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Upgrading my 2009 Mac Pro - need advice

MacUser2525 said:
I have two port pci-e card with only one ssd in it at the moment most definitely an improvement over the SATAII of the system bus and don't get too hung up on the 3.33 there is a 3.2 model I have seen going most time hundreds of dollars less than the 3.33 your never going to notice that 1 or 2% difference.
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Thats true. What is the exact model number for 3.2 hex for my MP?

Anyway I'm still doing SD video and 720P,1080P at most so for me,having internal soft RAID0 with two regular HDDs is fine. But I'm pretty sure throughput of the drives will be major bottleneck before CPU. If I were doing majority of stuff in 1080p and above, I would have long gone with external solution. eSATA enclosures are priced very reasonably from my experience,you can stack up ´ole regular HDDs for max capacity (at 4k you'll need it) and stripe them for speed. Reuse your FW800 drives for backing up this RAID because speed isnt really important for backing up mostly.
 
comatory said:
Thats true. What is the exact model number for 3.2 hex for my MP?
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w3670 couple of them on Ebay ATM from the same people I got my 3680 from although I have seen some go in the low $300 on there you just have to keep an eye out or get a notification going whenever they are listed from a saved search.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Intel-Westme...0963013465?pt=CPUs&hash=item51b7069759&_uhb=1

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Intel-Westme...ng_CPUs_Processors&hash=item3f2e103fab&_uhb=1
 
CrazyNurse said:
Hey, I just bought a couple x5660s, too!!! :cool:

There are some good geekbench scores out there on 2009 MPs.

For me, the 5650s and 5660s are the bargain CPUs right now.

This should hold me off for a few years until we can pickup used shiny black R2-D2 MPs.
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Who / Where did you buy them?
 
That's who I got mine from. I used best offer feature and got mine for $425. Mine should be in the mail too. I'll post updates when I start the install.
 
MacUser2525 said:
w3670 couple of them on Ebay ATM from the same people I got my 3680 from although I have seen some go in the low $300 on there you just have to keep an eye out or get a notification going whenever they are listed from a saved search.

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Intel-Westme...0963013465?pt=CPUs&hash=item51b7069759&_uhb=1

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Intel-Westme...ng_CPUs_Processors&hash=item3f2e103fab&_uhb=1
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Question for anyone - Does the x56XX series processor use Turbo Boost? If so is there are chart somewhere that shows the max boost levels for different cores?

Answer (edit) - Apparently it does. Looking for a chart for boost figures now.

Edit2 - Max frequency is 3.2GHz
http://ark.intel.com/products/47921...X5660-(12M-Cache-2_80-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI)
 
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Just installed my Crucial 480GB SSD and put OS10.9 on it. Wow, so much more responsive. My old start up disk will just be internal storage along with another internal drive giving me 3gigs of HDD space in addition to my SSD.

Cant wait for my CPUs to get here so I can really get this thing rockin.
 
Although now I can't get FCP 7 to run.... It was working before on 10.9 after I upgraded from 10.6. But now that I've reformatted and tried to put it on the new SSD it's not working.
 
Thought I would share some data regarding my Caldigit USB3.0 PCIe.

I did some tests sending a 15.95GB Quicktime video back and forth between my Crucial 480GB SSD and a 7200rpm 3TB Lacie external drive with USB3.0 connectivity.

Below are the transfer times for moving the file from one drive to another.

CalDigit USB3.0
Write (Crucial to Lacie): 1:38
Read (Lacie to Crucial): 1:36

USB2.0 (connecting the Lacie drive into the MP's USB2.0 port with the USB3 cable.
Write (Crucial to Lacie): 6:56
Read: (Lacie to Crucial): "about 8 minutes" (didn't feel like waiting for test...)


Blackmagic speed tests for drives used:
Crucial 480GB SSD: Write 254 mb/s, Read 266 mb/s
Lacie 7200 HDD USB3: Write 154 mb/s, Read 157 mb/s

Blackmagic speed test with USB2.0 was somewhere in the mid 30s. And when I tested it with FW800, I think it was around 70.
 
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MacUser2525 said:
That ok you can have the bigger e-penis. Install is simple or was for me.

1. Upgrade firmware
2. Remove tray after confirming firmware update and shutting down machine detaching power cable.
3. Remove heat sink one at a time.
4. Remove processor stuck to bottom of heat sink use Isopropyl Alcohol to clean off old thermal paste.
5. Put in new processor apply some Arctic Silver 5 to new processor.
6. Two washers each post
7. Cut thermal pad to fit making sure to remove plastic from both sides before putting it on.
8. Put heat sink onto posts tighten until you fell it snug up.
9. Do the same procedure for second processor.
10. Check to make sure fan connectors seated properly I used little slot screwdriver to give them push down although don't think it was needed as they looked properly seated as it was.
11. Once complete put tray back in machine re-attach power cord press power button and hopefully like me it just fires up.
12. Enjoy new speed if you upgraded your ram to 1333mhz then reboot do pram reset, hold down the Option + Command + p + r keys at the same time. It will give you a longish start up tone let it continue on until it reboots when you hear tone second time let go of the keys to let it start up as normal and you should see 1333mhz ram speed now.

Think that is all there was to it.
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Hey, my processors arrived today, but I cant install them yet until my thermal paste and pads arrive as well as the washers. Hopefully I'll have that by this weekend.

I just upgraded my firmware to 5,1 and I also installed my 32gigs of 1333 ram.

Question - do I have to wait until after I install the processors to do the pram reset? If I do pram reset now before installing the processor will the ram function at 1333?
 
Mac Gus said:
Hey, my processors arrived today, but I cant install them yet until my thermal paste and pads arrive as well as the washers. Hopefully I'll have that by this weekend.

I just upgraded my firmware to 5,1 and I also installed my 32gigs of 1333 ram.

Question - do I have to wait until after I install the processors to do the pram reset? If I do pram reset now before installing the processor will the ram function at 1333?
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As the other poster has said after the processor install if your processor in the machine does not support 1333 resetting it does no good. Was that 8x4gb you put it? If so that is good as it will tell you that you have a good tighten on the heat sinks afterwards. I switched around my ram so I could end up upgrading my nephews machine as well and when I used all eight I discovered I needed an extra half turn or so on my second cpu to get all slots working.
 
MacUser2525 said:
As the other poster has said after the processor install if your processor in the machine does not support 1333 resetting it does no good. Was that 8x4gb you put it? If so that is good as it will tell you that you have a good tighten on the heat sinks afterwards. I switched around my ram so I could end up upgrading my nephews machine as well and when I used all eight I discovered I needed an extra half turn or so on my second cpu to get all slots working.
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Ok, for some reason I had thought that the 4,1 processors could support 1333. I'll just wait until after my CPU upgrade.

I bought 4X8gb ram so that if I want to upgrade to 48 or 64 in the future I can. I guess I could put in my 8x2gb cards back in if you have to have all 8 slots filled to have your computer tell you this. Not sure why that would matter though!
 
Mac Gus said:
Ok, for some reason I had thought that the 4,1 processors could support 1333. I'll just wait until after my CPU upgrade.

I bought 4X8gb ram so that if I want to upgrade to 48 or 64 in the future I can. I guess I could put in my 8x2gb cards back in if you have to have all 8 slots filled to have your computer tell you this. Not sure why that would matter though!
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Well you want it working properly. All eight are needed to test when I went from six all working to eight sticks in there with one not working strangely enough the second slot on the board not seen. When it was the fourth there that was empty which I would have thought would be the one not recognized when I put eight in, oh well quick tighten down on second cpu and they have worked fine since.
 
MacUser2525 said:
Well you want it working properly. All eight are needed to test when I went from six all working to eight sticks in there with one not working strangely enough the second slot on the board not seen. When it was the fourth there that was empty which I would have thought would be the one not recognized when I put eight in, oh well quick tighten down on second cpu and they have worked fine since.
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Ok, I think that makes sense now. I'll test it with all 8 sticks to make sure all slots are functional after install. Good advice. Thanks.
 
I have everything but my processors and hopefully they are here today. i should be attempting this tonight :eek:
 
deezayy said:
Processors didn't show, i'm bummed :(. Does anymore have more info on which washers to get from home depot?
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I'm assuming that you're looking for info mentioned in this post by Tutor and it has the product info on the nylon washers used by some people including me. Although Tutor recommended 3 on each post, I only used 2 instead and didn't need to clip the fan/temperature sensor connectors to make the upgrade work. So your mileage may vary.
 
xcodeSyn said:
I'm assuming that you're looking for info mentioned in this post by Tutor and it has the product info on the nylon washers used by some people including me. Although Tutor recommended 3 on each post, I only used 2 instead and didn't need to clip the fan/temperature sensor connectors to make the upgrade work. So your mileage may vary.
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Thanks - I was looking for the info too..
 
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