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Upgrading my 2009 Mac Pro - need advice

SadChief said:
http://pindelski.org/Photography/mac-pro/
Click to expand...

Can't see any pics in this link but a huge interesting blog. I have no time to read the whole thing.

The mono cpu i wanted to buy is sold ! I have no choice but the 2x2,26 macpro for upgrade with x5690.
So I found I needed 2mm washers on each plot. Quite easy for now. Is their something else I need to know ? Fan issues ? Special thermal paste application ? ....THX
 
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I finally found a step by step tutorial and another for ones who don't have time to read the big blog. The guy isn't using washers but just tightened the screws a little less (5 turns). Do you think it's safe ?
Except the washers is there any other precaution to do ?
 
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MrTed said:
I finally found a step by step tutorial and another for ones who don't have time to read the big blog. The guy isn't using washers but just tightened the screws a little less (5 turns). Do you think it's safe ?
Except the washers is there any other precaution to do ?
Click to expand...

The washers are NOT a guarantee of success; there is considerable variance in thickness... unless you have a micrometer they may actually give a false sense of security.

It is fine to do this without washers as long as you are not a total gorilla tightening down the heat sinks. Be gentle. Count turns and try to use cross patterns to tighten them evenly. There is a little trial and error even with the washers, so don't be alarmed if you don't get it right the first try - common symptoms of too tight/too loose: not all memory channels light up, fans on full, no startup chime. Take your time, don't panic.

The one thing I have seen omitted in many of these guides that I do feel is critical is the use of thicker thermal conductive pads. When you take off the heat sinks you will see strips of these pads that are used to move heat from the voltage regulators to the heat sink. With the taller CPU chips you are installing, you must compensate for the increased gap between the voltage regulators and the heatsink by using a thicker conductive pad, on the order of 4-5mm. Failure to do this can lead to poor cooling of the voltage regulators - this will not cause immediate failure but may shorten their lifespan.

Good luck,

-JimJ
 
MrTed said:
I finally found a step by step tutorial and another for ones who don't have time to read the big blog. The guy isn't using washers but just tightened the screws a little less (5 turns). Do you think it's safe ?
Click to expand...
While you can argue that washers are optional, but many who have done this upgrade would tell you it's easier to use washers to prevent overtightening. My own experience and many others' seem to indicate that people have a tendency to over-tighten the first processor and under-tighten the second one. The following links should provide enough info for you to decide how you want to proceed:

1. http://pindelski.org/Photography/2013/07/08/mac-pro-2009-part-tbd/

2. http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,852.660.html#msg24313

You may even find some contradictions from different sources, so use your own judgement to decide what's best for you.
 
jimj740 said:
The one thing I have seen omitted in many of these guides that I do feel is critical is the use of thicker thermal conductive pads. When you take off the heat sinks you will see strips of these pads that are used to move heat from the voltage regulators to the heat sink. With the taller CPU chips you are installing, you must compensate for the increased gap between the voltage regulators and the heatsink by using a thicker conductive pad, on the order of 4-5mm. Failure to do this can lead to poor cooling of the voltage regulators - this will not cause immediate failure but may shorten their lifespan.

Good luck,

-JimJ
Click to expand...

Thanks for your help. Where could I find this thicker conductive pad ?
Where are they in this picture, are they the brown "L" pad below the CPU ?:
processorcard3.jpg


[EDIT]
I found it ! it's there ? where do you find this 4-5 mm pad ?
The tighten step is a bit scary ...
MacPro_voltageregulators.jpg
 
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The thermal pads are not shown in the picture; typically they are stuck to the bottom of the CPU heat sink with adhesive tape.

The voltage regulators are the rows of square chips below the left CPU socket and above the right CPU socket.

Thermal conductive pads can be found at better electronic supply houses or on ebay. It is a type of foam rubber designed to conduct heat away from electronic devices. It can easily be cut to size using scissors. As I recall you will need two strips, about 4 inches long and about 1/4 inch wide. As previously stated, the thickness should be about 4.5mm


Below is a link to an ebay seller to illustrate what I am talking about. This is way more material than you need, and I have no idea about the vendor. Once again, this is just to illustrate the material.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1-5W-mk-Hea...524?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item589406ad04
 
Another Option

MrTed said:
I finally found a step by step tutorial and another for ones who don't have time to read the big blog. The guy isn't using washers but just tightened the screws a little less (5 turns). Do you think it's safe ?
Except the washers is there any other precaution to do ?
Click to expand...

Hi MrTed. Another option you can check is from a guy in eBay selling CPUs with the Integrated Heat Sink removed to make the cpu replacement straightforward. http://www.ebay.com/sch/box185/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=

You can clarify with the seller first as he is an electronics engineer if I am not mistaken and if he is highly skilled to perform this. Good luck.
 
Hi, I just upgraded the firmware of my 2 x 2.26 GHz. "About this mac" still displays "early 2009" but system report / hardware overview shows 5.1. Is this correct?
 

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nonlen said:
Hi, I just upgraded the firmware of my 2 x 2.26 GHz. "About this mac" still displays "early 2009" but system report / hardware overview shows 5.1. Is this correct?
Click to expand...

Yes that's correct. The OS profiler will still display the Mac Pro as 2009 but your firmware is 5.1 and you can now use Westmere processors with rams at 1333mhz ( applicable for 6 core processors ) Though the Nehalem X5590 quad core can support 1333mhz ram speed.
 
Just ordered a pair of 5690s today. Going to replace the 5660s that I put in back in January 2014. The price of the 5690s has come down quite a bit and it's about a 23% increase in clock speed over the 5660s. Has anyone done a second upgrade like this?

I noticed the power consumption for the 5690s is 130W vs 95W for the 5660s. Has this been a problem for anyone with the stock PSU? I'm also running a radeon 7970 and a USB 3.1 PCIe and am probably going to get a PCIe SSD soon. Can my Mac Pro handle all this?

Also, I need to get another 3mm allen wrench long enough to reach down to the screws inside the heat sink. Anyone know a cheap place to get one? Thanks.
 
Mac Gus said:
Just ordered a pair of 5690s today. Going to replace the 5660s that I put in back in January 2014. The price of the 5690s has come down quite a bit and it's about a 23% increase in clock speed over the 5660s. Has anyone done a second upgrade like this?

I noticed the power consumption for the 5690s is 130W vs 95W for the 5660s. Has this been a problem for anyone with the stock PSU? I'm also running a radeon 7970 and a USB 3.1 PCIe and am probably going to get a PCIe SSD soon. Can my Mac Pro handle all this?

Also, I need to get another 3mm allen wrench long enough to reach down to the screws inside the heat sink. Anyone know a cheap place to get one? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Torx t15 screw driver will do got mine dirt cheap at local hardware store and I think it is 960w output for the power supply in them plenty of room for the extra power consumed at full load for those processors plus your other devices.
 
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Should be doing my processor install tomorrow. It's been delayed because I'm trying to track down a 3mm allen wrench that's long enough.

I have a couple other upgrade questions:

1. How much of an improvement is a PCIe SSD boot drive over the Sata 2 one. I realize that the PCIe drive is over 2 times faster than the Sata 2 one. I currently don't have any gripes with my Sata 2 SSD, but I'm trying to get my computer optimized for editing 4K video. Will this be critical for editing 4K video?

2. In terms of optimizing my Mac Pro for FCX and 4k footage, what is the best GPU that I can install that uses the stock PSU? I don't want to have to add an additional power supply. Is the 7970 that I have the best card for FCX currently that uses the stock PSU?

3. I'm looking into external storage options for storing and editing 4K video. I'm thinking a raid array would be suitable. I've never used one before. I currently just use a single external drive connected via USB 3 and I get close to 200mb/s transfer speeds. It looks like with a Raid 0 drive that has two disks I can get about 400mb/s. Is that adequate for editing 4K video?

Note - I don't even have a 4k camera yet. I'll probably get one in the new year. My goal with these upgrades is to have a computer that can comfortably edit 4k video and I play on keeping this computer for several more years. Also I'm enjoying updating this thing to its more or less maximum potential. I've owned this thing since I got it new in 2009 and it has some sentimental value :)
 
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[doublepost=1479174606][/doublepost]
Mac Gus said:
Should be doing my processor install tomorrow. It's been delayed because I'm trying to track down a 3mm allen wrench that's long enough.
Click to expand...

If you have a harbor freight near you, they always have these in stock!

http://www.harborfreight.com/10-pc-metric-t-handle-hex-key-set-69370.html

Mac Gus said:
1. How much of an improvement is a PCIe SSD boot drive over the Sata 2 one. I realize that the PCIe drive is over 2 times faster than the Sata 2 one. I currently don't have any gripes with my Sata 2 SSD, but I'm trying to get my computer optimized for editing 4K video. Will this be critical for editing 4K video?
Click to expand...

Depending on the actual SSD that you use on the internal bays, they can be a huge difference. PCIe has a much higher bandwidth for data and being able to utilize that would be better. AFAIK the internal sata bays are limited to 600MB/s between all of them, so even if you do a raid0 on all 4 bays with SSD, they'll only reach 500-600MB/s write speed. Thats where the PCIe sata raid controllers come in, where you can control those 4 bays and have them all go through the PCIe lanes instead of the built in sata. Write speeds are fairly critical for 4K if you want a very smooth experience editing footage directly without transcoding to proxy/optimized media. IF you're planning to edit on proxy's though, the SSDs on raid0 speed raided would be more than enough.

Mac Gus said:
2. In terms of optimizing my Mac Pro for FCX and 4k footage, what is the best GPU that I can install that uses the stock PSU? I don't want to have to add an additional power supply. Is the 7970 that I have the best card for FCX currently that uses the stock PSU?
Click to expand...

FCPX works directly on OpenCL, and AMD cards are the best bang for the buck in this scenario. Most people run a R9 280x (or a pair of them) and can do a lot with them. Your 7970 is basically a 280X as I have been told by other members and from reading around. But since you're planning to stick to the stock power connector allotment, your best bet would be to stick to your current card until support of the newer cards get streamlined. Im personally running two RX480 8GB (6pin) on my main machine, and they're "good" but I definitely want more but I'm just stupid and greedy like that.

Mac Gus said:
3. I'm looking into external storage options for storing and editing 4K video. I'm thinking a raid array would be suitable. I've never used one before. I currently just use a single external drive connected via USB 3 and I get close to 200mb/s transfer speeds. It looks like with a Raid 0 drive that has two disks I can get about 400mb/s. Is that adequate for editing 4K video?
Click to expand...

400mb/s is more than adequate, faster is better ofcourse but that 400MB/s is probably limited by the HDD. If you can shell out money for a larger size Sata III 6Gb/s SSD (512GB and up) and have it externally connected into an enclosure, you can reach higher speeds and not have to do a Raid0. Reason I prefer such setup is because Raid0 doubles your chances of a drive failing and everything will just fail. Yes, you do get the fast speeds, but if your data is critical and you certainly cannot have downtime or even worse a data loss, then Raid0 isn't for you. Having one fast SSD backing up to cheaper HDD in an external 2+bay enclosure would be more ideal for you.

Mac Gus said:
Note - I don't even have a 4k camera yet. I'll probably get one in the new year. My goal with these upgrades is to have a computer that can comfortably edit 4k video and I play on keeping this computer for several more years. Also I'm enjoying updating this thing to its more or less maximum potential. I've owned this thing since I got it new in 2009 and it has some sentimental value :)
Click to expand...

Indeed! Its definitely fun upgrading them, and with the sentimental value is definitely icing on the cake. I think we definitely all still have a while before our systems become obsolete, so until then, we'll keep upgrading! cheers!
 
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It's Alive! (Again!)

Just finished the install of the 5690 processors replacing my 5660s. I installed the 5660's almost 3 years ago at the time paying $425 for the pair. I remember a pair of 5690s back then were over $1k. I paid a little under $400 for the 5690s and hopefully I can sell my 5660s and get a little bit back for them.

Having already installed new processors in this computer it was a bit easier as I already had the 2mm washers and the thermal pads in place. The install was pretty straight forward except on one of the heat sinks the black fan wire was getting in the way of the copper heat sink and I had to super glue the wire down so it wouldn't get out of place.






Before applying thermal paste.


Geek Bench 3. The 5660s got were getting a multi-core score of around 26,600.

[doublepost=1479247276][/doublepost]Also, one other thing. I had ordered two more 8gb ram sticks to bring the overall ram up to 64gigs. I bought them cheap on ebay. But when I put them in my computer won't boot up, the power light just flashes. Did I get the wrong ram or is it just bad ram?

This is the auction for the ram:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/330510776446?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
 
Mac Gus said:
It's Alive! (Again!)

Just finished the install of the 5690 processors replacing my 5660s. I installed the 5660's almost 3 years ago at the time paying $425 for the pair. I remember a pair of 5690s back then were over $1k. I paid a little under $400 for the 5690s and hopefully I can sell my 5660s and get a little bit back for them.

Having already installed new processors in this computer it was a bit easier as I already had the 2mm washers and the thermal pads in place. The install was pretty straight forward except on one of the heat sinks the black fan wire was getting in the way of the copper heat sink and I had to super glue the wire down so it wouldn't get out of place.






Before applying thermal paste.


Geek Bench 3. The 5660s got were getting a multi-core score of around 26,600.

[doublepost=1479247276][/doublepost]Also, one other thing. I had ordered two more 8gb ram sticks to bring the overall ram up to 64gigs. I bought them cheap on ebay. But when I put them in my computer won't boot up, the power light just flashes. Did I get the wrong ram or is it just bad ram?

This is the auction for the ram:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/330510776446?_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
Click to expand...

Looks like you mix RDIMM with UDIMM, and it's almost the only restriction that you should straightly follow. Otherwise, won't boot.
 
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