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Building a MacPro

nagal

By nagal,
in Mods and Overclocking

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Listed1st.com
Listed1st.com
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Awesome! I just ordered a pair of those heatsinks, cross my fingers, I hope they'll do well enough to get me a 3.3GHz MP. If my system will run at 3.3GHz, I'll buying Nagal a box of Snickers!

 

Also I saw on the site the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1, If you're like me you enjoy a silent system, and that fan on the x1900XT is like a jet engine! I've been using the S1 for about 6 months and LOVE IT! I did get the turbo cooler kit, totally silent, makes a huge difference.

 

 

 

Any ideas on how I could make unstable chips stable? 4 pair of 2.4GHz CPUs will not overclock to 3.0GHz, I get the power button of death if I hit 100% CPU load.

 

Also wanted to let y'all know the best place for memory is omnitechnologies.biz Love them. Fast, professional shipping, the EASIEST RMA process I've ever had. Excellent ram. Amazing price. They have 2GB FB Dimms for $99 each, I'll contact them early next week to see if I can persuade them to give a discount to forum members, I think they might go for it!

 

I've already bought 64GB of FB-DIMMS from them.

 

I also have a guy who buys up the 1U and 2U heatsinks. He pays $25 a pop for the H53G or P0018, I found even on ebay they are tough to sell!

 

And now for my last thought of the night, what are your (speaking to all the readers here) favorite shared computing programs? SETA@HOME, Folding@HOME... Is there a team already established from the Hackintosh community I should join, or should we create our own and show the other teams the true power of the Hackintosh?

 

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newtech
newtech
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Bumping up the core voltage may increase stability for OC'ing those 2.4's. Easier to accomplish in windows using OC tools.

Out of curiousity what sSpec are those 2.4's?

 

sSpec ES 2.4's I have seen...

 

QQYK ( Nagal's, seem to be have max multiplier of 8 Rather than 9 ) Fam 6 mod 15 stp 4 [b0]

 

QQYH Fam 6 mod 15 stp 4 [b0]

 

QQNA Fam 6 mod 15 stp 5 [b1]

 

QUQI ( Mine, Very stable at 3.0 ) Fam 6 mod 15 stp 7 [b3]

 

QLGZ ( Mine, on backup board ) Fam 6 mod 15 stp 8 (?) [C0]

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deleted_account
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Awesome! I just ordered a pair of those heatsinks, cross my fingers, I hope they'll do well enough to get me a 3.3GHz MP. If my system will run at 3.3GHz, I'll buying Nagal a box of Snickers!

 

Also I saw on the site the Arctic Cooling Accelero S1, If you're like me you enjoy a silent system, and that fan on the x1900XT is like a jet engine! I've been using the S1 for about 6 months and LOVE IT! I did get the turbo cooler kit, totally silent, makes a huge difference.

 

 

 

Any ideas on how I could make unstable chips stable? 4 pair of 2.4GHz CPUs will not overclock to 3.0GHz, I get the power button of death if I hit 100% CPU load.

 

Also wanted to let y'all know the best place for memory is omnitechnologies.biz Love them. Fast, professional shipping, the EASIEST RMA process I've ever had. Excellent ram. Amazing price. They have 2GB FB Dimms for $99 each, I'll contact them early next week to see if I can persuade them to give a discount to forum members, I think they might go for it!

 

I've already bought 64GB of FB-DIMMS from them.

 

I also have a guy who buys up the 1U and 2U heatsinks. He pays $25 a pop for the H53G or P0018, I found even on ebay they are tough to sell!

 

And now for my last thought of the night, what are your (speaking to all the readers here) favorite shared computing programs? SETA@HOME, Folding@HOME... Is there a team already established from the Hackintosh community I should join, or should we create our own and show the other teams the true power of the Hackintosh?

 

 

Have you considered Kingston RAM? These are 8gb (2 x 4gb) set of FB-DIMM modules going for $330. (That's $165 for each 4gb module) + a Lifetime Warranty

http://shop.kingston.com/partsinfo.asp?pro...R667D2Q8F5K2/8G

 

 

Just thought I'd share in case any of you guys are interested, since I believe, the Mac Pro Logic board (like most server boards or any 5400 chipset board) takes FB-DIMMS and I think, if i had a server board, I'd jump in on this, I have a feeling it won't be around for long. They sell those ram heatsinks (like apple ram) separately as well.

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nagal
nagal
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That is a good price for 4GB module! But you still really want to run multiples of 4 memory modules to take advantage of the quad channel memory buss.

 

On another note, I am happy to report CPU heat sink sensor success! :D

 

I stopped at my local Radio Shack and picked up two 2N3904 transistors in T0-92 package. I got home and cut the thermistor of the thermal sensors I bought before that did not work. I did this because the sensor had the 2 pin plug that mates with the jack on the logic board. I then soldered one of the wires to the base and collector of the 2N3904 and the other wire to the emitter (as shown SMSC doc newtech linked to). I plugged it in and nothing. On a hunch, I rebooted the computer. After it came back up, I launched Hardware Monitor and there it was, my sensor reading the same as the on board ambient air sensor! Its reading the same because I dont have the sensor attached to the heat sink, its just hanging around by the exhaust fan. I just need to figure out how to attached it to the actually heat sinks. I am thinking of just using some RVT.

 

The cost on this is about $10 for both of them :D I forgot where I got them but I got 2 thermal sensors like these http://www.sidewindercomputers.com/flatthersen.html for around $8 shipped and the 2N3904 from Radio Shack were $ .79 each.

 

Once I get both attached then I should be able to put the Apple OEM fans back in :)

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That is a good price for 4GB module! But you still really want to run multiples of 4 memory modules to take advantage of the quad channel memory buss.

 

Once I get both attached then I should be able to put the Apple OEM fans back in :P

 

Thanks for the tips about 4 memory modules for "quad channel bus" < never heard about that. Is this an apple exclusive thing? or for all motheraboads (including PCs)

 

And as for teh Apple OEM fans, are they superior than the Thermalrights?

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nagal
nagal
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The Quad Channel memory is not an Apple exclusive it is part of the 5000/5400 series chipsets. I do not know if the Apple fans are superior but the logic board has integrate fan speed control. For the fan controller to work you need to use PWM fans which the Apple fans are.

 

Yes, I will post up some pictures here shortly. As soon as I get some coffee in me I am going to finish making them.

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nagal
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nagal im pretty interested in your awsome building of a mac pro but do you know how much it would cost me to build a macbook pro?

 

No idea really but I can easily bet it would cost more than actually buying a MacBook Pro. The only reason the Mac Pro builds work cheaper is the availability of getting the CPUs, memory, hard drives and optical drives for a good bit less or (as in the hard drives and optical drives for me) reusing existing ones.

 

 

On the sensor side, here are the pics. Looks like I fried one of the transistors when I was re-soldering the first sensor I made so there was not so much extra cabling. Oh well, I will dig 4 quarters out of my change cup and go get another one :)

 

Here is the wiring cut down to size. The little black dot thing above the first wire is one of the transistors for the sensor. If you think that is small, you should have seen the surface mounts ones I tried working with!

 

314xibn.jpg

 

Sensors assembled

 

208xkw4.jpg

 

Close up of the sensors. My soldering job could win the worst soldering job award without question.

 

209h9oj.jpg

 

And one of the sensors attached. I decided to use electrical tape and then a strip of duct tape to hold it in place. I will go back and find a better solution but for now it works.

 

2njccaf.jpg

 

And a screen shot of Hardware Monitor. You can see CPU A Heatsink is reading 36 C MORE than CPU B Heatsink. To verify it was not reading correctly, I removed it from the heatsink to just read the air temp and there was no change. I fired the transistor for sure. The issue is my soldering iron is 40W so it is easy to do. Really need a 25W solder iron. I can see that once I ge

 

n3rl75.png

 

From this screen shot of Hardware Monitor you can see that getting the CPU B Heatsinks sensor working has the Fan CPU/Memory running at its minimum which means less noise. I believe once I remake the CPU A sensor, the other two fans will run at a lot lower speed.

 

235iew.png

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Listed1st.com
Listed1st.com
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I've never purchased much from MacMall, I love refurbished items, they have serveral hard drives listed, I've heard the Hitachi's described as the "Deathstar" and I've been told Maxtor is to be avoided, what hard drives do you (collectively) prefer? Typically I've used Western Digital. Any preferances?

 

 

[url="http://www.anrdoezrs.net/click-2870901-10476600"]MacMall's Manufacturer Refurbished Outlet [/url]

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Listed1st.com
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I just learned something that I'd like to see if anyone else has been able to verify... Apparently the new Harpertown Mac Pros will not run Tiger, thus the problems with Protools users (Protools isn't quite Leopard Compatible yet). Wonder how this relates to the Harpertown in the old Logic boards, more changes than we thought?

 

 

Also: Tom's Hardware has just released a detailed CPU Cooler comparison, the ThermalRight is a heavy hitter:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2008/02/20/cpu...2008/page8.html

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Listed1st.com
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So has anyone ever used the "Dempsey" Xeon processors in the Mac Pro? I'm thinking I may, just for kicks. Their speed is extremely high, up to 3.7GHz, but the performance o one of those units would probably be about that of the 3.0GHz "Woodcrest". Plus I hear they are great at overclocking. I've got a pair of 3.43GHz Dual core CPUs, I may just toss them in and see!

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Listed1st.com
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It's a systems, that functions, I actually just bought it! It'll be here end of this week! Definitely stay tuned for complete details! I'm going to toss in a pair of 2.4GHz Clovertowns! All the seller knew was

 

"Don't really know what it is. The motherboard said "APPLE" on it. I have BOOT this board with a bootable cd. the pictures show that the ITEM have sucessfully boot up. The items are apple board; power supply, cdrw/ dvd rom. The system is built into a FULL STEEL CASE @ 50lbs"

 

Looks like the seller used "BartPE" to boot the unit, more details as they arrive...

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nagal
nagal
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Cool find Listed and can't wait to find out more about it! Even the memory risers are red. Weirdness.

 

As for the Dempesy, meh. If I doubt the 3.7 even comes close to the performance of the 3.0 but if you got em, toss them in and see what happens. I have never heard anything good about the performance of the Dempesy compared to the Clovertons.

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nagal
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I'm just curious to see if I can overclock the 3.43 to 4.3GHz! I'll let you know when the CPUs arrive as well.

Just found a guy on ebay selling an EFI Flashed 8800GT, wonder if it'd work on the '06-'07 MPs?

 

From what I have read, no. The 8800GT and the 2008 Mac Pros are using EFI64 while the older Mac Pros use EFI32.

 

Nagal any news on the Firmware issue? Can you now receive updates from Apple. I'm asking now because of the latest iTunes Release and perhaps some other stuff!

 

I get Software updates just fine but until they release a Firmware update I have no idea if it will work. My logic board actually has a firmware newer than the latest Mac Pro firmware update.

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Listed1st.com
Listed1st.com
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Okay! Sad news! I installed the "Dempsey" CPUs in the Mac Pro and just got 2 CPU Error lights :-P Anyone know why? (Other than they are not supposed to go in a Mac Pro!). Or was it the fact that the guy just stuck 4 CPUs in foam and they were scraping up against each other in the box.

 

Now for some shameless advertising:

http://www.listed1st.com/Business_Resources.html

 

I'm dipping my toes into the world of affiliate marketing, have a look!

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