Powermac G5 Liquid cooled mini saga of frustration

If you ever encounter a G5 that wont start, I mean no lights no sound, push the button and literally nothing happens, not even the faint whimper os the system trying to gain power, the first step is to try opening it and pressing the pram reset button under the ram, if that doesn't work, the next step is to try a new pram battery, if that doesn't fix it its either the motherboard or the power supply. I have had a few clients with G3, G4,s and even G5s where pressing the PRAM reset fixes weird issues that could easily be mis-diagnosed and cost hundreds more for no reason.

Wiki says :"Non-volatile random access memory (NVRAM) is the general name used to describe any type of random access memory which does not lose its information when power is turned off. This is in contrast to the most common forms of random access memory today, DRAM and SRAM, which both require continual power in order to maintain their data. NVRAM is a subgroup of the more general class of non-volatile memory types, the difference being that NVRAM devices offer random access, like hard disks."

The PRAM or parameter ram is used to store system configurations for macs much like a BIOS does on an x86 machine.

Anyway enought lesson on PRAM. another way to erase, reset or "zap" the PRAM as mac geeks commonly say it is to hold Command-P-R at start-up, the computer needs to boot though, and this G5 was not.

Narrowed it down that the issue was the power supply, now if you fix computers a lot power supplies go out all the time, my most common hardware issue, the second being motherboards. Common reasons for a power supply to go out are dust clogging and slowing down fans causeing overheating, capacitor explosions, power surge, and wear and tear (old age). After doing some research on the model of G5 I was up against I found out it was a Liquid-cooled November 2004 2.5ghz dual-processor G5 model. By using WeLoveMacs.com as a resource I narrowed it down by finding it was the only dual 2.5ghz G5 made in 2004 (the date stamped on the logic board).
Becasue of the nature of macs, the power supply was engineered to be long and flat at the bottom of the case, and because of the design and unique cable pin out the 600watt would-be no hassle to the wallet part costs about $300 after shipping and tax.....

Heres a resource to find dissasimbl directions for the liquid cooled G5's cause it took me about an hour to track down anything decent,