I recently got an amazing deal on a 2009 MacPro flashed to 5,1 firmware from a professional music producer who upgraded to a more modern Mac and just wanted to sell his older one fast. The body of this MacPro is literally in near mint condition and even the inside of it only had a moderate to minimal amount of dust and it even came with the original Mac Pro box--this guy knew how to take care of his gear to say the least!
I tested all the ports on it were working ok, ran Geekbench 5 test to see that it ran it without crashing or other issues and finally ran the EXTREMELY LONG 3+ hour EXTENDED Apple Hardware Test DVD boot disc and after 3.5 hours testing the machine it reported back that there were NO ERRORS or problems found with the system or the memory.
I even downloaded trial software of Adobe Photoshop 2023 and Topaz Photo AI to see this Mac Pro run them because I read in a YouTube thread on upgrading these 5,1 MacPros that one commenter essentially said that his MacPro 5,1 after upgraded to Monterey with OCPL could no longer run PhotoShop 2023 or Topaz Photo AI at normal speeds as this software was just crawling along at such a oddly slow rate that this software was nearly unusable. Both Photoshop 2023 and Topaz Photo AI ran at good speeds in this MacPro with 64GB RAM while working on multiple very high res files.
Yet I have this very odd problem with this 5,1 Mac Pro in that every so often, and more recently more often than before, when I push the power button to start the machine up I get a flashing power button light and it doesn't start. The thing is though that it always starts up again fine after I turn the machine off with the power button, wait 5 seconds or so then press the power button again. It's not the end of the world to have to deal with this annoying problem but it is somewhat annoying and a waste of time but I'm also worried that it might be an indicator of a greater problem lurking in the system. This problem occured/occurs both when I was running this machine on Mojave from an HDD (the HD set up this machine came with) and on Monterey via OCLP on a Sabrent nVMe PCIe card with a Samsung 2TB nVMe SSD.
The other odd problem I have with it is the GPU a Radeon RX580 which has very clean fans and otherwise looks brand new at times makes a loud clicking sound at startup that then fades away after I log in to the machine. Sometimes however this loud clicking sound it makes doesn't fade away after start up and this is just unbearable to have to listen to while using this machine. It has only happened on 2 occasions that this loud sound continued on this machine but this is the second odd problem on this machine.
Machine specs:
2009 Mac Pro flashed to 5,1
12-Core 3.46 GHz
64 GB of 1333 MHz RAM
Samsung 2TB nVMe SSD on a Sabrent nVMe PCIe card in the 16x PCI card slot
Radeon RX580 8GB
Since I know from reading other threads here that a flashing start up light is a sign that there is something wrong with the RAM in the MacPro I checked the memory LED lights on the CPU tray and they aren't lit up. I also tried putting in other known working RAM from from my other MacPro that has never had this flashing start up light issue and the intermittent flashing startup light problem continued so I just put the original RAM back in. Also note that I ran the EXTENDED extra long 3+ hour system hardware and memory test on this machine and the hardware and RAM passed 100% ok. Also the machine starts up fine with just one attempt after these failed start up attempts with the flashing light and when its running I get no errors or problems of any kind except for the loud GPU but that issue is very rare and seems to be some kind of problem with the physical fans on the GPU even though they look very clean.
Anyone have any idea of what to try next to solve these intermittent problems?
I tested all the ports on it were working ok, ran Geekbench 5 test to see that it ran it without crashing or other issues and finally ran the EXTREMELY LONG 3+ hour EXTENDED Apple Hardware Test DVD boot disc and after 3.5 hours testing the machine it reported back that there were NO ERRORS or problems found with the system or the memory.
I even downloaded trial software of Adobe Photoshop 2023 and Topaz Photo AI to see this Mac Pro run them because I read in a YouTube thread on upgrading these 5,1 MacPros that one commenter essentially said that his MacPro 5,1 after upgraded to Monterey with OCPL could no longer run PhotoShop 2023 or Topaz Photo AI at normal speeds as this software was just crawling along at such a oddly slow rate that this software was nearly unusable. Both Photoshop 2023 and Topaz Photo AI ran at good speeds in this MacPro with 64GB RAM while working on multiple very high res files.
Yet I have this very odd problem with this 5,1 Mac Pro in that every so often, and more recently more often than before, when I push the power button to start the machine up I get a flashing power button light and it doesn't start. The thing is though that it always starts up again fine after I turn the machine off with the power button, wait 5 seconds or so then press the power button again. It's not the end of the world to have to deal with this annoying problem but it is somewhat annoying and a waste of time but I'm also worried that it might be an indicator of a greater problem lurking in the system. This problem occured/occurs both when I was running this machine on Mojave from an HDD (the HD set up this machine came with) and on Monterey via OCLP on a Sabrent nVMe PCIe card with a Samsung 2TB nVMe SSD.
The other odd problem I have with it is the GPU a Radeon RX580 which has very clean fans and otherwise looks brand new at times makes a loud clicking sound at startup that then fades away after I log in to the machine. Sometimes however this loud clicking sound it makes doesn't fade away after start up and this is just unbearable to have to listen to while using this machine. It has only happened on 2 occasions that this loud sound continued on this machine but this is the second odd problem on this machine.
Machine specs:
2009 Mac Pro flashed to 5,1
12-Core 3.46 GHz
64 GB of 1333 MHz RAM
Samsung 2TB nVMe SSD on a Sabrent nVMe PCIe card in the 16x PCI card slot
Radeon RX580 8GB
Since I know from reading other threads here that a flashing start up light is a sign that there is something wrong with the RAM in the MacPro I checked the memory LED lights on the CPU tray and they aren't lit up. I also tried putting in other known working RAM from from my other MacPro that has never had this flashing start up light issue and the intermittent flashing startup light problem continued so I just put the original RAM back in. Also note that I ran the EXTENDED extra long 3+ hour system hardware and memory test on this machine and the hardware and RAM passed 100% ok. Also the machine starts up fine with just one attempt after these failed start up attempts with the flashing light and when its running I get no errors or problems of any kind except for the loud GPU but that issue is very rare and seems to be some kind of problem with the physical fans on the GPU even though they look very clean.
Anyone have any idea of what to try next to solve these intermittent problems?