Did I upgrade or downgrade ?

[clipsedsm95]

Hey guys, so please don't rip me apart as I believe I made the right choice but give me your opinions and please keep it civil.

Ok so I currently own a late 2013 MBPR 15" 2.3 quad with 750M 2GB VRAM and 16GB ram 512GB PCIe SSD

It has slowly gotten slower and slower with apps I use such as Lightroom. I have done fresh installs on every new OS release so that's not an issue here.

I wanted to upgrade but the iMacs and new Mac Pros are a little above my pay grade currently due to job change.

I'm not sure if I upgraded or downgraded here but I purchased a Mac Pro a1289 mid 2012 XEON 12 Core 2.4 E5645 (X2) 32GB ram 3TB disk raid 0 for my pictures internally.

I also purchased a few upgrades
- Radeon HD 7950 3GB VRAM (Mac Edition)
- 64GB Ram
- 500GB MX200 for OS and Apps
- AC and BT4.0 PCIE card for hand off
- USB 3 PCIE card
- super multi 24X drive

** could I upgrade my E5645 to an X5675 ***

I personally think I got it for a steal at 1600 excluding the upgrades and 4TB disk came included I will be taking one out to use SSD.
In all honesty did I made the right choice here or did I shoot my self in the leg???
I can't test the machine out my self as I work out of state and will not be home until the weekend.

Thank you ahead for any responses!

 

[pastrychef]

Seems like a huge upgrade to me.

Yes, you can upgrade the E5645 CPUs to X5675 CPUs.

 

[clipsedsm95]

Seems like a huge upgrade to me.

Yes, you can upgrade the E5645 CPUs to X5675 CPUs.

Awesome thanks !

Is there any guides on how to upgrade them? Is there anything extra I need to do or is it just a simple heat sink removal CPU swap. put back together then done ?
[doublepost=1458296810][/doublepost]

Seems like a huge upgrade to me.

Yes, you can upgrade the E5645 CPUs to X5675 CPUs.

https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/201533622834

Is this one ok ?

 

[pastrychef]

Yes, those CPUs look fine.

 

[clipsedsm95]

Yes, those CPUs look fine.

Thank you very much. I'm so excited with the upgraded CPU's on the benchmark site it states I will have the 2nd fastest Mac on the 64 bit multi core scale !!

 

[owbp]

12 core cMP wil hardly be a downgrade, compared to anything really...
Congratulations, can't wait to save money for one!

 

[kschendel]

If you are doing a straight hard drive for SSD swap, you could do worse than the Mushkin 1Tb Reactor -- I swapped out old drives for a Mushkin and it was a very nice read speed boost for $230. Plus I don't need to worry any more about when the old rotating drive would fail. You won't get the kind of garish read/write numbers that you would by going for PCIe SSD, but it's a cheap and useful upgrade.

 

[ActionableMango]

Is there any guides on how to upgrade them? Is there anything extra I need to do or is it just a simple heat sink removal CPU swap. put back together then done ?

That's pretty much it. You will want to clean off old thermal paste and reapply new. You will need:

Rubbing alcohol to remove the old paste, and cotton pads, balls, or q-tips
New thermal paste (Arctic Silver 5 is very commonly used)
A very long 3mm allen wrench for the heat sink bolts

I bought this t-handle wrench and it works fine:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000X285AW/ref=pe_309540_26725410_item

 

[clipsedsm95]

That's pretty much it. You will want to clean off old thermal paste and reapply new. You will need:

Rubbing alcohol to remove the old paste, and cotton pads, balls, or q-tips
New thermal paste (Arctic Silver 5 is very commonly used)
A very long 3mm allen wrench for the heat sink bolts

I bought this t-handle wrench and it works fine:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000X285AW/ref=pe_309540_26725410_item

yea I did it simple stuff. Mac is great but for the applications I use it for it isn't that great which kind of sucks.