Mac Pro (1,1) - OS X Lion too noisy

[cs.oyen]

Hi!

I'm with a weird issue with a Mac Pro 1,1 (2,1 FW).

The problem regards at noisy graphics card fan.

I can't understand why this is happening.

So:

When using OS X Snow Leopard all system works okay and very silent overall.

If running OS X Lion the graphics card just "go crazy" making a very annoying sound I think this is the gpu fan.

If run back to 10.6 it will work okay. If run bootcamp run okay as well but with 10.7 it's very uncomfortable with that noisy sound.

Someone have this issue as well? Have any explanation for this problem and a solution that not involve get back to 10.6?

Note: the graphics card is an ATI X1900XT (512MB).


Cheers!

 

[CapnDavey]

Lion is a half baked OS you might want to try the hacked efi option to use Mavericks or later

 

[Sko]

I had some strange fan behaviour on my Mac Pro 1,1 after upgrading the firmware to 2,1. I upgraded the SMC as well and did an NVRAM reset and it all settled after a few days.

 

[cs.oyen]

I had some strange fan behaviour on my Mac Pro 1,1 after upgrading the firmware to 2,1. I upgraded the SMC as well and did an NVRAM reset and it all settled after a few days.

I have the 2,1 FW and the 2,1 SMC FW as well.
Same happened with me and after doing same thing the fan noise disappear, unfortunately the GPU fan does not like OS Lion.
Maybe will change it to something without fan and less power consumption.

 

[cs.oyen]

Lion is a half baked OS you might want to try the hacked efi option to use Mavericks or later

Hi!

Well I absolutely agree with you. Some years ago when upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion with an 1st gen MacBook aluminium the computer behavior was a mess.

At my current working MacBook Air the best OS version (in my opinion) was Mavericks. I really enjoyed that os.

With this old Mac Pro I already installed Mavericks and it works fine but the graphics card is not fully compatible (it gets something like 10 MB memory) and the graphics are very basic (no transparency and everything related).

Need to get a different graphics card. Do you have any suggestion?

Thanks

 

[orph]

may be worth just looking at the card and seeing if it needs a clean, also worth trying changing it to the second pci slot (if it's in the first one) or vice versa to see if that helps.

 

[cs.oyen]

may be worth just looking at the card and seeing if it needs a clean, also worth trying changing it to the second pci slot (if it's in the first one) or vice versa to see if that helps.

Hi,

Yes i check both options before. No visible dusty and the temperature always around 55-60 degrees.

In the second pci-e slot OS X give me a message about not running as designed power/performance (can't find the exact words). Need to use the 1st PCI e slot.

 

[orph]

is the card an original mac ATI X1900XT or a pc ATI X1900XT?
there was a problem with some of the mac X1900XT and there was a recall
https://blog.macsales.com/7201-ati-x1900-xt-video-card-problems-finally-addressed-by-apple

or it may just be some random bug,

when you had it in slot 2 was there still a problem with the fans? the card shude be fine in the second slot (ie the second from the bottom) im fairly shore you can set slot 2 to pci x8 lane mode with "Expansion Slot Utility"
http://web.archive.org/web/20080725...l/HWtech_PCI/Articles/pci_implementation.html
"The Configuration Expansion Slot Utility is located on your Mac Pro at: /System/Library/CoreServices/."

 

[Sko]

Need to get a different graphics card. Do you have any suggestion?

I've been through some ATI cards on my Mac Pro. The original one was a X1900XT. I fitted a passive cooling solution on it, Accelero X2 if I remember correctly. Next was a PC 4870 which I flashed with EBC firmware, Accelero also. Then a PC 6850 without modifications.

Now I have a R9 280X with EBC mod and standard cooling and I like it very much.

 

[cs.oyen]

is the card an original mac ATI X1900XT or a pc ATI X1900XT?
there was a problem with some of the mac X1900XT and there was a recall
https://blog.macsales.com/7201-ati-x1900-xt-video-card-problems-finally-addressed-by-apple

or it may just be some random bug,

when you had it in slot 2 was there still a problem with the fans? the card shude be fine in the second slot (ie the second from the bottom) im fairly shore you can set slot 2 to pci x8 lane mode with "Expansion Slot Utility"
http://web.archive.org/web/20080725...l/HWtech_PCI/Articles/pci_implementation.html
"The Configuration Expansion Slot Utility is located on your Mac Pro at: /System/Library/CoreServices/."

Hi,

The X1900XT is an original Mac version, not PC/flashed.

I will check the SN card maybe is one of the affected.

Well about the pci-e slots, to be honest as I work just with apple laptops and Mac Mini computers don't know how apple OS work with configurable PCI slots. I already try to change the configurations on the expansion slot utility but in all configurations but only in 1 st slot I have the green check that allow to work at full bandwidth.

Now, a few day later, I don't know if the graphics card really become working better or I just ignore the noise but I think that now the noise is a lot lower than before.

Running OS 10.6 and Windows 7 (to run some things I can't get on OS X) the behavior in my opinion is okay.

Lion definitely make a lot more noise, but at this moment I really think is better with a less noise.

Will check the SN and wait a few more days to ensure I'm okay with the noise.

Thank you
[doublepost=1527454721][/doublepost]

I've been through some ATI cards on my Mac Pro. The original one was a X1900XT. I fitted a passive cooling solution on it, Accelero X2 if I remember correctly. Next was a PC 4870 which I flashed with EBC firmware, Accelero also. Then a PC 6850 without modifications.

Now I have a R9 280X with EBC mod and standard cooling and I like it very much.

Hi,

Maybe I will get an HD 5770 and flash it, but can't find much and overall they are "expensive" (the entire Mac Pro costs less than an 5770, at least on the places i search for one).

Well I have one question, your are using an R9 280X, I have here an R9 270X from an old Windows machine. It's possible use the 270X or just works with the 280X? Sorry for this question I just don't know much of this, work with Apple computers since 2008 but almost all time with laptops, so the most usual for me was changing the RAM and HDD

 

[Sko]

I don't know of an EBC firmware for the 270X/7870. There is a thread at netkas about creating your own ROM for 7xxx, but I guess it's 64bit, for Mac Pro 3,1 and up. You can use it without flashing - so no boot screen. But it should work.

 

[orph]

i dont know if it will matter if the card get's full bandwidth as it's such a old/slow card so might be worth a try.
of if you can live with it then it's fine.

as you are on osx10.6 your options are a tad limited for alterntive cards unless you are willing to update to osx10.7.5 or higher
nvidia topic
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...out-nvidia-pc-non-efi-graphics-cards.1440150/

if your willing to use a pc card with no boot screens then a cheep option is an GTX660

 

[cs.oyen]

Hi everyone!

I got some time to check this and, for now, I think I got what I want.

In the past days I got an PC ATI 5770, flashed it to a "Mac version" FW.

Replace the X1900XT with the 5770 and can't be more silent. Even my PC with water cooling system makes more noise than this Mac.

Spend a little more time to check if can run other OS thank Lion. Try Mavericks and Yosemite. At this point I'm working with Yosemite (requires a lot more work than Mavericks to install).

The overall system works very well, no signal of any software or hardware problem.

I'm running with 2 SSD's and 1 HDD (SSD: 1 for OS X, 1 for Windows; HDD: with 2 partitions, one for OS X data and one for Time Machine).

The only "complain" I have is the HDD noise, when is used for Time Machine can hear it, nothing special.

My only concern is about the OS, because as Apple don't let this Mac run officially nothing higher than Lion.

I don't have the trust feeling as I have on other machines that support recent OS X versions, but can't do much here. Just work with higher versions with some "tweaks" or install 10.6/10.7 without external changes and have less concern about system stability. As I don't use this for critical work procedures I think I can live with that little concern.

Cheers.

 

[orph]

relay happy you got it up and working well, the GPU will be a big upgrade too

 

[cs.oyen]

relay happy you got it up and working well, the GPU will be a big upgrade too

Well yes its working very well at all. Very silent, really silent.

About the Mac OS officially I'm stuck at 10.7 as I said.

I try Mavericks and now I'm using Yosemite. I want to run El Capitain but can't find a direct way to install it (from an usb device for example).

You or someone know any way to create an direct install to El Capitain on this Mac? At this point just find ways to install restoring specific images from disk utility.

Thank you!

Cheers

 

[orph]

if your on osx 10.10 at the mo that's not bad,
for osx10.11 see this https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-el-capitan.1890435/
and notice the security update will brake things so dont install it.

do you have a second mac (or know some one with one?) that can make things easier to do

osx10.10 is a big jump from osx10.7, most apps will work fine so it's not a bad place to be so if you do have problems going past that point it might be worth just being happy on osx10.10.

on my 3.1 i stuck to osx10.8 until i hit app problems but osx10.10 looks still well supported

 

[cs.oyen]

if your on osx 10.10 at the mo that's not bad,
for osx10.11 see this https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/2006-2007-mac-pro-1-1-2-1-and-os-x-el-capitan.1890435/
and notice the security update will brake things so dont install it.

do you have a second mac (or know some one with one?) that can make things easier to do

osx10.10 is a big jump from osx10.7, most apps will work fine so it's not a bad place to be so if you do have problems going past that point it might be worth just being happy on osx10.10.

on my 3.1 i stuck to osx10.8 until i hit app problems but osx10.10 looks still well supported

Yes at this moment I'm at 10.10. Already have the 10.11 on different disk I install just for testing this one.

About the security updates already know that replace the boot efi file (or something like that) so didn't install those.

Yes I have more Mac computer one Macmini (unsupported like the pro) and a 2013 MacBook Air for working, at this moment still have support for new OS versions.

If I can choose to be honest I just stay with Mavericks but unfortunately there are some software that I can't use new versions with Mavericks (like new office for Mac, OneDrive...).

What you think? Stay with 10.10 or go to 10.11? In your opinion.

Cheers.

 

[orph]

well up to you on osx10.10 v osx10.11
osx10.11 is on my 3.1 and seems rock stable so if it's easy to do and you dont do the security update then go for it i gess.
but read up and be ready to wipe and downgrade if there's a problem.

in some ways if you have no need to upgrade to osx10.11 then it's easy to stick to osx10.10 as it's working with no problems.

the second mac thing was me miss understanding ops >.< i dont know why but had the impression that you where still on osx10.7 so where not able to run the new install so was going to suggest making an install drive on a second computer.
forgot to edit it out ops

 

[cs.oyen]

well up to you on osx10.10 v osx10.11
osx10.11 is on my 3.1 and seems rock stable so if it's easy to do and you dont do the security update then go for it i gess.
but read up and be ready to wipe and downgrade if there's a problem.

in some ways if you have no need to upgrade to osx10.11 then it's easy to stick to osx10.10 as it's working with no problems.

the second mac thing was me miss understanding ops >.< i dont know why but had the impression that you where still on osx10.7 so where not able to run the new install so was going to suggest making an install drive on a second computer.
forgot to edit it out ops

Alright! Currently I'm with 10.10 testing everything on a second hard drive 10.11.

If everything work as expected and as I need will jump to 10.11 if not keep 10.10.

I read something about issues with iCloud and related services like FaceTime... As I just use this things only with my laptop don't need to extend to more computers. So one less thing to worry.

I will test all OS and will post here if find any problem. So next days will run it just for testing purposes.

Thank you very much for your help with this stuff

Cheers.