What have you done with an early Intel recently?

[ojfd]

Some of you might remember that I replaced the funky behaving keyboard in my MBA 2015 a few weeks ago.
(This was my first ever MBA, all other machines being MBPs).
Now, just for kicks, I decided to calibrate the display of the said machine using professional tools - GretagMacbeth (X-Rite) spectrophotometer i1Pro and proper software.
Well, the gamut of the MBA 2015 display is a huge disappointment.

Take a look. Yellow - sRGB, white - MBA. What you pay is what you get, I guess. If you want a thin MacBook with a thin display, be prepared that the color reproduction will suffer.
When it comes to gamut volume, the 2009-2011 MacBook Pros, even with their TN type panels run circles around this MacBook Air.

 

[Amethyst1]

If you want a thin MacBook with a thin display, be prepared that the color reproduction will suffer.

…or get a 12“ MacBook and suffer for different reasons.

 

[rampancy]

I didn’t even think to get cans of air at — let’s be honest in the year of our common era 2024 — Fiverama/Laurierama. I just used the same dusting brush I’ve relied on for years (a really old, but soft Aveda brush I once used for loose-powder makeup before I pared down from using makeup during the aughts), and physically blowing air at things like that big finned grille.

From my time repairing the mountain of A1181s in my hoard, compressed air cans quickly became my best friend as those things were almost always caked with layer upon layer of dust. Sometimes, the cooling issues I encountered with a MacBook were cleared up simply because I'd blown out the bricks of dust clogging up the heatsink fins and fan exhausts.

Even had I relied on canned air, the amount of grime on my sweater and on the floor was somewhat staggering, even for someone who’s cleaned out a filthy G5 tower. I am kind of amazed the single Delta fan inside — and the maybe cooling design by Apple’s designers, given the design constraints of “thin” — is as good as it is. (The 2007 iMac, by contrast, relies on three fans.) I opened the fan, dusted it out, and gave the spindle a couple of drops of the same oil I used for reviving my laptop fans.

Yes, I encountered that issue too; what I ended up doing was putting the iMac out in the stairwell (which is thankfully close to our condo unit's front door) and blasted it with compressed air out there. I have a great deal of affection for the childhood friend who gave me this Mac, but no, I'm not thrilled with inhaling a decade or so's worth of their dust.

Ah yes. The RedGreenFixit.com instructions are a Canadian exclusive. It’s a terrible shame no one outside of Canada can access its tear-down guides, not even with a VPN!

It just made sense to me to just use plain old Canadian grey duct tape to temporarily hold the iMac together while I tested my upgrades; there's just no way I'd just completely close it up again without testing, not with (relatively expensive and hard to locally source) adhesive tape involved. Funny enough, I didn't mind the aesthetics of the ugly grey duct tape on the edges of the display bezel. In a very Canadian way, I kinda liked it.

 

[ToniCH]

From my time repairing the mountain of A1181s in my hoard, compressed air cans quickly became my best friend as those things were almost always caked with layer upon layer of dust. Sometimes, the cooling issues I encountered with a MacBook were cleared up simply because I'd blown out the bricks of dust clogging up the heatsink fins and fan exhausts.

I've used a mountains of compressed air cans in my hobbies - and it seems that I am always out of one when I need it. So, lately I've been thinking of getting an electric air duster. Could be cheaper in the long run and "running out" of it is probably a rarer occurance. 👍

 

[B S Magnet]

As Core Average reads 3.86 GHz, I assume Turbo Boost is fully working? yes > /dev/null in Terminal will test that.

That command brought it to a max of 3.85GHz.

With the Intel Power Gadget, I can tweak the settings to get it to stay around 3.87–3.88 GHz (probably from a single core, as I’m guessing the “maximum” setting, with alternatives being 2 cores, 4 cores, and all cores) is implied to be one core). So I’m guessing this is about as high as this physical example can go.

Do you mean the 4771? The 4770K was a retail affair.

Two bits: I mis-typed CPU as “GPU”, so please disregard that.

Also, after I posted, I dug into old tech news and reddit discussions asking the same kinds of questions, to learn the i7-4770K was an on-shelf retail box CPU, unlocked (to make overclocking possible), and lacked some feature most Haswell contemporaries called vPro (which, for overclocking, *not* having it was considered a plus). The i7-4771 seems like it was the i7-4770K, but made to play nice for OEM models desiring those specs but lacking the unlocked multipler.

And post-its. I love that personal touch.

Sometimes, important quotes and ideas I want to remember happen away from the computer, and I put them there with the intent of transcribing them at some point. The stickers are all from the original owner, but I keep them because a) they’re nifty; b) they’re on the same page as I am; and c) it makes me think of them and hope they’re doing okay out west (haven’t talked to them very much since they moved). And on paper, I still consider this iMac their iMac, so if they were to ask for it (very unlikely, but I was insistent), they’d be getting a much peppier, but still familiar setup.

 

[B S Magnet]

I've used a mountains of compressed air cans in my hobbies - and it seems that I am always out of one when I need it. So, lately I've been thinking of getting an electric air duster. Could be cheaper in the long run and "running out" of it is probably a rarer occurance. 👍

I think this is what I ought to do.

My main hesitation with canned air is it’s still a potent greenhouse gas (difluoroethane, trifluoroethane, or tetrafluoroethane, typically). Apparently one can use, cheaply, these refrigerants in canned air for old aircon systems which once required the CFC called freon, but I have no idea how effective that is in the long run.

I can’t remember how many years it’s been since I bought a can of compressed air, but knowing its potential for retaining atmospheric energy is thousands of times more potent than CO2 and hundreds of times more potent than methane is enough for me to look for more sustainable alternatives, such as an electric air duster, in the long run.

 

[eyoungren]

So, one of my minor issues with OCLP is that the WindowServer process seems to take up more and more ram over time. I suspect that is a result of having to use the root patches in order to drive five additional displays, three of those being the outdated Aluminum Cinema displays.

The solution has been to logout periodically and then log back in. And if I do not do that every once in a while, the system will eventually just lockup on me. However, much like restarts, I hate that. So, a while back I asked in the main Sonoma forum if there was a way to auto logout. I knew I could schedule shutdowns and startups, but Apple doesn't natively provide a way to auto logout (or in).

A kind user responded and gave a few alternatives, but I found my own solution using a terminal command that they provided. If anyone remembers Lingon, well the dev still makes that app and this time around I bought it. Lingon X.

Lingon allows you to establish cron jobs through a GUI. In a couple of clicks I'd managed to set up a cronjob that would log me out at 11:30pm every day. This is typically a time that I am NOT at the computer, so it works for me.

What is cool is that the nature of the terminal command simply causes the system to tear down all the windows that are running. It appears that you are auto logged out in the background and if you happen to see the process all you'll see are black screens with the primary screen having some code on it. You NEVER see the login screen itself. Since at 11:30 my monitors are sleeping (and me too), I never see this.

Now, at some point my backups go off. That causes the Mac to autologin. So, by the time I'm ready to use the Mac on the following day, EVERYTHING is exactly as I'd left it.

And the WindowServer process ram issue has reset itself.

Again, this all occurs with no interaction on my part and allows me to pick up exactly as if I'd never logged out. For this, the purchase price of Lingon X was well worth it to me.

 

[Amethyst1]

That command brought it to a max of 3.85GHz.

Close enough to the official 3.9 I guess.

The i7-4771 seems like it was the i7-4770K, but made to play nice for OEM models desiring those specs but lacking the unlocked multipler.

A 4770C would have been cool: Iris Pro 5200 and 128 MB L4 cache like the 4770R, but socketed. (Not that it would make much of a difference in GPU-heavy tasks since the NVIDIA is doing the heavy lifting.)

The stickers are all from the original owner, but I keep them because a) they’re nifty; b) they’re on the same page as I am; and c) it makes me think of them and hope they’re doing okay out west (haven’t talked to them very much since they moved).

That’s even better

So, one of my minor issues with OCLP is that the WindowServer process seems to take up more and more ram over time.

FWIW some Kepler GPUs are known to cause a memory leak. Yours aren’t among them though.

A kind user responded and gave a few alternatives, but I found my own solution using a terminal command that they provided.

Killing or crashing WindowServer logs you out. killall WindowServer

 

[B S Magnet]

It just made sense to me to just use plain old Canadian grey duct tape to temporarily hold the iMac together while I tested my upgrades; there's just no way I'd just completely close it up again without testing, not with (relatively expensive and hard to locally source) adhesive tape involved. Funny enough,

You can tell the difference between plain old Canadian grey duct tape from the imported American gray duct tape by the way that it is. Also, Americans frequently like to call theirs “duck tape” because… :: points down to the very end of her signature line the way a school librarian points to where you should put the books you pulled from the stacks but don’t intend to check out ::

[OK, a bit harsh, but from childhood, I rebelled against Noah Webster’s ruination of English spelling and wasn’t fond of that shared tendency to mondegreen words like “duck tape” for duct tape or “manila envelopes” for vanilla envelopes, amongst others.]

I didn't mind the aesthetics of the ugly grey duct tape on the edges of the display bezel. In a very Canadian way, I kinda liked it.

Total Canadian punk aesthetic, right up there with the Robertson head and (surviving) K-cars — all 17 of them (16 of them on Vancouver Island alone, where they never use salt).

 

[eyoungren]

FWIW some Kepler GPUs are known to cause a memory leak. Yours aren’t among them though.

Hmm, well I can live with it.

Killing or crashing WindowServer logs you out. killall WindowServer

Yes, I knew that. But I didn't want to have to open Terminal and then type that in. Nor did I want to go to the Apple Menu to logout. Basically, I don't want to be bothered with having to logout manually, be it terminal command or anything else.

Of course, I could have used Lingon to do that as well, but this is the terminal command I was given in that thread:

launchctl reboot logout

 

[ToniCH]

Today I started a long overdue project: making my single CPU (3.33GHz) 2010 cMP to twin CPU -configuration and install other parts so it can replace my old 2009 cMP (2x2.8GHz). I bought this second cMP in spring 2023. Didn't really need a second one but this machine came with a box full of interesting stuff I wanted, like NVMe -expansion cards, USB 3 -cards, cables etc etc. The seller didn't want to sell just parts, it was all or nothing -deal so I took it all.

The machine was only single CPU model so it was not very interesting to me. I kept it as a spare. But, then I bought X5690 -processors for my old 2009, delidded them and installed - it failed to run the CPU's (machine build date too early). I then learned that the 2010 cMP's should not have any problems accepting them. But, I didn't have a 2010 twin CPU tray and the 2009 tray is not compatible with 2010's so I had to find a 2010 tray for the machine. And I didn't want to spend a lot so ordering from abroad was not an option. After about 8 months I spotted one locally, very cheap and with slow processors. Bought it. 👍

The tray has been sitting in my office ever since and I didn't even know if it really works or not. Today was the day to test it out. I dug out the 2010 and first just installed the new CPU tray with some RAM. And moment of truth! It works!

How it started:

Ready to test the new tray:

And with the new tray:

EDIT: typos

 

[ToniCH]

And then to replace the 2.4GHz CPU's with the X5690 3.46GHz CPU's. I also renewed thermal paste (Arctic MX-6) to the North Bridge chip and replaced the heat sink spring pins at the same time.

Last month I relidded the X5690 CPU's for this purpose as the 2010 cMP's use lidded CPU's.

And the grand finale on the CPU -upgrade! 🤩

So, a nice little success! 👍

Next I shall transfer all the goodies from the 2009 to the 2010.

 

[ToniCH]

I transferred the PCIe -cards and some RAM to the cMP 2010:

This was easy as I also transferred all drives so everything now works just like it did in the old 2009 cMP.

Now I need to investigate the BootROM/NVRAM situation. It seems to have the newest version but I need to take a peek and dump the ROM to figure out if it needs to be reconstructed. I got that made to my 2009 so the process is familiar. In any case this machine does not have enableGop yet. I'll do that tomorrow and then plan what to do next.

 

[DCBassman]

I transferred the PCIe -cards and some RAM to the cMP 2010:

This was easy as I also transferred all drives so everything now works just like it did in the old 2009 cMP.

Now I need to investigate the BootROM/NVRAM situation. It seems to have the newest version but I need to take a peek and dump the ROM to figure out if it needs to be reconstructed. I got that made to my 2009 so the process is familiar. In any case this machine does not have enableGop yet. I'll do that tomorrow and then plan what to do next.

A very nice machine! I'm continually tempted to get another cMP, but just don't have the space. Certainly don't have a need, yet I have 5 working Macs...

 

[B S Magnet]

And then to replace the 2.4GHz CPU's with the X5690 3.46GHz CPU's. I also renewed thermal paste (Arctic MX-6) to the North Bridge chip and replaced the heat sink spring pins at the same time.

Last month I relidded the X5690 CPU's for this purpose as the 2010 cMP's use lidded CPU's.

View attachment 2433676

And the grand finale on the CPU -upgrade! 🤩
View attachment 2433678

So, a nice little success! 👍

Next I shall transfer all the goodies from the 2009 to the 2010.

I’m really enjoying this write-up. And now you really have a Mac Pro worthy of the name.

Also, your Mac Pro was assembled in Cork, Ireland! You never see Macs over here with “CK” as the serial prefix. And yours was built sometime during May 2011.

 

[Amethyst1]

I transferred the PCIe -cards and some RAM to the cMP 2010:

What m.2-to-PCIe switch card are you using for the two NVMe blades?

And now you really have a Mac Pro worthy of the name.

The USB 3.1 card in Slot 3 needs to be replaced with a Thunderbolt 3 card: then we have a winner. *hides*

 

[B S Magnet]

What m.2-to-PCIe switch card are you using for the two NVMe blades?


The USB 3.1 card in Slot 3 needs to be replaced with a Thunderbolt 3 card: then we have a winner. *hides*

🤷‍♀️

All this glowing up of Mac Pro 4,1/5,1 era has me thinking a lot about winding down my Power Mac G5 and replacing it with something a little peppier.

But then… I’d need to find a proper display (no, not going to track down an ACD-to-DVI adapter), and then the upgrades, and then the cards to add and… yah, that’s not a project for me right now. Maybe in the dead of boreal January or February when local listings turn up for next to nothing (definitely not right now, though).

 

[TheShortTimer]

But then… I’d need to find a proper display...

What are you using at the moment, a TV?

 

[ToniCH]

What m.2-to-PCIe switch card are you using for the two NVMe blades?

Lycom DT-130. A decently fast card.

The USB 3.1 card in Slot 3 needs to be replaced with a Thunderbolt 3 card: then we have a winner. *hides*

Well, in that case I guess I need to flash the GC Alpine Ridge I recently bought unused and cheaply from our local classifieds. 😉

My only problem this far has been the fact that I haven't been able to figure out what I could use it for. The NVMe drives are quite fast enough as they are now, I don't have an external egpu box or faster GPU than the RX580 I use now, even USB is pretty fast with my current setup. Any suggestions where I could see some advantage?

I do have couple of TB3 docks though, so I could add plenty of connections which would be more easily accessible than now (rear of the machine).

 

[Amethyst1]

Any suggestions where I could see some advantage?

Hmm…

• External audio interfaces etc.
• Apple Studio Display
• Apple Thunderbolt Display
• LG UltraFine 4K
• LG UltraFine 5K
• Target Disk Mode to other TB Macs
• Networking to other TB Macs

 

[B S Magnet]

What are you using at the moment, a TV?

Ha, but nope.

My G5 has, since the day it was given to me (for the whopping price of free), has been paired to an acrylic 20-inch LCD which comes with an ACD connector, not a DVI one. (The lousy GeForce 5200 card it came with does have both ACD and DVI connectors, but I lack a DVI display. The acrylic 20-inch is the only standalone display I own. (In that sense, I’m sort of the anti-@Amethyst1, but not at all out of spite! just, idk, a longtime habit of keeping bulky things in my life to a minimum how and where I can. This ought to help to make sense of why I’ve yet to own a Mac mini…)

And bonus: the last TV I owned was in… ::checks notes:: 1996. Number of times I’ve missed having a TV in the last 28 years: goose egg.

(No, I’m not like this.)

 

[GMShadow]

Some of you might remember that I replaced the funky behaving keyboard in my MBA 2015 a few weeks ago.
(This was my first ever MBA, all other machines being MBPs).
Now, just for kicks, I decided to calibrate the display of the said machine using professional tools - GretagMacbeth (X-Rite) spectrophotometer i1Pro and proper software.
Well, the gamut of the MBA 2015 display is a huge disappointment.

Take a look. Yellow - sRGB, white - MBA. What you pay is what you get, I guess. If you want a thin MacBook with a thin display, be prepared that the color reproduction will suffer.
When it comes to gamut volume, the 2009-2011 MacBook Pros, even with their TN type panels run circles around this MacBook Air.

View attachment 2433152

One of the reasons I finally broke down in 2020 and bought a 2015 rMBP15 was because I couldn't take doing long hours on my 2015 MBA13 anymore - the screen and blur from the low-ish PPI was killing my eyes when writing.

In 2010, the panels were 'eh' - by 2014-15 they were outright embarrassing, with possibly only ThinkPad screens being worse for the premium price point.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Hmm…

• External audio interfaces etc.
• Apple Studio Display
• LG UltraFine 5K
• Target Disk Mode to other TB Macs
• Networking to other TB Macs

Both monitors need two DisplayPort HBR2 streams via Thunderbolt 3 for full resolution (the Studio Display can use one HBR2+DSC stream but the RX 580 can’t do DSC).

Also…

• TB RAID Arrays - got one myself.
• Fibre Channel interfaces.
• Streaming and recording devices - here's one that I bought to capture the HDMI output from my games consoles and other scenarios that shall not be discussed here.

Ha, but nope.

My G5 has, since the day it was given to me (for the whopping price of free), has been paired to an acrylic 20-inch LCD which comes with an ACD connector, not a DVI one. (The lousy GeForce 5200 card it came with does have both ACD and DVI connectors, but I lack a DVI display. The acrylic 20-inch is the only standalone display I own. (In that sense, I’m sort of the anti-@Amethyst1, but not at all out of spite! just, idk, a longtime habit of keeping bulky things in my life to a minimum how and where I can. This ought to help to make sense of why I’ve yet to own a Mac mini…)

And bonus: the last TV I owned was in… ::checks notes:: 1996. Number of times I’ve missed having a TV in the last 28 years: goose egg.

Fair enough.

I asked because my computer usage predominantly involves HDTVs, which of course limits the resolution choices but they still possess better picture quality than the LCD monitors I've acquired. At some point I really ought to treat myself to a fully fledged monitor though.

(No, I’m not like this.)

I certainly can be at times - much to the irritation of people who around me who are extremely tolerant.

 

[B S Magnet]

I certainly can be at times - much to the irritation of people who around me who are extremely tolerant.

OK… when it comes to pop music produced between about 1977 and 1993, L@@K@UT…

 

[ToniCH]

Hmm…

• External audio interfaces etc.
• Apple Studio Display
• Apple Thunderbolt Display
• LG UltraFine 4K
• LG UltraFine 5K
• Target Disk Mode to other TB Macs
• Networking to other TB Macs

Thanks for suggestions, lets see....

- Audio interfaces - maybe but this is more like my wifes thing, and most interfaces relevant to her seem to be Firewire or USB. Currently the only use for external audio interface I have is digitizing analog sources, recently got one to verify my cassette decks are properly aligned.
- ASD - LOL, no.
- TB display - wife has one connected to her Mini, this might be possibility. 2 of those would be nice.
- LG Ultrafines - hmmm...maybe...4K's are affordable up to 27 or 32" sizes but above that ...no.
- Target disk mode or networking - have plenty of macs capable but haven't used in years

Also…

• TB RAID Arrays - got one myself.
• Fibre Channel interfaces.
• Streaming and recording devices - here's one that I bought to capture the HDMI output from my games consoles and other scenarios that shall not be discussed here.

- RAID arrays - do not really have need for one, nowadays more use for NAS. I do not do video editing much so network speeds are more than enough for my needs (backups, file storage, file sharing). The occasional video edit will fit to my internal drives when editing.
- Fibre Channel - no use
- Streaming and recording - no use now but who knows if at some time this could be a possibility? Wonder if there is any demand for middle aged gray hair, slight belly -performances in OF? 😆

So, maybe the most immediate useful feature for me would be getting the ports more accessible via TB dock. Just noticed: I have 2 TB2 docks and only one TB3 dock (elgato). No need to figure out which would be the best with the TB3 card.

PS. I briefly had 2 x 2TB NVMe's in RAID 0 configuration in my 2009 cMP but it was PCIe-bus limited and not at all faster than 1 drive only. This is how Lycom DT-130 + Samsung 970 EVO Plus 2TB transfer data in cMP 2010 PCIe-bus (obviously same with the 2009):