Although the sleds themselves appear to use thumbscrews, you will need a screwdriver to securely mount a drive on there.


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The sleds slide in and out fairly well, although it's about as smooth as machined metal rubbing against machined metal can physically be.


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The latch at the rear of the case locks the sleds in place, even if the side panel is removed. If the sleds aren't locked in place, removing one with a drive attached still requires some force; it's by no means difficult, but it's not an effortless movement and the drives won't fall out on their own.


Drive sleds locked - Click to Enlarge

Although not listed in the system specifications, there are two unused SATA connectors on the motherboard:


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The optical drives share a single PATA bus as SATA optical drives are still far from mainstream. We'd guess that future versions of the Mac Pro may use those two unused SATA connectors for SATA optical drives as upcoming HD-DVD and Blu-ray drives are being offered primarily with a SATA interface.

Inside the Mac Pro PCIe Slots
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  • plinden - Saturday, August 19, 2006 - link

    No point in arguing with this guy - he's shown just how much he knows about the subject. How could someone regularly read AnandTech and not know about EFI? And then profess to have confused it with some obscure mobo manufacturer?

    Oddly enough, I can't find any motherboards for sale manufactured by a company called EFI - either it's very obscure or he's making it up. I wonder which one it is?
  • michael2k - Friday, August 18, 2006 - link

    EFI isn't a manufacturer, it stands for "Extensible Firmware Interface", see the link in the other post.
    Lian Li had an aluminum case first, but Apple's design was COPIED by Lian Li. Read the Anandtech article in which half the comments for the case review claim "G5 ripoff".
  • plinden - Friday, August 18, 2006 - link

    quote:

    EFI is an average/cheap mobo maker at best (not to say unreliable, just average in function, and performance). They are no DFI, or ASUS, not even close.


    I laughed out loud at this. You're absolutely right, EFI is no DFI or ASUS, not even close.

    You've just proved you know fuck all about this. I suggest you read up on EFI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_I...">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Firmware_I... before posting about this in the future.

    I'm not going to tell you makes the Mac motherboards. I'll leave that up to you to research.
  • Petoschka - Wednesday, April 1, 2020 - link

    Well, my Junk Pro from early 2008 is still running.
  • pervisanathema - Wednesday, August 16, 2006 - link

    I want one. :o
  • takeshi7 - Tuesday, January 7, 2014 - link

    Just a small correction on page 2: The Power Mac G5 PCI-E also has 3 USB 2.0 ports on the rear panel.

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