When Apple fixed my 1993-purchased G5‘s screen-freezing issues at the start of April by re-seating some improperly-seated RAM, I was just happy to get a working computer back. At the time I brought it in, I had myself convinced it was the video-graphics card — but I’m not particularly technically-minded.

It worked flawlessly for almost two weeks: Then the screen-freezing resurfaced — which is why there wasn’t a blog-entry yesterday. MacDoc, seemingly a one-man business operation hidden away in Mississauga, is a bit further than Apple-Yorkdale but I needed a second opinion!

After some probing questions about the startup-screen symptoms, the “doctor” turned the computer on and noticed the graphics-card fan wasn’t moving, something I had mentioned — by the way — to the Apple genius.

We replaced the old card (not visible in the above picture because it sits just above the platform over the upper G5 processor) with this. That circular metal-henge surrounding the card’s fan is twice the height as the henge-less fan on my old card, because of which I lose the ability to put a PCI-card there. It was suggested that the smaller fan was actually a deliberate design-flaw (created to accomodate the small PCI-card profile): Its size would have limited the fan’s intended purpose.  Perhaps my old card’s apparent demise is (additional) proof of that hypothesis.