My G5 Quad is about 6 years old and still is a great machine, until a couple of weeks ago, when it froze on startup. Led no. 7 burned, which means that your processor’s dead or you logic board. In my case, it was the latter. Brought it to a Mac repair shop, they couldn’t help me, but had to pay €140,- for the check they did. A bit of Googling around learned that if you heat the logic board with a hair dryer, sometimes the machine could be brought back to life. I had nothing to lose, so gave it a try. Yes, it worked…. for a couple of hours. The feared LED#7 burned, the machine froze, fans going full power. I did the hair dryer treatment again, a bit longer than before, and it powered up fine, ran for about 12 hrs, so I thought that the problem was solved. Next day same problem on startup, I gave up hope…..
A few days ago I talked to a computer repair guy and he told me that instead of using a hair dryer or heat gun, you should remove the logic board and put it in an oven, he told that I should google on “reflow”, and yes, several Youtube video’s showed brave people putting the guts of their G5 machines into grills and ovens. I gave it a shot, desperate as I was, and after 8 minutes at 190˚C (375˚F) the apples were grilled. Did it work? Until now, YES!!! I ran the AHT (Apple Hardware Test), logic board OK, no other problems. Even after rebooting a couple of times, no LED’s burning:-)
Hopefully I can work another year on it before moving to a new Mac Pro (I was actually waiting for the Sandy bridge model that expect to arrive Q1 2012), but I read that the 2nd gen Sandy Bridge processors will be far more powerful than the ones that arrive in january, so I hope the logic board was “well done”…..
Of course, when the G5 dies again, I’ll let you know.
Update: april 3rd 2012. It died (again)…….
Just out of curiosity, why can’t you replace the faulty hardware? is it a matter of cost or is it just impossible to do?
Hi Antonio,
It isn’t very easy to find that specific Logic board. And if you find one, then they are pretty expensive.
And I was very curious if the reflow trick would work, it was almost too good to be true:-)
I did manage to buy one on Ebay for about €20,-, the seller told me it was from a Apple store closing down and had never been used, but that’s hard to check. I hope it works if I need to replace it…
The grilled board is still working, I’m not gonna replace it with that one as long as it remains a stable machine.