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Is my G5 Quad going bad?
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ok it happened again.
man its really hard to see exactly which LED it is since the Dimm brackets are in the way and the front grill for the case is next to that.
anyway, right next to the LED it says: “LED 804”
and it appears to be just under the top dimm.
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[Borjis] “ok it happened again.
man its really hard to see exactly which LED it is since the Dimm brackets are in the way and the front grill for the case is next to that.
anyway, right next to the LED it says: “LED 804″
and it appears to be just under the top dimm”
OK, I verified the location of this LED on my Quad. This LED (#2 in the Apple KB article I linked to earlier) is also labeled as the “overtemp” LED.
It’s basically telling you that one of the CPUs has gotten too hot. You can monitor the temp of the CPU cores with something like Hardware Monitor (or Hardware Monitor Lite – reports temps in your menubar, so it’s really easy to see). The iStat Pro widget is also very good for this.
When was the last time you checked the fans and CPU radiator for dust? It’s possible that too much dust has gotten on there and is blocking the air flow. It’s also conceivable that you’ve got a bad sensor or a bad CPU.
The Apple service manual for the G5 says to check to airflow and the fan and sensor connectors. Next, it says to reseat the front inlet fan, run the Thermal Calibration in Apple Service Diagnostics, and replace the processor. Obviously, most of this is to be left to AppleCare, since you’re still covered by it.
You can try running the Apple Hardware Test to see if it comes up with any errors. It’s on the install DVD that came with the computer. Boot the machine (with the disc in the drive) holding down the Option key until you get a list of bootable options. One of those is the hardware test. It can take quite a while before you’re able to start the test, so be patient. Expect the test to take a few hours if you have a few GB of RAM.
Generally, if the computer gets into an overtemp situation, it will sleep for a while to cool off. There should be entries in your system log with something similar to this: “Thermal Manager: max temperature exceeded for 30 seconds, forcing system sleep” or “Thermal Manager: Thermal Runaway Detected: System Will Sleep.”
In any event, if it’s not simply a blockage of airflow, you’ll probably need to take it in for service.
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WOW thanks for the detailed explanation Steve.
Really appreciate it.
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I [Borjis] “WOW thanks for the detailed explanation Steve.”
I even enjoyed reading it. Next time my machine is ready to blow a cooling system gasket I’ll remember Steve’s great post. As they say, “forwarned is forarmed.”
David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor
David Weiss Productions, Inc.
Los AngelesPOST-PRODUCTION WITHOUT THE USUAL INSANITY
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