How will the iBook ringiovanisco: as additional RAM and HD as the best choice
As you can see on the page “My Hardware“, a couple of days ago I got the new components to restore life to my iBook 12” 1.33ghz.
As the last model produced (mid late 2005), Factory equipped with a Fujitsu 40GB 4200rpm 2MB cache, which these days is totally inadequate.
It also has 512MB of RAM soldered on the logic board, to which they were originally 512MB PC2700 Crucial added other.
As for the RAM, with Apple choose a preferred module is complicated, it takes luck, or otherwise you have to rely on those modules, such as those marked Crucial, that have the fateful “Certified for Mac”, enough to drive up the price of a single module 1GB PC2700 to 55/60 euro, practically a steal.
Not having absolutely no desire to spend that kind of money, I started to do some research on the Internet, but did not have luck, since in the end all went on the safe side and took certified modules (I even read about someone who has done well 200EUR tap into a store, LOL).
At one point I found a module Corsair Value Select pc3200 1gb, bearing in mind, however, that the Value are not certified for safe compatibility with Mac. The exact product code is VS1GSDS400.
I asked on the official forums Corsair, in this thread, but I did not have complete answers, because the 8 ram chip that make up the module could have compatibility problems with the iBook Logic Board.
The desire to prove to a relatively low figure (30EUR) prevailed, and at the end I chose this form.
The result? Perfectly compatible! (the face of the certified modules costing twice :P)
The ram adapts to the speed of bus (333mhz)
Corsair value ram mounted sull'ibook
About My Mac showing 1.5GB of RAM
For safety, I put the DVD in Mac OSX 10.4 and I did start the Hardware Test, that has been passed without problems.
After a few days of use, I have not encountered any particular problem.
With regard to the Hard Disk, as I said above, the original HD had become totally inadequate, as well as becoming very full.
Since the discs 7200rpm 60 80gb or are almost all old and are sold at crazy prices, I am oriented towards something modern, high density and at 5400RPM, that not so much by the performance of distanziasse 7200RPM.
The result is the Samsung HM160HC from 160gb (39Eur), of which we highlight the benefits in this official thread.
According to the review, way inferior to 7200rpm only the access time, very slightly higher, but nothing else.
Here's a synthetic test with HDTune:
not bad, true?
We see that in comparison to more modern or SATA 7200rpm, there are no major differences:
Samsung HM160HC: comparison with other drives and 7200rpm sata, click to enlarge
Obviously this is due to a high density of data in the one flat 160GB (which also helps to reduce consumption).
I installed the program SuperDuper to clone the partition, and I plugged in a usb box to start copying.
then, After following driving Faqintosh and spending 3 hours to mount the disk, I could immediately see if anything had improved:
The boot has gone from 40.57 seconds at 34.97, and the desktop loads increased from 31 seconds at 12 second, for a total difference of 13 second. Not many in the complex, but instead is a nice percentage gain.
But much the difference is felt in common: the disc is much quieter and runs much much less than the old thanks to 8mb of cache. Folders with images instantly show previews, and the applications start much faster.
These data Xbench, relating to the new hard drive:
XBench: tests on the new Samsung HDD 7200rpm
I hope you have two good tips to rejuvenate your Mac G4, spending a few lire 🙂