Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

2006 mac pro CPU upgrade: where can i get...

bearcatrp, did you do the upgrade yet?

I did go through the library to display the correct processor info in about this mac... and day before yesterday, i got major privileges problems, along with broken kext's. had to reinstall OS. so, i'd be hesitant to do that again.
 
There are better ways to edit that file than what you did with the permissions.

Using sudo in the Terminal, you could copy the file out, change the owner/permissions (and back it up!), edit it in the Terminal or the GUI, then use sudo to put it back.


Anyway, I would love to see how well the 5345s work out for you, bearcatrp, as I just won a quad 2.66 on eBay, and am looking at upgrading to an octo. (Cheaper than any other octo-mac option available to me, should have bought a refurb 2.8 in the fall when I could. Live and learn.)

The X5355s on eBay are currently quite expensive.
 
Keep your eyes open and keep searching, if you want the 5355s. I got them for $155 each (engineering samples).
 
bozz2006 said:
Keep your eyes open and keep searching, if you want the 5355s. I got them for $155 each (engineering samples).
Click to expand...


I'd prefer to not buy engineering samples as they may contain errata that the retail/OEM chips do not. I'm bidding on a few chips right now, we'll see how quickly they go over my threshold.
 
that's understandable. From my research I learned that the QVQF models are pretty much the same as the production units, so I made sure to get the QVQF units. But I see where you're coming from.
 
bozz2006 said:
bearcatrp, did you do the upgrade yet?

I did go through the library to display the correct processor info in about this mac... and day before yesterday, i got major privileges problems, along with broken kext's. had to reinstall OS. so, i'd be hesitant to do that again.
Click to expand...

They are in route (mail). Hopefully have them by friday so I can do the upgrade this weekend. I don't plan on changing the display seeing you had problems. As long as its working, will not screw things up. The chips seem to go up on ebay since you bought yours. The cheapest I found for 2.66 were around 300 a piece. Since this mac pro will crunch data and being used as a media center, and they are 80w instead of 120w for the larger ones, think I will be fine. Maybe in a year or so, when the prices come down for the 3ghz ones, I'll change them again. How's your temps running lately?
 
NoNameBrand said:
There are better ways to edit that file than what you did with the permissions.

Using sudo in the Terminal, you could copy the file out, change the owner/permissions (and back it up!), edit it in the Terminal or the GUI, then use sudo to put it back.


Anyway, I would love to see how well the 5345s work out for you, bearcatrp, as I just won a quad 2.66 on eBay, and am looking at upgrading to an octo. (Cheaper than any other octo-mac option available to me, should have bought a refurb 2.8 in the fall when I could. Live and learn.)

The X5355s on eBay are currently quite expensive.
Click to expand...

I will run a test ripping a movie before and after to give you an idea of the upgrade. I think handbrake gives the best idea as it uses all cores when ripping.
 
The temps dropped down into the high 80's at idle, so i decreased my fan speeds a little. i had the cpu and exhaust set at 1000 rpm, and dropped them to 850 rpm. with casual use (itunes, safari, mactheripper, toast) temps have been in the low 90's. using photoshop and bridge they are high 90's. handbrake pushes the temps to around 120-130 degrees farenheit. still very manageable, as my macbook cpu is at 126 degrees right now with just safari open.
 
This thread got me energized as well. I picked up a pair of used X5355's and will start to look at putting them in my mac pro 1,1. Should be fun! Picked up an Nividia 8800GT for cheap as well.

Thanks for sharing the info on the process. Will keep you posted

Enjoy
John
 
I did this upgrade with 5355s about a year ago. It's seriously cost-effective, especially with Snow Leopard coming soon. Add plenty of RAM and an 8800GT or 4870 and this machine can still hold its own, even with some of the new boys.
 
cal6n said:
I did this upgrade with 5355s about a year ago. It's seriously cost-effective, especially with Snow Leopard coming soon. Add plenty of RAM and an 8800GT or 4870 and this machine can still hold its own, even with some of the new boys.
Click to expand...

There's a 4870 upgrade for a 2006 Mac? Really? Where? How?
 
barefeats says the 4870 that works in the 2009 & 2008 model also works flawlessly in the 2006 model as well.
 
Tesselator said:
WOW! Awesome! Got a link?
Click to expand...

barefeats.com.

Anyway, Rob took the drive and video card from his new Mac Pro and stuck it in his 8x3.0 Clovertown Mac Pro. Worked fine. He says on his site or in a post here that copying what he thought were the relevant files over didn't work, he had to use the boot disk from the new machine.
 
NoNameBrand said:
barefeats.com.
Click to expand...

Oh sure... Send me to the root of a site with fifty trillion articles and the worst structure ever conceived (not to mention a search engine that isn't very useful), without a specific page. :(

I of course know that the main page is at barefeats.com. I was asking for the actual page he was reading.
 
Processors arrived!

Dropped them in, seems stable, working etc.

I highly recommend the long shafted torx screwdriver or allen wrench. Twas a pain to remove/install for me.

System Profiler shows :
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro1,1
Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 8
...

Yay!

Anyhow, activity monitor only shows 1 graph for the cpus... odd. I suppose this is expected?
 
mine does the same. double click the little cpu "graph" inside activity monitor, and a new window will pop up showing all 8 cores.
 
Finally done. According to apple, its supposed to be a 3mm hex to remove the heatsink. I tried the #15 torx but wouldn't work. No one sells a long allen wrench in 3mm so bought the T kind, ripped off the plastic handle, bent almost straight, then it worked. Ran the cinebench test. Here are the results:

2.0 ghz quad
render 1 cpu 2184
multi cpu 7457
open gl 2867

2.33 octo
render 1 cpu 2534
multi cpu 14834
open gl 2867

2.8 octo 2008 mac pro
render 1 cpu 3232
multi cpu 18245
open gl 6093

Heat is up a bit. Plan on running a movie once per day, then shut down. Figure after 7 days, should be ready to go full time. Now I need to sell the older one to recoup some of this project.
 
screen-capture.png
 
Looks good. My temps playing a movie are 108 degrees cpu B while cpu A is around 95 degrees. Don't know why but cpu B ran hotter running the quads too. Does yours show around a 12 degree difference?
 
I don't really watch movies on mine. I'll put one on and let it run for a while then let you know what my temps are. Generally, they run between 95-105 degrees, and are between 1-6 degrees difference.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back