which hasn't had the problem, but I'm looking to sell it, since I don't want to be responsible for it after AppleCare expires in Feb. 2009... In my opinion, the design is flawed for several reasons:
- leaking should ideally be incredibly rare, and I don't think it is
- provision should have been made to isolate the effects of a leak. Destruction of CPUs, logic board and power supply seems common in cases of coolant leakage.

In other words, overall, the system is too fragile. I want an air-cooled Xeon.

I'm curious about exactly where the leaks are developing, and if there might be a proactive way to upgrade the cooling system, such as better hoses and clamps, or if the leaks are developing in the pumps or metal parts of the cooling radiators.

All 20 were purchased in the summer of 2007, the 2.7 GHz model.

must be why :-))

Someone mentioned that the 2.7DPs could have two different coolant designs.
Whether due to availability of parts or testing, or to try a different design.

"- leaking should ideally be incredibly rare, and I don't think it is"

You have no basis on which to make that claim.

"- leaking should ideally be incredibly rare, and I
don't think it is"

You have no basis on which to make that claim.

I wasn't being very specific, but I'll stick to my statement - I don't think these leaks are incredibly rare. Incredibly rare, to me, would be... maybe, one report of a leak on this forum in the three years since liquid cooling was introduced on the G5, and everybody else saying "wow, I've never heard of that before!" That's definitely not the case.

But, yes, I don't have anything like a failures/units percentage.

I hope I'm wrong, but in years to come when people look back on the G5 era, I can't help but feel the liquid cooled models will be viewed as a bit of a mistake. Perhaps even as a slightly desperate and ultimately futile (although totally understandable) attempt to keep the PowerPC based Macs ahead of the competition. I've no idea what the failure rate is, but I wouldn't be surprised if a certain small percentage of failures are expected, and it's actually cheaper to pay the cost in terms of AppleCare claims and disgruntled customers than it is to try and make it 100% fail proof.

I hope I'm wrong, but in years to come when people
look back on the G5 era, I can't help but feel the
liquid cooled models will be viewed as a bit of a
mistake. Perhaps even as a slightly desperate and
ultimately futile (although totally understandable)
attempt to keep the PowerPC based Macs ahead of the
competition. I've no idea what the failure rate is,
but I wouldn't be surprised if a certain small
percentage of failures are expected, and it's
actually cheaper to pay the cost in terms of
AppleCare claims and disgruntled customers than it is
to try and make it 100% fail proof.

That's pretty much how I see it.
They might all be doomed to failure, maybe mostly after AppleCare expires.

How does one go about raising this as an issue with Apple? I would not have bought a G5 had I known it was likely to fail after 2 years use with a coolant leak. The fact that it is difficult to get replacement parts says to me that this is not uncommon. It is a design fault, not simply a wear and tear or other issue. Even outside of applecare I would expect some attention to customer opinions.