Doing it right.

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

If you examine the three model years and six versions of the current Mac Pro – 2009, 2010 and 2012 – each of which came in single or twin CPU models – only one of these uses a non-standard Intel Xeon CPU design. The odd duck is the 2009 dual CPU version which uses CPUs without the Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS), an alloy top plate which is both glued and soldered to the CPU and the surrounding base itself. I have read no definitive reasons for this approach and would guess that Apple must have been concerned about thermal performance, the no-IHS design likely being easier to cool with the massive heat sinks used in the Mac Pro. What is mystifying is that the 2010 and 2012 dual Mac Pros reverted to stock IHS CPUs with little or no other apparent changes, other than to the height of the heat sinks to accommodate the thicker CPUs and reversion to stock sprung CPU retainers.

You can see the difference in Apple’s own drawings in their service manuals:

Single and twin CPU retainer in all except the 2009 dual models.
This is the standard sprung retainer used in most Intel CPU installations

Dual CPU design in the 2009 8-core – no IHS.
My annotations refer to the IHS design,
showing how the IHS is attached.

The practical upshot of the dual CPU 2009 design difference is that upgrading the CPU means that the heat sinks must be raised 2mm, a process fraught with risk of damage to the relatively fragile CPU socket, if not to the CPU itself. A damaged socket means a new processor board, some $400, and loss of use while you wait for the replacement. That and a bruised ego, not to mention time wasted.

Additionally, revisions have to be made to the heat sink fan power connectors and additional thermal pad material must be installed on the voltage regulators to maintain proper thermal contact with the heat sinks. Finally, fresh threadlocker should be applied to the retaining bolts for the heat sinks, as I illustrate.

In mechanical tasks proper instructions never use the word ‘judgment’. Judgment is subjective. ‘Subjective’ translates, as often as not, to catastrophe. Thus, in determining a measured approach to CPU upgrades in the dual 2009 machine, I set forth a low risk, objective way of securing the heat sinks with the upgraded, thicker CPU in place which will protect those fragile CPU sockets from damage.

Yet, clearly, the most elegant way of doing the 2009 dual upgrade is to use upgraded CPUs without the IHS fitted. The snag is that Intel appears never to have marketed these. This has caused determined upgraders to use various methods to remove the IHS, including razor blades, unmanaged heat, force and abrasive means to emulate the stock Xeon E5520 design.

The advantages of this approach are that the upgraded CPU is simply dropped into the socket, the loose alloy frame is placed over the CPU and the heat sinks are reattached with exactly the same number of bolt turns as was required to remove them. No changes are needed to the temperature sensor sockets in the heat sink and no additional thermal pad material need be installed. Nice and simple.

The disadvantage is that the IHS removal process is high risk. The risk includes mechanical damage to the CPU and financial damage to your pocket-book if you get it wrong. And it is not easy.

Reader Paul Opsahl had purchased a 2009 dual CPU Mac Pro after seeing my series of articles on this exceptional bargain of a computer. When Paul mentioned that he had managed to remove the IHS plates in the two Xeon W5590s he used in his 2009 dual upgrade, I was all ears. I asked him to detail his method and I think you will find it makes for fascinating reading. As the IHS is both soldered and glued to the CPU and the printed circuit board, some razor blade work remains but Paul’s technique to remove the solder bond is obviously the right way to do this, and I present his work below.

You will find Paul’s approach rigorous and well researched – in marked contrast to the amateur hour methods found on the many chat boards out there. You will also be amazed at just how shoddy Intel’s soldering technique is – maybe reason enough for Apple to adopt a non-IHS design in the first place!

If you want to install upgraded non-IHS CPUs of your choice in a dual 2009 Mac Pro, and want do do it right with non-IHS CPUs, contact Paul and see if he can fit you in while doing his day job and keeping bread on the table. You will find his rates for the work of removing the IHS reasonable. Regard the payment you make to him as the cost of insurance against damaging the CPU sockets in the processor board of your precious Mac Pro. Paul is an electronics engineer, not a backyard hacker, and has the right tools for what is a difficult job.

Paul takes it from here.

* * * * *

Preliminary discovery:

I started with a visit to the local computer recycler (Midwest Computer Brokers) in Walford, IA. I asked if they had any old Xeon processors available – any speed. I explained that I wanted to learn how to successfully remove the IHS. They gave me a Pentium 4 processor that already had the IHS removed with the aid of a blow-torch and a flat blade screwdriver. I decided that I could use that in a first experiment to determine what temperature the solder melts at ( more on that later ).

During a second trip to MCBIA, I specifically asked for a Xeon processor with the IHS intact. They offered to sell me a known good Dual Core 3.03GHz Xeon for $40. The goal with that device was to learn how to cut through the adhesive without damaging the printed circuit board and remove the IHS using a temperature controlled heat plate. I had seen a post where someone had used a double-edge razor for this purpose. I opted for a single-edge razor thinking there would be less chance for me to see blood. The single-edge blade worked, but I later learned that the single-edge blades are almost twice as thick as the double-edge blades ( the double-edge blades I used later on the Quad Core Xeon processors are approximately 0.004 inches thick ). The adhesive is very soft, but tightly compressed between the IHS and the rigid printed circuit board in a gap of about 0.008 inches. That narrow gap means that it’s tough to get even the thinnest razor blade between the IHS and circuit board. It took several passes to get to the point where I sensed that the blade was no longer cutting adhesive. Having access to the dimensions of the adhesive spread would have helped here. Based on a visual inspection of the adhesive using a microscope, I concluded that the IHS was cut free ( except for the solder ). There is a place on one side where the adhesive is absent – mostly likely to allow cleaning solution to escape from under the IHS during assembly.

Temperature controlled heat plate with vacuum:

At that point, I was ready for the temperature controlled heat plate. During my experiment with the Pentium 4 processor, I placed the already removed lid upside down on the heat plate and slowly increased the temperature until the solder melted. The heat plate is controlled with a digital thermostat that makes this measurement quite easy.

The hot plate and microscope at work.

That experiment indicated that 165 degrees C was the temperature I should use during this second experiment. Confident that Intel had used the same type of solder to attach the IHS to a Xeon processor, I set the temperature to 165 degrees C and waited until the temperature controller indicated that the heat plate had reached 160 degrees C. At that temperature, I turned on the vacuum pump that holds the device in place via a small hole in the center of the heat plate and placed the processor on the heat plate with the IHS side down. This technique limits the amount of heat absorbed by the assembly. I started applying a very light upward force on the printed circuit board using a tweezer – just enough to lift it away from the CPU when the solder had melted. The temperature of the heat plate continued to slowly increase – after about 20-30 seconds, the solder flowed and the printed circuit board lifted away from the IHS. I lifted the printed circuit board away and placed it to the side to cool.

Post-removal inspection:

During inspection of the remaining solder on the CPU, I noticed several voids or air pockets where solder was missing. In addition, there appeared to be some areas where there the solder flowed to the IHS, but had not completely bonded with it – referred to as a cold solder joint. These are process problems for Intel, but nothing to worry about going forward in this application unless they are severe. Localized over-heating in the CPU could be a problem if the voids were large, but these were small.

Poor soldering by Intel.

Removal of excess solder and adhesive remains:

The next task was to learn how to remove the excess solder on the CPU and the remaining adhesive from the printed circuit board. I did not want to heat the solder on the CPU with a solder iron as there is no way to know what temperature the CPU might be exposed to. Given that solder is very malleable, I decided to try using the razor blade to cut it away. This approach worked very well – only being careful to keep the blade flat against the CPU. You should not expect to see a clean gold-plated CPU at this point – a very thin layer of solder will not cause a problem in the final Mac Pro installation.

Cleaning the IHS adhesive off the printed circuit board was much more difficult. After another evening with Google, I found a video on YouTube where a Dremel tool had been used along with isopropyl alcohol. Given that the Dual Core Xeon was my test case, I elected to try this approach. I’m not convinced the alcohol is necessary as it does not soften the adhesive in the least – I elected not to use it on the W5590s. My only concern here was that static electricity could damage the CPU – to reduce that risk, I made certain that I was properly grounded with an electrostatic wrist strap. I would have no way of knowing if the processors were damaged until I had used this approach on the W5590s and installed them into the Mac Pro. I also changed the tool-head often in order to efficiently remove the material from all sides.

Post-removal inspection:

After removing the excess solder and the remaining IHS adhesive, I inspected the printed circuit board and CPU under a microscope. The inspection gave me confidence to proceed with this approach on the W5590s. The Dual Core Xeon board has only the CPU under the IHS – there are no other components. This is not the case with the Quad Core Xeon processors. As can be seen on the 2.26GHz CPU’s removed from the Early 2009 Mac Pro, there are 10 power supply bypass capacitors adjacent to the CPU. This made removing the IHS more difficult on the W5590s.

CPU with IHS, adhesive and solder removed.

Process with the Xeon W5590 CPU:

Using the approach documented here, I started work on the 3.33GHz Xeon CPU’s. All went well until the final inspection. At that point I noticed that one of the CPU’s had two damaged capacitors – I had cut into each of them while cutting the IHS adhesive. This problem was solved by purchasing a 2.26GHz Quad Core Xeon processor ( no IHS ) on eBay for $25 and using that as a donor to replace the damaged capacitors. There are 10 capacitors – each apparently 2.2 microfarads. I could have used the CPU’s that were in the Mac Pro, but I elected to keep those in case some issue came up with the W5590s when they were installed. A close visual inspection of the capacitors is important as damage there could result in the metallization layers shorting together.

Damaged capacitors.

For future IHS removal projects, I have made a tailored jig to keep the razor blade flat with the printed circuit board. The design of the jig is such that a maximum depth of cut is maintained on all four sides, precluding damage to the surface mounted capacitors. The razor is held at an angle of 30 degrees between the two metal components with 0.260 inches of the blade extending into each channel – enough to cut the adhesive without damaging the capacitors.The fixture holds the razor blade rigid while the processor is moved, in the channel with the IHS side down, past the cutting edge. The fixture design allows the printed circuit board of the CPU to flex upward as the razor moves into the gap between the IHS and printed circuit board. (I have seen the engineering designs for Paul’s jig, and can confirm that it is exceptionally elegant. The accuracy of the tolerances suggests that there is no risk of damage to the CPU. – Ed).

If you want Paul to remove the IHS from your CPUs, you can email him in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for more details, by clicking the icon below:

Click the icon to mail Paul Opsahl.

If you use his services, my benefit is precisely zero.

* * * * *

Thank you, Paul.

A note on temperatures. Intel’s web site states that TCase should be limited to 67C (153F to us Luddites); Paul explains that this refers to continuous use. TCase it the temperature on the outside of the IHS as Intel illustrates here:

TCase for the Intel Xeon W55xx CPU family.

How then can the CPU withstand the 165C (329F) required to melt the IHS solder? Well, Intel applies that level of heat when first attaching (however ineptly) the IHS, as that’s what is needed to melt the solder in the first place. Thus application of like heat when removing the IHS should not damage the CPU provided that the period is limited. Intel’s data sheets (doubtless much beloved of Chinese intellectual property thieves, though they still have to pay Novellus and Applied Materials for the costly fabrication machinery when copying/stealing Intel’s CPU designs) have data on tolerances which lead to this conclusion. Bottom line? Don’t overheat and don’t heat for too long and you will be OK. Just enough to melt the solder and permit removal of the IHS.

Best of all, have an expert like Paul do the work for you. His 2009 Dual Core Mac Pro uses de-lidded non-IHS W5590 3.33GHz CPUs, modified using his technique above, so you can be comfortable that he eats his own cooking.

Adding SATA III drive capability.

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

SATA III:

One of the signs of the benign neglect afforded its Mac Pro line by Apple is the absence of SATA III compatibility. Insert a SATA III 6gb/s drive in a Mac Pro of any vintage and it will run at SATA II 3gb/s speed. Meaning at half of its design speed.

However, Apple’s sloth and refusal to add a feature found on just about every competing computer on the planet can be countered at modest cost using a PCIe card adapter.

Before making this conversion, my Mac Pro was using two 120GB SSDs, the one containing OS X, Applications and the Lightroom catalog. The other is a backup clone. Placing the LR catalog on the speedy SSD greatly improves LR’s speed, at the penalty of using up space on the disk drive. My 11,000 image catalog is some 40GB and, as a result, my SSD startup drive is over 90% full. Not good.

RAID 0:

Adding a 250GB SSD drive internally would not solve my problem – I would have to replace both the existing 120GB drives to maintain a redundant backup clone. Or I could simply make a 250GB partition on one of the internal HDDs as a backup location. However, it struck me that the two 120GB SSDs could be made into one drive using Apple’s RAID 0 capability built into Disk Utility. Then adding just one 250GB SSD would give me a new startup drive with space to clone it on the RAID 0 SSD pair. RAID 0 makes the two drives appear as one in Finder, and there is no redundancy. On the other hand RAID 0 has the nice side benefit of doubling the effective speed of the two drives as OS X can write data far faster than the SSDs can receive it. Double the number of SSDs and you double the write speed, so older SATA II paired RAID 0 drives in SATA II slots now run at SATA III speeds. Twice as fast. Magic.

Apple’s document on software RAID configuration using Disk Utility is here and makes for interesting reading for those contemplating this approach.

PCIe card:

Now a related snag is that I have no more internal connectivity for additional disk drives. Here is my disk layout before adding the 250GB SSD:

Mac Pro drives before the upgrade. SSD Bak resides in the optical drive area.

The four drive bays are taken up with the SSD boot drive, two HDD data drives and a TimeMachine drive. The backup for the SSD is in the optical drive area.

Shopping around I learned that plug-in PCIe cards are available which will accept one or two SSDs. As these use one PCIe slot, SATA III speeds are available. Apricorn makes a well reviewed PCIe SSD card in both single and dual SSD form factors, but the dual version blocks Slot 3 – not good. Accordingly, I settled on the single SSD version for all of $49, leaving Slot 3 available for later use:

Apricorn Velocity Solo PCIE/SSD card.

The SSD slots into the card and the card into the Mac Pro with no cables involved.

SSD inserted in the Apricorn PCIe card. The additional SATA III data port is circled.

Three of the four retaining screws have been inserted and, yes,
John White does outstanding Nikon Ai conversions!

It gets better. The Apricorn has a second SATA III port for an additional drive (SSD or HDD – any size you can accommodate) which can be placed anywhere inside the cavernous interior of the Mac Pro, without interference with PCIe Slot 3:

SATA III port on Apricorn Velocity.

It makes more sense to use two single-SSD Apricorn cards rather than one dual one if you need to use two SATA III SSDs. Both take two slots (the dual overlaps a slot, making it unavailable), but by using two cards you get two SATA III data expansion sockets. Using one dual card you only get one SATA III expansion socket. So when you come to add additional drives, as I illustrate here using the expansion socket, you will be able to double the number of HDDs or SSDs thus added. Both the 16x (Slot #2) and 4x (Slots #3 and #4) will support full SATA III speeds.

Installed in PCIe Slot #2. #1 is for the GPU, top, #3 is for the USB3 card, #4 is currently vacant.

This means that a second drive, which will have to be powered from a cable from the optical drive enclosure, can be connected to the Apricorn Velocity card, and will be seen by OS X as a discrete drive and will run at SATA III speed. Good to know for future expansion needs, when they arise. For example, I could add a 2TB HDD connected to this port, and make my two existing 1TB HDDs into a RAID 0 array, behaving like a 2TB HDD. In this way I get a fast 2TB data HDD with the backup free. I ended up doing just that and illustrate the process here.

The Apricorn PCIe card comes with a 3 year warranty.

Choice of SSD and installation:

Unlike Apple, today’s Samsung is a major innovator, and its latest 250GB EVO 840 SSD is highly regarded as a state-of-the-art SSD, so I paid an additional $183 for one, making the package total around $250 with tax. It comes with a 3 year warranty.

Installation requires only a small Phillips screwdriver for the four screws which retain the SSD drive to the PCIe card (it takes less time to install than to unwrap the parts) and after using CarbonCopyCloner to clone the existing 120GB startup drive to the new Samsung SSD, I told System Preferences->Startup Drive to use the Sammy as the boot drive. Further, I did a PRAM reset on restarting the Mac Pro, some instances of the boot drive not being properly recognized having been reported unless a PRAM reset is done. (Note: If you have added USB3 capability, as I illustrate here, be aware that you cannot boot from an external USB3 drive. This is because the USB3 ports on the add-in PCIe card are not powered until OS X has started).

When you go to clone your current startup drive to the new SSD,
CCC will warn you that no Recovery Partition exists.

Go ahead and create the Recovery Partition using CCC. Now go to
System Preferences->Startup Drive and make the new SSD the startup.

The Recovery Partition has been created.

Drives before reconfiguring ‘SSD Boot_old’ and ‘SSD Bak’ to a RAID o drive.

Once the Mac Pro was restarted from the new PCIe Samsung drive, I set the two old SSD drives up as one striped (not concatenated) 240GB RAID 0 drive, to act as the backup drive for the new Samsung startup SSD.

Disk Utility used to set up two SSDs as one ‘striped’ (meaning RAID 0) disk set.

This is how NOT to do it:

Concatenation simply strings the two disks end to end – when one is full the other takes over.

As concatenation results in only one disk being written to at any one time, the benefits of speed doubling using a RAID 0 disk set are lost, and the speed is no greater when concatenated than that of the individual drives.

I now have a 50% full Samsung startup drive and a 50% full RAID 0 backup comprised of two 120GB SSDs. The RAID 0 drive pair is reported as one drive in OS X’s Finder. Nice. Do not use the concatenation option – that strings the two drives end to end so you do not get the speed doubling that a RAID 0 striped array delivers. See the test results below to confirm this.

Be sure to enable TRIM for the new SSD and all will be well.

Confirming TRIM is in effect in System Profiler.

The new SSD is properly reported in SMARTReporter:

The new SSD in SMARTReporter.

Performance data:

How does it perform?

I set forth below four sets of BlackMagic disk speed test data – for the original 120GB SSD startup drive (a SATA III Sandisk running at SATA II speed), for the SATA II Intel former backup SSD, for the new Samsung SATA III 250GB Apricorn SSD and for the RAID 0 pair of two 120GB SSDs (the Sandisk and an older SATA II Intel) used as a backup:

Original 120GB Sandisk SATA III SSD running at SATA II speed:

Original Intel X25-M SSD, SATA II:

As you can see, there is little difference between the SATA III drive running at SATA II speed and the SATA II drive.

250GB Samsung EVO Apricot PCIe SSD running at SATA III speed – 2 to 3 times as fast:

120GB + 120GB RAID 0 Sandisk + Intel SSDs used as backup – twice as fast as each individual SSD, two SATA II drives running at SATA III speed:

A) Running in RAID 0:

Both discs are written to simultaneously, doubling the effective speed.

B) Running as two disks concatenated into one:

Concatenation is not the right way to do this. One disc is
written to until full then the other one is written to.

The Recovery Partition:

One final note. RAID does not support the Recovery Partition which allows recovery of the OS in Mountain Lion if your OS gets corrupted. Thus it makes more sense to boot from a plain vanilla SSD than from a RAID 0 pair, as the latter will not have the Recovery Partition available.

Use with Boot Camp with Windows:

There are many reports that Windows will not boot from the Apricorn – or other PCIe SSD – card using Boot Camp. As there is no conceivable scenario in which I will waste time with Windows, you are on your own here. I would suggest you use an emulation application like VM Ware, Parallels or VirtualBox (free) and run Windows from that – an approach which makes Windows just another executable application under OS X and requires no restart of the Mac Pro.

Conclusion:

This is a very cost and performance effective solution. You extend the lives of older, smaller drives, double their speeds, get a twice as fast startup drive and add an additional high-speed SATA III expansion option in the process. Power consumption of drives connected to the PCIe card is way below the maximum allowed. What’s not to like?

Don’t forget to recreate the related CCC Scheduled backup task when you are done – use of UUIDs for drives dictates this.

Update June 2015:

While you can squeeze in one or two SSDs using the Apricorn PCIe card above, there is now a more space efficient approach to adding lots of SSD drives, using the newer mini-PCIe mSATA drives which retail for a modest premium over regular 2.5 SSDs and are much smaller. Up to four 1TB mSATA SSDs can be installed on one PCIe card from Addonics (costing all of $55) and no external power supply is needed. These SSDs can be configured as JBOD (separate drives), RAID0 (two or more drives seen as one with no redundancy but increased speed) or RAID1 (mirrored drives with automatic back-up) using Apple’s Disk Utility.

I have sold my traditional SSDs and migrated to the Addonics/mSATA approach for its space efficiency, better cooling and higher capacity, and you can read all about that here.

As an HTPC – or a Photoshop machine.

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

Surely, you are thinking, a Mac Pro tower as a Home Theater PC is massive overkill.

Well, maybe so, but the economics and functionality are compelling, if you can find the space.

Your basic MacMini will run you $600, with another $100 for an external Blu-Ray reader/burner and another $100-200 for drive enclosures. Want an SSD? Better be prepared to gut and remodel that sealed little toy because Apple will not sell you one with an SSD in basic trim. You have to go to the costlier Core i7 model which, with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD will run you $1,200. Call it $1,500 with Blu-Ray and enclosures. Ridiculous. The only good thing to be said for it is that it comes with a working HDMI socket, allowing video and sound to be conveyed on just one cable. Nice, but at a price.

Now let’s look at the competing, used Mac Pro. I bought a 2009, 4-core, lightly used one from Stanford University (now that’s a pedigree) for $700 with 8GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD. It even included a stock Airport wi-fi card already installed – a pig of a job if you DIY. The HDD went on eBay and was replaced by the Intel 128GB SSD from my failing HackMini (a replacement for a 2009 MacMini which I sold, disgusted with its constant overheating). This SSD runs $100 and provides all the space needed for the OS and fast loading of applications. Rather than waste money on a backup SSD, I clone the SSD to a small 120GB partition on one of the internal 4TB HDDs.

Another $50 and ten minutes with a screwdriver saw the underwhelming (not so) Superdrive DVD burner swapped for an LG Blu-Ray reader/burner. Apple may never have adopted Blu-Ray but the technology works fine with OS Mountain Lion and either a tailored version of VLC (free) or Mac BluRay Player ($40). For ripping Blu-Ray discs, look here.

With four HDD bays inside the Mac Pro’s case there’s no need for external enclosures unless your storage needs are huge – like mine! The GT120 stock GPU is useless for HTPC applications as neither its Mini DisplayPort nor its DVI socket can convey sound. Off to eBay, replaced by the immensely capable EVGA nVidia GT430 which can be found used for $30. Get the one with the HDMI/VGA/DVI sockets. A perfect card for an HTPC, with 1GB of memory and its own silent cooling fan. And that’s it. After sales proceeds, the tab came to just $575, or well under half the price of the MacMini, the latter just waiting to overheat the minute you toss it a Blu-Ray ripping task.

And the Mac Pro is much more than just an HTPC. With little effort it can be enhanced to act as a whole home media and file server. Try that with your Mini.

2009 4-core Mac Pro – simplicity itself, with the nVidia GT430 GPU.
The massive heat sink at the top for the single CPU is total
engineering overkill, and let’s all be grateful for that.

To make the Mac Pro work with HDMI, apply the quick driver installation described here. It takes less time to do than to describe. To apply this patch, first ensure that your user account in OS X is password protected – my setup is for an HTPC with no password protection. The patch will ask you for a password and without one you cannot complete the installation. After patching you can remove the password in System Preferences->Users & Groups. Once you reboot, your HDMI-connected TV will display an HDMI option in System Preferences->Sound thus:

HDMI added.

Which Mac Pro to use? I recommend either the 2008 or 2009 4-core machines at $500 and $700, respectively. Both can run Blu-Ray ripping apps speedily owing to their 64-bit architecture, something denied earlier machines. Further, apply the 4,1->5,1 firmware upgrade (2009 only) I describe here for the latest functionality. While the 2007 and earlier Mac Pros are immensely capable machines, the savings in cost versus the lost functionality do not solve. 2010 and later machines are overpriced and any 8-core dual processor Mac Pro is total overkill for this use.

The 5,1 firmware upgrade in place.

Space? I had no issues. The big case fits neatly behind the big screen TV and my two 4-bay Mediasonic boxes with the Airport Extreme wi-fi router perch neatly on top. The base of the Mac Pro rests on the foot of the TV, conferring additional stability to what is not the most stable of arrangements at the best of times.

Mac Pro behind the TV. Note the
orientation of the DVD slot for ease of use.

Performance? Exemplary in every way.

Geekbench for the stock 2.66GHz Intel Xeon 4-core processor.

That’s 50% faster than the Sandy Bridge Core i3 in the HackMini which the Mac Pro replaced. If you want to go crazy, blow $575 or so on a new Xeon W3680 6-core 3.33GHz CPU which will drain your pocket-book but stoke your ego, returning a Geekbench score of 15,500 – close to the base 12-core dual processor 2012 Mac Pro which starts at $3,500 …. This would make an immensely capable photo processing rig for the Lightroom/Aperture/Photoshop set. The overpriced current i7 MacMini returns a Geekbench score of 8,500, by comparison.

Ah, you say, those internal drives – I have two 4TB ones for my Blu-Ray movies – are only SATA2, owing to the Mac Pro’s dated technology. True. Yet on test they render read and write speeds near-identical to external USB3 enclosures. (My external USB2 drives are too slow for Blu-Ray movies; they would need a $25 USB3 card in the Mac Pro for that use). If you must have faster, though I doubt that is needed, you can run the data connection through a $20 SATA PCIe internal card, and double your speed with SATA3 drives. So much for the Mac Pro’s purported obsolescence.

The MacMini has one other questionable advantage, in that it supports external Thunderbolt devices. That’s of no use in an HTPC, and have you checked the prices of TB cables and enclosures recently?

My OS and applications SSD is tucked away in the optical drive enclosure, making use of the provided available cable/socket, as illustrated here, a five-minute job.

USB3 vs. USB2:

If you propose ripping your Blu-Ray movies to external drives, these must be connected using USB3. USB2 is fine for regular definition movies but has insufficient bandwidth for the much larger Blu-Ray files. My 4-core Mac Pro movie machine has a 4-port USB3 Orico card (with the Fresno chip which is recognized natively by Mac OS 10.8.3 and later) and I show how to install the card here. You must provide power to the card from the optical drive bay and will experience great frustration and will waste much time if you do not. Simply stated, an unpowered card does not work.

As usual, the proof lies in the data:

USB2 disk speeds compared with USB3 disk speeds – external 4-bay Mediasonic enclosures.

Conclusion:

The single processor Mac Pros are far easier to find in mint, used condition than the dual processor machines. Do not pay more than $700 – there are many out there. Be patient.

In conclusion, the case will accommodate 4 x 4TB HDDs in stock trim and another four of these monsters if you piggyback them on the stock fittings and run SATA data and power cables. 32TB is a lot of storage.

Down the road when ultra-HD 4K TVs become affordable, you can install a better graphics card to drive the display. MacMini? You are going to be buying a new one to do that.

I cannot think of better value for your dollar than this rig, and all in a case which is as near silent as you can get. That’s an important consideration for an HTPC.

Adding USB3 and Blu-Ray.

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

Adding USB3:

It’s premature to say that Intel’s Thunderbolt will become the standard for connecting external devices to computers. The PC world, with its huge – if falling – volume has not exactly embraced the technology and until it does price will remain stratospheric. External TB enclosures are very costly and, for most, USB3 is just fine offering half the speed at a fraction of the cost.

Apple was especially lazy in upgrading the Mac Pro, with the 2009 model profiled in these articles identical to the 2012 except for CPU upgrades (thank you, Intel) and one firmware upgrade which allowed the use of 1333MHz memory and accepted 12-core CPUs. Other than that the 2009 and current 2012 machines are identical a fact which, once I spotted it, clued me in to the tremendous value proposition offered by the 2009 model.

However, in its apathy, Apple missed adding some modern technology to the Mac Pro from which it can benefit. At this time there are no PCIe cards which provide TB, but there is a handful which easily add USB3. This article only addresses users of Mountain Lion 10.8.3 or later, which comes with drivers for the Fresco chipset used by the card I have installed.

This is the card we want – it comes in 2-port and 4-port versions:

The Orico PFU3-4P or 2P Four/Dual Port USB3 PCIe card for the Mac.

This version of the Orico uses the Fresco chipset and can be found at Amazon in the 2-port version for $18, or the 4-port for $33. The ‘F’ in the model designation refers to the Fresco chipset. The big black cuboid at the top of the card is a 4-pin Molex male socket to which we will have to route power.

System Profiler will recognize this card once it’s inserted in a free USB3 slot. The card may work but, if it does, it will be well below capacity. The PCI slots provides insufficient power and a power line has to be run to the card’s male Molex socket for best functioning. I illustrate this below where I do an import of 50 Nikon D3x RAW files using an unpowered and a powered USB3 card. Unpowered it performs no better than USB2. Powered it’s twice as fast. Don’t fool yourself. You need to route power to the card.

The easiest way to power the card is to run a cable from the optical drive area. If you only have one optical drive in there then there will be a spare, combined SATA data and power socket available and you can tap into that using a SATA to female Molex cable. However, if you have already used the spare cable to power an SSD, as I illustrated in Part V, you will need to use a cable splitter to provide power for the USB3 card.

In either case you can use a cable which splits the existing cable in the optical drive bay into two power and two data feeds, leaving one free for subsequent use if you decide to relocate an SSD into the optical bay area. They can be had from Lindy-USA for $14 plus a thorough hosing for shipping of $13 and a one week wait. Appalling.

Finally you will need a short Molex male-female extension cable to reach the short USB3 PCIe card, and Monoprice will get it to you cheap and fast for a couple of dollars.

You should know that Molex pin connectors are a very poor design. The pins and sockets wobble and are easily bent if you are ham handed when assembling junctions, so do a fair bit of your own wobbling to make sure the pins find their mark before mashing the two together. In what follows I used the 2-port card, as my primary USB3 need is for an external card reader; all my disk drives reside inside the Mac Pro case where they are connected using speedy SATA technology. You can choose the 4 socket version if you like or add an external USB3 hub for additional needs. As the USB3 card we are installing in the Mac Pro is powered, an external hub will be driven just fine. Multi-port USB3 hubs can be had for well under $50 and all USB3 sockets are backward compatible with USB2.

Whatever you do, do not power the USB3 card from any available backplane board socket which is ordinarily used to power graphics cards. The voltage is incorrect and you may end up frying your computer.

The pinouts for the 4-pin Molex connector are shown here, for those interested.

Conflicts:

There are many reports of interference between unshielded USB3 cables, as used here, and Bluetooth. These show up in jerky mouse pointer action. If you do use BT, shield the connecting wires. I have long considered BT a deeply flawed, poor range technology and avoid it like the plague. If you must use a wireless mouse, use one which uses an RF sender/dongle, like many of those from Logitech or Microsoft. Shock news, I know, but MSFT actually does make something which ‘just works’.

Also, avoid using an USB3 card with comes with the NEC chipset. You need one with the Fresco chipset with Mountain Lion. The native drivers were probably added for the forthcoming OS 10.9. Fresco cards use these native drivers and avoid the use of aftermarket drivers which frequently bring stability issues with them.

Finally, if you want to boot from a bootable external drive, that drive cannot be connected to an USB3 card. The USB3 sockets are not ‘live’ until after booting, so drives connected there are not bootable.

Installation:

It’s tough to route power cables from the optical drive area to the USB3 card. The only unobstructed passageway through the firewall between the power supply and the PCIe area is through a small opening at the base of drive caddy #3 (third from the left as you face the drives’ labels), and the quickest and easiest way of accessing that passthrough is to remove the power supply unit.

To connect the Lindy splitter cable with the female Molex extension cable, in addition to a cable cutters and a crimping tool I used some 16 gauge crimp connectors and a cable stripper. The cable splitter as provided by Lindy has an unused Molex and an unused 4-pin fan plug and I wanted to get rid of as much cable clutter as possible – making the run ‘SATA (optical drive) to female Molex (USB3 card)’ directly. Thus I cut the Lindy splitter cable and crimped the cut ends together after getting rid of the excess connectors and cabling, illustrated below:

Removing excess connectors and cables. Lindy SATA splitter is the lower of the two. Molex extender above.

After making the two cuts (4 cables each), you join the cut cables with cable strippers and a crimping tool, respecting colors, after threading them through the firewall, which I describe below. Both black connectors are ground, so it does not matter if you mix these up.

You will need a short 2.5mm Allen wrench and a magnetized #1 long Philips screwdriver. Remove the optical drive assembly by pulling up on it, disconnecting the plugs to the DVD drive (and the SSD if you installed one there). Using the screwdriver, remove the two screws holding the alloy shelf and remove the shelf:

Shelf retaining screws. Use a magnetic screwdriver.

The plug for the PSU will be disclosed. Pinch the ends and pull it:

Remove the PSU plug.

Now remove all the disc drives in their caddies to give you working space, and undo the four screws, circled, to free up the PSU. Use the 2.5mm Allen wrench, and avoid using a rounded end wrench which will not make your day when you round the hex inside the Loctite-retained screws:

Retaining screws for the PSU. Use the shortest Allen wrench you have.
Contrary to the Service Manual, these are alloy and will not respond to a
magnetized wrench, so do not drop them.

The PSU can now be removed by sliding it a tad to the left then lifting it out, being careful to help the cable and plug along with the other hand:

Removing the PSU.

Should you ever need to replace it, here’s the label:

PSU label. 980 watts of power!

You can now thread the wires through the opening – it’s the same one used by an existing cable:

USB3 wires passed through the opening.

Replace the PSU, carefully threading the plug through to the optical drive area, reconnecting it and refastening the 2.5mm bolts after making sure the shelf is properly aligned – there are two tabs which slot into the firewall:

Wires threaded into the optical drive area.

Here’s a view of the backplane area with the USB3 card in place:

USB3 card in place with Molex connector (green), with the power wires threaded
through at the base of drive #3 for connection to the optical drive area (red).

Don’t worry, drive #3 will fit fine.

Be generous with the cable length so that there is no issue with any later PCIe cards you may elect to install. Note the small, black cable ties used to keep the wiring harness tidy:

Cable ties in place.

Mac Pros and untidiness do not go together, so spend a few pennies on 1/4″ cable sheath to tidy up those ugly wires for both the USB3 card and the power cables for the GPU:

Cables neatly dressed.

You are done.

PCIe card in place showing two USB3 sockets. Use PCIe socket #3 (shown)
or #4 to the right for the card, both 4-bit. #2 is 16-bit and is wasted for this purpose.

Confirmation of function:

Here’s System Profiler after installation:

After USB3 installation. This shows an
external 3TB USB3 drive connected.

Performance comparisons:

First I ran the Xbench disk test using a Mediasonic external enclosure with a 7200rpm HDD.

Using USB2:

Xbench – USB2, external drive.

Using USB3 – 1.7 times as fast as USB2:

Xbench – USB3, external drive.

Then for reference, I ran Xbench on the internal Sandisk 120GB boot SSD, which is in a different league altogether:

Xbench – SSD, internal drive.

Now xBench is a fairly dated benchmarking tool, and has not been updated in years. A more modern test is BlackMagic’s DiskSpeedTest, and here the results are more compelling, using the same Mediasonic enclosure.

Using USB2:

BlackMagic DiskSpeedTest – USB2.

Using USB3:

BlackMagic DiskSpeedTest – USB3.

That’s 5x the speed for Write and 4.4x for Read. That’s more like it!

And for the SSD boot drive:

BlackMagic DiskSpeedTest – SSD.

The conventional, spinning disk actually has faster Write performance than the SSD.

I then made a simple import of 50 RAW files from my Nikon D3x, a real world test. What follows is import time only – no generation of previews or application of lens profiles which processes have nothing to do with import speed. I used a Kingston FCR-HS3 USB3 card reader and a Lexar Professional 400x 8GB UDMA CF card.

Import time for 50 RAW files using USB2: 52.7 seconds
Import time for 50 RAW files using USB3: 52.1 seconds – with no power feed to the USB3 card
Import time for 50 RAW files using USB3: 28.1 seconds – with power connected to the USB3 card – 87% faster than USB2

While my 2 socket card is recognized by OS X with no power provided (I cannot speak for the 4 socket, not having tried it), the card is starved of power and performs far slower than a powered card.

Here is what you are looking for in System Profiler for a USB3 card with card reader attached:

Ample excess current capacity is available for a powered card reader.

Next I connected my Mediasonic USB3 movie storage box which contains 4 x 3TB 7200rpm HDDs. I copied a 5.75GB movie over from the Mac Pro’s SSD to one of the HDDs in the Mediasonic.

Export time over USB2: 172.5 seconds
Export time over USB3: 51.9 seconds – 3.3 times as fast
Import time over USB3: 52.0 seconds

So here USB3 really works, but compared to the theoretical limit of 5 gigabits/second (Gb/s), which is 0.625 gigabytes/second (GB/s), I am only realizing 0.11 GB/s, or 18% of the maximum. Still, it’s a lot faster than USB2. Further, whereas a ripped Blu-Ray movie will not play without stuttering over USB2, it’s fine over USB3, so this effort is not wasted.

One anomaly: A friend reports that if he leaves an external USB3 drive connected to the USB3 card, if the Mac Pro goes to sleep a disk ejection error (“The disk was not ejected properly”) pops up on wake. This is a non-functional error as the Mac Pro will have been inacrive when it went to sleep, so there is no risk of data loss.

USB3 update – April, 2014:

Technology marches on. A recent Mac Pro I upgraded saw me installing the Inateck 4-port USB3 PCIe card:

Inateck 4-port USB3 card. Click the image to go to Amazon.

The beauty of this card is that the maker claims it requires no additional power supply to function properly and my tests confirm this is true. That’s a great time saver and removes wire clutter from inside the Mac Pro’s case or, if you prefer, frees up the power supply source you ran earlier for additional HDDs, etc. The price is a mere $27 and my speed tests suggest the card is maybe 2-5% slower than the powered Orico installed above. That’s a worthwhile trade-off for USB3 speeds with far less work.

USB3 update – June 2015:

The Sonnet 4-controller USB3 4-port card.

Sonnet manufactures a 4-port USB3 PCIe plug-and-play card which has four controllers, compared to one for the Inateck. This means that if you simultaneously use more than one USB3 connected device, there will be no performance penalty as the controller is not shared between all four ports. The Sonnet Allegro Pro (must have ‘Pro’ in the name to get the four controllers) retails at $130 and only makes sense compared with the much cheaper Inateck if you propose to use more than one USB3 connected peripheral simultaneously and can tolerate no performance hit. I have not used the Sonnet but the maker has a good reputation. I’m sticking with the Inateck as I mostly use it to download image and video files from the cards in my digital cameras, using only the one port.

Adding Blu-Ray:

You can buy a Blu-Ray internal drive for under $70 from Amazon. Take a straightened paper clip, insert it in the small ejection hole to the lower right of the front tray and push to release the tray. (Good to know if a DVD ever gets stuck in the drive, and not something you can do with the miserable slot-loading drives fitted to many iMacs, MacMinis and MacBooks). Turn the drive upside down and you will see two small clips retaining the front tray bezel, each one third of the way in. Push away and down (in that order) from the tray’s front and the bezel will slide off. The drive is now ready for installation.

While you are in there connecting the USB3 power circuit, you can undo the four side screws retaining the dated and slow Superdrive (a standard drive with Apple hype added), replace it with the Blu-Ray drive and slip on the integrated SATA power and data cable. This really could not be simpler. That tired old Sony/Toshiba/Hitachi ‘Superdrive ‘ has no resale value – recycle it.

Tray bezel removal. Not nuclear physics.

OS X Mountain Lion works fine with Blu-Ray and you can learn about Blu-Ray players here and about the excellent MakeMKV ripping application here.

* * * * *

Here is what you have to look forward to with a modified 2009 Mac Pro:

Mac Pros in Geekbench.

Fanboy heaven. The mug comes from the mothership itself, 1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA.
The computer is how they used to make them.

Backing-up:

Here is the back-up strategy I adopt – 5 drives in the Mac Pro’s case and Cloud storage off site:

Mac Pro backup strategy.

Daily backups of the SSD Boot drive (OS X, applications and the Lightroom catalog/previews) and the HDD Data drive are made using CarbonCopyCloner. CCC is set to wake the sleeping Mac Pro so that it can do it’s job, as you cannot do backups with a sleeping computer.

Constant versioned backups are made using TimeMachine – very handy for recovering older versions of files.

Daily backups are made to CrashPlan in the cloud. The fifth drive – SSD Bak – resides in the optical drive area, as I illustrated earlier. If the Mac Pro fries, CrashPlan can ship you a disk with all your files overnight; the alternative of restoring over the air can take many days for large data sets.

When I travel, I pop open the Mac Pro’s case and pull the TimeMachine drive after first ejecting it in Finder, taking the drive with me.

This is a simple and robust back-up strategy. Crash Plan is essential as all the local drives are in the case and thus exposed to fire, earthquake or a power supply failure.

Finally, at some $1,100 a pop for a 2009 Mac Pro, there’s no excuse for having just one:

I really need to clean up those cables on #2 ….

Cost to build.

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

My 2009 Mac Pro – Turbo model. Beauty and a beast.
Not an external enclosure in sight.

In Part IX I looked at the upgrade costs of a 2009 Mac Pro compared with a like specification Hackintosh. This was relevant to my case as I was moving from a Hack and reusing many of the components.

Here I look at the all in cost of a fully loaded machine:

Cost to build.

The specifications here are very complete, and only displays are excluded. This build will drive four displays (2 x DVI, 1 x DisplayPort, 1 x HDMI).

Let’s look at the core components:

• The 2009 used Mac Pro represents the sweet spot in pricing using stock RAM (unlike the 2008 which uses expensive FB DIMMs) and with full 64-bit functiionality unlike the pre-2008 models. The 2010 and 2012 are discounted, being far too expensive.
• While the stock GT120 graphics card is retained if you ever need to see the splash screen at cold start, the excellent mid-range nVidia GTX660 is used, the Zotac model being exceptionally quiet.
• A deep slot Kingston USB3 card reader is used, the deep slot preventing the pin-bending behavior common with CF cards in cheaper readers. The Kingston reads all types of cards in addition to the CF ones used by my Nikons.
• Longer monitor cables move the large Mac Pro case from under the desk into the open.
• Shockingly, while they were busy making cell phones, Apple forgot to add USB3 to the Mac Pro, so we install a powered PCIe card to do just that.
• Most 2009 Mac Pros come without Airport, so a used Airport wi-fi card is procured.
• You can pay up for ‘Apple Certified’ RAM (40% more) or buy Corsair, as good a brand as there is. 6 x 4GB sticks maximize cost efficiency and complement the triple channel addressing of memory in the two Xeon CPUs, meaning three sticks for each CPU.
• A boot SSD, containing OS X and your applications, is essential. Life is too short for HDDs.
• Rather than spend on a backup SSD, a 120GB partition is created on one of the pair of 2TB data HDDs to clone the boot SSD. The cost of that storage space on an HDD is under $6! Two 2TB HDDs add all the storage you will reasonably need. Need more? Opt for 4TB HDDs or buy external USB3 enclosures.
• A 3TB HDD is added inside the case for sequential Time Machine back-ups as a further failsafe. All drives are inside the case.
• Wireless mice and keyboards are high maintenance toys. Get the Logitech G500 gaming mouse and a proper wired keyboard. Add $20 for SteerMouse to access all the G500’s features. Avoid Apple keyboards and mice – ergonomic catastrophes all, if nice showpieces.
• A pair of Logitech speakers rounds out the ensemble.

So for around $2,200 you have a high performance, extremely robust, stock system which will match the best iMacs. Sure you can save and buy a used 2009 4-core machine, but the $250 or so saved makes little economic sense in the long run. A 27″ top quality Dell matte display will add $630, for a total of $2,830.

What does that buy you in iMac land, replete with unfixable and non-upgradable components and a ghastly glossy display? $3,000 gets you a Core i5 machine with one SSD (good luck getting any more in the chassis), and you can add $500 for the external drives and case to match the above.

Now let’s make that MacPro compete with the best there is, the 2012 12-core Mac Pro. That machine comes with three choices of CPU. To match the 2.66Hz middle model, whose CPU performance is identical to our 2009 with the processor upgrade, you are looking at $6,335 with a self installed SSD and the 3TB TimeMachine HDD added to the two 2TB drives in the case. The available GPUs are inferior to the GTX660 used in the 2009. The 2009 with upgraded CPUs is $2,660, both machines without displays. The upgraded 2009 Mac Pro offers 100% of the performance of the 2012 for 40% of the cost.

What are the main model differences?

The dual-processor Mac Pro has had a long life. What to choose and which to avoid?

Version 1,1, MA356LL/A, August 2006:

• Avoid. This Mac Pro can only run 32-bit applications. (See the Comment for specifics.)
• Came with two 2.66GHz Xeons.
• 667MHz fully buffered memory is very costly to upgrade.
• 32GB memory maximum.
• Abundantly available.

Version 2,1, unknown order number, April 2007:

• Avoid. This Mac Pro can only run 32-bit applications. (See the Comment for specifics.)
• Came with a choice of two Xeons in 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz or 3.2GHz.
• 800MHz fully buffered memory is very costly to upgrade.
• 32GB memory maximum.
• Abundantly available.

Version 3,1, MA970LL/A, early-2008:

• Consider. Less refined processor cage design makes memory changes a little harder, but a capable machine.
• First Mac Pro to run 64-bit applications.
• Came with a choice of Xeons in 2.8GHz, 3.0GHz or 3.2GHz speeds.
• 800MHz fully buffered memory is very costly to upgrade.
• 32GB memory maximum.
• CPUs can be upgraded to X5492 running at 3.33GHz but these are rare and costly. Reckon on $500 a pair. Not much of a speed gain over stock.
• PCIe slots 3 and 4 are PCIe 1.0, not 2.0 – slower, so not that good for an SSD, say.
• If you can find one with 16GB or more memory for under $700, buy it, if that’s your budget.
• Fair availability in stock trim.
• Good parts availability.
• The first Mac Pro to run OS 10.8 Mountain Lion out of the box.

Version 4,1, MB535LL/A, early-2009:

• Buy. The most desirable model, easily upgraded to 2010 or 2012 specifications.
• Runs 64-bit applications.
• Came with a choice of 8-core Xeons in 2.26GHz, 2.66GHz or 2.93GHz speeds.
• 1066MHz ECC memory is cheap to upgrade. No need to use overpriced ‘Apple approved’ type. Reckon on $65 per 8gB of 1333MHz.
• 128GB memory maximum – I know as I have built one.
• Lots of CPU upgrade options, many readily available, with the 2.66GHz Xeon W5650 12-core offering the best price/performance – 25,000 Geekbench with a pair of used CPUs costing $300. These offer a 100% speed gain over stock.
• Upgrade of CPUs needs care to avoid damage to CPU sockets.
• 4,1 firmware is easily upgraded to 5,1 which will recognize 1333MHz memory with no other work. 5 minute DIY job.
• 5,1 firmware upgrade permits use of 12-core CPUs and is mandatory for these.
• PCIe slots 3 and 4 are PCIe 2.0 – fast.
• Hard to find since I wrote these articles! Be prepared to pay up to $1,200 for a mint example.
• Excellent spare parts availability.

Version 5,1, MC561LL/A, mid-2010:

• Consider. Runs 64-bit applications.
• Came with a choice of Xeons in 2.40GHz (E5620, 8-core), 2.66GHz (X5650 12-core) or 2.93GHz (X5670 12-core) speeds.
• 1333MHz ECC memory is cheap to upgrade. No need to use overpriced ‘Apple approved’ type. Reckon on $65 per 8gB.
• 128GB memory maximum.
• 5,1 firmware is stock, supports 12-core CPUs
• CPUs use standard design with Integrated Heat Spreader, making upgrades easy.
• Top 8-core CPU upgrade is E5640, running at 2.66GHz for an 11% speed gain over base stock CPU – not worth the expense. Install a W5590 instead.
• PCIe slots 3 and 4 are PCIe 2.0 – fast.
• 12-core CPUs can be upgraded to faster 12-core CPU with an Xeon X5687, running at 3.60GHz for a 35% speed gain over base 12-core stock CPU. Still very costly on the used market, if you can find them.
• Hard to find used and seldom under $1,800 for the base model. You are better off buying the early-2009 and upgrading the CPU ($250-450) and firmware (no cost).

Also version 5,1, MD771LL/A, mid-2012:

• Overpriced but excellent. Almost identical to the mid-2010, but with different CPU choices.
• 8-core CPU is the 2.66GHz E5645.
• 12-core choices are the 2.66GHz X5650 (same as the 2010) and the 3.06GHz X5675.
• 128GB memory maximum.
• Same CPU upgrade options as the mid-2010.
• PCIe slots 3 and 4 are PCIe 2.0 – fast.
• Expensive used, as it is the current model.
• Can’t hold a candle to the mid-2009 for economic value.
• Only for those spending other people’s money.

Buying used? Don’t be cheated.

The model number has direct bearing on a Mac Pro’s market value, so it’s important to see what you are buying. A fraudulent seller can easily upgrade firmware from 1,1 to 2,1 or from 4,1 to 5,1 (see here) and will show you the upgraded model number in System Profiler, thus:

My Mac Pro as shipped – model 4,1 – on the left.
My hacked 5,1 machine – the same chassis – is on the right.

Or the seller may claim that the machine has been ‘upgraded’ from stock.

Find or ask for the Mac Pro’s serial number on the rear ledge below the sockets. Alternatively go to About This Mac (Apple icon, top left of your screen) and click twice where it says ‘Version 10.8.4’ or whatever, and your serial number will be disclosed. Here’s mine:

Disclosing the serial number.

Now go here, input the serial number and you will get something like this:

Data on my Mac Pro, an April 2009 model made in week three of the month.
Goodness, ‘Built in the USA’ no less.

Now if someone says it’s a 2009 or 2010, you can check. The serial number lookup is of the original build, allowing you to confirm the ‘upgrade’ status, and while I do not show the whole screen above, it reports Model Number 4,1, even though I have upgraded to 5,1, which is what System Profiler reports. Thus a 2009 being passed off as a 2010 or 2012 is easily spotted by running the serial number report.

Other things to look for:

You will see many Mac Pros whose lower foot or feet are distorted. The chassis panels may also be misaligned. This can only mean one thing. The machine has been dropped. Run like blazes. You never know what sort of damage ensued until you stress test the machine, and it’s not likely a dishonest seller will let you do that in any case. Plus, do you really want to wake up to that every morning? Likewise avoid machines with heavy scratches, dirt inside or from a smoking environment. Scratches often indicate studio use with the computer inserted in and out of racks, having led a hard life. Move on. There’s always another machine.

Light scratches and a general absence of bumps are fine, but my advice is to go for a pristine machine and pay a bit more. This is a 5-10 year investment and the marginal cost is immaterial over that period of use. The best are ones from amateur users which come with the original box. These are likely to have been babied. And for heaven’s sake, do not buy a machine which runs Windows only. Not only does that confirm the seller has execrable taste, you really want to know why it cannot run OS X.

Further, you will find many machines listed by people who are completely clueless about the specifications, model number, year and so on. These are likely high volume brokers and good luck with that lot. Or perhaps they are thieves, though pinching one of these is a non-trivial matter owing to the weight and bulk. Try and buy from knowledgeable Apple Mac fans who know their stuff. If you are into Rolls Royces, chances are you will look after yours, no? What you want is an original owner, Apple fanboy, cream puff who is upgrading. They are out there.

Finally, avoid heavily modified machines (like mine!). Buy stock. A modified machine means you are taking a gamble on the competence of the modifier, an irrational risk (doesn’t apply to mine, of course …. and it’s not for sale in any case). Stock CPUs, stock GPU, stock RAM (especially with 2008 and earlier machines using costly buffered RAM) – these work best. You can always upgrade to your heart’s content. Specialist machines with multiple cards and RAID capability, boasting of their processing power and listed with several monitors will have had an awfully hard life in a studio environment. You can do better. A little patience goes a long way. While I bought mine on Craigslist and got lucky, I would broadly characterize most Craigslist sellers as crooks and/or thieves. It’s a perfect market for fencing stolen goods. The ethically challenged lot exists on eBay too, and shipping is a pain with these behemoths, but you are covered by PayPal insurance against fraud and should get transit damage insurance as part of the purchase.

The best of luck with your search. When you are done you will not regret it, for you will end up with a professional tool, one which is easily upgraded or repaired, rather than a recyclable, mass market toy. You know, like those two iMacs of mine which melted all those years ago.

The next in this series of articles will address installation and benchmarking of USB3, once I get the necessary cables.