That g4 has a green power light, so it's probably a 'yikes' or 'sawtooth' model. Those G4 processors use like 7W of power!

It wasn't until the Quicksilver dual processor models that they started hitting the limits with that case design. They introduced the "Mirrored Drive Doors" model to help lol. At that point we were talking about 40w or so.

It's a Sawtooth 450MHz.

Was wondering the same. Those old PowerPC's used to run hot. I think it was one of the primary motivations Steve had for changing to Intel.

G4 Macs didnt run that hot, compared to G5 ones, which came factory water cooled in the case of a PowerMac G5. (https://everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/faq/powermac-...)

At least some of the early Intel Macs ran hot too; I had a core duo plastic Macbook and it got uncomfortably hot.

(author)

The G4? Not much. The G4's FireWire spinning disk RAID? Quite a bit. I'm plotting possible replacements.

Not sure if that's technologically possible or even an option for you access pattern, but for my more modern SATA disks I see about 1W (from the wall) per disk when spun down, lots of W for spin up and 5 to 8W spinning. I guess numbers for old disks are a bit different, but the principle should hold.

Drawback is that you'll likely be doing staggered spin up, which can introduce some latency. But for non-interactive stuff like daily backups that's just irrelevant.