06/14/02

Cube processor upgrades : specs and pricing.

We now have some information about the Powerlogix upgrade for the Cube. According to Powerlogix, the PowerForce G4 Series 100 has the following specs :

Cube upgrade : a follow-up (4)

Jof sent us a mail about fitting a fan in the Cube:

Hiya, All in all a very exciting time: the Cube is not yet dead! Having read your correspondent Carsten's message regarding fitting a fan in the Cube, I'd just like to reassure him that, if you get the Panaflo 15mm-high fan as recommended by www.cubeowner.com at this page: http://www.cubeowner.com/faqs/coolingfans.html the noise is more like a very gentle hum than the roaring of a Quicksilver tower. I fitted one of these just a couple of weeks ago and instantly saw my processor temperature halved under all circumstances. I can't hear the fan over the hard drive, and even with that spun down in a completely quiet room, it's barely noticeable. Of course, we'll have to wait to see if the Powerlogix upgrades include a separate fan on the processor itself and what the noise implications of that are, but I'd recommend anyone fitting an uprated graphics card to install some sort of additional cooling: don't forget that the original Cube Radeons had a fan. After putting a (fanless) GeForce 2MX in my machine, I noticed a lot more heat than with the stock Rage Pro, and the fan certainly seems to contain that. Keep up the good work: I don't think I've seen so many updates on Cube-Zone in one day!

Regards, Jof

Cube upgrade : a follow-up (3)

OWC now offers the 800 Mhz and 1 Ghz Cube upgrades (pre order). Whoa!

GeForce2Mx for Cube for sale

Our partner MacResQ has some GeForce2MX AGP for the Cube. Those cards cost $149.99. Hurry up, they don't have a lot of them.... If you buy those cards from them, you will also help the site! The reference of the card is "P008078"

If you're in Europe, you can still buy a card from Shaye (they still have some). If you want to order from them, send an e-mail here, and tell them that you come from the Cube-Zone.

Cube upgrade : a follow-up (2)

I also mailed Robert from Powerlogix and he told me that the Cube 800MHz version will cost $599 and the 1GHz version $799. So there will be a 1GHz version for the Cube. :-) The only thing that holds me from buying is the noise of the fan. I was very happy when I changed last year from a G4 Tower to the Cube and I never want to have a computer back with a fan inside (ok, the iBook has a fan, but it never starts to work). :-) Carsten

06/13/02

Cube upgrade : a follow-up

Robert, from Powerlogix, answered the two questions you all ask yourself:

Does the Cube upgrade have a fan?

Most likely.

Will I need to modify the Cube to use the card (mostly the heatsink)?

It will come with its own heatsink.

Readers comments

Concerning the Cube processor upgrade from Powerlogix, I think that only the 133mhz machine will have the 1ghz CPU. The 100mhz bus machine ( the cube ) will get 750mhz CPU. This make sense if the CPU is limitted to 7.5X but we have to check on Motorola procurement to confirm this. my feeling is that there is only a 1GHz CPU with a locked 7.5x bus speed and there is no 1Ghz with 10x working at 100mhz bus speed. This means we will have an underclocked runing cooler CPU. Still 750mhz is a welcome... Steve

06/12/02

Finally a Cube processor upgrade!

You all know that there were dual processor hacks for the Cube. But now Powerlogix has a supported Cube processor upgrade for the Cube. here is the press release :

"POWERLOGIX ANNOUNCES WORLD'S FASTEST POWERMAC UPGRADES AUSTIN, TEXAS -- June 12, 2002 --

PowerLogix today announced the fastest ever processor cards for PowerMac G4s. The new PowerForce G4 Series 100 and Series 133 processor upgrades will be available in speeds ranging from 750Mhz to 1GHz. With the new PowerForce G4, PowerLogix continues its tradition of leading the market in new upgrade card designs. These are the first and only upgrade cards to use the latest technology from Motorola--the G4/7455 processor, code named "Apollo."

"We are excited to be the first manufacturer to market upgrades with speeds up to one gigaHertz," said Robert Jagitsch, President. "Adding a PowerForce G4 card can provide performance surpassing a new machine for a lot less money." The Apollo has four integer execution units, one double precision FPU, and four 128-bit AltiVec execution units. It also has a 256KB on-chip L1 cache running at full processor speed. The PowerForce G4 will be available with varying amounts of L3 cache. The PowerForce G4 processor upgrade simply replaces the stock processor card. The user removes the original processor card and installs the PowerForce G4 card in its place. It installs easily in just a few minutes by following the included instructions.

The PowerForce G4 Series 100 upgrade cards are compatible with the following PowerMac G4s running at 100 MHz bus:

The PowerForce G4 Series 133 upgrade cards are compatible with PowerMac G4s running at 133 MHz bus:

Note: We recommend the PowerForce G4 ZIF 550 for use with the PowerMac G4 'PCI Graphics'. Availability: PowerForce G4 Series 100 will be available in July. PowerForce G4 Series 133 will be available in August. We expect very high demand for these cards so we recommend resellers place advance orders with our distributor, Waypoint Distribution. Pricing: Retail prices range from $449 to $749. Complete ordering SKUs will be available shortly on our website and through Waypoint Distribution. "

Readers comments

06/11/02

Combo Drive survey for Cube Owners

Our friends at CubeOwner.com have started a Combo Drive survey for Cube Owners. here is what Laurie, the webmaster of cubeOwner says :

"Hi, I am the webmaster of cubeowner.com. We have corresponded in the past and I really appreciate the link you have provided to cubeowner on cube-zone.com. MCE has contacted me regarding a possible cd-rw and combo drive upgrade specifically for the Cube. When they announce the older Ti book combo drive upgrades, my email box was flooded with questions about whether the Ti book drive would work in a Cube. With some modifications it looks like it will, but rather than experiment, I went straight to MCE to alert them as to how much interest there was amongst Cube owners. So they asked me to do some research for them :) I would be most appreciative if you would post a link to the survey on your home page, as I know it would be of interest to many of your readers. I've had the poll up for 2 days so far and have received almost 200 entries already, but the more answers I get the more leverage we have with MCE. The copy I have used to invite people to take the survey is as follows: MCE Technologies has asked CubeOwner.com to do a little poll regarding interest in CD-RW and Combo Drive upgrades specifically for the Cube. Your vote DOES count! Please take 5 minutes to participate in this short poll. The results will be forwarded to MCE and CubeOwner will keep you all updated on what comes out of it. The link for the poll can be found at http://www.cubeowner.com or you can go directly to the poll by clicking this link.

Thank you in advance. "

Laurie Duncan

Reader question.

"I wanted to ask you what type of card should the cube support: AGP or PCI or another type? Becus there many types of Nvidia Geforce 2 Mx and I don't know which one to choose. Thank you very much. " Arthur L.

The Cube only has an AGP slot. You can either use an AGP ATI Radeon, or a GeForce 2MX or GeForce 3. (preferably the Apple OEM one, others may not fit.)

05/21/02

Where to find Cube parts?

A lot of our readers have asked us about a place where they could buy GeForce cards. Shaye (based in Uk, but ships internationally) still has some. Here is what they offer:

Here is a message from Shaye : "Want to take advantage of Quartz Extreme? Well here is your chance folks we recently got in a another supply of geforce cards for the cubes. But we also have dual monitor support geforces on special. Now you can run two monitors from your Cube. Something that was never possible before. Hurry stock is Limited and supply is short". If you want to order from them, send an e-mail here, and tell them that you come from the Cube-Zone.

We'll have some other deals in the near future. Stay tuned.

Update : the prices are in £ not $. Hurry. There are only a few cards left.

05/17/02

Jaguar and the Cube, a follow-up

Some of our readers are interested in using jaguar with their Cube. Here is what they say :

"Hi, Just a quick follow-up to your item about Jaguar (Mac OS X 10.2) and Cube video cards: it seems there's a deal of confusion about this area. Jaguar itself is a general recompiling and upgrade of the core Mac OS X software, including asked-for and desired features. Quartz Extreme is an additional set of capabilities allowing the OS to offload a lot of the GUI-drawing donkey-work to a suitable video card, but if there's no suitable card available, the OS goes back to regular Quartz, where the CPU is drawing the GUI. Basically, any Mac capable of running OS X will be able to run Jaguar, so Cube owners with the Rage 128 card need not fear that they will be unable to run Mac OS X 10.2. However, a graphics card upgrade will be needed to reap the full benefits of Quartz Extreme. Probably this stuff you already know, but I think it's important that the idea doesn't get out there that Cubes won't run this OS release. That said, what are the options for those of us who want to upgrade the video card and need to have an ADC connector to suit our Apple flat-panel displays?"

Jof.

The options are : Radeon cards, GeForce 2 Mx cards and GeForce 3 cards. All of them have ADC if they are Apple OEM cards (others won't work with your Cube)

"Hello Cube-Zone ! I'm a Cube owner and I've just seen that Jaguar will be able to work faster with more recent video card than the original one. You answered to Richard who had the same concern that it is possible to replace the original card by a GeForce 2 MX or a even more a GeForce 3. I'm surprised about the GeForce 3, I did not know it would be possible. Anyway, I'm trying to find one of these cards. Do you have any idea where to find one ? Thanks a lot for your web site that I read frequently."

Best Regards, Denis R.

Thanks for your mail. Stay tuned, we'll probably have a source that will be able to sell you a card next week....

05/15/02

New Rackmount server : XServer, starting at $ 2999

Apple today introduced Xserve, a powerful 1U rack-mount server. Designed from the ground up as the perfect complement to Apple's UNIX-based Mac¨ OS X Server software, Xserve is ideal for business and education customers. Its dual 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processors each have 2MB of Double Data Rate (DDR) L3 cache, and Xserve is the first Apple server to use DDR SDRAM memory with up to 2GB capacity. Xserve offers storage, with up to 480GB on four hot-plug ATA/100 drives.

Xserve includes an unlimited user license to Mac OS X Server software, offering users a perfect combination for file/print service, video streaming, database applications, computational clustering and web and mail serving.Xserve rack-mount workgroup server solution combined with Apple's UNIX-based Mac OS X Server software is a superior platform for Oracle9i Database. Xserve is also perfect for I/O intensive applications such as digital video, high-resolution digital imagery and large scientific datasets. With capacity and performance rivaling much more expensive servers from Dell, HP, IBM and Sun, Xserve delivers high-speed networking, 15 gigaflops of computational power and nearly a half terabyte of hot-plug storage. With four independent ATA/100 drive channels, Xserve offers nearly double the performance of other 1U servers that utilize more expensive Ultra3 SCSI drives.

05/14/02

Jaguar and the Cube

One of our reader sent us a mail about Jaguar and Quartz Extreme :

I am a happy Cube user. Rumor has it OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) will be faster because (among other things) : Apple said Jagwire would enable modern graphics cards to take much of the load by "pipeling" Quartz via OpenGL to the card. Thus, "Quartz Extreme", as it's called, relieves the main CPU of drawing the eye candy, but will only be available on machines with AGP 2X and 32MB of memory and above. Rage 128 systems don't cut it. "We had some misunderstandings before," said Jobs referring to the current lawsuit on behalf of G3 users. I have an original 128Pro. Is there a Cube-ready video card which meets the specs for Jaguar?

Richard

There are several possibilities to upgrade your Cube: you can either use a Radeon (Apple OEM), a GeForce 2MX or a GeForce 3. You may have to change the faceplate of the card before you can install it.

05/01/02

The Cube in a kiosk

Dale sent us an e-mail with some very interesting pictures :"Hi, I stumbled on your site and thought you might find our experiment interesting, we designed and built a kiosk using an Apple 15" LCD and an Apple Cube ( Those pictures are copyrighted : © 2002 Ex Machina http://www.exmachina.qc.ca)

Click on the picture to see it full screen!

ATI Radeon for the Cube

Our partner MacResQ has some ATI Radeon AGP for the Cube. Those cards cost $149.99. Hurry up, they don't have a lot of them.... If you buy those cards from them, you will also help thse site!

eMac and updated PowerBook G4...the new G5 towers are coming soon...

Apple just rolled out three new Macs : the eMac which is a CRT G4 iMac designed for education and two new PowerBooks (667 and 800 Mhz G4).

The new eMac has the following features: 700MHz PowerPC G4 processor,100MHz system bus, 128MB SDRAM (two 168-pin DIMM slots), 40GB Ultra ATA hard disk drive, either a CD-ROM drive or a Combo drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW). The eMac supports five screen resolutions: 640 by 480 pixels at 138 Hz 800 by 600 pixels at 112 Hz 1024 by 768 pixels at 89 Hz 1152 by 864 pixels at 80 Hz 1280 by 960 pixels at 72 Hz, with a NVIDIA GeForce2 MX graphics processor with AGP 2X support and 32MB of dedicated Double Data Rate (DDR) SDRAM video memory.

We should now see some G5 towers soon....

04/26/02

Cube dust cover.

One of our readers, Lloyd (he also sent us some pictures that are in our gallery) has discovered a company called Co-Du-Co (computer dust cover). It makes dust covers for the Cube, for $15.95.

04/25/02

Apple Promo

If you want to replace your Cube (we hope you don't...but nobody is perfect..), Apple is making a promotion in Europe. It is called "Peace of Mind". In England, for example, if you buy a new Power Mac G4 with a 17" Apple Studio Display and AppleCare Protection Plan, you will save up to £207 on your purchase.

New desk pictures

We have updated our Cube gallery with one page of users' desks. You can find it here. If you have some more pictures, please, send them here.