I am still surprised at the amount of dust there. I definitely have gone for more than 3 years before opening that section, and never found anywhere near that amount of dust. I am really curious about the environmental conditions in your installation location...
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Mac Pro 1.1 overheating, loud noise & burn smell
- Thread starter Frodoo
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I am still surprised at the amount of dust there. I definitely have gone for more than 3 years before opening that section, and never found anywhere near that amount of dust. I am really curious about the environmental conditions in your installation location...
Heh. I had some dust on the heatsink fins when I recently took off my fan assembly to (try - and fail) to get a MaxUpgrades SAS/SATA Link adapter working with my now returned Areca 1880ix-12 RAID card, but nowhere near that much. I took compressed air and blew it from the rear of the machine toward the front where the dust was, then removed the rest with a shaver cleaning brush, as that easily got between the heatsink fins.
Temps went down by almost 10°C across the board on the lower chassis/parts.
My fans are set as follows:
PSU: Default
PCI-E Bay: 1000 RPM
CPU: 1000 RPM
Exhaust: 1000 RPM
The PSU fan is automatically controlled by the PSU itself - it never revs up unless the PSU gets very hot, and SMCFanControl cannot control it. The PCI-E Bay fan cools the area very nicely at this setting with little noise. The CPU fan and Exhaust fan were increased because with fully (or nearly fully) populated riser cards, airflow is moderately restricted coming out of the machine, so a more forceful intake plus more forceful exhaust, both balanced at the same RPMs, was prudent, and this is my default running configuration. Using these settings my video card fan never has to rev up. Ever. (HD5870, also had an HD5770 as well, prior to that an HD3870 and X1900XT).
I regularly dust off my RAM heatsinks with that shaver cleaning brush, as well as the memory riser board, but only when I have an ESD wriststrap connected to me and a wall socket's ground pole. If you take the time to use one of these shaver cleaning brushes (with bristles at least 3/4th of an inch long), and go across the motherboard, you'll notice temps decrease drematically, especially on the Northbridge, which is the hottest running chip in the entire machine.
I also (with the exception so far of the PSU fans since I've yet to get the PSU out of the machine easily) clean all of the fan blades with said brush about once a year, as they do get dust caked onto them, which reduces airflow and increases noise. Clean fan blades = very very quiet even at 1000 RPM. Lemme tell ya, weaving my brush against the fan blades of the exhaust fan isn't easy to do, especially since I've never been able to remove that particular fan (probably because I've never removed my CPU heatsinks, which they butt up against).
I've always advised against vaccuuming a computer since most vaccuums produce at least a modest amount of static electricity, and it don't take much to fry a circuit/chip with that.
Note: If any of you use IcyDock enclosures for 2.5" SSD/HDs in the internal drive bays, open the IcyDock enclosures every so often and dust them out. Their vents are dust magnets.
I have but a single platter based HD in my Mac Pro because Apple never got the design right with regard to platter HD vibration noise. And the stock Seagate HDs were atrociously loud. So much so I could physically feel the HD spin as I typed on my keyboard. That drive now sits waiting for me to put it into my grandparents' WinME PC (yes, ME - they can't move to XP because they refuse to get rid of the 1995 version of Scrabble as they hate and loathe the UI of the newer versions and the old one uses the BINK video codec and doesn't run on XP properly).
As for the eSATA bracket discussed earlier, mine didn't cost me much at all. $5 after tax from Central Computers. I may just put my SIIG 3Gbps SATA/eSATA card back in until I can get a working RAID card so I have reliable eSATA.
For anybody that plans to upgrade a PCI-E 1.0 slot Mac Pro with a 6Gbps SAS/SATA card, you'll need an x4 or x8 width card. The x1 cards are limited to 250 MB/sec max, which is actually less than the internal 3Gbps HD bay backplans from the motherboard SAS connection. x1 6GBps cards are a waste IMO even in PCI-E 2.0 slots, as you still lose 100 MB/sec performance.
I want the Areca card to work right in my Mac Pro...boohiss.
I'd print my hardware monitor numbers, but can't find an easy way to get them to my clipboard and I'm sure as hell not bothering to type them all manually.
Temps went down by almost 10°C across the board on the lower chassis/parts.
My fans are set as follows:
PSU: Default
PCI-E Bay: 1000 RPM
CPU: 1000 RPM
Exhaust: 1000 RPM
The PSU fan is automatically controlled by the PSU itself - it never revs up unless the PSU gets very hot, and SMCFanControl cannot control it. The PCI-E Bay fan cools the area very nicely at this setting with little noise. The CPU fan and Exhaust fan were increased because with fully (or nearly fully) populated riser cards, airflow is moderately restricted coming out of the machine, so a more forceful intake plus more forceful exhaust, both balanced at the same RPMs, was prudent, and this is my default running configuration. Using these settings my video card fan never has to rev up. Ever. (HD5870, also had an HD5770 as well, prior to that an HD3870 and X1900XT).
I regularly dust off my RAM heatsinks with that shaver cleaning brush, as well as the memory riser board, but only when I have an ESD wriststrap connected to me and a wall socket's ground pole. If you take the time to use one of these shaver cleaning brushes (with bristles at least 3/4th of an inch long), and go across the motherboard, you'll notice temps decrease drematically, especially on the Northbridge, which is the hottest running chip in the entire machine.
I also (with the exception so far of the PSU fans since I've yet to get the PSU out of the machine easily) clean all of the fan blades with said brush about once a year, as they do get dust caked onto them, which reduces airflow and increases noise. Clean fan blades = very very quiet even at 1000 RPM. Lemme tell ya, weaving my brush against the fan blades of the exhaust fan isn't easy to do, especially since I've never been able to remove that particular fan (probably because I've never removed my CPU heatsinks, which they butt up against).
I've always advised against vaccuuming a computer since most vaccuums produce at least a modest amount of static electricity, and it don't take much to fry a circuit/chip with that.
Note: If any of you use IcyDock enclosures for 2.5" SSD/HDs in the internal drive bays, open the IcyDock enclosures every so often and dust them out. Their vents are dust magnets.
I have but a single platter based HD in my Mac Pro because Apple never got the design right with regard to platter HD vibration noise. And the stock Seagate HDs were atrociously loud. So much so I could physically feel the HD spin as I typed on my keyboard. That drive now sits waiting for me to put it into my grandparents' WinME PC (yes, ME - they can't move to XP because they refuse to get rid of the 1995 version of Scrabble as they hate and loathe the UI of the newer versions and the old one uses the BINK video codec and doesn't run on XP properly).
As for the eSATA bracket discussed earlier, mine didn't cost me much at all. $5 after tax from Central Computers. I may just put my SIIG 3Gbps SATA/eSATA card back in until I can get a working RAID card so I have reliable eSATA.
For anybody that plans to upgrade a PCI-E 1.0 slot Mac Pro with a 6Gbps SAS/SATA card, you'll need an x4 or x8 width card. The x1 cards are limited to 250 MB/sec max, which is actually less than the internal 3Gbps HD bay backplans from the motherboard SAS connection. x1 6GBps cards are a waste IMO even in PCI-E 2.0 slots, as you still lose 100 MB/sec performance.
I want the Areca card to work right in my Mac Pro...boohiss.
I'd print my hardware monitor numbers, but can't find an easy way to get them to my clipboard and I'm sure as hell not bothering to type them all manually.