MP 7,1 The thing I love MOST about the Mac Pro...

[Grumply]

The thing I love MOST about the Mac Pro, is just how elegantly everything is designed - it allows all of your peripherals to simply plug and play.

It's all just so tidy, and neat. None of the horrible hodgepodge you get with PCs, where random components are just thrown together. And cases have to cut open with dremels and things just to make everything fit.

You get to feel so SUPERIOR to everyone else...

 

[SecuritySteve]

What is that card that has a very tall slot, that is slightly askew? I've never seen a port like that in the back either, really curious what it is.

 

[DrEGPU]

Video capture card of some kind?

 

[MarkC426]

And have you had it at the beach.......

An open computer laid onto a carpet (static heaven).

 

[Grumply]

What is that card that has a very tall slot, that is slightly askew? I've never seen a port like that in the back either, really curious what it is.

The second card from the bottom? It’s a Blackmagic Decklink card. It’s for feeding a clean video signal out to a 10-bit reference monitor.

And have you had it at the beach.......

An open computer laid onto a carpet (static heaven).

It’s fine, I’m a really grounded kinda guy. ?‍♂️

 

[MarkC426]

Why do you need cable ties, don't the cards fit properly?

 

[tsialex]

Wow, took me some seconds to understand what exactly you did.

Maybe you need an extended Mac Pro.

 

[robotica]

I am honestly not sure what I am looking at here. How is that card installed?

 

[tsialex]

I am honestly not sure what I am looking at here. How is that card installed?

The OP used a PCIe riser for the first GPU and a PCIe slot extension to relocate and get access to all the PCIe slots.

 

[kennyman]

The OP used a PCIe riser for the first GPU and a PCIe slot extension to relocate and get access to all the PCIe slots.

Yes, OP is using a PCIe extension riser cable as the GPU on the bottom slot covers the PCIe 3.0 x 8 slot. The BM Decklink card is not heavy and I am sure it is not causing any stress on the other parts.

 

[orbital~debris]

Wow, that looks to be one not particularly well cared-for Mac…

 

[profcutter]

I get what you're saying, for sure, OP. That said, I'm not sure that zipties are the only answer. If you need some height on the backplane, why not just use longer screws and washers? Something that would let the case close? The overlapping of cards on slots is not an ideal design, you're absolutely right about that, especially for a machine that pricey.

 

[jscipione]

The old Mac Pro also quite tidy and neat inside.

 

[MarkC426]

Wow, that looks to be one not particularly well cared-for Mac…

That's what my comment about the beach was about.
It looks like it's full of sand.....

 

[PinkyMacGodess]

The old Mac Pro also quite tidy and neat inside.

View attachment 1825366

What I loved about these is the total lack of any shame about making this the biggest, and emptiest computer I've ever owned. There is SO MUCH EMPTY SPACE in it. If it overheats, its because your desk is on fire.

One other side benefit is that the dust doesn't tend to get stuck in all the kinks and other areas. Yeah, the heat sinks collect dust, but not really as much as you would think.

So love my Mac Pro. It's hard to think of selling it. I may just keep it, and let my heirs figure it out.

 

[Grumply]

Wow, that looks to be one not particularly well cared-for Mac…

Actually, that's a quite recently de-dusted Mac. While the cooling system on the 7,1 does seem to work really well - it pulls in more dust than ANY computer I've ever seen in my life. It's pretty wild.

And a camera flash is always going to show you every last particle ?‍♂️

I get what you're saying, for sure, OP. That said, I'm not sure that zipties are the only answer. If you need some height on the backplane, why not just use longer screws and washers? Something that would let the case close? The overlapping of cards on slots is not an ideal design, you're absolutely right about that, especially for a machine that pricey.

There aren't screw holes built into the backplane for the individual cards, just ones for Apple's cover plates. It would be possible jury-rig something. But it would require screws and bolts long-enough to fit, most likely some drilling, and almost 2cm worth of washers.

For a machine that spends 99.9% of its life sitting still, I'm not sure it's worth the effort.

What I loved about these is the total lack of any shame about making this the biggest, and emptiest computer I've ever owned. There is SO MUCH EMPTY SPACE in it. If it overheats, its because your desk is on fire.

One other side benefit is that the dust doesn't tend to get stuck in all the kinks and other areas. Yeah, the heat sinks collect dust, but not really as much as you would think.

So love my Mac Pro. It's hard to think of selling it. I may just keep it, and let my heirs figure it out.

I WISH the 7,1 was as good with dust as the 5,1 was. The "filters" on the 7,1 seem to be near completely useless. It's like the Cookie Monster (but for dust).

 

[Grumply]

For anyone wondering "why" you'd want this weird PCIe layout (that requires a PCIe riser + a PCIe extension cable to add the 6th card, when you could fit all six cards in natively).

It's the only layout that allows all four of the x16 cards in the machine (2x 6800XTs, 2x Highpoint M.2 RAID Controllers) to run in x16 slots:

I was actually happy to have the Highpoint 7104 Card running in a x8 slot up the top (which would allow everything to be mounted in the system normally) like this:

But if you have the cards arranged like this, the 7,1 constantly sends you ALERTS to let you know your PCIe layout is not optimal, and there's no way to make it shut up. So this hodgepodge arrangement solves that issue, and allows all of the cards to run at their maximum speeds.

 

[dapa0s]

And have you had it at the beach.......

An open computer laid onto a carpet (static heaven).

If I have a pc on a carpet like that, I just put it on a thick, wooden board. Not the best solution, but hey, better than nothing.

 

[KeesMacPro]

@Grumply :It's the first time I see a MP7,1 with a touch of ghetto-style, I like it a lot!

But.... in this setup there are 4 cards not really fixed: 2x HPT , Decklink and 6800XT......
Looking at this I came up with an idea to fix all cards , but I admit that it requires some skills and probably some trial and error...
Corresponding to the height of the riser (lets say 20mm), you could get an aluminium U- shaped strip at the same size (20x20x20mm) and cut it at a length of the Decklink and the 6800XT slot (3 slot units height).
When you attach the original PCI bracket that covers the lower 4 slots, you could shove the U-strip with 1 side underneath the bracket before the 2 screws are completely turned in.
At the height of the slots for the 6800XT and Decklink, you could drill a hole in the U-strip and fix the cards with e.g. M3 screws and nuts, or more elegantly ( and far less fiddling) you could tap 2x M3 thread in the U-strip and forget about the nuts.
I imagine the lower screw of the bracket requires some fiddling to get it in this way....
Just an idea...

As you may have noticed, I'm not a native speaker so sorry for a somewhat crippled description ; )

EDIT: A much easier way (if you're ok with drilling 2 little holes in the original PCI bracket) is to tap M3 thread , mount 2 distance bolts in the bracket at the position of the slots in the 6800XT and Decklink and fix the cards with 2 screws.

 

[cosmichobo]

The thing I love MOST about the Mac Pro, is just how elegantly everything is designed - it allows all of your peripherals to simply plug and play.

It's all just so tidy, and neat. None of the horrible hodgepodge you get with PCs, where random components are just thrown together. And cases have to cut open with dremels and things just to make everything fit.

You get to feel so SUPERIOR to everyone else...

If unhappy, I can give you my address. I'll cover shipping.

 

[profcutter]

I suppose it's an odd choice by apple to put x16 slots that can't handle wide GPUs without covering adjacent slots. The machine I suppose is yelling at you because it expects you want RAID/Storage in the fastest slots available so you can have the maximum throughput of RAIDed NVMEs, for example. Makes sense, but why not arrange the slots on the logic board in such a way that you have less overlap from the x16 slots?

 

[Grumply]

I suppose it's an odd choice by apple to put x16 slots that can't handle wide GPUs without covering adjacent slots. The machine I suppose is yelling at you because it expects you want RAID/Storage in the fastest slots available so you can have the maximum throughput of RAIDed NVMEs, for example. Makes sense, but why not arrange the slots on the logic board in such a way that you have less overlap from the x16 slots?

Yeah, at this point I think I'm going to dig a little deeper, and contact Apple to find out if there's anyway to shut down the PCIe Layout Alerts (so that I can mount everything properly again) but remove the warnings that my PCI config isn't optimal.

Technically, since I only have two M.2s RAIDed together in the 4x NVME controller. Having the smaller Highpoint card in a x8 slot, shouldn't actually cost me any overall speed (especially since any writes I do to the 2x M.2 RAID, are being read from the 5x M.2 RAID in the larger Highpoint card) so the bandwidth should be fairly balanced.

 

[profcutter]

It seems like your configuration isn’t that out of the ordinary, they should have contingencies in place for such a setup in a “pro” machine.

 

[deconstruct60]

I suppose it's an odd choice by apple to put x16 slots that can't handle wide GPUs without covering adjacent slots.

They can handle what has classically been "wide" slots ( standard double wide). The problem now is the very top end GPU cards have drifted from 2.1 and 2.2 wide cards into creeping closer to being 3x wide cards. 3 wide has not been a standard. It may become over time, but pragmatically wasn't one back in 2015-2017 ( when this stuff was largely spec'ed out). Vast majority of mainstream motherboards (and associated ) boxes with slots can't handle this either without slot cover.

If push in vintage 2012-2016 GPU cards into the Mac Pro 2019 , the large majority of even the top end cards would fit.

The machine I suppose is yelling at you because it expects you want RAID/Storage in the fastest slots available so you can have the maximum throughput of RAIDed NVMEs, for example. Makes sense, but why not arrange the slots on the logic board in such a way that you have less overlap from the x16 slots?

The system is likely sensing that a x16 physical and electrical card is in a x8 electrical socket. The nag provision is build on the assumption that there are no > 2 wide cards in the system ( presumes that the other non-MPX cards/modules do not block slots ).

Should be a "Yes there is a mismatch and don't bug me again until there is a change in slot usage configuration" option for the dialog box. The other problem here is bad software ( if it is "discovering" this state over and over again.. that is flawed. )

 

[deconstruct60]

It seems like your configuration isn’t that out of the ordinary, they should have contingencies in place for such a setup in a “pro” machine.

for 2006-2016 time it wouldn't be "out of the ordinary". The increasing bloat of GPU card width has been relatively recent.

Apple's duo 6800 MPX module also doesn't run into the problem either. ( which is part Apple designing for their stuff first ) .