Upgrade problems Mac Pro 4,1

[arbroathsmokie]

Hi all,

I finally got round to buying myself, what is hopefully my last major upgrade to my Mac Pro. I've flashed the firmware to be a 5,1 and bought a matched pair of X5680 3.33GHz. Tonight I popped these little bad boys into my mac, and it did't go as smooth as I thought it would.

When I powered up, I got a red LED by each CPU/heatsink, no chime, the white power LED went on as usual, and got no display. When forced shut it down another red LED came on beside bay 1 of my hard drives.

After calming down thinking I killed my Mac, I put back the original CPU's (E5520 Quad-Core 2,26GHz) and my mac is up and running again.

I'm curious if there are any tips what to do.

My Mac Pro is a 4,1 flashed to 5,1. Running Yosemite, has 32GB RAM, 1x1TB Crucial SSD, 3x4TB Hitachi, Mac edition Geforce GTX 680.

Thanks in advance.

 

[MacVidCards]

What did you do about the heat spreaders/extra space?

I would suggest you post in one of the established threads on this. (and read it first, thoroughly)

This is not a trivial upgrade.

 

[h9826790]

The 4,1 use lidless CPU, you can't just swap them with the normal CPU without any precaution.

The red LED should be the processor hot warning. You may not really overheat your CPU yet, but 99% it's heatsink related in your case.

 

[Macsonic]

Hi all,

I finally got round to buying myself, what is hopefully my last major upgrade to my Mac Pro. I've flashed the firmware to be a 5,1 and bought a matched pair of X5680 3.33GHz. Tonight I popped these little bad boys into my mac, and it did't go as smooth as I thought it would.

When I powered up, I got a red LED by each CPU/heatsink, no chime, the white power LED went on as usual, and got no display. When forced shut it down another red LED came on beside bay 1 of my hard drives.

After calming down thinking I killed my Mac, I put back the original CPU's (E5520 Quad-Core 2,26GHz) and my mac is up and running again.

I'm curious if there are any tips what to do.

My Mac Pro is a 4,1 flashed to 5,1. Running Yosemite, has 32GB RAM, 1x1TB Crucial SSD, 3x4TB Hitachi, Mac edition Geforce GTX 680.

Thanks in advance.

Sorry to hear about your problem. It could be the heat sensor is not tightly or properly seated or you may need to tighten the screws a bit. I helped a friend of mine in upgrading his CPUs though his was a 2010 Mac Pro. His Mac would not boot and there was a red LED light beside CPU A. I adjusted the horizontal alignment of the heatsink so the heat sensor is seated tight and made a few turns on the screws. His Mac Pro was working fine after that and the red light was gone. You can check out this video of a guy upgrading his 2009 Mac Pro. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAdgT-hJuXU

Note that with 2009 Mac Pro, there is a 2mm difference with the lidless and lidded cpus.

 

[arbroathsmokie]

Well I thought I had done my research into the upgrade, clearly I haven't. I must admit I did think it strange how different the CPU's looked from each other. I think I'll probably not take the gamble in upgrading the CPU on this Mac, and keep my eye out for a cheap Mac Pro 5,1 instead to do the upgrade.

Thanks all.

 

[Macsonic]

Well I thought I had done my research into the upgrade, clearly I haven't. I must admit I did think it strange how different the CPU's looked from each other. I think I'll probably not take the gamble in upgrading the CPU on this Mac, and keep my eye out for a cheap Mac Pro 5,1 instead to do the upgrade.

Thanks all.

There's a guy in eBay offering delidding services for CPUs for upgrading 2009 Mac Pros http://www.ebay.com/itm/171492605104?_trksid=p2060778.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT It may be an option.

 

[lowendlinux]

Well I thought I had done my research into the upgrade, clearly I haven't. I must admit I did think it strange how different the CPU's looked from each other. I think I'll probably not take the gamble in upgrading the CPU on this Mac, and keep my eye out for a cheap Mac Pro 5,1 instead to do the upgrade.

Thanks all.

If you want to part with them I'm interested.

 

[CASLondon]

I have a similar thread along these lines, with my upgrade a few months ago, might be worth digging that up. I remember some good advice in that thread, and I had very similar problems.

All I can say, is that I was about to give up and send my tray out to get it done by someone else, I had the same lights, I went back to original cpus and tried again more than twice. I probably had three or four sessions going at this thing.

I literally said, why not try it one more time before taking it to Fed Ex, and I got a boot. Do you have Pindelski's instructions for doing this? It is all about correct tension in those bolts. I was so afraid of over tightening that I probably was under somewhere, its a matter of fractions of turns.

 

[Upgrader]

Well I thought I had done my research into the upgrade, clearly I haven't. I must admit I did think it strange how different the CPU's looked from each other. I think I'll probably not take the gamble in upgrading the CPU on this Mac, and keep my eye out for a cheap Mac Pro 5,1 instead to do the upgrade.

Thanks all.

Did you manage to get it working in the end? Unless you went far beyond hand tight on the heatsink screws you could well be ok. Equal and carefully applied screw torque is incredibly important. Sounds like he screws weren't tight enough. You definitely need to add extra thermal pads (2mm thick) over the voltage regulators on both CPU's before replacing each heatsink. You also need to uncouple the heatsink fan plugs from their slots. As mentioned above, this is no trivial upgrade but excellent results can be had if you're ultra careful and methodical.