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Success: 2006 Mac Pro upgraded - 2 x Xeon 5355 Quad-cores!

musicman0725 said:
I think I'll wait a little longer before moving to an SSD.
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You shouldn't - you miss out on one of the biggest single "felt" speed increases possible... If it's due to the cost go for a 120GB - more than enough for a massive system partition and available comparably cheap nowadays (around 110,-€). May require some discipline to keep bigger installations and huge music/image/video libraries on another partition on a big standard hd, but imho well worth it!
 
musicman0725 said:
I purchased a 9" 3mm hex key from amazon for about $5. Made it really easy to remove the heatsinks (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000X285AW/).

Did you also upgrade to the 2,1 firmware? I also noticed amazon had the 256GB crucial m4 for $295 yesterday (newegg still has it for that price).
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Had I had the foresight, I would have bought the proper tools ahead of time. The information I had available did not prepare me for just how annoying the heatsinks really are!

Yes, I did the 2,1 upgrade. It was my understanding that the 1,1 firmware would not properly recognize the x5355s, though I never checked. However, I can say for a fact that the 2,1 firmware only recognizes ONE 5150 after the upgrade.

I love SSDs, but I refuse to buy one unless the reviews are decent and I get it for $1/GB equivalent. They are the single best upgrade you can do for your machine IMO from an HDD (or 1GB --> 4GB RAM, depending). If you need a replacement boot drive, or just have a few hundred dollars to spend, you will not regret buying a good SSD.
 
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I will be doing this CPU (x5150 to x5355) upgrade as soon as my hex tool comes in. For those of you that did the upgrade already, what programs did you felt the speed increase? I used Adobe Lightroom and Premiere CS5 and I'm hoping to see a bit of speed increase from these two programs.
 
joot said:
I will be doing this CPU (x5150 to x5355) upgrade as soon as my hex tool comes in. For those of you that did the upgrade already, what programs did you felt the speed increase? I used Adobe Lightroom and Premiere CS5 and I'm hoping to see a bit of speed increase from these two programs.
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Adobe programs (with the exception of Acrobat Pro) are considered to take good advantage of multiple cores. Many Apple programs do, as well.

Programs that are not well-threaded will not see much benefit because they will run on a single core at the same clock speed.

Mostly, I run virtual machines. The pure Geekbench score wasn't of paramount importance, but core count was.
 
I've just upgraded 3 of my Mac Pro 1.1s with the 2.66 quad core chips, bought from US ebay for $130 a piece.

Everything is running great now - I'm using them mainly as render nodes for 3dsmax/vray under Windows 7 & am seeing almost a doubling of render performance (which means up to about 50% of the performance of my 2.66 12-core Mac Pro).

I found the hardest part was getting the fan assembly out. That bugger felt like it was never going to shift (on all 3 machines).

Before the upgrade one of the Mac had had a problem for ages with the fans running too fast (it sounded like a jet taking off, which meant it was unusable). The Northbridge heat sink was showing a crazy temperature which couldn't be right so I took the chance to re-seat it with fresh thermal paste. The result was a lovely silent Mac with a 100% performance boost.

Very happy!

btw, the heat sink screws are not actually hexes although a hex tool does apparently work ok. The screws are T15 torx heads. For anyone buying a tool especially for the job - maybe repeatedly using a hex could eventually damage the screws.
 
^^ No wonder, I search and search and some people were saying use 3mm hex T-handle wrench. Then the other people were saying use the 3mm Torx (T-15) wrench. They have different end points. I end up buying only the Eklind 3mm T-handle wrench. I hope that one works. This tool is a pain in the rear to find. None of the ACE hardware stores near me had it. Had to order from on-line...that's why I haven't done it yet...still waiting for the tool...
 
joot said:
^^ No wonder, I search and search and some people were saying use 3mm hex T-handle wrench. Then the other people were saying use the 3mm Torx (T-15) wrench. They have different end points. I end up buying only the Eklind 3mm T-handle wrench. I hope that one works. This tool is a pain in the rear to find. None of the ACE hardware stores near me had it. Had to order from on-line...that's why I haven't done it yet...still waiting for the tool...
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does anybody know if the 5365 xeons will work in a mac pro 1,1?
 
Rokeneer said:
Does it require upgrading the heat sinks that are currently on the 5160's, or can they just be dropped in with no further modifications?
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Not sure if it's necessary but since the original model featuring these CPUs was MacPro2,1 it might be a good idea to upgrade the firmware (prior to swapping the CPUs, I guess) to have the correct microcode available for the CPUs.

See the netkas forums for the firmware file and the upgrade process. I don't know the exact location.

Have fun upgrading your Mac Pro. It's pretty easy.
 
flatfoot said:
Since the original model featuring these CPUs was MacPro2,1 it might be a good idea to upgrade the firmware (prior to swapping the CPUs, I guess) to have the correct microcode available for the CPUs..
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Rokeneer said:
Does it require upgrading the heat sinks that are currently on the 5160's, or can they just be dropped in with no further modifications?
Click to expand...

You will not need to upgrade your heatsinks, but you should definitely update your firmware: http://forum.netkas.org/index.php/topic,1094.0.html And it gets a little weird when you update because (for me at least) the MacPro did not recognize my second 5150. But once you drop in the x5365s, your Pro should see them fine.

While you're down there, buy some Isopropyl (91% or higher - higher is better) and some lint-free wipes to clean off the old thermal paste from the CPUs and heatsinks. Then buy some high performance thermal paste (not OEM garbage). I recommend this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835242019

Finally, I'm sure you've looked at pricing, but you can get 2.66GHz x5355 Quads for about $100/ea if you look hard enough. x5365s are at least 2.5x more expensive for negligible gains in performance (333MHz and the same architecture limitations).
 
x5356 also runs hotter if I'm not mistaken. Uses more wattage due to higher clocks. Things to keep in mind when doing this swap:

1. The memory cage screws are easily stripped

2. Fan assembly takes a lot of wiggling around to get it off

3. Keep a laptop, iPAD around to search youtube for tutorials

4. Be patient...
 
I've been following this thread since I decided to proceed with a CPU upgrade on my good old MP 1.1. I got two X5365 SLAED from ebay for 450$.
They are both SLAED sspecs but they haven't got the same serial number, I believe we can still call them a matched pair ?
I'm waiting for my upgrade kit to arrive (Arctic clean, Arcticsilver 5, Anti-Static Wrist Strap and a long T15 screwdriver) to go on with the upgrade.

I do have a few questions though,
- Shall I upgrade the EFI via netkas utility before doing the upgrade, or after ? My boot rom is actually MP11.005C.B08. Any trouble from that boot rom ?
- Will I have to take the memory cage screws completely off ?
- Will this 8GB Kit (4GBx2) work with the X5365s ?
http://www.crucial.com/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=1626055CA5CA7304 (DDR2 PC2-5300)
Or shall I go for those ones ? http://www.crucial.fr/eu/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=C2C9F7D4A5CA7304 (DDR2 PC2-6400)
- Will I be able to run W7 with bootcamp (and fusion) with this new setup. I plan to use Vray in rhinoceros for architectural renders and hopefully use the 8 cores. I have also installed a HD5770 GPU and a crucial M4 SSD recently and I'm running Lion 10.7.3.

Thanks,
B32
 
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Hey! First post here!
Thanks to this thread I got sucess installing 2x5355 on my MACPRO 1,1 !

But it still showing UNKNOWN on the mac info (tryed the aboutthismac.pkg, but I heard that it doesnt works on lion)

Also, if someone are looking for cheap 5355 , nextag showed a shop called EOPTION online. I bought mine there for 80,00 each.

Any ideia how to fix this unknown problem on my mac? Lion 10.7.3 here. I really dont want to mess with the bios...
 
^^ I tried to joined the forum about a month or so ago but seems the administrator of the site has not approved my membership yet. Anybody else have problem joining and getting approval from that site ?
 
5150s

Hi, Just curious to see what everyone has done with their Xeon 5150's? I've just got a couple of x5365's but I'm trying to work out if there is a way I can put my 5150's into something and set up a network for rendering.
 
Just to be sure, the upgrade to the X53xx Xeon processor family will allow me to run Mountain Lion, or is Lion the end of the line for the Mac Pro 1,1?
 
doing it

Hey guys, think i am going to do this.

Going with the x5355 SLAEG.

Seems pretty straight forward. What is up with the tape mod though? Did not seem like it was part of the x5355 procedure - something i would like to avoid, it seems to cause problems.
 
derbothaus said:
^^^ end of line.
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That's not quite right :)

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d-m-a-x said:
What is up with the tape mod though?
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Iirc that is a mod (BSEL) to run cheaper 5345's with 2.33GHz instead of the regular 1.83GHz those chips are being advertised for. Nowadays the price of the 5355's is not that far off anymore, so you don't need to go 5345 and perform that mod (unless you want to have the cheapest upgrade possible or want to try to overclock the 5355 ;)
 
Just gotta chime back in here.

Can't believe how happy I am with this.

Figured I'd give it a go, for the money it was hard to beat.

8 Core (2 x 2.66 5355 Quads)
16GB RAM
128 Crucial M4 in OWC Sled Adapter
256 Crucial M4 in Velocity Solo
Still waiting on grabbing a video card (5770/5870)

Thing is a beatishly bestish beast.

Geekbenching 9500's 32 / 10500's 64

LOVIN IT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
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