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MP 1,1-5,1 Advice on pimping up my Mac Pro please !

rodedwards

rodedwards

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 7, 2010
208
69
Hi everyone ...

I'd like some advice on upgrading my 2009 classic 4,1 Mac Pro please (firmware updated to v5,1).

As you can see from system profile report, I have already upgraded processors, ram and hard drive to Samsung 840 EVO 1TB 2.5-inch Basic SATA Solid State Drive connected via PCIe. I also just upgraded the graphics card to an AMD Radeon RX580 Sapphire Pulse with full Mac EFI support. These cards are now sold refurbished by https://www.macstoreuk.com/product/amd-radeon-rx580-8gb-with-mac-efi/ and allow Mac Boot screen.

I think the bottleneck is the six year old Samsung Evo 840 SSD. So i'm seriously considering upgrading the Samsung 840 Evo hard drive as it only reads / writes at under 500Mb/s.

Is it easy to fit a 1Tb Samsung 970 NVMe SSD (1,500Mb/s) that will also be bootable or am i better with a standard and newer 2.5" SSD?

Any advantages upgrading ram to 64Gb too - I'm mainly using Photoshop and FCPX to edit 8k video.

Any advice on this would be much appreciated ...

 

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rodedwards said:
Big thanks Orph ... although I'm not much of a tech head and didn't fully understand it ...

So using those 'blade' sdd's - i'm at risk of no boot screen etc? Is that why a standard SSD is more easily compatible?
Click to expand...

No boot screen has to do with using a non Mac EFI graphics card, if you use a GPU that wasn't sold by Apple or came with your MP, then it won't have a boot screen during start up, unless you flashed the GPU with Mac EFI yourself with a Windows computer.

Keep it mind that you need to have Mojave installed with a certain bootrom to get a bootable nvme.

I just upgraded my 4.1 flashed 5.1 Mac Pro to Mojave with a 1tb Crucial P1 NVME SSD bootable (with the Lycom nvme pcie adapter), and also a Metal supported Sapphire RX580 GPU.

I used the following 3 guides to upgrade my 4.1 flashed 5.1 to Mojave, upgrade to the RX580 GPU, and use NVME SSD:

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...-mojave-bootrom-upgrade-instructions.2142418/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/blade-ssds-nvme-ahci.2146725/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/gpu-compatibility-list-for-cmp.2174600/
 
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rodedwards said:
Is it easy to fit a 1Tb Samsung 970 NVMe SSD (1,500Mb/s) that will also be bootable or am i better with a standard and newer 2.5" SSD?

Any advantages upgrading ram to 64Gb too - I'm mainly using Photoshop and FCPX to edit 8k video.
Click to expand...

See my signature for my NVMe setup. Kryo M.2 PCIe adapter with a Samsung 970Pro. There are other options, but this is the one I chose. 1500/1500 read write (very close).

You can upgrade to 64GB Ram if you want, but it'll be slower than 48GB of ram because the Mac Pro uses triple channel memory. But if you DO need the extra ram, it's better to fill all 4 slots because 4 slower ram sticks with adequate capacity is better than 3 faster ram sticks with not enough memory for what you're doing.
 
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Thanks to you all for your help so far ... I'm not super tech savvy ... so trying hard to keep up. :)

From what i can see ... the graphics card metal support Mojave firmware requirement shouldn't be a problem ... However, does my Samsung Evo 1Tb SSD main boot drive (that's connected via PCIe port) need to be replaced with a standard SATA drive for the firmware and Mojave upgrade?

Also ... It looks like a Samsung 970 Evo blade will work and increase my read write speed when fitted properly ... but do i need a special adapter to fit this to the PCIe port (in place of old Samsung 840 Evo SSD) ?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07CGJNLBB/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1

Am i also right in thinking that a special PCIe adapter with two switches will give me up to 3000Mb/s read write speeds? Or is my old Mac Pro throttled back to 1500Mb/s?

Big thanks again in advance !
 
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I don't want to sounds like an a$$ but did you even look at all the stuck wiki posts above here..

Everything you've asked is addressed in at least one of those wiki posts along with reviews and benchmarks
 
lowendlinux said:
I don't want to sounds like an a$$ but did you even look at all the stuck wiki posts above here..

Everything you've asked is addressed in at least one of those wiki posts along with reviews and benchmarks
Click to expand...

As i said in last my comment (perhaps you missed it) ... I'm not very tech savvy ... so having looked at all of those posts I'm still a little confused. That's why i am asking for clarification ...

I was hoping for some helpful and friendly comments as I'm still learning ...
 
Your best option is to get a NVMe PCIe m.2 SSD along with a PCIe adapter card. Keep in mind you will get at most 1,500 Mbps. Also, use at least some type of passive cooling like a heat sink.

Your system will recognize this setup, however you will need to install Mojave onto it to use as boot drive.

If you are looking to double the speed of this drive and you have north of 200 quid then you could get a card with a fancy switch.
 
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Imma need a geekbench 4 on that box.

Assuming 32gb RAM via 4x8gb I'd say get 2 more 8gb sticks for a total of 48gb in triple channel mode for Photoshop.

Get a PCIe SSD adapter and get a cheap NVMe SSD. You could get a 970 Pro but also many cheaper brands will work just as well on pcie v2. You can instead get non-nvme SM951s on the used market which are plenty fast and will work on HIGH Sierra. Any of the above should benchmark around 1,500MB/s read and write.
 
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Thanks everyone ... I really appreciate your advice as I don't want to buy the wrong kit ...

I think I'm going to go for this Aqua Computer kryo3M.2 evo PCIe 3.0 x 4, adapter for M.2 NGFF PCIe SSD, M-Key with passive cooler:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/Bew0742LW4WB/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&psc=1

I've got High Sierra backed up on Time Machine, so i'll install new hardware, remove old Samsung 840 Evo from the PCIe slot and then reinstall High Sierra from the back up on to the new blade drive. I can see if all is hunky dory before i then upgrade to Mojave.

Is there any advantage to installing the blade SSD into the first PCIe slot on my Mac Pro as i think i read the first two slots are fastest?
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jscipione said:
Imma need a geekbench 4 on that box.

Assuming 32gb RAM via 4x8gb I'd say get 2 more 8gb sticks for a total of 48gb in triple channel mode for Photoshop.

Get a PCIe SSD adapter and get a cheap NVMe SSD. You could get a 970 Pro but also many cheaper brands will work just as well on pcie v2. You can instead get non-nvme SM951s on the used market which are plenty fast and will work on HIGH Sierra. Any of the above should benchmark around 1,500MB/s read and write.
Click to expand...

Big thanks - I may even treat myself to some new ram !
 
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your adapter and blade combo will give the same results (approx 1500MB/s read/write) in any of the 4 available PCIe slots.
This is a limitation of the adapter not the computer.
You can achieve faster results in slots 1 or 2 but it requires a special and more expensive adapter card.
 
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jbarley said:
your adapter and blade combo will give the same results (approx 1500MB/s read/write) in any of the 4 available PCIe slots.
This is a limitation of the adapter not the computer.
You can achieve faster results in slots 1 or 2 but it requires a special and more expensive adapter card.
Click to expand...

Thanks jbarley ! I'll fit it in the top PCIe slot where there is a space.

I've just upgraded to Mojave 10.14.6 with firmwares and Boot Rom 144.0.0.0.0 too ... slowly getting there ! :)
 
fatespawn said:
See my signature for my NVMe setup. Kryo M.2 PCIe adapter with a Samsung 970Pro. There are other options, but this is the one I chose. 1500/1500 read write (very close).

You can upgrade to 64GB Ram if you want, but it'll be slower than 48GB of ram because the Mac Pro uses triple channel memory. But if you DO need the extra ram, it's better to fill all 4 slots because 4 slower ram sticks with adequate capacity is better than 3 faster ram sticks with not enough memory for what you're doing.
Click to expand...

May i ask your advice on ram please ... as i don't quite understand ... as i said, i'm no tech head.

I currently have 32Gb ram installed 1333ghz DDR3 - 4Gb x 8 slots.

I did buy an upgrade to 64Gb a few weeks ago (before your advice) and it ran much slower so i returned it for refund. If i now try and upgrade to 48Gb ram as you suggest, will that be much faster than the 32Gb or do i really need to go to 96Gb? I have eight ram slots ... what's your advice please ?! Thanks again in advance ...
 
rodedwards said:
May i ask your advice on ram please ... as i don't quite understand ... as i said, i'm no tech head.

I currently have 32Gb ram installed 1333ghz DDR3 - 4Gb x 8 slots.

I did buy an upgrade to 64Gb a few weeks ago (before your advice) and it ran much slower so i returned it for refund. If i now try and upgrade to 48Gb ram as you suggest, will that be much faster than the 32Gb or do i really need to go to 96Gb? I have eight ram slots ... what's your advice please ?! Thanks again in advance ...
Click to expand...
6 x 8GB ECC 1333MHz or 6 x 16GB ECC 1333MHz are the optimum configuration for a dual CPU Mac Pro, Nehalem/Westemere Xeons are tri-channel.

If you use 8 DIMMs you have a penalty since the 3rd and 4th memory slots of each Xeon share a channel and only when you need more RAM than faster RAM you use 8 DIMMs.
 
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tsialex said:
6 x 8GB ECC 1333MHz or 6 x 16GB ECC 1333MHz are the optimum configuration for a dual CPU Mac Pro, Nehalem/Westemere Xeons are tri-channel.

If you use 8 DIMMs you have a penalty since the 3rd and 4th memory slots of each Xeon share a channel and only when you need more RAM than faster RAM you use 8 DIMMs.
Click to expand...

Fabulous tsialex- thanks so much ...

Will i notice much difference upgrading to 48gb from 32Gb (8 x 4Gb) or do i need to go to 96Gb?

Do i fit the chips in slot 1,2,3 and 5,6,7 for max performance?
 
I largely use Photoshop (big files) and FCPX again big files 8k 360 video.

I was going to use my new EVO 970 m.2 as a scratch disk for PS ... but not sure if it's as fast as more ram. Also, from what i understood, FCPX doesn't use much more ram than 8Gb - unlike Adobe Premiere. That's why i upgraded to RX580 GPU and the m.2.

What do you think please? Big thanks again ! :)
 
rodedwards said:
I largely use Photoshop (big files) and FCPX again big files 8k 360 video.

I was going to use my new EVO 970 m.2 as a scratch disk for PS ... but not sure if it's as fast as more ram. Also, from what i understood, FCPX doesn't use much more ram than 8Gb - unlike Adobe Premiere. That's why i upgraded to RX580 GPU and the m.2.

What do you think please? Big thanks again ! :)
Click to expand...
eBay server pulls are so cheap nowadays that you can buy 96GB (6 x 16GB ECC 1333MHz) and use it as cache/RAMDISK/etc, go for it since it's the best compromise of RAM size versus RAM throughput.
 
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What's a server pull ?! Is it a ram chip? Sorry to sound studid ! :D
tsialex said:
eBay server pulls are so cheap nowadays that you can buy 96GB (6 x 16GB ECC 1333MHz) and use it as cache/RAMDISK/etc, go for it since it's the best compromise of RAM size versus RAM throughput.
Click to expand...

What's a server pull - is it a ram chip set? Sorry - i'm a bit wet behind the ears ! :)
 
rodedwards said:
What's a server pull ?! Is it a ram chip? Sorry to sound studid ! :D


What's a server pull - is it a ram chip set? Sorry - i'm a bit wet behind the ears ! :)
Click to expand...
Server pulls are used ECC RAM that come from servers that are decommissioned, most people here buy server pulls on eBay/AliExpress.
 
Cool ... thanks for explaining ! I'll look into it all ... really appreciate your advice. :)
 
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rodedwards said:
I did buy an upgrade to 64Gb a few weeks ago (before your advice) and it ran much slower so i returned it for refund. If i now try and upgrade to 48Gb ram as you suggest, will that be much faster than the 32Gb or do i really need to go to 96Gb? I have eight ram slots ... what's your advice please ?! Thanks again in advance ...
Click to expand...

Just for some fun perspective on how affordable RAM upgrades for 4,1 / 5,1 systems are now... in 2015 I bought 3x 16gb 1333 sticks from Data Memory Systems - it cost me US$537 before shipping. Last month, I bought 3 more from the same company to bring my system up to 96gb, only US$107 before shipping.
 
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