Hello,
It is possible, but you need another family of processors if you have a dual-proc system. Others will tell you exactly which ones, but I wanted to tell you this now so that you don't buy the wrong processor.
Loa
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
MP 1,1-5,1 Hex 3.2 update from 2010 quad 2.8 photos new! CPU to use!
- Thread starter philipma1957
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Hello,
It is possible, but you need another family of processors if you have a dual-proc system. Others will tell you exactly which ones, but I wanted to tell you this now so that you don't buy the wrong processor.
Loa
Hello,
Found the info: you need to buy CPUs of this family: X5650 - X5690, which are more expensive, but needed for dual proc setups.
Loa
Found the info: you need to buy CPUs of this family: X5650 - X5690, which are more expensive, but needed for dual proc setups.
Loa
Need some advice on fan issue
I need some advice on the behavior of my 2009 Mac Pro fans with the processor (and firmware) upgrade. I updated to the 2010 firmware a few days ago and last night I installed a W3680 hexacore processor. The install went very smooth; almost too easy.
Idle temps look good (93 F, 36 C). The problem is when I put the machine under full load the temps go up quickly and the fans do not seem to be ramping up at all to compensate. Under full load the processor temp would go up to 160 F, 71 C before I would stop the load to let it cool off. Strangely, my fans do not seem to be ramping up to compensate for the high temps (or at least not fast enough to cool down before I reach dangerous temp levels). My understanding is that 157 F is the max temp for a W3680 so I really didn't want to push it beyond there and find out what might happen.
If I manually ramp up the fan speed with fan control software (SMC or iStat) the processor stays cool under load. I would prefer that the system adjust the fan speed accordingly so as to maximize the life of the fans as well as minimize any unnecessary noise.
Tried resetting SMC but I seem to still have the same issue. The system does not seem to increase fan speed under load. I do know that prior to the upgrades this was functioning correctly.
Any ideas why? Do you think it is related to the unsupported firmware hack/processor upgrade? Anyone else here with a similar upgrade put their machine under full load? Do your fans ramp up accordingly? How high do you let temp go?
I need some advice on the behavior of my 2009 Mac Pro fans with the processor (and firmware) upgrade. I updated to the 2010 firmware a few days ago and last night I installed a W3680 hexacore processor. The install went very smooth; almost too easy.
Idle temps look good (93 F, 36 C). The problem is when I put the machine under full load the temps go up quickly and the fans do not seem to be ramping up at all to compensate. Under full load the processor temp would go up to 160 F, 71 C before I would stop the load to let it cool off. Strangely, my fans do not seem to be ramping up to compensate for the high temps (or at least not fast enough to cool down before I reach dangerous temp levels). My understanding is that 157 F is the max temp for a W3680 so I really didn't want to push it beyond there and find out what might happen.
If I manually ramp up the fan speed with fan control software (SMC or iStat) the processor stays cool under load. I would prefer that the system adjust the fan speed accordingly so as to maximize the life of the fans as well as minimize any unnecessary noise.
Tried resetting SMC but I seem to still have the same issue. The system does not seem to increase fan speed under load. I do know that prior to the upgrades this was functioning correctly.
Any ideas why? Do you think it is related to the unsupported firmware hack/processor upgrade? Anyone else here with a similar upgrade put their machine under full load? Do your fans ramp up accordingly? How high do you let temp go?
I don't know why you are having this problem but in the absence of a better answer, I have a possible workaround.
I'd try Lobotomo's Fan Control. Unlike SMC Fan Control which only adjusts the minimum speed, Fan Control allows you to adjust speeds vs temperatures. It has a handy graph to show you what effect your settings should have.
http://www.lobotomo.com/products/FanControl/index.html
Hopefully this helps you out until the root cause of the problem is solved.
Last edited:
I am guessing it is in the efi hack. I don't have the problem with a 2010 machine which is just a cpu swap. but i am more of a fan control guy. i programmed istats menus 3 with 6 speeds. and change them when I want/need to.
Please note that 100 C is considered the thermal cutoff threshold of the CPUs. I have a non-Apple workstation, and under load my CPUs (quad-core W5560s,) can reach 95 C even with the fans going full bore. I'd let the CPUs heat up some more before worrying about the cooling. Obviously, if you hit 90 C and the fans don't spin up, while temps continue to climb, it's time to back off...
Understood. If I manage my fans manually I can maintain safe temps as well but I was hoping I could let the SMC do the work for me and keep the fans at low speeds when the computer is just idle. This will increase the lifespan, minimize noise and save my ass if I were to forget to ramp them up manually before a large load.
I noticed a while back in the thread you had written:
It sounds like you might have the same issue on your 2010 that I have on my 2009. You just manage your fans manually to maintain safe temps.
This is interesting. You are the second person to now tell me that 100C is the max temp for these processors and not to worry unless I was going over 90C. Someone else mentioned this over on the netkas thread.
I was under the assumption it was much lower. phillipma1957 indicated a max safe temp of 157F (69C) and the databases I have checked also say 68C.
http://http://cpu-data.info/index.php?grp=AT80613003543AF&gr=-1
Tonight I will give a shot at letting it go above 69C and see if the fans start ramping up. Thanks for the info.
Attachments
NO what happens is the apple software for the fans tends to be less aggressive then I want. Pretty much true for any apple i have used.
my works areas are such that if I run handbrake I can max the fan and not have to listen to the sound.
I was able to get my pro pretty hot with cpu test. it maxes all cores at 98 to 100 percent. For hours on end. Apple's fan speeds were not to my liking under this test which is as extreme a test as you can do. Somewhere in this thread I post screen shots of the test.
This looks pretty handy. I had not heard of this fan control software before. Thanks for the tip.
The single processor family (w35xx and w36xx) is designed to work in single processor motherboards. They have one QPI channel, and Intel charges a lot less for them.
The dual processor family is designed to work in dual processor motherboards. They have two QPI channels. The second QPI channel is for processor-to-processor communication, which obviously is not needed in a single processor model. Intel charges dearly for this second QPI channel.
You cannot use the less expensive single processor family in the dual processor motherboard, even if you buy two of them, because those processors do not have the second QPI channel that the chipset on the dual processor motherboard expects and needs.
You can see here which processors are designed for single (UP), dual (DP), or multiprocessor (MP) applications, the number of QPI channels, etc:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nehalem_(microarchitecture)
Nanofrog has a good explanation here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/13319021/
Woah, interesting. Huh. Internally at Intel, 100C (well, 98C) was considered the max, at least on the previous generation.
Now that I dig deeper, the desktop, server, and workstation chips seem to be in the ~70C range, while the notebook chips are 100C, "officially".
As an aside: is there any advantage to be had by choosing a W3570 over a W3565 as an upgrade to the '09 quad? The latter is quite a bit cheaper, but seems to be nearly identical.
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-gb) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)
The tJunction on laptops has to be higher to compensate for the thermal constrains put on the system by the case design limiting the available airflow.
Anonymous Freak said:
The tJunction on laptops has to be higher to compensate for the thermal constrains put on the system by the case design limiting the available airflow.
Last night I let it work under a flu load for a bit longer and found that the fans did finally start ramping on their own once the processor went over about 80 C. The booster fan ramped up to about 4000rpm and brought the processor down to the low 60s C under a full load.
For some reason I was under the impression this threshold for increased fan speed was lower when I was running the quad 2.66. Apparently, I was wrong.
It seems to be working great. I may consider running some higher minimum fan speeds to keep the heat down but for now I am going to assume that it is safe to temporarily go above the 68 C rating that Intel is publishing.
Thanks for the advice.
this is what I found doing the cpu tests the fans do ramp up under apples fan control but slower then i would like. Since I do at least 3 10 hour handbrake queues a week I went with the manual fan speed setting I programmed from istat menus.
I run the handbrake work overnight and don't care how loud the mac pro is. Been doing it for months no problems.
I run the handbrake work overnight and don't care how loud the mac pro is. Been doing it for months no problems.
I looked into this myself a while ago. I do not see any large advantage to the W3570. If you look at the specs, the W3570 can run 1333 ram instead of 1066 and it's QPI channel is faster. I don't think this translates to any noticeable increase in real-world performance.
If you run 3 16gb sticks of ram in it and of course use programs that need 40gb of ram it may be better speedwise.
Is the base '09 quad's logic board capable of the higher RAM and QPI speeds? Without firmware hacks? Later this year I'd like to do a simple drop-in replacement, and I want to stay clear from anything more involved than that.
No, you need the 2010 firmware. That firmware enables:
- Hexacores and other 32nm Westmere Xeons
- 1333 memory
- Audio over HDMI/MDP
The firmware upgrade to go from 2009 to 2010 seems pretty solid (I am running it along with a W3680 hex). There are no specific compatibility issues whatsoever that anyone seems to have come across.
The only concern would be if you had to take the machine in for service and you could not boot it to put the 2009 firmware back on. My experience with Apple geniuses tells me that it is likely that if you brought them a 2009 with 2010 firmware that didn't boot they would probably just replace the logic board and processors and would never even know your firmware was non standard. I would however suggest putting your original processor back in before any type of service though (as well as putting 2009 firmware back on if you can).