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MP 1,1-5,1 just got two Mac Pro 3.1's for free. please help me upgrade?

Friendly

Friendly

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 31, 2019
15
1
BC, Canada
yep, I received two 2008 Mac Pro 3.1 and 27" displays for free and I would like to do a few tweaks and would apprecaite your help on where to source parts at good prices and guides on the software and such.

they're A1186's with dual 2.8ghz Xeon E5462, upgraded to 8GB RAM (4x 2GB) and I believe the HDD was upgraded to a 1TB from whatever it was stock and Nvidia 8800GT graphics cards and some video board, which I'm not certain about.

things I would like to do:
- swap HDD for SSD's (do I need anything special for SSD's other than a tray to reduce to 2.5"?)
- upgrade one machine to 16GB (put the 2GB DIMM's from one into the other) and the other to 32GB or 64GB, if I can to it cheap enough
- upgrade one to the top end CPU it can take (I found some X5482 for $26.50/each).
- upgrade to a Nvidia 6xx or 7xx GPU for compatibility
- install Catalina on one and Catalina and Windows 10 on the other

some of the concerns off the top of my head are:
1) do I need anything special beside the tool from dosdude to install Catalina? things like BIOS/Firmware updates? will it update the Mac Pro like modern Mac's, or do I have to buy it?
2) where to find the RAM for decent pricing. the PC2-6400 FB-DIMM's I'm seeing are just as expensive as DDR4, but they're used!
3) where to find Apple flashed 6xx or 7xx GPU's?
4) are the HSF for the E5462's sufficient for the X5482's?

one machine will be going to my Father in Law, it's gong to replace his ancient 19" iMac as it's painfully slow. he doesn't need anything too special as all he really does is surf Norweigan news sites now (he's 86).

the other machine I want to play with as all I've had the joy of tinkering with is a 2015 Mac Mini (I think) that has 4GB of RAM (can't be upgraded) with a 128GB SSD I popped into it to make it bearable.

anything you can advise or direct would be greatly appreciated!
 
Comments:

- Yes, you can swap for 2.5" SSD's without anything more than an adapter (or just tape). Any well-known make/model will be fine and a very nice improvement.
- With 8 GB in them already, try not to invest more in memory unless you can get it very cheap or free. Unless you need both machines, you can salvage the RAM from one to put in the other, but even 8Gigs are OK for general use, especially if you have an SSD for swap.
- Don't invest in upgrading the CPUs unless they are free. The boost will only be single digit percentages, and it will be unnoticeable in normal use.
- Get a used RX 280X or something like that (well, that's what I have in mine; probably later cards are fine too). Definitely AMD only, though.
- Maybe Catalina is already known to work, but I wouldn't count on it.

1) No idea.
2) Ebay? But again, only if it's basically free.
3) Stick with AMD.
4) Don't unless basically free.

But my advice is to think of the 3,1s as so obsolete that no further investment should be made aside from the most minimal. Any recent iMac would be worlds better.
 
the X5482 would provide about a 15% IPC over the E5462...but I do get your point of how old this HW is worth questioning whether it's worth the cost.

also, dosdude provides info that Catalina can install on the 3.1, but need's a metal GPU. talking to a guy on reddit, he's shared that due to the lack of SSE 4.2, I can't use modern AMD cards, so would need an Apple flashed Nvidia 6xx or 7xx GPU, as there are Apple drivers available for those. if anyone knows more about GPU requirements, please speak up. if I can use a 290X with my CPU's, I might lean that way.

I'll probably just do the SSD update, GPU update (Intel's current HD630 iGPU is about 25% faster than the 8800 GT's these came with, LoL!). I've put out feelers for the CPU and RAM, so perhaps I'll score something at almost free pricing. ;)

well, looking at the stickies, I saw one for GPU's and for part 6.2, it shares the following:

6.2. For MacPro 3.1: Nvidia Geforce GTX 680.
Note: that cMP doesn’t support SSE4.2 which is used in AMD/ATI modern GPU drivers.
- so to find a GTX 680.

I have a GTX 970 that's not being used...anyone know if this can be used?
 
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Don't even bother with Catalina on 3.1. Run High Sierra. You'll be much happier with the performance of it.

The GTX 970 should work fine with Nvidia drivers on High Sierra. It won't work at all on Catalina or Mojave. Well, it will technically put a picture onto a monitor, but it will be dog slow since there are no drivers. You won't get a boot screen, but everything else will work with the 970.

FBDIMMS were (and still are) terribly expensive.

If you wanted to upgrade the CPU's, look specifically for SLANZ S-Spec X5482's for 3.2GHz or SLANR X5472's. As mentioned previously, it would be a small boost in speed. 10-14% or 5-7% for X5482 or X5472 respectively. Probably not worth the cost.

Any mid grade SSD will be enough to max out the onboard SATA-300 connections. Don't bother with a higher-priced one.

If you're doing anything that requires a lot of disk use, there were some RAID cards, such as the RocketRaid 2721, that you could plug in to upgrade the onboard slots to SATA-600. If you watch on eBay, these occasionally go for almost nothing.
 
You can get rx 580 working properly in 10.14.5 in the 3,1. This can be a MVC flashed card or you can get a working boot screen with a stock PC Card rx 580 using modified refind and a clover driver in the 3,1. (You should be able to do 560-590, I just say 580 as it is what I use)
You could also flash a 480 to 580 from what I hear and that would also work.

You can boot from apfs formatted NVME SSD which is about 1500MB/s peak for the 3,1 in slot 2. (Slightly risky bootrom modification required)

I really don’t know if the 280x works at all in the 3,1.
 
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Reactions: Prophet96ix
Ludacrisvp said:
\I really don’t know if the 280x works at all in the 3,1.
Click to expand...

It does, unflashed, right out of the box. I have one in mine. That's why I mentioned it. No boot screen, though, and by now there may well be better options out there.
 
Ludacrisvp said:
You can get rx 580 working properly in 10.14.5 in the 3,1. This can be a MVC flashed card or you can get a working boot screen with a stock PC Card rx 580 using modified refind and a clover driver in the 3,1. (You should be able to do 560-590, I just say 580 as it is what I use)
You could also flash a 480 to 580 from what I hear and that would also work.

You can boot from apfs formatted NVME SSD which is about 1500MB/s peak for the 3,1 in slot 2. (Slightly risky bootrom modification required)

I really don’t know if the 280x works at all in the 3,1.
Click to expand...

do you have more information on that?
 
Ph.D. said:
It does, unflashed, right out of the box. I have one in mine. That's why I mentioned it. No boot screen, though, and by now there may well be better options out there.
Click to expand...
AMD GCN GPUs work with MP3,1 up to Sierra only, High Sierra and above AMD drivers need SSE4.2.

If you use hacked Sierra drivers to run AMD GPUs with High Sierra, it's not recognised as a compute device, for example. Hacked Sierra drivers don't work at all with Mojave.

The only trouble free GPUs with MP3,1 after Sierra are NVIDIA GPUs.
  1. Kepler, Maxwell and Pascal with High Sierra, with native and web drivers
  2. Kepler with Mojave with web drivers, no support with Maxwell and Pascal
 
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Prophet96ix said:
So the RX 580 does not work in High Sierra on the cMP3,1?
Click to expand...
It only works if you have the ability to install and manage it, since this type of hack have to be re-applied every normal/security update that Apple releases and touch the AMD drivers. It's a constant headache.

If I was you, I would move to a MP4.1 or change to a NVIDIA GTX 680.
 
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