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Getting ready for the plunge-some advice needed

A

aslowdodge

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 12, 2012
94
9
I have a mac pro 4.1 dual 2.26 quad core. Ram is 32mb of 1066 MHz DDR3
A week ago I updated to 5.1 and now have High Sierra 10.13.6 installed and running with Boot ROM Version: MP51.0089.B00
Next week I am changing processors to dual 5590’s delidded (this ought to be interesting), but I'm waiting for delivery of my Arctic Silver 5 paste next week.

The OS and all my apps are running off a Toshiba HDTS351 512mb SSD installed in bay 1 sata
I currently have 2 gt 120 video cards and a PCIe usb 3.0 expansion card and (the 4.1 only has USB 2.0)



What I plan to do is:
PCIe slot 1 install my new sapphire radeon RX 580 Nitro+ 8gb video card
PCIe Slot 2 Open
PCIe Slot 3 is a Samsung 512mb 970 Pro NVME M.2 installed on a Angelbird Wings PX1 as primary drive running Mojave.
PCIe slot 4 Sonnet Tempo SSD card holding two sata III 512 gb ssds.
One SSD will have a clone of the current high sierra OS and apps in case the new Mojave doesn’t play well with some of my older apps, I’d like to boot into the High sierra and run this drive. The other ssd will be a scratch disk for photoshop.

So before I plunge into this
1. What exactly what is boot screen? Do I need it?

2. My questions are with Mojave will I completely lose the boot screen, or is that something that is temporary until the new card and mojave is installed. In other words When Mojave is installed with the new Rx580, will the boot screen come back?
My plan is to clone the Toshiba with High sierra onto the new Samsung 512mb 970 Pro NVME M.2 and make this the startup drive. Then ultimately move the Toshiba to the Sonnet card. Then upgrade to Mojave on Samsung 512mb 970 Pro NVME M.2. Will I have any problems installing and running the 970 Pro NVME M.2 on high sierra?
Sound logical?


3. For slot 2 I have a usb 3.0 card I can put in, but back to the boot screen issue.
I plan on using a 30 inch dell monitor as my primary working monitor, a 55 inch 4k tv as a mirror monitor to the 30 inch monitor, a 20 inch cheap monitor to hold all my photoshop palletes. I thought someone said if I run the old gt120 graphics card I would get the boot screen on it with Mojave although the monitor will have no acceleration, not important for just the pallettes. But if I can run all three on the RX580 and get the boot screen, I don’t need the old gt120 and can get my USB 3.0 card back?

4. In any case, are these PCIe cards all in the right slots?

5. Just to make sure I am doing this right. Once I have High sierra installed on Samsung 512mb 970 Pro NVME M.2 the I plan on removing the toshiba ssd with high sierra out of the computer so there is no confusion.
Then I remove my gt120 graphic cards cards and install the sapphire radeon RX 580
I restart the computer and then download the installer for Mojave and run it.
Once it restarts I open System Information and check if I have BootROM 140.0.0.0.0
If I do this and it checks out, I upgrade the high sierra to Mojave.
I did a search for Avatron, AVVideoCard.kext, and AVFrameBuffer.kext and none appear to exist on my mac.

Thanks in advance-just trying to keep myself from screwing everything up.
 
aslowdodge said:
I have a mac pro 4.1 dual 2.26 quad core. Ram is 32mb of 1066 MHz DDR3
A week ago I updated to 5.1 and now have High Sierra 10.13.6 installed and running with Boot ROM Version: MP51.0089.B00
Next week I am changing processors to dual 5590’s delidded (this ought to be interesting), but I'm waiting for delivery of my Arctic Silver 5 paste next week.

The OS and all my apps are running off a Toshiba HDTS351 512mb SSD installed in bay 1 sata
I currently have 2 gt 120 video cards and a PCIe usb 3.0 expansion card and (the 4.1 only has USB 2.0)



What I plan to do is:
PCIe slot 1 install my new sapphire radeon RX 580 Nitro+ 8gb video card
PCIe Slot 2 Open
PCIe Slot 3 is a Samsung 512mb 970 Pro NVME M.2 installed on a Angelbird Wings PX1 as primary drive running Mojave.
PCIe slot 4 Sonnet Tempo SSD card holding two sata III 512 gb ssds.
One SSD will have a clone of the current high sierra OS and apps in case the new Mojave doesn’t play well with some of my older apps, I’d like to boot into the High sierra and run this drive. The other ssd will be a scratch disk for photoshop.

So before I plunge into this
What exactly what is boot screen? Do I need it?
Click to expand...
Boot screens are the initial screens before the GPU driver loads, like when you use the boot selector/Single user mode/Verbose boot/FileVault support.

If you don't know what it is, you probably don't need it.

My questions are with Mojave will I completely lose the boot screen, or is that something that is temporary until the new card and mojave is installed. In other words When Mojave is installed with the new Rx580, will the boot screen come back?
Click to expand...

No, only Mac EFI GPUs have boot screens/Single user mode support/Verbose boot/FileVault support. RX-580 is a PC GPU, no Mac EFI support.

My plan is to clone the Toshiba with High sierra onto the new Samsung 512mb 970 Pro NVME M.2 and make this the startup drive. Then ultimately move the Toshiba to the Sonnet card. Then upgrade to Mojave on Samsung 512mb 970 Pro NVME M.2. Will I have any problems installing and running the 970 Pro NVME M.2 on high sierra?
Sound logical?
Click to expand...

It will probably work, but it's best to do a clean install. High Sierra have NVMe drivers for 970 Pro, but you only can boot from it if you upgrade to BootROM 140.0.0.0.0. MP51.0089.B00 don't support NVMe boot, read the first posts of these threads to know how to upgrade to 140.0.0.0.0:

MP5,1: What you have to do to upgrade to Mojave

MP5,1: BootROM thread | 140.0.0.0.0


For slot 2 I have a usb 3.0 card I can put in, but back to the boot screen issue.
I plan on using a 30 inch dell monitor as my primary working monitor, a 55 inch 4k tv as a mirror monitor to the 30 inch monitor, a 20 inch cheap monitor to hold all my photoshop palletes. I thought someone said if I run the old gt120 graphics card I would get the boot screen on it with Mojave although the monitor will have no acceleration, not important for just the pallettes. But if I can run all three on the RX580 and get the boot screen, I don’t need the old gt120 and can get my USB 3.0 card back?
Click to expand...

Mojave don't support GT120 and don't work with AMD and NVIDIA cards at the same time. High Sierra more or less work with this. BTW, RX580 fans invade the Slot-2 space, a lot of cards that have components into the back have trouble RX-580 fans.

In any case, are these PCIe cards all in the right slots?
Click to expand...

For best throughput, use the NVMe into slot-2.

Just to make sure I am doing this right. Once I have High sierra installed on Samsung 512mb 970 Pro NVME M.2 the I plan on removing the toshiba ssd with high sierra out of the computer so there is no confusion.
Then I remove my gt120 graphic cards cards and install the sapphire radeon RX 580
I restart the computer and then download the installer for Mojave and run it.
Once it restarts I open System Information and check if I have BootROM 140.0.0.0.0
If I do this and it checks out, I upgrade the high sierra to Mojave.
I did a search for Avatron, AVVideoCard.kext, and AVFrameBuffer.kext and none appear to exist on my mac.

Thanks in advance-just trying to keep myself from screwing everything up.
Click to expand...

You will probably find that things not usually go like you planned. Sapphire Pulse RX-580 size is one.
[doublepost=1546213024][/doublepost]Now I see another, you have a Nitro+ - you will totally block slot-2, since Nitro+ is a 2.2 slots card.
 
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Thanks
tsialex
, everything was smooth so far I figured it wasn't going to be that easy afterwards. I think what I will do is put a spare ssd in with a clone of my high sierra and take out the one I have for now and put it off to the side.
It sounds like in the end I will just be removing the gt120 cards altogether and just run the rx580. Are we talking NVMe into slot-2 right above the rx580. I had planned that if I wasn't going to need the gt120, Will the rx580 fit, it looks huge but I watched videos of people putting them in and they fit but take a lot of room. But it sounds like you are saying it will block access to the slot 2?
 
aslowdodge said:
Thanks
tsialex
, everything was smooth so far I figured it wasn't going to be that easy afterwards. I think what I will do is put a spare ssd in with a clone of my high sierra and take out the one I have for now and put it off to the side.
It sounds like in the end I will just be removing the gt120 cards altogether and just run the rx580. Are we talking NVMe into slot-2 right above the rx580. I had planned that if I wasn't going to need the gt120, Will the rx580 fit, it looks huge but I watched videos of people putting them in and they fit but take a lot of room. But it sounds like you are saying it will block access to the slot 2?
Click to expand...

Sapphire Nitro+ RX-580 is a 2.2 slots wide GPU and totally blocks slot-2 when installed into slot-1. Even Sapphire Pulse RX-580 is a little bit more than 2 slots wide and have problems with a lot of cards that have components into the backside, like HighPoint SSD7101-A.

If you still can return the Nitro+, do it. Besides 2.2 slots wide card, it's a GPU that can use 237W when in full power consumption. Mac Pro 5,1 can only supply 75W from the slot and 75W for each PCIe AUX power connector, so 225W max. Since you rarely use the GPU at full, you probably can make it work, but it's 12W over the power specification and you could get unexpected shutdowns when in full power consumption.

You should not have bought a Sapphire Nitro+ RX-580.
 
Last edited:
I haven't looked, but maybe put the Sapphire Nitro+ RX-580 in slot 2 with the 16 lanes, give up slot 3, put Angelbird Wings PX1 with evo in slot 1 with 16 lanes, and then Sonnet Tempo SSD card holding two sata III 512 gb ssds. in slot 1?
Which Graphics card should I have gotten?
 
aslowdodge said:
I haven't looked, but maybe put the Sapphire Nitro+ RX-580 in slot 2 with the 16 lanes, give up slot 3, put Angelbird Wings PX1 with evo in slot 1 with 16 lanes, and then Sonnet Tempo SSD card holding two sata III 512 gb ssds. in slot 1?
Click to expand...
Angelbirds PX1 is PCIe 2.0 4 lanes.

The problem is that slot-3 and slot-4 are shared thru a PCIe 2.0 switch, slot-1 and slot-2 has 16 lanes each and slot-3 and 4 share the last available 4 lanes. So if you want the best throughput at all times, you should not use slots 3 or 4 with NVMe drives, that's why I suggested slot-2 for the NVMe drive.

Sapphire RX-580 Nitro+ into slot-2 will block slots 3 and 4, check it.

Which Graphics card should I have gotten?
Click to expand...

Apple recommends:
  • SAPPHIRE Radeon PULSE RX 580 8GB GDDR5
  • MSI Gaming Radeon RX 560 128-bit 4GB GDRR5
  • SAPPHIRE Radeon PULSE RX 580 8GB GDDR5
  • SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 7950 Mac Edition
  • NVIDIA Quadro K5000 for Mac
  • NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Mac Edition
Sapphire RX-580 Nitro+ is a card designed for PC overclockers.
 
aslowdodge said:
I haven't looked, but maybe put the Sapphire Nitro+ RX-580 in slot 2 with the 16 lanes, give up slot 3, put Angelbird Wings PX1 with evo in slot 1 with 16 lanes, and then Sonnet Tempo SSD card holding two sata III 512 gb ssds. in slot 1?
Which Graphics card should I have gotten?
Click to expand...

At this time, the very best combination of GPU in the 2010/2012 is a AMD Vega 64 reference card in my opinion. It is a regular 2 slot card that will not block slot 2, plus the Vega 64 is much faster than any RX580 or RX590 out there. The only drawback is to mount the pixlas mod cable and flashing the Vega with the secondary Sapphire Bios for reduced fan speed and noise. I think there is just no better solution out there at the moment for using Mojave on the cMP and have all slots available for fast IO.
The only question remains, do you have what it takes to put in the power cable. Read this wonderful website for further instruction.
If you ara a handy craftsman or an electrical engineer, this mod is really very easy to do. If I can do it you can do it with ease.
Since the mod is widley used, a finished cable can be ordered from various websites very conveniently.

http://thehouseofmoth.com/mac-pro-pixlas-mod/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/pixlas-4-1-mac-pro-mod.1859652/

best luck to you

and

BIG THANKS TO tsiALex !!!
 
I think you are right, that card does look like it's a tad shorter just enough to give good access.
I did manage to shoehorn the Sapphire Nitro+ RX-580 in slot 1 and Angelbird Wings PX1 with evo in slot 2.
The screws at the bottom of the anglebird were pushing against the plastic housing of the 580 card, but I filed them down a bit. I can see where they are rubbing on the 580 plastic housing and considered taking the housing off and drilling a 1/4 hole in the housing which would allow the angelbird to have no tension at all. Beside warranty-anyone see a problem with that?

IMG_2423.JPG


The question now is I have a usb 3. 0 card and the Sonnet Tempo card with a sata ssd on it. Does it matter which slots they go in for 3 and 4?
 
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