ATI Radeon 9000 Installation

New for 2004: The PowerLogix PowerCube Enclosure is the solution you've been waiting for. Now you can install video cards like the Radeon 9000 which are too tall and run too hot to install safely in the normal enclosure.

The relatively small increase in size also allows the Clear PowerCube to support higher performance graphics cards, many of which simply don't fit in the original Cube. The Clear PowerCube provides much more free space around the video card ...plenty of room for the heatsinks on the graphics card to do their jobs efficiently.

The often overlooked component regarding heat generation is the DC/DC (aka VRM) card. The DC/DC card is used to step down the incoming 28 volts from the external power supply to 12V, 5V, and 3.3V for use by the various components in the Cube. The special bracket and cable included with the Clear PowerCube repositions the DC/DC card into direct airflow. The result is much cooler and safer operation - and longer life for the DC/DC card. More info about the PowerCube can be found in this FAQ article.

Solutions for installing these cards in a standard Cube enclosure are included below, for the brave :)

A note from Trevor Hancher, ATI Technologies Inc:

" Hi Everyone,
I bumped into Kerrum and several other members of this forum, all of whom asked for information on fitting a Radeon 9000 Mac Edition and Radeon 9700 Mac Edition into the Cube."

"Since ATI neither recommends nor endorses hardware modification of graphics cards or systems, I must officially state that the Cube is an unsupported system configuration for Radeon 9000 Mac Edition, owning to the fact that does NOT fit without modification. "

"Reading through this and other threads, it's apparent that several of you have thrown your warranty cards away and proceeded with the modifications needed to make the card fit. So... "

"The following is not recommended by ATI. Any risks associated with, and problems caused by hardware modification is entirely the responsibility of the user. "

Here's the rest of Trevor's CubeOwner Forums post   [see this link for details on how/where to move the DC/DC card, from the 8500 mod mentioned previously]

New Radeon 9000 FAQ submission, courtesy of CubeOwner reader and forum member "a102t": Radeon 9000 Installation
You can read more about this mod in this forum thread.

added March 21, 2003: Another GREAT, detailed tutorial on installing the Radeon 9000:

I'm Eric, a french photographer. I installed last week a Radeon 9000 Pro mac Edition in my G4 Cube. The installation is quite easy, even if it's important to do all things carefully. I post the method here : Bidouille hardware sur Mac : MacBidouille.com. The text is in french, but you can translate it with google.

I translated it using Altavista's BabelFish. Here's the translated link.

Modders: You can get a pre-made 9-inch 12-inch 30 Pin Male-Female IDC Type Cable Extension for DC/DC card relocation at http://www.cablesandconnectors.com/ (Great for Cube Mods to fit too-tall video cards ). ONLY $7.99

G4 Cube Modification for ATI Radeon 9000 Pro, from Dr Bott.

Link: