Without doubt it would make more sense to replace rather than repair if it involved the board, those boards still fetch crazy money, my model being the 3ghz 8 core, I still find it hard to believe the asking price is around the same as replacing the entire machine.
Just so you know, my problem is identical, all the ram works fine, either fully
Populating riser A or B in either the upper or lower ports, the problem arises when both riser boards are installed, it either fails to start, or on the rare chance it does fire up, shortly after it begins a restarting process and never actually restarts, it just gets stuck in a boot loop over and over.
The machine is immaculate inside, the entire guts of the machine have been taken out, carefully cleaned with air, and reseated. The SMC / PRAM have been reset countless times, everything I could suggest cleaning I've already done.
Replacing the PSU i have considered, however that's a huge gamble in something that may or may not solve the issue. Bare in mind, my machine usually powers 4 sata drives, one SSD drive, a 5770 card, 16gb of ram, and a SuperDrive, leaving me thinking maybe I was overloading it a little, however removing all the drives, the SuperDrive, and installing my old ati 1900 card back in there, surely I would have lightened the load... And yet the problem
Is still happening, doesn't point me in the direction of a PSU.
As things are right now, it's running stable with one riser, just a shame to sacrifice the RAM on the other card. Let's hope someone browsing these forums finds a solution why this is happening.
Hi Shibuyablue,
So far I have counted more than 700 Mac Pro users, who have made some form of post/reply across various mac forums and Apple Support Community who have experienced random restarts on Mac Pro's 2007-2012 models. This is appalling and a thorough investigation by apple should of been made resulting in a recall to access/repair/replace the faulty components(s). Why there is some who have not experienced the random restarts, which could be numerous and varying reasons, have saved from the annoying and time wasting efforts by the end user, and in many cases apple genius bar staff, trying to find the actual fault.
While iStat menu and AHT are a method employed, along with process of elimination removing each hardware component to try "identify" the fault, often little or no success has been acquired. Suggestions to clean each and every connector is good housekeeping, removing dust and build up enables better connectivity and provides better airflow and cooling. It must be assumed that as Apple, like other turnkey computer manufacturers source compatible parts to complete the system, it would be highly likely that there is a supply of one or more components that will become faulty, either by the environment, use, heat, other variables which is not easily identified as the fault found by the end user or Apple technicians.
I have had the joy of dealing with Apple genius bar staff, apple technicians, Apple Care support and other Apple Authorised Service Centres since 2010 who to the best of their knowledge cannot correctly identify the cause(s) of the random restarts of the Mac Pro, regardless of the model. I have had just about every component replaced, investigated, blammed, but to no avail, the random restart still occurs. I have the Mac Pro early 2008 3,1. Random restarts occurred within 12 months and have never stopped. The intermission period between the random restarts are not consistent, occur regardless whether an application is running or not, whether HDDs or SSD, regardless of the video card, whether A/B or only A riser has ram fitted. Generally a recall occurs when there is a safety issue, possible harm to humans, examples are exploding batteries in laptops! But a fault that causes random restarts would not be deemed as crucial enough to warrant a recall, however some investigation should be implemented to the Mac Pro users whom have experienced this random restart.
2 days ago apple announced (May 10th 2014) not publicly though, that they will not be providing support or parts any longer for the 2008 or earlier Mac Pro. They called it "Antique". Interestingly, although not perceived as accurate to some industries, Wikipedia describe Antique as:
An antique (Latin: antiquus; "old", "ancient") is an old collectable item. It is collected or desirable because of its age, beauty, rarity, condition, utility, personal emotional connection, and/or other unique features. It is an object that represents a previous era or time period in human society.
It is common practice to define "antique" as applying to objects at least 100 years old. However it goes on to say :
The term "antique" is pejorative in some instances to imply that something is out of date.
Some would say, why don't you just upgrade, by a new one? Thats what the nice young fellow at the Apple Store said, my response was "you pay for it". Just because something is 6 years old, but has been kept up to date operating system wise still makes it fit for current use, otherwise apple would not support it under its compatibility with mavericks, for example.
Getting back to this topic of Random Restarts for Mac Pro users, there is possibly a common cause that some nice technician has identified across a number of Mac Pros that might like to shed light.
My 2006 Honda Accord needs a new part, perhaps one should just buy a new one. There are laws in each country that govern how long a manufacturer must be able to service and supply parts for a product. If no service or parts can be provided and the product is expected to last longer than it has then the consumer has rights to a replacement or upgrade that would provide what the faulty product was providing. Not a legal statement just summarising.
