MP 1,1-5,1 Sofa king lost

[Ar0undth3fur]

Howdy y’all,

I’ll try and keep this short but as detailed as possible.

TLAS: currently, I cannot get my 5,1 Mac Pro to boot. I was using it last night, it kept crashing (freezing/shutting off) as well as letting me know my hard drive was almost full. I kept powering it back up to finish one task, and then it just quit booting. White LED comes on, seems like everything powers up, but never hear a chime, and never get anything on the screen(s). No safe mode, no boot/option mode, no recovery mode/etc.

I tried resetting SMC, NVRAM, pulling out all my cards, hard drives, different combos of hard drives (I have multiple OS on several of them), reseating all my ram, even the original GPU… NOTHING is working. I was worried I maybe fried my harddrive(s) but the one HDD I have (which if I recall is the main boot drive/OS) does indeed power up - not sure about my SSDs - or that maybe the main wouldn’t boot because it was full.

I’ve had issues with the machine before, but they’ve always seem to resolve… not going too well this time though.

Anyhow, let me back up and give you the full details. This machine was original a 4,1 12 Core 2.93, it was converted to a 5,1 before I bought it. I purchased it in early 2014, loaded it up with 96 of ram, and used a Crucial SSD to do my music production and live recording on. Never had many issues (PSU in late 2015, some ram/performance issues on an advanced recording project at the end of 2017, which I then replaced all the ram and went up to 128). Machine ran perfectly since.

This started going awry when trying to upgrade to a new GPU so that I’d be able to power up to 6 screens. I bought a FirePro 9000 from a reputable seller who specializes in GPUs on eBay earlier this year. Put it in, and upgraded to Catalina. Realized I screwed up by upgrading too far so that some of my 32 bit programs ceased to work… made a Time Machine backup of my current Catalina system, went back down to Mojave but did it in a goofy way where I’m using/booting off of the Time Machine backup… was hoping to fix that soon.

Anyhow, can’t remember if I upgraded the OS before or after installing the GPU, but I pretty much ran into issues immediately. Machine would shut itself down all the time. It would get sluggish, glitch, or just randomly shut off. Now mind you, I did used to run as ass of browser tabs, but it never was an issue with the previous setup (original GPU, and High Sierra if I recall). Went back and forth with guy who sold me the GPU, started with a “NEW Old stock” PSU. That didn’t fix it.

Did pixlas, that *seemed* like it fixed it, but I did do some other mods around the time I did Pixlas and it’s a bit foggy trying to remember how things acted with each change (upgraded to 3.46 chips, added USB 3.2 card, upgraded Bluetooth/Wi-fi, and added another SSD on an OWC Accelsior PCI board). I currently have 2 27” Cinema displays, and an older 20” Cinema Display (intention of running a 2nd 20” in the near future - with a total of 3 each eventually).

When doing my chip swap and paste, I ended up screwing up the sockets on the original tray, so I tracked down an identical loaded tray on eBay to replace it with. Put that in, no issues, machine was back to normal. However I started having the shut down issues again, as well as visual artifacts and sluggish performance. Macs Fans was showing the Northbridge diode on the new tray was verrry hot (95-96 C, and on average about 25-27 C hotter than the heat sink). I put thermal grizzly on the CPUs, and the Northbridge, as well as the GPU… BIG improvement on temps and almost back to normal.

However, last week, started seeing the same issues come back. GPU seller suggested I look at USB devices and experiment unplugging them to track down the culprit for computer freezing when waking from sleep (which was another issue I had been having). I pulled the usb hubs I had (2 Anker data hubs, and 1 Anker charger). Some reviews for Anker hubs show some people having issues with their hubs causing shut downs and glitches - in some case frying some components (I HOPE they didn’t damage any of my stuff…).

That seemed to fix it, at least for a little bit of at least offered an improvement. I started to think my issue was Mojave, as I had read it was notable for causing shut down issues and such (or at least a possibility). I was in the middle of trying to get my PCI SSD setup with High Sierra to boot from and clean off/back up all my other drives. Was casually using my machine last night and that’s when it seems like it blew up.

My thoughts have been trying to figure it out, what could’ve happened or what could be the culprit:
-HDD/SSD full and not letting it boot
-HDD/SSD fried
-new PSU already fried
-GPU fried
-new tray already fried
-motherboard fried
-ram issue (no red lights)
-some kind of power issue between my machine demanding too much from its PSU, or an external power/outlet/battery back-up issue)
-or some other kind of kink that may hopefully resolve itself like it usually does?

I’m starting to think the whole issue here is my GPU, as my quest for more capability seemed to spawn most of the problems. At this point though, even going back to the original GPU isn’t getting me anywhere so I don’t know.

Can anyone help??

 

[Bigwaff]

Can anyone help??

A lot to unpack here...

Have you tried resetting the NVRAM? Have you ever replaced the BR2032 battery on the motherboard? Do these first.

Otherwise, you need to get either High Sierra or Mojave booting... if you have an Apple OEM GPU, install it. If not, get one, or at least a EFI bootable aftermarket GPU. Not a flashed PC GPU. A real OEM Apple or aftermarket Mac GPU. You absolutely need one for troubleshooting purposes in general. You can find Apple OEM AMD ATI Radeon HD 5770 on eBay for under $40.

The Definitive Classic Mac Pro (2006-2012) Upgrade Guide

The largest/most-complete guide to all possible classic Mac Pro upgrades covering OS, Firmware, GPU, CPU, Storage, USB, THunderbolt and Network upgrades.

blog.greggant.com

Pull all your PCIe cards except for the compatible GPU card. Remove all SATA storage except for a drive you can install High Sierra or Mojave on. Once you have a clean install, launch System Information app and report back or screenshot the "Hardware" page (should initially launch showing page). Of most interest is your Boot ROM version.

You can also try to boot Internet Recovery, Option+Command+R (latest compatible MacOS) or Shift+Option+Command+R (closest MacOS version Mac Pro shipped with). Recommend you use wired ethernet as Internet Recovery super flaky over WiFi.

 

[reader50]

Check your PRAM battery voltage. It should be 3+ volts.
Disconnect your optical drives. Those are quite old today, and can hang boot if they die.
You pulled your USB hubs, but did you switch keyboard / mouse to alternates? If it's a bad mouse or keyboard, and you connected them directly, this would not have helped.
Do another SMC reset after pulling any drives or other hardware, before trying to boot.

Agree with Bigwaff - get it to boot, and check the Boot ROM version. That's part of your main logic board. Your original was upgraded to 5,1 but it's not clear from your story if you ever checked if the replacement was also fully updated.

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

A lot to unpack here...

Have you tried resetting the NVRAM? Have you ever replaced the BR2032 battery on the motherboard? Do these first.

Otherwise, you need to get either High Sierra or Mojave booting... if you have an Apple OEM GPU, install it. If not, get one, or at least a EFI bootable aftermarket GPU. Not a flashed PC GPU. A real OEM Apple or aftermarket Mac GPU. You absolutely need one for troubleshooting purposes in general. You can find Apple OEM AMD ATI Radeon HD 5770 on eBay for under $40.

The Definitive Classic Mac Pro (2006-2012) Upgrade Guide

The largest/most-complete guide to all possible classic Mac Pro upgrades covering OS, Firmware, GPU, CPU, Storage, USB, THunderbolt and Network upgrades.

blog.greggant.com

Pull all your PCIe cards except for the compatible GPU card. Remove all SATA storage except for a drive you can install High Sierra or Mojave on. Once you have a clean install, launch System Information app and report back or screenshot the "Hardware" page (should initially launch showing page). Of most interest is your Boot ROM version.

You can also try to boot Internet Recovery, Option+Command+R (latest compatible MacOS) or Shift+Option+Command+R (closest MacOS version Mac Pro shipped with). Recommend you use wired ethernet as Internet Recovery super flaky over WiFi.

Yes, those were my thoughts too, and what I was already trying to do to resolve the other issues in terms of installing High Sierra.

Yes, I forgot to mention the battery but I also did change out the BR2032 recently when going thru the machine, and did the NVRAM last night as mentioned.

Yes, as I stated I already tried my original Apple GPU and no dice. I will try the Internet recovery though, although I just can’t get a chime/display or normal startup going.

Check your PRAM battery voltage. It should be 3+ volts.
Disconnect your optical drives. Those are quite old today, and can hang boot if they die.
You pulled your USB hubs, but did you switch keyboard / mouse to alternates? If it's a bad mouse or keyboard, and you connected them directly, this would not have helped.
Do another SMC reset after pulling any drives or other hardware, before trying to boot.

Agree with Bigwaff - get it to boot, and check the Boot ROM version. That's part of your main logic board. Your original was upgraded to 5,1 but it's not clear from your story if you ever checked if the replacement was also fully updated.

I’ll pull the new battery and check it, sometimes weird things happen where they die quickly or something else drains them.

I have OEM keyboards and mice I can try to see if that’s the problem for booting up, but I did already try pulling all easily available things to to minimize load on the machine as I stated above, no dice, and also the new tray was originally a 4,1 which was flashed to a 5,1, to my understanding that’s the only reason it did end up working in my machine.

Something like this happened about a month ago I recalled last night, it was after I pulled the tray to repaste the CPUs and Northbridge. IIRC afterwards, it started not showing all the ram, at which point I pulled all the ram to swap in one by one, and at some point it quit giving a chime or a display on boot, just black screen. I do remember ever so slightly tightening the CPU heat sinks down the littlest bit more, as well as found some small fluff in one of the ram spots… I can’t remember what was the exact fix (leaning towards the heat sinks needed a little bit more tightening and that finally got it to boot) - but I was able to get it to boot normally and all the ram did end up showing up like normal… just hard to think I’d need to tighten the heat sinks once again after they seemed to be fine the last several weeks. Also wouldn’t think there’d be an issue with the ram again, but I suppose anything’s possible.

Has anyone else had issues going to Mojave and had better stability and reliability when compared to High Sierra?

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

So all is well at the moment. Pulled the new battery, already down to 2.8 volts (kind of odd…). Did SMC reset, no change.

Pulled the tray, tightened heat sinks about a 1/4 of a turn on each screw, and reseated all ram. Ran it on original Apple GPU, no other accessories. Did SMC reset. Computer started to act like it was turning on, kept restarting, I suddenly heard the cd drive try to open over and over again, yanked it out, and computer booted. Fkin weird.

Seems it might’ve been the cd drive “boot hang” that was previously mentioned, never heard of that before, I had recently upgraded the drive to a 24x Pioneer, which to my knowledge didn’t seem like it was initially causing problems.

Anyhow, was able to get into the machine, free up space on the boot drive to increase stability, and then plot my next move.

Figured I could test one by one each new device to see where the issue is.

Not sure exactly what the culprit or fix was… the battery change and SMC reset initially didn’t fix anything, it was only have I messed the the tray, I saw a change… then took a hint and pulled the cd drive. Fweird.

Played around with the current setup, no issues, ran fine and reliably. Only thing is it would not let me put it in sleep mode. It did wake up from screen saver when I came back an hour later (had it on “sleep never” at that time), but even after putting it on a 15 minute timer for going into sleep mode, it would not take a manual command to go to sleep. I’ll see how it acts tomorrow.

Thanks to everyone who’s helped so far. Not sure if I should try and trouble shoot everything on the current OS, or go ahead and create a bootable drive with High Sierra on it to test if my full setup will be more stable and reliable on that OS… suppose I could always reupgrade to Mojave if I wanted to.

 

[Bigwaff]

Boot ROM version…?

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

Boot ROM version is 144.0.0.0.0

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

Boot ROM version is 144.0.0.0.0

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

I’m at my wit’s end with this machine.

It’s back up and running, on a fresh High Sierra OS on a brand new EVO 870… and no matter what combination of equipment I have hooked up, it’s still doing the same thing - randomly gets “caught up”, freaks out, freezes and reboots itself, or freezes so bad it just stays on.

It seems to work pretty well as long as I’m not using the internet or browsing… I can run my audio DAWs without too much of an issue (usually), but as soon as I start using a browser (Chrome or Firefox ESR), that’s what triggers everything, usually video.

I can’t remember how I had my pixlas cables configured to the card, but it seems I may have not connected 2 of the direct-to-PSU grounds to the 8 wire port of the card, and only had 3 of the 5 direct grounds connected to the card (the other 2 grounds were the jumpers off of 3 of the Pixlas ground wires). Either way, I reconfigured it thinking it perhaps that incorrect grounding may have been the issue… machine ran great last night for about an hour of so of heavy browsing and music, but of course, while playing YouTube music in the background and scrolling past an embedded video, the machine freaked out. Perhaps a software issue? Even Macs Fans starts visually glitching out when this happens.

When putting the original Apple GPU back in, it seems to do fine, there are no issues (asides from not waking from sleep and freezing, which is another problem to fix).

Ever since I put this card in (FirePro W9000), it has been a PITA. I got it, so that I could specifically run up to 6 screens at once. A thought occurred to me today, I currently have 3 Apple cinema displays connected (2 27”, 1 20”) - I know some cards require active adaptors for more than X number of connected devices. However, research indicates that if using all screens with Mini Display Ports, no active adaptors are required.

I just can’t figure it out. Doesn’t matter what OS is running. Pixlas didn’t fix it. A new “new old stock” PSU didn’t fix it. Unplugged everything (USB 3.2 card, hubs, etc.) except a keyboard and mouse (as well as trying apple keyboard and older usb mouse) - nothing’s doing the trick to get the machine to play with the GPU. I’ve seen where other users have ran this card with success… is the fact I upgraded from 2.93 to 3.46 chips part of the problem, with the newer chips requiring more power..? I don’t think it is because I did run it briefly with the 2.93 chips, albeit pre-pixlas.

I thought going back to High Sierra would help, but it’s the same as it is on Mojave. I can’t go any higher because I still use a lot of 32 bit programs.

I’m wondering if perhaps this card I too strong/power hungry for my machine… although the math shows that everything should play well together power wise. I originally purchased a VisionTek Radeon 7870 Eyefinity 6 off of eBay for running the 6 screens, but I think it needs to be flashed… only way I could get it to produce a picture was in safe mode and it had visual glitches and artifacts out the yingyang - although on paper it should use way less power than the FirePro, if it’s a power issue.

Does anyone have any insight as to what could be done to make this card work on my machine? I can’t hardly find much on this particular combination. At this point I’ve tried just about everything, and it’s frustrating because it seems others have had success.

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

Wow, totally double posted thinking the original post didn’t post completely… my b

 

[reader50]

Sounds like your new GPU is most of the problem. Could you confirm the exact card model, please?

There is a FirePro W9000 which looks like a consumer Radeon HD 7970, quite an old card today. I wouldn't be surprised if the GPU's heat sink grease is dried out, or if the card is dying generally.

If you want a Pro card, a better choice might be a Radeon Pro WX 5100 or WX 7100. These map to the consumer Radeon RX 400/500 series. On the consumer side, an RX580 is a good choice. Just get a Sapphire or other major brand - there are Chinese market imports that claim to be 580s, but are actually an incompatible 570 in disguise.

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

Sounds like your new GPU is most of the problem. Could you confirm the exact card model, please?

There is a FirePro W9000 which looks like a consumer Radeon HD 7970, quite an old card today. I wouldn't be surprised if the GPU's heat sink grease is dried out, or if the card is dying generally.

If you want a Pro card, a better choice might be a Radeon Pro WX 5100 or WX 7100. These map to the consumer Radeon RX 400/500 series.

It was sold/labeled as:
“ULTRA RARE AMD FirePro W9000 6GB Eyefinity 6 Metal GPU Mac Pro 4K Boot Screen” on eBay.

I’ve already taken it apart and cleaned it/de-dusted it as well as repasted it with Thermal Grizzly. The temps for it in Mac’s Fans seems nominal, 50-54 C. The old paste honestly didn’t look that bad, it was a pretty solid and thick layer, took me forever to get all of its residue off.

I honestly don’t even need an “incredible” card, I just need one that’s reliable, stable, and can support 6 monitors.

 

[reader50]

6x outputs on a single card does limit you to Pro cards. I assume you don't have the free slots to accept two graphics cards? Single-slot cards have become rare in consumer cards, but some Pro cards still come in single-slot. The WX-4100 / 5100 / 7100 are all single slot cards (but with 4x ports each).

The WX-9100 is a Vega-based card, 6x ports, but 2-slot width. And I've heard Vega cards have issues in Mojave with fans running at higher than needed speeds. Apparently fixed in Catalina and later.

Some RX570/RX580 consumer cards come with 5x ports (the 5th port is dual-link DVI).

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

6x outputs on a single card does limit you to Pro cards. I assume you don't have the free slots to accept two graphics cards? Single-slot cards have become rare in consumer cards, but some Pro cards still come in single-slot. The WX-4100 / 5100 / 7100 are all single slot cards (but with 4x ports each).

The WX-9100 is a Vega-based card, 6x ports, but 2-slot width. And I've heard Vega cards have issues in Mojave with fans running at higher than needed speeds. Apparently fixed in Catalina and later.

Some RX570/RX580 consumer cards come with 5x ports (the 5th port is dual-link DVI).

I could probably fit another card in there, I currently have an OWC Accelsior holding my 870 Evo boot drive on one port, a USB 3.2 card, and 1 free port left open, but the back plate is the antenna plate for my updated USB/wifi card (which I could probably retrofit to a different place/back plate). The W9000 I have is a double size, as compared to the original Apple Card I have (half as thick).

Are you suggesting maybe using 2 different video cards for this? Perhaps I could find 2 3 port cards…? I think that could work, as my main work station will eventually host 3 27” Cinema displays, and the other 3 20” Cinema displays will be at independent work stations… I’m in contact with the guy I bought the W9000 from to try and figure out a solution - I don’t see any outcome where I don’t send this card back or can’t end up using it, at least at this point.

When I said I don’t think I need a “pro card”, I meant like I don’t need one that’s all juiced out and super high performing (I.e: something that will require a lot of power) - I just need *a* card that will support 6 monitors, while still being reliable and stable.

 

[reader50]

A pair of WX-5100 or WX-7100 would give you 8x ports (2 spare ports). As they're single-slot, you'd have the extra knockout between Slot-1 and Slot-2 available for antenna use.

The WX-4100 is a 1-slot low-profile card. When new, it came with two backplates: a low-profile, and a regular-profile. If bought used, you'd have to make sure they included the regular-height backplate.

Using two cards would also simplify troubleshooting. If one card is going and making your system unstable, you can pull a card at a time to find the problem.

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

Thanks for the suggestions, I’ll check those cards out. I know to take it with a grain of salt, but Google AI is suggesting a single, 6 port card would be more reliable, stable, and less problematic compared to 2x 3 port cards that are less “juiced up”… although I’m not sure it’s grasping the nuance/qualifier I’ve tried to put in the query of “less power hungry” for the 2 card setup.

Based on what I’ve shared here, what are you inclined to believe is the culprit for my issues…? Is this a power issue? Or bad GPU? Software based? Or some kind of other hardware derived issue? (Motherboard, ram, etc).

 

[reader50]

It would take component swaps with a healthy 5,1 to solve exactly what the problems are. Based on your descriptions, I suspect your W9000, and your plan is to presently max it out (use all 6x ports). That would make me nervous. Though as a Mac tech nerd, I have multiple GPUs lying around, and could troubleshoot more easily.

You've swapped most of the potential problem parts already, though I don't like how your 2nd PRAM battery drained so fast. Though perhaps it had been in storage too long, and was mostly drained before you installed it.

About the wake-from-sleep issue, you said your boot drive is an 870 EVO mounted on a PCIe card? That's why it won't wake up. The PCIe slots are powered down during sleep, making your boot drive disappear. Maybe an SSD can come back online fast enough for macOS to wake up successfully. But I'd bet against that.

Move your boot drive to a native SATA bay. If you actually need the bandwidth of SATA 6G for data, you can have a separate SSD as a data drive on the PCIe card. Or move to an M.2 card in the PCIe slot instead, which would push your data bandwidth to ~1.5 GB/s.

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

Interesting angles. I can tell you that I was still having “waking” issues on my drives in the SATA spots as well, albeit those drives are all near capacity, which could potentially have caused issues too. I can certainly try putting the 870 in one of the SATA spots to see if that helps.

For a PRAM battery draining like that, what would normally cause that? A bad/problematic motherboard…? Doing lots of SMC or NVRAM resets?
I confirmed the new PRAM battery was at 3V or more before putting it in the other day, I could pull this one to see where it’s at now. I would imagine, are those batteries constantly recharged..? Or are they just supposed to last that long? (5-10 years in this application?).

 

[reader50]

A new PRAM battery should be around 3.3v, and you run into problems when it drops below 3. It does not recharge. If your system is powered on all the time, there should be no drain from the battery - it's used when system power is lost. ie - unplugged in storage.

I just replaced my battery. I've had my 2009 for over a decade, and my old battery still tested good. But I'd been plugged into line power the entire decade+, so there had been no drain to speak of.

The battery drains if your Mac Pro is unplugged, such as in storage for a year. Or if your SMC crashes, the battery can sometimes be drained way faster than usual. Resets are not a problem, as they restore normal SMC behavior.

About boot drives in PCIe, I boot from an M.2 on a McFiver PCIe card and sleep is normally stable. But ... I'm booting Sequoia via OCLP, which resides on a SATA drive. So technically, I'm booting from a SATA drive that doesn't have to reappear after sleep. I haven't tested direct PCIe booting/sleeping enough to tell how stable sleep is.

How full are your drives? My rule of thumb is to upgrade when a boot drive hits 80% full, or a data drive reaches 90%. Running drives near their capacity is rough on the drive, and will severely degrade HD performance. SSD read performance should hold up, but SSD write will suffer.

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

I’m currently copying my 870 image to a new 850 I have and was intending on replacing some old drives with; going to put it in a SATA bank and start booting off of it to test your theory. I wonder if making this change could have any connection to my other issues…? My drives are all in the 85-95% full range (except the new 870 and 850 mentioned previously). I know my former boot drive which was like almost entirely full was causing crazy issues until I moved some stuff of it.

I forgot to mention, I am having audio issues when these crashes start to happen, or when things start to get hung up. I have a Tascam DM4800 mixer connected via FireWire and USB, and my sound runs through that to my studio speakers; I always have open the Tascam FireWire card app, which helps monitor audio drop outs. I have been seeing where I start having audio dropouts in that app, and the sound is unrecoverable as well, if the machine doesn’t flat out freeze. I’ve learned that I can “reset” coreaudiod process to see if I can make it come back. Just wanted to make sure I mentioned that bit of info.

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

A new PRAM battery should be around 3.3v, and you run into problems when it drops below 3. It does not recharge. If your system is powered on all the time, there should be no drain from the battery - it's used when system power is lost. ie - unplugged in storage.

I just replaced my battery. I've had my 2009 for over a decade, and my old battery still tested good. But I'd been plugged into line power the entire decade+, so there had been no drain to speak of.

The battery drains if your Mac Pro is unplugged, such as in storage for a year. Or if your SMC crashes, the battery can sometimes be drained way faster than usual. Resets are not a problem, as they restore normal SMC behavior.

About boot drives in PCIe, I boot from an M.2 on a McFiver PCIe card and sleep is normally stable. But ... I'm booting Sequoia via OCLP, which resides on a SATA drive. So technically, I'm booting from a SATA drive that doesn't have to reappear after sleep. I haven't tested direct PCIe booting/sleeping enough to tell how stable sleep is.

How full are your drives? My rule of thumb is to upgrade when a boot drive hits 80% full, or a data drive reaches 90%. Running drives near their capacity is rough on the drive, and will severely degrade HD performance. SSD read performance should hold up, but SSD write will suffer.

Tried to test the SATA boot drive idea.. same issue as always, froze right up. Albeit, I did wake it with a Bluetooth mouse, I’ve heard that it’s best to turn them off when putting them to sleep because there can be a conflict with them and sleep mode.

Trying the single screen thing at the moment… literally trying everything. This is so frustrating. Shouldn’t be this hard to get multiple screens to work!

 

[Ar0undth3fur]

A new PRAM battery should be around 3.3v, and you run into problems when it drops below 3. It does not recharge. If your system is powered on all the time, there should be no drain from the battery - it's used when system power is lost. ie - unplugged in storage.

I just replaced my battery. I've had my 2009 for over a decade, and my old battery still tested good. But I'd been plugged into line power the entire decade+, so there had been no drain to speak of.

The battery drains if your Mac Pro is unplugged, such as in storage for a year. Or if your SMC crashes, the battery can sometimes be drained way faster than usual. Resets are not a problem, as they restore normal SMC behavior.

About boot drives in PCIe, I boot from an M.2 on a McFiver PCIe card and sleep is normally stable. But ... I'm booting Sequoia via OCLP, which resides on a SATA drive. So technically, I'm booting from a SATA drive that doesn't have to reappear after sleep. I haven't tested direct PCIe booting/sleeping enough to tell how stable sleep is.

How full are your drives? My rule of thumb is to upgrade when a boot drive hits 80% full, or a data drive reaches 90%. Running drives near their capacity is rough on the drive, and will severely degrade HD performance. SSD read performance should hold up, but SSD write will suffer.

I should mention the machine seems to have a pretty large power spike/draw when it starts up, according to activity monitor, seems like something’s getting overwhelmed right when it cranks up, and if I move the mouse or move windows/apps around too much it’s gets frozen, and shuts down.

 

[reader50]

Freezing when you make things happen on screen. Once again, the graphics card is a suspect. But you only have an even-older original GPU to swap with. Try getting a WX-7100 or WX-5100 and see if you get some stablity with 3-4 monitors. If so, order a second card. You mentioned not needing the full 6x ports until a later time.

If you know any other local Mac users, perhaps you could borrow a consumer RX-480/560/570/580 for brief testing. Before ordering another card. You might even let them test your W9000 in their system, see if your problems appear for them.