Fixing it.

For an index of all my Mac Pro articles, click here.

You can purchase the full 196 page Service Manual for the 2009 (and other) Mac Pros here. It costs $4.99 and after PayPal sent my money I received an email 5 minutes later with a download link to a perfect definition PDF.

If you are serious about fixing your Mac Pro let me tell you this. Having done more than my fair share of wrenching on some of the finest German two and four wheel transportation for several decades, a reading of this manual – and it is a fascinating read – suggests that this may be the most perfectly designed ultra-complex machine made by man. The extent of the modularity and ease of dismantling is a joy. Here’s a simple test of your capacity to do advanced work on your Mac Pro. If you don’t get off reading this manual, which is as good as it gets, then you really should delegate the work.

Allow me to regale you with some details. For example, that huge 40 pound machine uses but seven types of screw:

Screws in the Mac Pro.

The processor cage screws, which retain the processor cage while simultaneously providing guides for the processor tray, courtesy of the machined collar, are simply exquisite. Is this Jony Ive at work? The design after all goes back to the G5 Power Mac of 2003 and Ive was well on board by then. I do not know but whoever did the work deserves to be applauded.

When the proprietor of the excellent tech site AnandTech, Anand Lal Shimpi, buggered up (engineering term) his Mac Pro after fitting new CPUs, he clearly was ignorant of the exquisitely detailed torque specs dictated by Apple for tightening the Allen bolts used to retain the CPU heat sinks. Nor did he account for the fact that the Integrated Heat Spreaders on his upgraded CPUs made the CPU 1.88mm thicker, mandating a work around – of which more later. A quick check of page 154 of the Service Manual would have told him how to do it:

How not to bugger it up.

What’s that you say? You don’t have an inch-lb. torque wrench? Worried about destroying your processor tray. Hire an expert to do the upgrade.

Click the logo for details of my
2009 Mac Pro CPU upgrade service.

RAM playing up? Why not check the superb memory diagnostic diodes on your processor tray?

Memory diagnostic diodes.

You get the idea. We all know what RTFM stands for. Well Buy TFM.

Reading this masterpiece crystallizes why the forthcoming 2013 ‘dustbin’ Mac Pro is such an abomination. When it goes wrong, there’s nothing to fix. You send it in, some semi-skilled worker replaces everything in one transplant step and you get a bill for $3,000. That’s just not right.

To see Apple’s web site the day of the release of the 2009 Mac Pro, click here. You can go even further back to June, 2003 when the magnificent case design was first introduced in the Power Mac G5 by clicking here, starting at $1,999. The video confirms that Jon Ive was the designer.

Here’s what the Mac Pro cost back then:

From Apple’s 2009 web site.

You think there is no ‘Apple tax’? Think again. Check out the memory and CPU upgrade costs back then – for comparison the 24gB of 1600MHz Corsair RAM in mine cost me all of $225:

Ouch!