Help with upgrading 2012 MP

[bigbadneil]

Guys
My 2012 is killing me. It is seriously slow when trying to work on image RAW files of 250 MB each. I am working on these files in Hasselblad Phocus software and also Photoshop CC. Every brush stroke basically causes a hourglass effect, and is constantly locking up. I like to stitch files together in PScc and that takes forever.
My system set up is below: I would like to know what options there are out there to upgrade this machine to maybe a 12 or 16 core processor and basically anything that will get me out of this bottleneck.

Are my options send the computer back to Apple or is there a way that a roughneck can do this by buying the stuff online and swapping it out or would this need to be done by a professional .............I can change a light bulb but normally seek outside help to do that 🙂

Neil

 

[mahaha]

I feel your pain, i'm in sort of the same boat with a 2010 5,1 working on the same files. Although my machine is feeling it's age, it's still cruising along pretty well. The difference in set up is I have a velocity duo with 2 ssd drives and perhaps that's where I'm getting some of the speed. https://www.apricorn.com/upgrades/vel-duox2

Going from a sata drive to this was the best upgrade I could have ever done and definitely helped with the speed of things. I don't know how much improvement you'll see since you already have a single ssd? And like I said mine is definitely feeling it's age.

Will be following this thread for other suggestions or simply waiting for hell to freeze over with the modular.

Cheers!

 

[bsbeamer]

Velocity Solo X2 and Velocity Duo X2 are the main reason I haven't abandoned my 5,1 for another machine yet. Getting very close, however.

What also helped (for Adobe at least) is to setup two SATA SSDs in a RAID 0 for the Adobe scratch disk. This increases SATA read/write speed to near what the Velocity Solo X2 is for read/write. Adobe can write all the temp files it wants/needs and I'm using those SATA slots for something since PCIe slots are full.

Upgrading the GPU to an NVIDIA GTX 1080 Founders Edition 8GB also helped a bit with Adobe products. Non-EFI (so no boot screens). Do notice a speed improvement in several apps over the GTX 680 Official Mac version that I was using previously. (I mainly work in video, however.)

Looks like you have 32GB RAM? That machine will support 3x16GB sticks (48GB total).

Not a ton that you can do about the CPU unless you want to upgrade to dual tray with dual processors. Money may be better spent on SSDs and PCIe upgrades vs. dual CPU. And SSDs are upgrades you can take to another machine down the line. Upgrade as many of those 6TB HDDs as you can, or at least the one you're working from the most. They are at least 4x slower than SSDs.

Will recommend this - run AJA System Test Lite (free) with a 16GB test file on all your drives. Make sure you're not suffering from an APFS write issue on system drive. Also take note at the speed of the other drives. My system drive was CRAWLING (with Adobe especially), but was fixed by cloning system to an HFS+ drive and abandoning APFS. Not totally sure why this was, but the drive was automatically updated/upgraded to APFS during High Sierra install.

 

[bigbadneil]

I just bought this after talking with the Tech guy at OWC
Item: DIY Kit: OWC Accelsior S + 2.0TB Extreme Pro 6G Solid-State Drive Bundle. Storage Expansion With a Speed Boost. No drivers required. 3 Year OWC Limited Warranty on Accelsior; 5 Year OWC Limited Warranty on SSD. (OWCSSDACL6G2TB)
Qty: 1
Price: $769.00

Item: Sonnet Technologies Allegro USB 3.0 4-Port SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Charging PCI Express 2.0 Card. Adds four USB 3.0 ports to your system, transfers data up to 5Gb/s, and supports USB 3.0 bus-powered devices. Sonnet Technologies 1 Year Limited Warranty. (STIUSB34PME)
Qty: 1
Price: $54.75

 

[fiatlux]

I have a very similar system (6 cores, 3.33 Ghz, 24 GB RAM, SSD and plenty of HDDs) and have never felt it was slow, including with H3D39 files on Phocus.

My boot and apps drive is a PCIe M.2 SSD drive in a PCIe adapter, with plenty of free space on the drive. I always try to keep plenty of space on the boot drive and upgrade when I reach 50% capacity.

My main working drive is actually a RAID0 set of two HDDs. It does help a bit with throughput.

Finally, I have a RX 580 which is much faster than your GPU, although I don’t know to what extent it makes a big difference in Phocus.

 

[bsbeamer]

You could have saved a bit of money elsewhere, but the PCIe SSD OWC sold you will be faster IF it is setup correctly. You possibly could have just moved your SSD into a PCIe adapter and that alone would have improved your system. (Usually $40-$100 for single drive adapters depending on brand.)

If you are not using USB regularly, that card will not have a major impact on overall speed in the situation you described (unless you are working from external USB media). Most 5,1 users have added a USB3 and/or eSATA card to their machines, or swap in/out as needed.

What are you using your 4th PCIe slot for? Looks like you'll have GPU, the new PCIe SSD, and the new USB PCIe card. If it is free, you could add two additional SSDs in an Apricorn Velocity Duo X2 PCIe adapter.

 

[JedNZ]

You would need to source a dual CPU tray in order to upgrade to 12 core – make sure you get the right one: if it's a 4,1>5,1 firmware upgrade then you'll need to get a 4,1 dual CPU tray.

As far as the slowdowns go, what troubleshooting have you already done? Here are some things I would be doing.
1. Hold down Shift key on startup to enter into Safe Boot mode - see here for what goes on when you do this.
2. Reset PRAM by holding down Cmd+Opt+P+R on startup - keeping holding these down until you've heard the startup chime (bong) for the third time. See here for what goes on when you zap your PRAM.
3. Set SMC – see link in step 2 above for instructions.
4. Check Photoshop CC settings (Cmd+K) to check you're all good in there – specifically check Performance, Scratch Disks and 3D preference items.
5. Boot into Recovery HD > Disk Utility or use a specialised hard drive utility like TechTool Pro (which can check SMART status), Disk Genius, (Disk Warrior?) etc to check and repair any hard drive woes.

 

[Squuiid]

I just bought this after talking with the Tech guy at OWC
Item: DIY Kit: OWC Accelsior S + 2.0TB Extreme Pro 6G Solid-State Drive Bundle. Storage Expansion With a Speed Boost. No drivers required. 3 Year OWC Limited Warranty on Accelsior; 5 Year OWC Limited Warranty on SSD. (OWCSSDACL6G2TB)
Qty: 1
Price: $769.00

Item: Sonnet Technologies Allegro USB 3.0 4-Port SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Charging PCI Express 2.0 Card. Adds four USB 3.0 ports to your system, transfers data up to 5Gb/s, and supports USB 3.0 bus-powered devices. Sonnet Technologies 1 Year Limited Warranty. (STIUSB34PME)
Qty: 1
Price: $54.75

Next time I'd wait for some responses from the forum before rushing out and buying something. 😉
OWC, as many will tell you, sell horrible SSDs. Overpriced and using poor controllers.

This would have been a much better option:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Inch-Internal-MZ-76E2T0B-AM/dp/B0786QNSBD

Or a couple HyperX Predator 480GB PCIe SSDs would have also been a great option.
1,000MB/sec writes vs the OWC at 402MB/sec.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA65053D8907
+ this adapter:
Lycom DT-120 M.2 PCIe to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter (Support M.2 PCIe 2280, 2260, 2242)

The Sonnet Allegro Pro is a good card however.

If you want to max out your system you could also get a Sapphire RX 580 8GB card and a Bluetooth 4.0/802.11AC WiFi card:
http://www.osxwifi.com/apple-broadc...-with-adapter-for-macpro-2009-and-macpro-2010

Not sure how much improvement you'd see from the RX580 in Photoshop however, but overall it will future proof you Mac a bit without the hassle of dealing with the NVIDIA web driver.

You possibly could have just moved your SSD into a PCIe adapter and that alone would have improved your system. (Usually $40-$100 for single drive adapters depending on brand.)

Agreed.

 

[bigbadneil]

Next time I'd wait for some responses from the forum before rushing out and buying something. 😉
OWC, as many will tell you, sell horrible SSDs. Overpriced and using poor controllers.

This would have been a much better option:
https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Inch-Internal-MZ-76E2T0B-AM/dp/B0786QNSBD

Or a couple HyperX Predator 480GB PCIe SSDs would have also been a great option.
1,000MB/sec read/writes vs the OWC at 402MB/sec.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA65053D8907
+ this adapter:
Lycom DT-120 M.2 PCIe to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter (Support M.2 PCIe 2280, 2260, 2242)

The Sonnet Allegro Pro is a good card however.

If you want to max out your system you could also get a Sapphire RX 580 8GB card and a Bluetooth 4.0/802.11AC WiFi card:
http://www.osxwifi.com/apple-broadc...-with-adapter-for-macpro-2009-and-macpro-2010

Not sure how much improvement you'd see from the RX580 in Photoshop however, but overall it will future proof you Mac a bit without the hassle of dealing with the NVIDIA web driver.

Yes you are absolutely correct. I should have waited but I’m 60 years old so time is pregnant.
I think that what I have bought will definitely speed things up but installing it will be a different matter....... normally I get my nabour to change light bulbs but I will try and go this by myself.
Pictures to follow

Neil

 

[pixelatedscraps]

Yes you are absolutely correct. I should have waited but I’m 60 years old so time is pregnant.
I think that what I have bought will definitely speed things up but installing it will be a different matter....... normally I get my nabour to change light bulbs but I will try and go this by myself.
Pictures to follow

Neil

You’ve done one of the easiest upgrades, don’t let others knock the OWC upgrade option. Sure, there are cheaper / faster options but the one you’ve picked is nonetheless a solid upgrade option and should last you a while. I second getting a video card upgrade, though the RX580 cards are hideously overpriced at this moment - for photoshop, the cheaper RX560 should be fine and will fly compared to what you have.