G4 cube help !

[shkj]

Hi All,

I was wondering

I am going to receiving a G4 Mac Cubef rom my sister who is a graphics artist, she will be buying a new G5 machine

her G4 has 512 megs of ram can I upgrade it to the max 1.5 gigs ??? Do I need "special memory or will any PC133 or PC100 work ??

Also the 20 gig hard drive is a 5400 RPM model can I upgrade that to an 80 gig 7200 8 cache drive ???

if so is there a way to transfer or image the entire hard drive to the nbew one so I won't have to re-install everything as she does not have any of the original CD to do this ???

I also read some where that there are CPU upgrades available for this machine I would like to possibly go to 800 MHZ or so what processor is the best bang for the buck ??

lastly what about a video card upgrade from the current 16 meg to possibly a 64 meg card ???

Can the card be from a PC machine or does it specifically have to be for a mac ??

which cards will fit the original cube case without alot of modifacations ??

I do not play games, however I do alot of digital photography,converting Canon 10D RAW files to jpegs and then editing them, I also use Photoshop CS quite frequently and other imaging programs, basic office apps,burning CD's and the web

my wife however plays

casino,card and On-Line Pogo games which I also think is 2D also

this machine is not really my main machine, it more or less is going to used as a learning tool to enter the world of Macs

in addition to my Windows PC's

[krmathis]

WOW, you got lots of questions! :p

I dont know the Cube much, but I know there are kits to upgrade to 1.5GHz, 1.5GB ram, 120GB hdd, GeForce 3 etc...

A good place to search for info are: http://www.cubeowner.com

[Steve]

I used to have a Cube and did some upgrades to mine, so i know a fair bit. Best bet however is post your questions on the forums @ 'CubeOwner.com'. You'll get the best responses there.

However, i can tell you -

HDD upgrade to 120Gb Maximum (7200 RPM? Sure!)

RAM upto 1.5Gb - Will take regular SDRAM PC100/PC133. It can be rather fussy with the modules however - like most Macs!

GPU - The most powerful card to fit into a Cube was / is the GeForce3 ADC (64Mb). These are not easy to get ahold of, and fetch around $300-400 on eBay. I paid $350 for mine last year! *sigh* The cards need to have the Mac ROM, either via Flashing or from new. Be careful however if you flashed PC Cards, they can differ in size. For example a PC GeForce3 might not fit! ;)

CPU? Err, this is no easy process, but sure it can be upgraded. Check out Powerlogix (Google ;))

I'd also recommend putting in a base fan also. The cube chassis actually has a space allocated for Fan, i guess they never thought it'd be a complete failure! :p Adding a Higher Capacity/Speed HDD might cause heat problems, as will a new GPU, so i'd deffo recommend it. I know it goes against the initial idea of the Cube, but this cube wasn't built with newer kit in mind!

Hope thats helpful to ya!

[fuzzy_logic]

For all the trouble you'll have to go through and all the money you're gonna spend on upgrading, you might as well sell the cube and get a used eMac from eBay (for example, This). It won't cost you that much!