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MacPro5,1 CPU upgrade

D

Draeconis

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
May 6, 2008
987
281
Hello all!

I'm quite interested in replacing the CPU in my 5,1. Currently it has what it came with, a W3530. Runs very well, but I'm presuming with the new Sandy Bridge CPUs this'll push down the price of the current gen Hex CPUs.

I was just wondering what CPUs work with the 5,1 (W3XXX, as it's a single-cpu system), and where I might get them from. Is eBay the best place?

Cheers :)
 
Any Intel Xeon W35xx or W36xx will work. That means the fastest CPU you can get is W3690 (3.46GHz 6-core). Your best option should be W3670, which goes for around $580 on eBay.
 
All of those work.. but watch your money as if you already have a w3680 3.33 6-core, you will only get 2 percent increase in speed with the w3690.. The correct math to figure this out is as follows:

Take w3690's 3.46 and divide it by w3680's 3.33 speed, then subtract -1 from the result, multiplying by 100 and that will give you the actual percentage gained..

3.46/3.33 -1 * 100 = 3.93 which isn't enough to even justify an upgrade from w3680 to w3690. Save for those who have slower Quad-core processors.. and if you apply the firmware update to update your 2009's efi firmware to a 2010, then you will be able to take advantage of 6-core processing power.


ActionableMango said:
Hexacore
W3690
W3680
W3670

Quadcore
W3580
W3570
W3565
W3530
Click to expand...
 
Well I think I'll go from my W3530 to a W3680, which should be a bit of a leap!

Is it really as simple as swapping the CPU out and it all works? No EFI hacks?
 
philipma1957 said:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Intel-X...57?pt=CPUs&hash=item2312528b49#ht_2941wt_1226



REAL seller good ratings


they also sell this one.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-Intel-X...EN_Servers&hash=item588e8a32cd#ht_2913wt_1226



when I purchased my cpu it was the w3670 at 615 from the above seller. now that w3680 has dropped in price get the w3680. the above seller has a real warranty of 3 years.



here is the build thread ;




https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1122551/
Click to expand...

Thanks for the links mate, it was your article I read that got me interested in this, so thank you very much :)

Unfortunately I'm based in the UK, and I'm not sure those eBay links will ship here :(

Searching on eBay.co.uk brings up links from Hong Kong, and that makes me a little weary, not sure if that's justified or not?
 
Draeconis said:
Is it really as simple as swapping the CPU out and it all works? No EFI hacks?
Click to expand...

Yes. Since you have 2010 Mac Pro, the EFI has support for B1 stepping, which is what W3680 uses.

Draeconis said:
Searching on eBay.co.uk brings up links from Hong Kong, and that makes me a little weary, not sure if that's justified or not?
Click to expand...

I don't think the location matters too much. Many eBay items ship from China anyway. As long as you use PayPal, I don't think there should be an issue.
 
Ok, silly addendum, I should have asked this earlier as it's the most fundamental question really; does replacing the CPU invalidate the warranty? Threads in this forum and others contradict each other a lot, so it's unclear.
 
Apple's warranty is here:
http://images.apple.com/legal/warranty/docs/cpuwarranty.pdf

The relevant text is here:
This warranty does not apply: (a) to consumable parts, such as batteries, unless damage has occurred due to a defect in materials or workmanship; (b) to cosmetic damage, including but not limited to scratches, dents and broken plastic on ports; (c) to damage caused by use with non-Apple products; (d) to damage caused by accident, abuse, misuse, liquid contact, fire, earthquake or other external causes; (e) to damage caused by operating the product outside the permitted or intended uses described by Apple; (f) to damage caused by service (including upgrades and expansions) performed by anyone who is not a representative of Apple or an Apple Authorized Service Provider (“AASP”); (g) to a product or part that has been modified to alter functionality or capability without the written permission of Apple; (h) to defects caused by normal wear and tear or otherwise due to the normal aging of the product or (i) if any Apple serial number has been removed or defaced.
Click to expand...

My opinion is that an AppleCare rep would probably say it's voided because he's not used to people upgrading CPUs and it doesn't seem like the sort of thing you should do on an Apple, even though there is nothing in that text that states the warranty would be voided by upgrading your CPU.
 
ActionableMango said:
Apple's warranty is here:
http://images.apple.com/legal/warranty/docs/cpuwarranty.pdf

The relevant text is here:


My opinion is that an AppleCare rep would probably say it's voided because he's not used to people upgrading CPUs and it doesn't seem like the sort of thing you should do on an Apple, even though there is nothing in that text that states the warranty would be voided by upgrading your CPU.
Click to expand...

You know in reading the warranty I am of the opinion that if you asked apple for permission to pull the w3530 cpu and put the w3680 cpu in they would give permission .
Mind you just a guess that if you said you are going to keep it and not sell it for 3 years or more (thus any warranty would be ended as no warranty is longer then 3 yrs.)
they may say yes.
 
Interesting. I've been thinking about replacing my 2.8 quad core with the 6 core since the bus is the same. I actually have the 1333Mhz memory in it now but it runs at 1066.

Anybody actually done this already ?
 
I'm pretty sure swapping CPU's does not invalidate the warranty as long as you send it in with the original CPUs when it comes time for service.

(With the obvious catch that if you damage the machine in the course of replacing CPUs it's on you. But I've seen Apple replace entire CPU daughter cards due to CPU swaps gone bad for the part costs, and still not invalidate the warranty.)
 
goMac said:
I'm pretty sure swapping CPU's does not invalidate the warranty as long as you send it in with the original CPUs when it comes time for service.

(With the obvious catch that if you damage the machine in the course of replacing CPUs it's on you. But I've seen Apple replace entire CPU daughter cards due to CPU swaps gone bad for the part costs, and still not invalidate the warranty.)
Click to expand...

I asked one of those genius guys about warranty and CPU swap a few weeks ago and he said yes it does void warranty. He didn't say anything about putting the old one back in.
Guess it sorta depends on where you take your Pro to.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-gb) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)

I'm entirely confident I'm able to do it, I've been building my own machines for myself and others for years, but invalidating the warranty would suck a bit.
 
InuNacho said:
I asked one of those genius guys about warranty and CPU swap a few weeks ago and he said yes it does void warranty.
Click to expand...

I would like for one of those geniuses to quote the warranty text that covers that, because I've read it and I see nothing of the sort.
 
It's common knowledge that so called Geniuses know next to nothing about warranties. I bet that if you asked 10 different Geniuses, at least one of them would say you can do it. Especially if the Genius answered immediately, he didn't have a clue what he was talking about. Usually when you mention the word upgrade, their first line is "Yes, it voids warranty, but you can take it to us and we will do the upgrade and charge $500 plus parts".
 
Hellhammer said:
It's common knowledge that so called Geniuses know next to nothing about warranties. I bet that if you asked 10 different Geniuses, at least one of them would say you can do it. Especially if the Genius answered immediately, he didn't have a clue what he was talking about. Usually when you mention the word upgrade, their first line is "Yes, it voids warranty, but you can take it to us and we will do the upgrade and charge $500 plus parts".
Click to expand...

Pretty much true. LOL
 
CPU = reauthorize software

I'm always surprised on these CPU-upgrade threads by the lack of any mention of the effect this chip swap would have on various copy-protected software authorizations.

E.G. VST music plugins, Adobe Photoshop et. al, etc. If the software doesn't use an iLok or similar dongle, then it probably generates some kind of hash number based on "unique" hardware parameters of your machine including MAC addresses and CPUID's. If you swap out the CPU , you then have a different computer as far as the software protection algorithm is concerned, and you have to spend as long as it takes to re-authorize your software.

This could be a trivial or even non-existent problem for people with a minimal amount of 3rd-party software, or it could be a week's worth of email exchanges for somebody with (for example) 250 VST plugins of which 2/3's use proprietary copy-protection schemes dependent on unique hardware parameters.

I'd upgrade my 3.33 hexacore to a 3.46 in a heartbeat (even though the effective speed increase is minor) if it weren't for the umpteen megabytes of "dear sir I know I don't have any authorizations left but would you please please please out of the kindness of your heart give me one more because I swapped out my CPU" email's I would have to keep track of.

--TD
 
trankdart said:
I'm always surprised on these CPU-upgrade threads by the lack of any mention of the effect this chip swap would have on various copy-protected software authorizations.
Click to expand...

I haven't heard this from anyone who has upgraded their CPU. I have never upgraded a CPU on a Mac, but have several times in Windows and never had this problem.

I have heard about the theory of doing a hardware check, but the software maker assured customers that several items were checked and you'd have to change nearly all of them to trigger a reauthorization.

I don't know about your specific plug-ins, but Adobe software can be deauthorized before the CPU swap and reauthorized afterward. It's pretty simple. No weird email paper trail needs to be kept.

With nobody else reporting the problem, I wonder what evidence you have that this will happen, that has you worried about it?
 
ActionableMango said:
I haven't heard this from anyone who has upgraded their CPU. I have never upgraded a CPU on a Mac, but have several times in Windows and never had this problem.

...

With nobody else reporting the problem, I wonder what evidence you have that this will happen, that has you worried about it?
Click to expand...

I haven't upgraded a CPU on a Mac either. But I have also upgraded plenty of CPU's on Windows. I can tell you from experience that if you upgrade the CPU on a Windows machine (or e.g. replace the system drive with a larger one while leaving everything else the same) products from the following software plug-in companies will de-authorize you: Toontrack, IK-Multimedia, WaveArts, Nomad Factory. Also the screenplay-writing program Final Draft will de-authorize you if you even breathe hard on a Windows machine. I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting.

You are correct that Adobe software can be de-authorized and re-authorized after the change, so I should have left that out of my list. Sorry. But I have zero doubt that the other products I mentioned (plus others I didn't), which provide no method of temporary de-authorization, will require me to re-authorize on a Mac.

--TD

Correction: Final Draft allows temporary deauthorization.
 
Last edited:
trankdart said:
I'm always surprised on these CPU-upgrade threads by the lack of any mention of the effect this chip swap would have on various copy-protected software authorizations.

E.G. VST music plugins, Adobe Photoshop et. al, etc. If the software doesn't use an iLok or similar dongle, then it probably generates some kind of hash number based on "unique" hardware parameters of your machine including MAC addresses and CPUID's. If you swap out the CPU , you then have a different computer as far as the software protection algorithm is concerned, and you have to spend as long as it takes to re-authorize your software.

This could be a trivial or even non-existent problem for people with a minimal amount of 3rd-party software, or it could be a week's worth of email exchanges for somebody with (for example) 250 VST plugins of which 2/3's use proprietary copy-protection schemes dependent on unique hardware parameters.

I'd upgrade my 3.33 hexacore to a 3.46 in a heartbeat (even though the effective speed increase is minor) if it weren't for the umpteen megabytes of "dear sir I know I don't have any authorizations left but would you please please please out of the kindness of your heart give me one more because I swapped out my CPU" email's I would have to keep track of.

--TD
Click to expand...

Upgraded my 2009 Mac Pro with EFI to 2010 and installed a W3680. No issues whatsoever with software. I have discussed warranty and license issues with Adobe in the past and from what I understand upgrades of memory, CPU, disk, and others will not violate software license.

I'm a professional photographer and all third-party apps (PS CS5 Suite, Photo Mechanic, GraphiStudio Design Pro, Capture One, Toast 11, Pocket Wizard, MS Office Suite 2011, etc.) and all Apple apps run perfectly.

If this were actually the case then any legitimate repair including a CPU failure/replacement would cause these license problems. I have not seen any evidence to support this theory.
 
Last edited:
MacPro5,1 Upgrade from X5650 Intel Processor

I have X5650 Intel processors in my dual hexacore MacPro5,1 (2.67 GHz). Is it possible to upgrade all the way up to X5690 (3.46 GHz) even though it has a different "Max TDP (Thermal Design Power)" - 95 W vs. 130 W? Is this a limiting factor? Would I need to upgrade my (stock) power supply?

Many thanks!
 
From my recent upgrade experience the higher TDP is not an issue: I went from the lowly E5520 (80W TDP) to a W5590 (130W) in a MP 4,1. No issues whatsoever, the fans run a bit higher, that's all. see also my separate thread on the upgrade if interested.
 
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