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Done it! - Nehalem W5590 Octad 3,33 GHz

Taipan said:
Oh, sorry to hear that. For us here in Germany this year was the first time (that I know of) that weather went crazy like that. Though still in a smaller scale than in the US. My girlfriend just bought a house with a big garden, and two months later the biggest and most beautiful tree was felled by storm. Some smaller towns got all roofs blown away. Hope it doesn't get worse.
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Sadly, according to the Weather Channel, in the near future, we'll look back on 2011 and refer to it as "the good ole days," despite all of the natural catastrophes occurring this year all over the world. In other words, this is just the beginning of worldwide climatic devastation to accompany the worldwide financial/economic devastation, as if it needs companions. There's always a piper to pay. The destruction of parts of the ozone layer and the vanishing polar ice caps demand it from us. Just in this year, we've had record blizzards, early onset heavy snowfall, fires, rain, drought, tornados, floods and earthquakes, even east of the Mississippi River. Famously, the question was asked,"Am I my brother's keeper?" We're all brothers and sisters no matter where our ancestors may have traveled. I'm your keeper (and whenever you need help call on me) and you are mine and we are our planet's keeper. We might shirk our responsibilities as keepers. But the Truth shall endure until the end of humanity, as will the outcomes flowing from our denial of that the Truth.
 
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Just upgraded my MP 4.1 Dual 2.26Ghz to Dual 2.93 X5570 and took me about 1 hour with lots of patience and everything went silk smooth, I had success from the first press of the power button. Firmware was already upgraded to 5.1 and now all 32GB OWCRAM is seen at 1333Mhz as well:)
The only regret is that I didn't take any pictures :mad:
 

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I'm thinking about upgrading my 8-core 2.26 GHz. The 3.3 GHz W5590 CPUs are still quite expensive (relative to the cost of the Mac Pro) at around $1,000 for a pair on eBay. But I've seen completed auctions for non-ES 3.2 GHz W5580s for around $200 each.

I see the dual CPU Mac Pros will operate with just one CPU installed. I've currently got 16 GB of RAM as 8x 2 GB sticks. If would go with just one W5580 for now would that mean I could only use four of my eight RAM slots?

Is using washers to prevent over tightening of the heatsinks recommended? If so how thick should they be?

It looks like the 2.26 GHz E5520s don't have much resale value. I guess buyers are put off by the fact that they are lidless. A pair sold for about $150 while the normal version goes for close to that for one. I assume most boards meant for Xeons don't have over clicking features. Would one of these work in an i7 board? Could the fact that they're lidless be a benefit for overclocking?
 
Cool, thanks. Maybe a little lidless over/underclock marketing in the ebay ads will up the price a bit.

I'll watch for a good price and then do the swap. Need to find some of that thermal padding.
 
Bought two CPUs from ebay and some thermal padding from Digikey using a link earlier in this thread.

I'm going from a 8-core 2.26 GHz with 80W E5520 CPUs to an 8-core 3.2 GHz W5580 with 130W CPUs.

Should I need to increase my fan speeds over stock speeds? If so can anybody comment on the noise difference? I saw a comment in another thread that made reference to yet another thread (which I couldn't find) and it sounded like someone's CPUs with the IHSs were actually running cooler.

And what kind of temps should I expect under load?

Thanks.
 
Thanks! Upgrade thread was very helpful

Just upgraded a MP 4.1 Dual 2.26Ghz to Dual 2.93 X5570 also.
The question I have is what are the consequences of not adding 2mm of thermal pad to the pink pad between the heat sync and the IC's on the board?
I received the processors before the thermal pad and installed them.
Been running the fans at 25% more speed to keep things cool but wondered if specific IC's needed to have the thermal pads dissipate heat.
The sensors heat ranges seem to be within what other Mac Pro 4,1 users report. Or should I refrain from usage until I install the pads?
 
Auralwiz said:
Just upgraded a MP 4.1 Dual 2.26Ghz to Dual 2.93 X5570 also.
The question I have is what are the consequences of not adding 2mm of thermal pad to the pink pad between the heat sync and the IC's on the board?
I received the processors before the thermal pad and installed them.
Been running the fans at 25% more speed to keep things cool but wondered if specific IC's needed to have the thermal pads dissipate heat.
The sensors heat ranges seem to be within what other Mac Pro 4,1 users report. Or should I refrain from usage until I install the pads?
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The pads are required for a reason so I personally think you should install them ASAP before something overheats there. I think the first signs will be a froze screen or KP, if the MP is not going directly to sleep.
Congrats with the upgrade.:)
 
Thank you for your advice

Thanks! I took everyone's advice and ordered the thermal heat pad and installed them. I didn't post a reply to your suggestions right away because it took several weeks for the pads to arrive and I didn't not want to boot up my system.
Again, Thank you.
 
What should the inner diameter of the washers be? I'm ready to do the swap but would like to have all the parts on hand rather than pulling the heatsinks and checking then running to the store hoping to find the right sized washers.
 
What kind of temperatures are people seeing for the various Xeons, either 4-core, 6-core, or 8-core setups?

The following are from the stock 2.26 GHz Xeons in my 2009 Mac Pro using Temp Monitor 4.96 under 10.6.8. I've tried dual 2.93 GHz X5570s and got temps around 75-85 C under load, dual 3.2 GHz W5580s and got temps around 80-90 C, and dual 3.33 GHz W5590s and got temps around 85-95+ under load. I've tried redoing the thermal compound (Arctic Silver 5) various ways and reseated the heatsinks numerous times for each set of CPUs. These are the BEST temp ranges I got. Sometimes they were even higher under load.

Can somebody let me know if this is normal? I want to get them running as cool as possible. I've played around with Fan Control but I want to be running as cool as possible at stock speeds before I go upping my fan speeds if I have to.

After I swap some of the other processors back in I can post more details on the temps.

[Stock] 2x 2.26 GHz Quad-core

Ambient = 30 C

Idle
CPU A = 46 C
CPU A Cores = 50-55 C
CPU B = 39 C
CPU B Cores = 45- 50 C

Load [Geekbench Stress Test]
CPU A = 63 C
CPU A Cores = 70-73 C
CPU B = 57 C
CPU B Cores = 62-67 C
 
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this is very useful information. I was going to pull the trigger on a pair of W5590s but am a bit concerend about the significantly higher TDP compared to the original 2.26GHz CPUs (E5520?). Would you have any more numbers on how the fans were coping with the different CPUs? Did they get very noisy?
 
I haven't had the chance do any more testing but I can give some more general observations.

Even after resetting the SMC and PRAM the fans didn't seem to ramp up quickly under load. I thought I'd be seeing the same temps under load but with faster fan speeds as the CPU speed increased. Instead the fans seemed to act about the same and the faster CPUs just ran hotter. You can force the fans to go faster using smcFanControl or Fan Control but I didn't experiment with them too much. Perhaps I need to go back and do that. I wouldn't want the Mac Pro fans running full blast all the time, but compared to some of the older systems I'm used to its really not that loud. You can use the two fan control programs I mentioned to get an idea of how loud your's would be at various speeds. That would tell you how loud it will be if you up the fan speeds after a CPU swap.

I figured my problem was poor thermal compound application or not installing the heatsinks correctly. I eventually ended up using a sort of two step process to applying the compound 1) wearing a glove or covering your finger with a plastic bag, spread a layer of compound so thin that you can almost still read the printing on the CPU. I masked off the edges of the integrated heatsink and could barely see a difference in the color of the metal that was covered vs the metal that wasn't once I removed the tape. 2) Make a thin X of compound in the center of the processor. I do it so that the lines are half the length of the distance from one corner to the other. I could run the processors without step 2 (making the X) but doing that helped. Using this method my temps were lower than what I got after multiple tries at the standard 'place a drop at the center' method.

I began swapping out CPUs without using washers as spacers to account for the increased height of the normal CPUs with integrated heatsinks vs the stock lidless CPUs. I did it multiple times and really tightened down on the screws with no problems. i did sometimes have to loosen them up a bit in order to get the Mac to boot but I mean no problems as far as bent pins. I picked up some washers thinking maybe that would help but it doesn't seem to make a difference and I haven't been using them.

I've considered lapping the heatsinks and CPUs. I'd never done it before but just tried it on a HP XW9400 dual quad-core Opteron system with a stock water cooler. I just lapped the water blocks and temps dropped by 10 degrees. But...i went to far on the one and it seems to have developed a slow leak so that wasn't an overall success. Though no damage to the computer and a Mac Pro heatsink won't leak. It would be a pain to do with that lip on the aluminum part of the heatsink though. And the HP waterblocks looked and felt bad, the Apple heatsinks feel much smoother.

Finally, this has got me thinking about a water-cooled hackintosh with an EVGA SR-2 motherboard or a water-cooled Mac Pro. I don't think there's room in the Mac Pro for internal radiators so if I were to do it I'd drill holes in the metal that's above the CPUs and below the PCI-E slots and then make two more holes in the back of the Mac Pro next to the PCI-E slots. It'd get hooked to a ready-to-use, off-the-shelf external pump/radiator system or routed into an empty G5 case housing the pump and radiator. The former would be easier but I kind of like the dual tower idea - like a pair of linked SGI Origin 200s :). The G5 would also be a great place to house disks connected to a RAID controller in the Mac Pro. Oh, and if you're going to water cool the CPUs might as well do the GPU too.

Tutor, I haven't seen any details of your water-cooled Mac Pro anywhere. Care to share?
 
help with RAM slots

Hi,

i've just upgraded from 2 x 2.26 to 3.33 Ghz with a pair of W5590 .

It took sometime to understand how much the hex screws of the heatsinks had to be tightened but it worked , temperatures are as before also under heavy stress.

The only problem i have is with RAM (4x 2 GB) : it seems that slot 2,3,4 aren't working anymore while 1 ,5,6,7,8 are ok , the RAM is the original one, all DIMM are tested and working, i have installed them in slots 1,2 and 5,6 .

So the problem is with memory slots ... i've reset PRAM and SMC , nothing changed.

i should probably reinstall stock processors to check if the problem persists but if in the meantime somebody has any advice ...
 
limlo said:
Hi,

i've just upgraded from 2 x 2.26 to 3.33 Ghz with a pair of W5590 .

It took sometime to understand how much the hex screws of the heatsinks had to be tightened but it worked , temperatures are as before also under heavy stress.

The only problem i have is with RAM (4x 2 GB) : it seems that slot 2,3,4 aren't working anymore while 1 ,5,6,7,8 are ok , the RAM is the original one, all DIMM are tested and working, i have installed them in slots 1,2 and 5,6 .

So the problem is with memory slots ... i've reset PRAM and SMC , nothing changed.

i should probably reinstall stock processors to check if the problem persists but if in the meantime somebody has any advice ...
Click to expand...

The problem is most likely not with the memory slots. I had this happen because the heat sink's pressure was not evenly applied to the CPU; so some slight heat sink readjustment is in order - it's more art than science.
 
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I want to upgrade my 8 core 2.29 2009 mac pro to 2x x5650 6 core.
would it be easier to remove the lids on the new processors than worry about the the pads and washers?
thanks
 
In my opinion, it's easiest and safest to use washers on each of the heatsink mounting screws to keep it leveled. Removing the IHS lid can cause damage to your CPUs if done incorrectly.
 
nick1980webb said:
The 3.33 Ghz W5590's are hard to find in the uk for a pair
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You've probably found them already after this time but I bought two used W5590's this past week from separate sellers for a 5.1 customer on ebay UK, paid £280 for one and £320 for the other. Both had 7 days warranty upon receipt and stress tested fine.

There is one in Hungary on there at the moment but the customer will not offer any DOA warranty or returns in any way - avoid.

I am still on the hunt for another pair, anyone in the UK will have to keep looking regularly to find them cos I will snap the next two up that list with a 7 day warranty.

Pair of hex's cheap in the states here:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/595726-B2...ink-/171181182109?pt=CPUs&hash=item27db318c9d

Make offer!
 
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gugucom said:
Image
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I'll be doing a processor upgrade in the very near future; I've purchased two Intel Xeon W5590 3.33 GHz Quad-Core processors off of eBay to replace my stock 2.26 GHz quad cores. The W5590 processors were pulled from an early 2009 Mac Pro; as that's the machine I have, I'm hoping the will work just fine.

My question is about the 2mm thick thermal pads I need to order. So I'll know what size thermal pad to order, what is the length of the pink strip shown in the above linked photo?
 
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