128 GB of RAM in new Mac Pro late 2013

[mward333]

Your best bet is probably OWC or macramdirect, ask OWC why they don't have it, are they going to etc or pressure macramdirect. Crucial might be another one, if you can talk to an engineer and get them to try. They are perhaps too big to push un-Apple supported parts though.

I've talked to all of them in the last couple of weeks, including to some of their engineering people. I think macramdirect seems to be the "best bet" right now, as they are testing and said they should have the parts ready in about 1 month, and after all, they even have prices posted, and they are just finishing their testing. Ramjet also told me that they are just doing their testing right now, and I should check back very, very soon with them too. I will keep this thread updated with whatever I can find. Thank you for your help, Umbongo!!!!

 

[mward333]

all suggested RAM is load reduced

Umbongo, to extend our conversation, I am digging deeper into the part numbers you sent, but when I look them up (for instance, at memory4less), all of these parts are "load reduced", and I've seen several people say that the new Mac Pro will not take load reduced DIMMs. Do you have any suggestions for RAM that isn't load reduced? I put the URL's that correspond to each of the part numbers you suggested. I don't care where I buy the RAM (anything is OK for me). I only used the memory4less links because they have information about all of these part numbers, and they claim all of them are load reduced (unfortunately).

The Samsung part number is M386B4G70BM0-CMA with the number 1, 3 or 4 after it....

http://www.memory4less.com/m4l_itemdetail.aspx?itemid=1470143023

The Micron part number is MT72JSZS4G72LZ-1G9

http://www.memory4less.com/m4l_itemdetail.aspx?itemid=1470090965

The Hynix part number's are HMT84GL7AMR4A-PB (1.5v) and HMT84GL7AMR4C-PB (1.35v)

http://www.memory4less.com/m4l_itemdetail.aspx?itemid=1474023278
http://www.memory4less.com/m4l_itemdetail.aspx?itemid=1466264532

----------

Even the manufacturer's webpage seems to say that these are load reduced. For instance, if I look at the Samsung catalog, the digits "86" near the start of the item number M386B4G70BM0-CMA

and I look at page 4 of the following 32 page pdf file from Samsung:

http://www.samsung.com/global/business/semiconductor/file/product/ddr3_product_guide_dec_12-0.pdf

I can see that the "86" in the Samsung part number means it is load reduced, more specifically, it is a 240pin LR DIMM.

OK, one more update: I have now (today) thoroughly looked through the Samsung, Hynix, and Micron product sheets and websites, and I cannot find any RAM that matches the necessary specs for the nMP. Ugh. This is depressing. All advice is welcome!!

 

[AidenShaw]

... all of these parts are "load reduced", and I've seen several people say that the new Mac Pro will not take load reduced DIMMs.

You believe "several people" from the Internet

For what it's worth, a ProLiant using the same CPUs and chipset as the new Mini Pro only supports LRDIMMs in the 32 GiB capacity.


Memory support page from http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/14212_na/14212_na.pdf

 

[mward333]

You believe "several people" from the Internet

For what it's worth, a ProLiant using the same CPUs and chipset as the new Mini Pro only supports LRDIMMs in the 32 GiB capacity.

Hi there, AidenShaw! Well, I am just telling you what I have heard from discussions on the web and on the phone with people who are testing RAM in the nMP. Do you have firm evidence that LRDIMMs work in the nMP? Everyone I've talked to (so far) is telling me that the nMP does not work with them. It is good to hear that the ProLiant with the same CPU's and chipset can support LRDIMMs. I'd love to hear the same from someone with the nMP.

Thank you in advance for any evidence you can provide. My department (understandably) doesn't want to make a large RAM purchase without some firm evidence that the RAM is compatible with the nMP.

 

[AidenShaw]

Hi there, AidenShaw! Well, I am just telling you what I have heard from discussions on the web and on the phone with people who are testing RAM in the nMP. Do you have firm evidence that LRDIMMs work in the nMP? Everyone I've talked to (so far) is telling me that the nMP does not work with them. It is good to hear that the ProLiant with the same CPU's and chipset can support LRDIMMs. I'd love to hear the same from someone with the nMP.

Thank you in advance for any evidence you can provide. My department (understandably) doesn't want to make a large RAM purchase without some firm evidence that the RAM is compatible with the nMP.

My comment about the Internet was tongue-in-cheek, hence the smiley.

The evidence is that the CPU supports 32 GiB LRDIMM (and only LRDIMM in the 32 GiB size).

Apple could block (or fail to enable) that support in the BIOS.

A second clue is that you can only find load-reduced 32 GiB DIMMs. The memory guys aren't into selling DIMMs that won't work on the target systems.

We'll have to wait for a trustworthy answer (BareFeats, Tom's, OWC ...).

 

[mward333]

We'll have to wait for a trustworthy answer (BareFeats, Tom's, OWC ...).

Agreed, agreed! I've talked with some people who are checking this issue really extensively. Please feel welcome to check back in if you hear anything! I'm looking extensively and waiting to hear. I'll be first in line to make such a purchase. I've already got the grant funding set aside for this.

 

[v4film24]

I had the 2012 Mac Pro souped-up to 3.46 dual 6 cores, 128GB Ram and added a Cubix box to support 4 Graphics cards - 2x GTX 680 for Mac and 2 ATI 5870s (hoping to change these to 7970s soon). 5 TB of SSD and 4GB BU drive:
3 Raided TB SSDs & BU drive in Drive Bays, 1 TB SSD in extra Optical Bay and OWC TB Accelsior on the PCIe Bus. Built out 3 of these using OWC to install the components. Mavericks supports the 128GB RAM instead of 96GB under Mountain Lion.

All that RAM means 2K RAM previews of 2-min clips in AE6 then easy output during render (dumping Ram to disk). Really saves a lot of time since updates only require rendering the changed layers into RAM.

Multicore Performance meets or beats the nMP 12-Core, except in single core GeekBench and RAM/Disk speed. This is an $18,000 system! But when evaluated to labor costs in a work environment, quickly pays for itself. And I have CUDA with GTX 680s plus good Open-CL/Open GL with the ATI cards.

 

[mward333]

Thank you for sharing, v4film24! Sounds like a very nice system indeed. I use the Mac for computing (I'm a scientist). The 128 GB of RAM will be especially helpful for large symbolic computations. I also plan to use it as a server in a data analysis class I teach.

 

[mward333]

possible RAM that might work

OK, OK, how about this RAM? It appears to NOT be load reduced. Looks like everything in the specs matches up.

http://www.pcwmemory.com/pcw-884.html

I did not notice this one before.

 

[Derpage]

I wonder if there is enough juice to run those at 1866..shoot 1600 even

 

[mward333]

I wonder if there is enough juice to run those at 1866..shoot 1600 even

What do you mean by "enough juice to run those at 1866"??

Please tell me more! I am so eager to find a solution that will work.

 

[AidenShaw]

OK, OK, how about this RAM? It appears to NOT be load reduced. Looks like everything in the specs matches up.

http://www.pcwmemory.com/pcw-884.html

I did not notice this one before.

It doesn't appear to be load-reduced - I looked up the ProLiant on their site and it clearly listed an "LRDIMM" for the 32 GiB module.

Unfortunately, they show a 20% restocking fee on returns. If it doesn't work, you'd be out $440 plus shipping and handling unless they give you a written guarantee that you won't be charged restocking.

 

[mward333]

It doesn't appear to be load-reduced - I looked up the ProLiant on their site and it clearly listed an "LRDIMM" for the 32 GiB module.

Unfortunately, they show a 20% restocking fee on returns. If it doesn't work, you'd be out $440 plus shipping and handling.

AidenShaw, thank you for your kind reply! Yes, I could by the LRDIMM's from many places. I'm just worried that the LRDIMM's won't work because that's what most people seem to be saying. (I think I heard this from an Apple Engineer too, but that was over a month ago.) So that's why I'm looking for RDIMM's.

I just called PCW-Memory and am waiting to hear from one of their technical people. I do worry a lot about restocking fees, not to mention that I need to order my Mac Pro and the RAM at the same time, so the RAM will arrive much earlier than the Mac Pro, and I definitely won't be able to test it within the first 30 days. Ugh, this is tricky!

 

[Derpage]

What do you mean by "enough juice to run those at 1866"??

Please tell me more! I am so eager to find a solution that will work.

High speed ram (1866 is middle range these days) takes more power, that along with such large dimms could lead to throttling. It all depends on what the board can handle. If it can push enough electricity to the ram, it'll run at 1866, if not, it'll downclock to a speed it can run at.

 

[mward333]

High speed ram (1866 is middle range these days) takes more power, that along with such large dimms could lead to throttling. It all depends on what the board can handle. If it can push enough electricity to the ram, it'll run at 1866, if not, it'll downclock to a speed it can run at.

Makes sense, Derpage, thank you for explaining. I've bought RAM beyond what Apple specifies can be handled (in the past), but for some reason this purchase is turning out to be tricky. Don't you think that the nMP can supply sufficient power to drive the RAM?

 

[Derpage]

Makes sense, Derpage, thank you for explaining. I've bought RAM beyond what Apple specifies can be handled (in the past), but for some reason this purchase is turning out to be tricky. Don't you think that the nMP can supply sufficient power to drive the RAM?

I dunno! I hope it does for the sake of people desiring 128 @ 1866! If the speed is important as the volume, you may need to add that to your list of questions to ask as you go on this crusade.

 

[mward333]

I dunno! I hope it does for the sake of people desiring 128 @ 1866! If the speed is important as the volume, you may need to add that to your list of questions to ask as you go on this crusade.

Yes quantity of RAM (128 GB) is much more important to me than the speed. I was only trying to buy the 1866 speed since that is the spec for their factory installed RAM.

 

[Derpage]

Yes quantity of RAM (128 GB) is much more important to me than the speed. I was only trying to buy the 1866 speed since that is the spec for their factory installed RAM.

I've never met a scientist with a budget (Grew up hanging out at LBL in Berkeley, budget just meant "whatever it costs") so it's probably a moot point, but you can save money buying slower ram if it's the case that it won't run at 1866.

 

[mward333]

I've never met a scientist with a budget (Grew up hanging out at LBL in Berkeley, budget just meant "whatever it costs") so it's probably a moot point, but you can save money buying slower ram if it's the case that it won't run at 1866.

Most importantly, my department (for good reason) wants me to match the specs of the OEM when I buy 3rd party.

 

[dalupus]

Most importantly, my department (for good reason) wants me to match the specs of the OEM when I buy 3rd party.

If you are dealing with 128GB of data in memory, my guess would be you are working on large consecutive chunks of it at a time and not doing a bunch of small random accesses.

If that is the case, you won't even notice the difference between 1800 and 1666 or even 1333, you will be bus bound.

 

[Umbongo]

Umbongo, to extend our conversation, I am digging deeper into the part numbers you sent, but when I look them up (for instance, at memory4less), all of these parts are "load reduced", and I've seen several people say that the new Mac Pro will not take load reduced DIMMs.

32GB modules are only made as LR-DIMMs. Whether they work in the Mac Pro or not time will tell I guess. They certainly don't work in the old one because it required a firmware update that Apple never provided, but it's been part of the CPUs and chipset for nearly 2 years now. It's a standard feature of the platform AFAIK and I don't know why they would have disabled it when Mavericks supports 128GB.

 

[mward333]

32GB modules are only made as LR-DIMMs. Whether they work in the Mac Pro or not time will tell I guess. They certainly don't work in the old one because it required a firmware update that Apple never provided, but it's been part of the CPUs and chipset for nearly 2 years now. It's a standard feature of the platform AFAIK and I don't know why they would have disabled it when Mavericks supports 128GB.

This is really helpful to know. I didn't realize that every 32 GB module is load reduced. OK, that is helpful: it saves me looking around! Thank you for telling me that.

So it seems that we are now just waiting to hear if someone has tried LRDIMMs in the 12 core Mac Pro. For the nMP models with fewer cores, I've already heard that they won't work. In fact, repoman27 pointed this out in another thread recently:

So as I was reading the datasheet for these new E5 v2 Xeons the other day, I noticed that the E5-1600 series processors do NOT support LRDIMMS, just select members of the E5-2600 series do. So that would mean that only the 12-core Mac Pro (Late 2013) could take 32 GB LRDIMMS.

ALL of the new Mac Pro models use E5-1600 series processors except the 12-core Mac Pro. So only the 12-core Mac Pro has a possibility of using the LRDIMMS. Interesting!

 

[mward333]

32 GB modules to test

One of the RAM vendors is willing to let me test 4 of the 32 GB modules if I can find someone with the 12 core model of new Mac Pro near me. I called the Apple Stores near me, and their Mac Pros are "sealed" as display models. I have talked extensively with people on my campus to, and nobody seems to have one.

Does anybody have a suggestion for finding a 12 core Mac Pro within driving distance of Purdue University? I.e., within Indiana or in the Chicago, Illinois, or Cincinnati, Ohio, areas?

 

[VirtualRain]

One of the RAM vendors is willing to let me test 4 of the 32 GB modules if I can find someone with the 12 core model of new Mac Pro near me. I called the Apple Stores near me, and their Mac Pros are "sealed" as display models. I have talked extensively with people on my campus to, and nobody seems to have one.

Does anybody have a suggestion for finding a 12 core Mac Pro within driving distance of Purdue University? I.e., within Indiana or in the Chicago, Illinois, or Cincinnati, Ohio, areas?

What about asking AnandTech if they still have access to the 12-core system they used for their review? I'm sure they would be interested in testing the RAM for you and their general readership...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013

 

[mward333]

What about asking AnandTech if they still have access to the 12-core system they used for their review? I'm sure they would be interested in testing the RAM for you and their general readership...
http://www.anandtech.com/show/7603/mac-pro-review-late-2013

Sure, excellent idea, but do you know how to contact them?? Is there a phone number I can call them? I know that they are excellent at benchmarking, and I see that they have some North Carolina phone numbers, but none of the phone numbers work. Maybe they are impossible to find and/or to contact in person.