Legit Reviews

As the Apple iMac G5 series continues to gain market share among multimedia users many are finding out that the original system specifications are not up to par. Today we take apart an Apple iMac G5 and show you how to install additional memory modules to improve system performance.



http://legitreviews.com/article.php?aid=215

Damn, those things are crazy lookin'!
So you can just use regular ol' plain jane DDR PC-3200 memory in the Mac's?

Thanks for the pictoral tour, I've never seen the guts of an iMac G5 before

yup, believe it or not iMac G5's use standard PC-3200 184-pin memory modules. Nothing special as you can tell by looking at the Micron CL3 modules I took out of that G5.

The G5 iMac does indeed support dual-channel (128 bit) memory, it's just not mandantory. Most G5 iMacs just use a single stick (64 bit). I think barefeats or xlr8yourmac did some benchmarks and found that dual-channel is significantly faster during real-world usage.

More info on this subject here, from Apple:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300082
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86814

BTW, Apple has do-it-yourself information for their consumer models here:
http://www.apple.com/support/diy/orderonline/

And information on the Tower G5 (and G4, and G3...) here:
http://www.apple.com/support/powermac/

There's also some much more detailed information in the Developer section of the site:
http://developer.apple.com/documentatio ... -date.html

I personally like the Developer section the best, they have the most technical detail there. But there are many more places to go, like http://www.macsurfer.com for more information.

Times like these are why it really helps everyone to have a forum! Thanks for your information and I updated the article to reflict the info!

oh and since April, all iMac G5s come with a single stick of 512MB. This may have been mentioned in the article... but I am mentioning it again.

I didn't put that in the article because many online retailers and stores still have modles with the 256mb memory modules in them. Will take a bit longer to clear out all the 256mb models!