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MP 1,1-5,1 Hex 3.2 update from 2010 quad 2.8 photos new! CPU to use!

V

vbt101

macrumors newbie
Mar 28, 2013
17
0
Mac Hammer Fan said:
How much thermal paste do I have to apply on the processor?
I bought 3.5 g. I plan to spread it as fine as possible with a glove. Is this correct?
Click to expand...


I purchased Artic Silver 5 paste, and chose to follow the recommendation made by Artic Silver for this type of processor, which is to dispense a roughly1mm vertical line down the middle 2/3's of the processor. Let the heat sink do the spreading when you tighten it down.

They also recommend "tinting" the processor with the paste to shorten break-in. I did try tinting, but found the tinted paste to be really firm (like it was already too dried up), so I thought it might affect the thermal characteristics (it didn't), but I also had similar performance without tinting.

http://www.arcticsilver.com/methods.html
 
V

vbt101

macrumors newbie
Mar 28, 2013
17
0
Mac Hammer Fan said:
Do I have to apply some thermal paste on the sides of the processor too?
(vertical border)
Click to expand...

No, definitely just the top.

What kind of paste did you get?

----------
PowerPCMacMan said:
If you installed Windows and the same thing is happening, then the processor is defective. When you bought the processor did it say "for parts or repair" or anything such as a note of explanation about it? That would have told you something was wrong with it. I guess... Caveat Emptor.
Click to expand...

You were right, by the way. It was a defective processor. The seller sent me a new one which worked right away.

Had I not received a defective one to begin with, this whole upgrade would have been dead simple. Under an hour for everything first time through. I've done it so many times, now it would take 20 minutes even being careful.
 
Mac Hammer Fan

Mac Hammer Fan

macrumors 65816
Jul 13, 2004
1,332
500
vbt101 said:
No, definitely just the top.

What kind of paste did you get?

----------



You were right, by the way. It was a defective processor. The seller sent me a new one which worked right away.

Had I not received a defective one to begin with, this whole upgrade would have been dead simple. Under an hour for everything first time through. I've done it so many times, now it would take 20 minutes even being careful.
Click to expand...

I am happy to hear your problem is solved.
I will have my processor monday, a 6 core 3.33 Ghz. (Intel Xeon W3680)
I ordered it with Arctic Silver.
http://www.amazon.com/Arctic-Silver...&qid=1365249493&sr=8-2&keywords=arctic+silver

Fingers crossed. ;)
 
V

vbt101

macrumors newbie
Mar 28, 2013
17
0
Mac Hammer Fan

Mac Hammer Fan

macrumors 65816
Jul 13, 2004
1,332
500
I wish to thank all the users here who gave me the info for a succesful Mac Pro upgrade.
Especially philipma1957 for his clear instructions.
My 4,1 2,66 Quad is now a 5,1 3,33 Hex. Everything went fine, I had no troubles with the installation and temperature of the new CPU is 39°C.
:)
Geekbench score rose from 9460 to 16062
Xbench score rose 324 to 392
Cinebench CPU went from 4.86 to 8.87 while OpenGL rose from 30.14 to 37.64.
Terrific upgrade.
 
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V

vbt101

macrumors newbie
Mar 28, 2013
17
0
Mac Hammer Fan said:
I wish to thank all the users here who gave me the info for a succesful Mac Pro upgrade.
My 4,1 2,66 Quad is now a 5,1 3,33 Hex. Everything went fine, I had no troubles with the installation and temperature of the new CPU is 39°C.
:)
Geekbench score rose from 9460 to 16062
Xbench score rose 324 to 392
Click to expand...

Excellent! Question: did you run Geekbench in 64-bit mode? My 3.46 hex score is only 1450-ish, but I only ran the 32 bit trial.
 
philipma1957

philipma1957

macrumors 603
Original poster
Apr 13, 2010
6,402
278
Howell, New Jersey
Mac Hammer Fan said:
I wish to thank all the users here who gave me the info for a succesful Mac Pro upgrade.
Especially philipma1957 for his clear instructions.
My 4,1 2,66 Quad is now a 5,1 3,33 Hex. Everything went fine, I had no troubles with the installation and temperature of the new CPU is 39°C.
:)
Geekbench score rose from 9460 to 16062
Xbench score rose 324 to 392
Cinebench CPU went from 4.86 to 8.87 while OpenGL rose from 30.14 to 37.64.
Terrific upgrade.
Click to expand...

You are welcome and Yeah it is a great bang for the buck upgrade. I sometimes feel apple has delayed the mac pro because I posted this thread.(LOL) BTW that geek bench score is about right for 64 bit.


vbt101 said:
Excellent! Question: did you run Geekbench in 64-bit mode? My 3.46 hex score is only 1450-ish, but I only ran the 32 bit trial.
Click to expand...

He did 64bit for geek bench if you do 64 bit you will push 16500. Still moving the cpu and overall preformance of the machine 50% in many programs is nice.
 
Mac Hammer Fan

Mac Hammer Fan

macrumors 65816
Jul 13, 2004
1,332
500
vbt101 said:
Excellent! Question: did you run Geekbench in 64-bit mode? My 3.46 hex score is only 1450-ish, but I only ran the 32 bit trial.
Click to expand...
The Geekbench score is for 64 bit, indeed.
In 32-bit it is 14176.
I was also pleased that my memory went up to 1333 Mhz, although I bought my memory at OWC for my Mac Pro Nehalem 2009 and the invoice mentions 1066 MHz.

PS:
I have noticed that under full load (e.g. video conversion with Toast Titanium), the processor temperature reaches 60°C
 
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Mac Hammer Fan

Mac Hammer Fan

macrumors 65816
Jul 13, 2004
1,332
500
I still have one problem. If I want to install Snow Leopard on my "new Mac Westmere" I need 10.6.4 and Apple only sells 10.6.3.
However, if I use my Macbook from 2007, which is in an intel Mac and I install Snow Leopard on an external firewire disk and upgrade it to 10.6.8, I would use disk utility to transfer SL from this external disk to an internal disk in the Mac Pro. Would this work?

TIA
 
cal6n

cal6n

macrumors 68020
Jul 25, 2004
2,096
273
Gloucester, UK
You should be able to put your Mac Pro in Target Disk Mode and then connect it to your Macbook. Then install 10.6.3 on it. Reboot back into TDM and update from the Macbook using the 10.6.8 combo.
 
I

Ino

macrumors member
Aug 11, 2005
72
0
Another successful upgrade here. Found a W3690 for ~650 shipped so took the plunge from my 4,1 quad 2.66 to a 5,1 hex 3.46.

Everything's running smoothly performance-wise, though one nagging concern is my idle temp/thermal paste application. This was my first experience with thermal paste, so hoping someone with more experience can chime in and let me know if I should open everything back up and reapply using a different method.

Details:
Prolimatech PK-3 TIM
Line method down middle 2/3 of CPU method
Idle CPU temp: 48-51c
CPU Heatsink: 1-2 degrees lower than CPU
Ambient temp: 32-33c, though my thermostat is set at 76f/24c. Mac Pro is sitting on my desk.
Northbridge: 64c
Northbridge heatsink: 55c
Fans on stock settings (no fan control apps), all is quiet
Temps via Temperature Monitor

Any input would be greatly appreciated...thanks!
 
cal6n

cal6n

macrumors 68020
Jul 25, 2004
2,096
273
Gloucester, UK
Seems a little high compared to my readings but you're running a higher clocked processor than mine (W3680) and you may find that things improve after a few temperature cycles.

FYI, my figures at idle are:

Thermostat setting: 18 - 19°C

Ambient reading: 25°C

CPU temp: 37 - 38°C with heatsink consistently 2°C lower.

What are you seeing with a video encode or some-such on half load?
 
Mac Hammer Fan

Mac Hammer Fan

macrumors 65816
Jul 13, 2004
1,332
500
I "painted" the thermal paste with the top of my finger in a glove on the heatsink (fine layer) and the processor, a W3680. Temperature idle is 30-34°C, but under heavy load reached nearly 60°C (toast titanium video conversion)
 
I

Ino

macrumors member
Aug 11, 2005
72
0
cal6n said:
What are you seeing with a video encode or some-such on half load?
Click to expand...

I ran a Handbrake encode (large MKV file on local disk) and the CPU temp shot up to about 87c from my ~50c idle.

Fans started spinning up a little and controlled the temp around 82-84c. It stabilized there (while still encoding) and the fans slowed down.

Pausing the encode gets me back to the ~50c idle after 10 minutes or so.

Overall the encode was amazingly quiet compared to the 2.66 quad (which drove the fans crazy), but it still seems to run much hotter than the under-40c idle/~60c load temps some others here are seeing.
 
cal6n

cal6n

macrumors 68020
Jul 25, 2004
2,096
273
Gloucester, UK
That does seem high, especially as your earlier northbridge temps are very similar to mine.

My .mkv encode resulted in the following:

CPU temperature diode: 57°C Max
CPU Heatsink: 45°C Max

My Activity Monitor was reading between 650% - 750% during the encode. Did you check yours?

So be sure we're equivalent, let's try running exactly the same processes and comparing apples to apples.

Paste the following into a terminal window and hit return. It'll peg 6 threads, one on each core, at 100% usage:

Code: 
yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null & yes > /dev/null &

Once you've got stable temperatures, you can turn the processes back off with the following command:

Code: 
killall yes

I'll edit this post when I have my temperatures.

CPU temperature diode: 59°C Max
CPU Heatsink: 46°C Max
 
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I

Ino

macrumors member
Aug 11, 2005
72
0
I saw the same behavior as when I did the encode, meaning the fans spin faster once I went above 85c and then kept the temps steady at 82-84c. Heatsink is at 71c.

Pegging 6 threads at 100% via the terminal, Activity monitor shows 600% CPU activity, but 50% idle (since each core can process 2 threads, I assume)

Interestingly, Northbridge is now 56c and Northbridge heatsink is now 47c.

When I ran the Handbrake encode I saw similar percentages. Maybe even broke 800% for a little bit, but never over 900%.

Any further recommendations?
 
cal6n

cal6n

macrumors 68020
Jul 25, 2004
2,096
273
Gloucester, UK
Even with 12 instances of /dev/null running, I still only see 61°C for the diode and 47°C for the heatsink. The cores themselves top out around 70°C. See screenshot 1 for details.

That said, I've changed my fan behaviour using a fan control utility, details here. I seem to remember my temperatures were somewhat higher before using it. See screenshot 2 for my settings.
 

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