Howdy y’all,
I’ll try and keep this short but as detailed as possible.
TLAS: currently, I cannot get my 5,1 Mac Pro to boot. I was using it last night, it kept crashing (freezing/shutting off) as well as letting me know my hard drive was almost full. I kept powering it back up to finish one task, and then it just quit booting. White LED comes on, seems like everything powers up, but never hear a chime, and never get anything on the screen(s). No safe mode, no boot/option mode, no recovery mode/etc.
I tried resetting SMC, NVRAM, pulling out all my cards, hard drives, different combos of hard drives (I have multiple OS on several of them), reseating all my ram, even the original GPU… NOTHING is working. I was worried I maybe fried my harddrive(s) but the one HDD I have (which if I recall is the main boot drive/OS) does indeed power up - not sure about my SSDs - or that maybe the main wouldn’t boot because it was full.
I’ve had issues with the machine before, but they’ve always seem to resolve… not going too well this time though.
Anyhow, let me back up and give you the full details. This machine was original a 4,1 12 Core 2.93, it was converted to a 5,1 before I bought it. I purchased it in early 2014, loaded it up with 96 of ram, and used a Crucial SSD to do my music production and live recording on. Never had many issues (PSU in late 2015, some ram/performance issues on an advanced recording project at the end of 2017, which I then replaced all the ram and went up to 128). Machine ran perfectly since.
This started going awry when trying to upgrade to a new GPU so that I’d be able to power up to 6 screens. I bought a FirePro 9000 from a reputable seller who specializes in GPUs on eBay earlier this year. Put it in, and upgraded to Catalina. Realized I screwed up by upgrading too far so that some of my 32 bit programs ceased to work… made a Time Machine backup of my current Catalina system, went back down to Mojave but did it in a goofy way where I’m using/booting off of the Time Machine backup… was hoping to fix that soon.
Anyhow, can’t remember if I upgraded the OS before or after installing the GPU, but I pretty much ran into issues immediately. Machine would shut itself down all the time. It would get sluggish, glitch, or just randomly shut off. Now mind you, I did used to run as ass of browser tabs, but it never was an issue with the previous setup (original GPU, and High Sierra if I recall). Went back and forth with guy who sold me the GPU, started with a “NEW Old stock” PSU. That didn’t fix it.
Did pixlas, that *seemed* like it fixed it, but I did do some other mods around the time I did Pixlas and it’s a bit foggy trying to remember how things acted with each change (upgraded to 3.46 chips, added USB 3.2 card, upgraded Bluetooth/Wi-fi, and added another SSD on an OWC Accelsior PCI board). I currently have 2 27” Cinema displays, and an older 20” Cinema Display (intention of running a 2nd 20” in the near future - with a total of 3 each eventually).
When doing my chip swap and paste, I ended up screwing up the sockets on the original tray, so I tracked down an identical loaded tray on eBay to replace it with. Put that in, no issues, machine was back to normal. However I started having the shut down issues again, as well as visual artifacts and sluggish performance. Macs Fans was showing the Northbridge diode on the new tray was verrry hot (95-96 C, and on average about 25-27 C hotter than the heat sink). I put thermal grizzly on the CPUs, and the Northbridge, as well as the GPU… BIG improvement on temps and almost back to normal.
However, last week, started seeing the same issues come back. GPU seller suggested I look at USB devices and experiment unplugging them to track down the culprit for computer freezing when waking from sleep (which was another issue I had been having). I pulled the usb hubs I had (2 Anker data hubs, and 1 Anker charger). Some reviews for Anker hubs show some people having issues with their hubs causing shut downs and glitches - in some case frying some components (I HOPE they didn’t damage any of my stuff…).
That seemed to fix it, at least for a little bit of at least offered an improvement. I started to think my issue was Mojave, as I had read it was notable for causing shut down issues and such (or at least a possibility). I was in the middle of trying to get my PCI SSD setup with High Sierra to boot from and clean off/back up all my other drives. Was casually using my machine last night and that’s when it seems like it blew up.
My thoughts have been trying to figure it out, what could’ve happened or what could be the culprit:
-HDD/SSD full and not letting it boot
-HDD/SSD fried
-new PSU already fried
-GPU fried
-new tray already fried
-motherboard fried
-ram issue (no red lights)
-some kind of power issue between my machine demanding too much from its PSU, or an external power/outlet/battery back-up issue)
-or some other kind of kink that may hopefully resolve itself like it usually does?
I’m starting to think the whole issue here is my GPU, as my quest for more capability seemed to spawn most of the problems. At this point though, even going back to the original GPU isn’t getting me anywhere so I don’t know.
Can anyone help??
I’ll try and keep this short but as detailed as possible.
TLAS: currently, I cannot get my 5,1 Mac Pro to boot. I was using it last night, it kept crashing (freezing/shutting off) as well as letting me know my hard drive was almost full. I kept powering it back up to finish one task, and then it just quit booting. White LED comes on, seems like everything powers up, but never hear a chime, and never get anything on the screen(s). No safe mode, no boot/option mode, no recovery mode/etc.
I tried resetting SMC, NVRAM, pulling out all my cards, hard drives, different combos of hard drives (I have multiple OS on several of them), reseating all my ram, even the original GPU… NOTHING is working. I was worried I maybe fried my harddrive(s) but the one HDD I have (which if I recall is the main boot drive/OS) does indeed power up - not sure about my SSDs - or that maybe the main wouldn’t boot because it was full.
I’ve had issues with the machine before, but they’ve always seem to resolve… not going too well this time though.
Anyhow, let me back up and give you the full details. This machine was original a 4,1 12 Core 2.93, it was converted to a 5,1 before I bought it. I purchased it in early 2014, loaded it up with 96 of ram, and used a Crucial SSD to do my music production and live recording on. Never had many issues (PSU in late 2015, some ram/performance issues on an advanced recording project at the end of 2017, which I then replaced all the ram and went up to 128). Machine ran perfectly since.
This started going awry when trying to upgrade to a new GPU so that I’d be able to power up to 6 screens. I bought a FirePro 9000 from a reputable seller who specializes in GPUs on eBay earlier this year. Put it in, and upgraded to Catalina. Realized I screwed up by upgrading too far so that some of my 32 bit programs ceased to work… made a Time Machine backup of my current Catalina system, went back down to Mojave but did it in a goofy way where I’m using/booting off of the Time Machine backup… was hoping to fix that soon.
Anyhow, can’t remember if I upgraded the OS before or after installing the GPU, but I pretty much ran into issues immediately. Machine would shut itself down all the time. It would get sluggish, glitch, or just randomly shut off. Now mind you, I did used to run as ass of browser tabs, but it never was an issue with the previous setup (original GPU, and High Sierra if I recall). Went back and forth with guy who sold me the GPU, started with a “NEW Old stock” PSU. That didn’t fix it.
Did pixlas, that *seemed* like it fixed it, but I did do some other mods around the time I did Pixlas and it’s a bit foggy trying to remember how things acted with each change (upgraded to 3.46 chips, added USB 3.2 card, upgraded Bluetooth/Wi-fi, and added another SSD on an OWC Accelsior PCI board). I currently have 2 27” Cinema displays, and an older 20” Cinema Display (intention of running a 2nd 20” in the near future - with a total of 3 each eventually).
When doing my chip swap and paste, I ended up screwing up the sockets on the original tray, so I tracked down an identical loaded tray on eBay to replace it with. Put that in, no issues, machine was back to normal. However I started having the shut down issues again, as well as visual artifacts and sluggish performance. Macs Fans was showing the Northbridge diode on the new tray was verrry hot (95-96 C, and on average about 25-27 C hotter than the heat sink). I put thermal grizzly on the CPUs, and the Northbridge, as well as the GPU… BIG improvement on temps and almost back to normal.
However, last week, started seeing the same issues come back. GPU seller suggested I look at USB devices and experiment unplugging them to track down the culprit for computer freezing when waking from sleep (which was another issue I had been having). I pulled the usb hubs I had (2 Anker data hubs, and 1 Anker charger). Some reviews for Anker hubs show some people having issues with their hubs causing shut downs and glitches - in some case frying some components (I HOPE they didn’t damage any of my stuff…).
That seemed to fix it, at least for a little bit of at least offered an improvement. I started to think my issue was Mojave, as I had read it was notable for causing shut down issues and such (or at least a possibility). I was in the middle of trying to get my PCI SSD setup with High Sierra to boot from and clean off/back up all my other drives. Was casually using my machine last night and that’s when it seems like it blew up.
My thoughts have been trying to figure it out, what could’ve happened or what could be the culprit:
-HDD/SSD full and not letting it boot
-HDD/SSD fried
-new PSU already fried
-GPU fried
-new tray already fried
-motherboard fried
-ram issue (no red lights)
-some kind of power issue between my machine demanding too much from its PSU, or an external power/outlet/battery back-up issue)
-or some other kind of kink that may hopefully resolve itself like it usually does?
I’m starting to think the whole issue here is my GPU, as my quest for more capability seemed to spawn most of the problems. At this point though, even going back to the original GPU isn’t getting me anywhere so I don’t know.
Can anyone help??
