Run my 3,1 cooler?

[NOTNlCE]

Hello all,
I've done some searching around and have pretty much come to the conclusion that my quest is in vain, but I want to know if any of you guys do something special to help your Mac Pros to run cooler. And by cooler, I don't mean bumping the fans so the computer runs cooler, I more so mean "How do I shrink the amount of heat my Mac Pro is blasting into my office?" From what I've read, the answer seems to be "You can't, those Xeons run hot, not much you can do." But, I figured I would ask.

Thanks for your input.
-N

 

[sarthak]

1. Give the inside a good cleaning with an air duster.

2. Re-TIM the procs with higher end paste, should drop by a few degrees at most.

3. Also, if heat is your priority over performance, consider replacing any higher end graphics with a basic card that generates substantially less heat.

4. Replace 7200RPM drives with 5400RPM drives.

5. Install a custom fan assembly in the ODD bay using a Molex -> Fan plug. As you don't really want more fans/louder fans, I'd recommend the above.

6. Do less work that stresses the procs or GPU generating heat.

 

[NOTNlCE]

Re-TIM the procs with higher end paste, should drop by a few degrees at most.

Yeah, thought about that. The thermal paste was redone last October when I first acquired the machine. Might be a good move, though. I've blown the whole thing out recently (about a month ago) to improve airflow, as well.

 

[sarthak]

Yeah, thought about that. The thermal paste was redone last October when I first acquired the machine. Might be a good move, though. I've blown the whole thing out recently (about a month ago) to improve airflow, as well.

I don't think there is really much that can be done since the system is air-cooled other than replacing components with "greener" parts and clean up the systems internals.

 

[NOTNlCE]

Figured as much. Thanks for the advice. I've recently started Ejecting my spare drives (such as my BootCamp and Storage drives while I'm just using OS X) and that seems to help marginally. I guess I just have to find a way to funnel more air into the room.

 

[stjames70]

Multiple 3,1s

If you figure out how to cool the 3,1s let me know. I fit my office with multiple 3,1s and old ACD's instead of new iMacs, and I really like the setup. Only problem is the heat. Winter time, great. Summer time in Denver, AC is running at capacity. The whole front office feels like a little mini oven. And we cannot put them to sleep, since Fusion seems to lose connectivity with the Win 8 'server'

 

[hfg]

My old 3,1 added more heat to my den (constantly) than did the furnace register that was in there. It was always warm in there in the winter. My cat would always lay behind it, so I ended up putting a little bed for him there (the computer is built into a oak desk with rear opening behind the Mac Pro).

I switched to using a iMac for awhile, and my den actually got uncomfortably cold (perhaps I need to clean out that register duct in there). However, I soon returned to the fold with a new 2012 5,1 which I upgraded significantly, so my den is nice and toasty again.

I find that putting the Mac Pro in the "sleep" mode whenever possible, and allowing the hard disks to spin down when not being used (I run entirely from a SSD array most of the time) cuts the total daily heat output considerably. Switching from the 30" ACD with the florescent tubes over to a 27" LED display helped, although I also have a 24" tube-lit calibrated monitor for photo work, but it is off a lot.

Other than that ... there isn't much you can do.

 

[crjackson2134]

My old 3,1 added more heat to my den (constantly) than did the furnace register that was in there. It was always warm in there in the winter. My cat would always lay behind it, so I ended up putting a little bed for him there (the computer is built into a oak desk with rear opening behind the Mac Pro).

I switched to using a iMac for awhile, and my den actually got uncomfortably cold (perhaps I need to clean out that register duct in there). However, I soon returned to the fold with a new 2012 5,1 which I upgraded significantly, so my den is nice and toasty again.

I find that putting the Mac Pro in the "sleep" mode whenever possible, and allowing the hard disks to spin down when not being used (I run entirely from a SSD array most of the time) cuts the total daily heat output considerably. Switching from the 30" ACD with the florescent tubes over to a 27" LED display helped, although I also have a 24" tube-lit calibrated monitor for photo work, but it is off a lot.

Other than that ... there isn't much you can do.

Howard,

I was under the impression that spinning down drives was not advised when SSDs are involved. What's your take on that? I used to always spin down the HDDs, but I unticked that feature when I moved to an SSD boot drive.

 

[NOTNlCE]

My old 3,1 added more heat to my den (constantly) than did the furnace register that was in there. It was always warm in there in the winter. My cat would always lay behind it, so I ended up putting a little bed for him there (the computer is built into a oak desk with rear opening behind the Mac Pro).

I switched to using a iMac for awhile, and my den actually got uncomfortably cold (perhaps I need to clean out that register duct in there). However, I soon returned to the fold with a new 2012 5,1 which I upgraded significantly, so my den is nice and toasty again.

I find that putting the Mac Pro in the "sleep" mode whenever possible, and allowing the hard disks to spin down when not being used (I run entirely from a SSD array most of the time) cuts the total daily heat output considerably. Switching from the 30" ACD with the florescent tubes over to a 27" LED display helped, although I also have a 24" tube-lit calibrated monitor for photo work, but it is off a lot.

Other than that ... there isn't much you can do.

That's what I'm figuring. My 3,1 won't sleep anymore (GPU issue, long story) so I shut it down regularly and use my iMac G4 Hack for casual use, but when I have the day off I'm on my tower quite literally all day, and it really does get toasty. It was pretty great in the winter, but this is the first summer I've owned this machine, and it's pretty rough on the temp of the room. I suppose it's just the machine.

Thanks everyone for the input. I'm thinking of moving the location of my tower so that it is better ventilated, but I'm thinking that's the best that can be done other than swapping components, which just isn't an option.

 

[OS6-OSX]

This fan by Vantec makes my 3,1 cooler!

 

[Neodym]

"You can't, those Xeons run hot, not much you can do."

Your 3,1 runs with Harpertown Xeons, probably in stepping C0. It's possible that the E0 stepping provides a lower idle power consumption.

With the Woodcrest CPU's in the MP 1,1 you could get an idle power reduction from 48W to 16W (both CPU's combined) by using the latest stepping. Unfortunately I could not find information on idle power consumption for the Harpertowns on a quick search.

Another alternative may be to use the low-power variants of the Harpertowns, which would reduce TDP from 80-150W to 40-50W (however at the cost of a significant frequency reduction). Voltage seems identical, though I don't know which other requirements might apply to run them in the MP3,1.

Furthermore you should have an eye on OSX support for the latest nVidia GPU's with the Maxwell architecture. I replaced an AMD 6850 in my HTPCish PC rig with a 750TI (Maxwell) and significantly reduced heat in the small case. The 750TI has half the TDP of the 6850 (60 vs 127W) under load, while providing similar, if not slightly better performance.

Both GPU and CPU optimization should net you a perceptible power and heat reduction.

On the other hand, so would a switch to a more modern architecture Mac. Therefore it depends on whether you like to stick to the big boy for other reasons (like e.g. internal HDD bays, PCIe expansion slots or the superior cooling concept for sustained load scenarios).

 

[hfg]

Howard,

I was under the impression that spinning down drives was not advised when SSDs are involved. What's your take on that? I used to always spin down the HDDs, but I unticked that feature when I moved to an SSD boot drive.

I guess I hadn't heard that. Perhaps when the "Fusion" drive came about, there were some suggestions that the hard disk not spin down since it was an integral part of the Fusion array and would thus slow down all access. I always have my hard disks idle since my environment is totally contained on a 1TB RAID-0 SSD and only seldom used files and archives are on the hard disks. Of course, I do get the spinning beach ball when I first go to access these archives, but that isn't all that often.

-howard

 

[crjackson2134]

I guess I hadn't heard that. Perhaps when the "Fusion" drive came about, there were some suggestions that the hard disk not spin down since it was an integral part of the Fusion array and would thus slow down all access. I always have my hard disks idle since my environment is totally contained on a 1TB RAID-0 SSD and only seldom used files and archives are on the hard disks. Of course, I do get the spinning beach ball when I first go to access these archives, but that isn't all that often.

-howard

Ahh... I actually perfer to have my storage drives to spin down too, so I guess I can turn that back on again and see if there is any negative impact. The BB is to be expected during spinup time so I'm not concerned with that so much.

 

[bokdol]

the 2 things that cooled my 2.8 octo. 3,1 machine was replaceing all drives with ssd's that dropped temps like crazy and the addition of a 660ti. that ran much cooler then my stock gpu. still warms the room a little. but not as bad as when it was my heater during winter.

 

[pullman]

Mine doesn't run very hot at all but fwiw my OS was for years run from an SSD. Since a few months it's on a striped array of Intel 520s on Sonnet Tempo Pro. Still nice and cool. I also have two 3TB data drives in there. The one thing I do occasionally is to vacuum out dust.

 

[NOTNlCE]

Thanks for the advice, I bit the bullet and upped the AC in my room, plus shutting down regularly instead of having my tower run all day has made more difference than anything else seems to. I've started using other computers for smaller tasks instead of booting up the big ol' tower.