[Laminar]

It may come down to what's on sale when I'm ready to purchase. The i5-12400F is $110 vs. the i3-14100F at $125 for about equal single-core performance.

[Laminar]

Splurged a little and went for the i5-12600KF for $140, which also meant I had to buy a cooler for another $33. Initially planned on 16GB of RAM but at $38 for 16 or $53 for 32, I just went for 32. Spent a touch over what I had planned but I think it was all value-added. Son liked a white case, so we went with the white case and white CPU cooler.



Got a motherboard off of Marketplace for $50, found an open-box power supply from Best Buy for $40 shipped. RAM and processor were new. All in for about $370, which is less than an Xbox.

The i5 should outperform my 11th-gen i7 in all metrics.

Also, does the term "Black Friday" now just mean "sale"?

[reader50]

What will become of the MDD G4 -> Intel? Based on this thread, I assume your new build replaces the MDD Convertible?

[Laminar]

The MDD is mine and it stays. This replaces the MacPro 5,1.

[Thorzdad]

So, what kind of wacky fun can a guy get up to resurrecting a 2x2 G5? Asking for a friend...

[reader50]

When I rebuild G4s or G5s, the problems usually are dried-out heatsink grease, with hard-to-open heat sinks. Along with failing GPU fans. On the G4s only, there's also the PATA problem if you want to update the drives.

[Waragainstsleep]

The G5 heat sink parts from Apple used to come with pre-applied thermal grease IIRC. Except maybe they earlier ones that used to be supplied with gloves and a hatful of warnings about how toxic the super-duper special grease was.

[Laminar]

Originally Posted by Thorzdad 

So, what kind of wacky fun can a guy get up to resurrecting a 2x2 G5? Asking for a friend...

Strip the Mac components and put a new Intel board in there. The use cases for a current Mac are dwindling, let alone a crappy slow one that's several OS versions behind.

[Laminar]

Facebook Marketplace strikes again. Spot the bent pins.



Went ahead and ordered a new board that got delivered on Saturday. In the meantime, we hooked up the power supply so we could at least see the fun case lights.



The mobo showed up around 4pm and we were gaming by 6:30.



I ran the Heaven 4.0 benchmark on my PC and his and it's a dead heat, which makes sense because we both have a 3060 and that's probably the bottleneck of the system. But he's getting a solid 165fps on Fortnite with no drops so he's pleased. Minecraft on Ultra Fancy settings is 500+ fps.

Next step is making a shelf to get the PC up off the floor.

[andi*pandi]

minecraft + 500fps = does not compute

You set your block rendering to 128 and you'll like it!

(great job, happy kids!)

[subego]

I like the anti-anti static mat.