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.

Power consumption, stress tests and diagnosis.

Power consumption:

Using the calculator here I input the components for the modified Mac Pro:

Worst case power consumption data.

This assumes everything is running flat out. The PSU in the Mac Pro is 980 watts maximum continuous power, call it 1,400 watts peak power, more realistic of real world ‘spiky’ power demands, so it’s comfortably able to handle even the thirsty W5590 Xeons. At a more granular level, the two backplane sockets for powered GPUs are limited to 150 watts total, with the PCIe slots capable of delivering an additional 75 watts, for a total of 225 watts. So a GPU like the latest nVidia GTX780, which can draw as much as 250 watts, is demanding unsafe power draws when maxed out. If in doubt, add an external power supply to power extreme GPUs. If you use two of these, external power is essential.

Using the stock E5520 Xeons (2.26GHz) the BOOSTA and BOOSTB fans (inside the two CPU heat sinks) run at 1100rpm. The E5520 have a Thermal Design Power (TDP) of just 80 watts, at which point the CPU is throttled back to prevent meltdown. By contrast the W5590 CPUs have a TDP of 130 watts, so they will run hotter under load. At idle, my CPU fans run at 1,650 rpm, considerably higher than stock. As these fans are buried inside their respective heat sinks and the exceptionally robust case is well sound insulated, the increased fan speed results in no discernible increase in noise, which continues to be approximately 44dB at ear level, two feet distant from the front of the Mac Pro, which stands out in the open to the left of my desk.

Other fan speeds (PSU, processor cage, PCIe space, GPU) remain unaffected by any of the enhancements made.

With the components shown above, my Mac Pro idles at 188 watts. Set to Sleep it consumes but 9 watts.

Stress tests:

Ordinarily I test stability by ripping a DVD then compressing it in Handbrake. While this really exercises the CPU and memory, it’s not the best test out there. Handbrake does not work every CPU core and thread to the maximum.

There is a Stress Test function in Geekbench. This application is ordinarily used to test CPU and RAM performance, but go to Geekbench->Benchmarks->Run Stress Tests and this is what Geekbench will do to your 16 threads, or how ever many you have:

Stress Tests, viewed in Activity Monitor. Geekbench left, Handbrake right.

Well, I ran this Stress Test and after 30 seconds …. the Mac froze! No kernel panic, no messages, just frozen. Incidentally, trying Handbrake it froze also!

As all my memory was properly reported in System Profiler, my first thought was that there was an application causing the problem, yet removing applications one by one made no difference. The Mac Pro continued to fail the Stress Test. So it’s not an application issue.

Suspicion then fell on the memory as Geekbench tests both the CPU and the RAM. Four of my six 4GB sticks migrated from the Hackintosh where they had performed perfectly for 2 years. Two more were added recently to take advantage of the three channel Xeon CPUs which optimally address three sticks of RAM each. Three sticks for each CPU, for a total of 24GB.

So I pulled four sticks and ran the Stress Test, leaving just 8GB installed. Perfect. Stress Test passed.

Added back two more. Still perfect. Stress Test passed again.

Added the last two …. still perfect!

Conclusion? One or more of the memory sticks was not properly seated and was causing failure of the stress test. Quite how a stick can get improperly seated beats me, but it’s not the first time I have encountered the ‘badly seated memory sticks’ issue, although this is the first time I have been the victim.

And the result?

Passed with flying colors.

Temperatures? Benign – the highest I saw was 140F for one of the CPUs, everything else in the 100-110F range. The fans never broke a sweat despite the brutal nature of this test, running at minimum speeds throughout.

I’m now satisfied the Mac Pro can take just about anything I can throw at it.

The Diagnostic process:

With a host of variables in play the only way to diagnose issues is to remove or replace one variable at a time. For example, to pull memory sticks and close applications at the same time would be a pointless process. If the issue was solved as a result, you would not know which was the cause of the problem. It may seem slower to work one variable at a time, but, net, it’s the fastest diagnostic approach.

By the way, all that pulling and replacing of memory sticks is hardly onerous in a 2009 or later Mac Pro. The design makes the removal and replacement of the processor/RAM assembly a speedy affair.

Temperature issues.

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

Long time readers will recall that what drove me to using a Hackintosh five years ago was that I managed to fry the GPUs in three iBooks and two iMacs in quick succession. The last two were just out of warranty, naturally, and my efforts to better ventilate the nVidia 7300 GPUs and then to replace the 7300 in one with a 7600 all failed. Further, Apple denied any cooling issue existed even though their own discussion boards were replete with complaints. This led me to put out the iMac in disgust to a location better suited to its abilities:

The garbage awaiting collection

Thus it comes as no surprise that I have kept a watchful eye on operating temperatures ever since and even though the Mac Pro comes with state-of-the-art cooling, it’s a hard habit to shake.

The purpose of this piece is to address Mac Pro temperatures and suggest one minor enhancement.

The Mac Pro is exceptionally well cooled, with six fans in the 8-core model. (The 4-core has five, as it has one processor, not two). One pair of fans cools the processor cage in a push-pull configuration, each massive processor heat sink contains a fan, the PCIe fan cools the space occupied by the PCIe cards and disk drives and the large 980 watt power supply has its own fan.

The other day I ripped a movie then compressed it using Handbrake. That’s a stressful process which exercises all 8-cores in the two Intel Xeon CPUs used in the 8-core Mac Pro. It was an exceptionally warm day and the Ambient (case vicinity) temperature reported by iStat was 90F. All the operating temperatures of the various monitored components were fine, running in the 120F range, but with one exception. The Northbridge chip was reporting 165F. The fans did not spool up and the job ran fine, a full length uncompressed movie being reduced to a compressed iPad M4V version in 25 minutes. Nice.

Well, I did some reading of chat boards and they were – how to put this politely? – innumerate.

Thus, I went to the source, the excellent Intel web site, to check on the Northridge thermal specifications. Northridge is the chip which controls communications between the CPU and RAM, and Wikipedia has a fine piece on it here. Note that the increasing drive to integration saw the Northbridge chip move within the CPU case by the time Intel produced the later Sandy Bridge CPUs, which is what my Hackintosh used.

Intel’s thermal specs provide the definitive answer in their Northbridge Thermal Guide. Here’s the key extract:

Northbridge temperature limits.

I’m strictly a Farenheit guy and water boils at 212F at sea level in my world, so Intel’s 104C converts to 219F as the case temperature limit for the Northbridge chip. One commentator on a chat board stated he removed the chip and refreshed the thermal paste, but the loss was only 4F, which hardly seems worth the effort.

Nonetheless, as I never like to see high temperatures, I did some measurement. Here’s my iStat reading with the Mac Pro just doing some modest surfing:

Stock, static temperatures.

I then fired up SMCFanControl, which you can download free – click the link, and increased the fans speeds of the processor cage Intake and Exhaust fans from 800rpm to 1050rpm, thus:

Intake and exhaust fan speeds.

The processor assembly is the part-withdrawn assembly in the picture below (4-core above, 8-core below), holding the two CPUs, RAM and, yes, that hot Northbridge chip. There are two CPU fans within the heat sinks on an 8-core machine, named BOOSTA and BOOSTB, the first barely distinguishable in the image above:

Processor assembly partly withdrawn.

This assembly nests within the processor cage which I earlier removed to install an Airport card on the backplane board:

The ever diligent hound guards the processor cage.
Note how the fans have been moved in 1/2″ toward the center of the cage.

Those fans, which work in a push-pull configuration, are the ones we want to speed up if more air flow is to be directed over the Northbridge chip.

The modest speed increase for the minimum fan speeds from 800rpm to 1050rpm resulted in a 1-2dB noise increase at my working location, in practice barely detectable. But the benefit in terms of Northbridge temperature drop was excellent:

Northbridge temperature
drops 24F after modest fan
speed increase.

That’s a good noise:efficiency trade-off in my book and I’m leaving those two fans at that speed.

To satisfy curiosity, I cranked those two fans up to 3600+rpm, resulting in an unnacceptable noise level of 60dB. Not for daily use, but handy if you need quick cooling on a stressful task in excess of that offered by the automatic variable speed fan controllers in the Mac Pro. The Northbridge now dropped from 139F stock to 101F:

The fans cranked up.

Bottom line? For the temperature-obsessed, like me, a slight increase in fan speed to 1050rpm from the stock 800rpm for the intake and exhaust fans on the processor cage provides peace of mind.

It’s hot and I want to leave the cover off:

That is a bad idea. The Mac Pro’s massive alloy side cover plate is part and parcel of the thermal design. Look hard at the inside and you will see insulating rubber gaskets which seal the enclosure when the cover is in place.

The rubber seal inside the Mac Pro’s side cover.

With the cover in place the tunnels formed by the cover are completed, presenting a side-sealed conduit for the push-pull processor cage fans, resulting in optimal cooling. Leaving the cover off actually compromises cooling performance. Do not do it.