Processor upgrade 1.1 macpro. is it worth it?

Personally always use a pretty liberal amount of Arctic Silver thermal paste. When original processoirs are removed, there is a fair bit on the CPU, which requires cleaning off with an alcohol wipe and a cotton bud or similar.

When replacing, place a fair dob of paste in the middle, and spread with an icey pole stick until good coverage all round and then re-seat the heat sink and tighten. Generally get two CPU replacements to the tube to give you some idea how much personally use.

The lack of paste could well explain the over heating problem and kernel panics.

OK so for those playing along at home, it seems that Little Snitch has just been updated (again) to fix another KP issue (again). From their site:

Little Snitch 2.4.2 - August 8, 2011

• Improves OS X Lion compatibility.
• Fixes a kernel panic.

So keeping fingers crossed. Happens again and I know which app I'm uninstalling...

so i was wondering how the KP's are going are they still hapening because i have orderied a pair of x5355 2.66GHZ 8M 1333 at a reasonable price. And was wondering was it just little snitch not being compatible at the time or was it the Software Raid or the GPU Nvidia 7300 GT just wanting to know because when i get them i running both of these and want to know what fixed your problem in case i happen to run in to it on my machine

So i had a general question's to anyone with any knowlegde on this subject can please answer.

I have been doing alot or research into updateing my MacPro 1,1 from Intel Xeon 5150's Quad-Core 2.66ghz. To the Intel Xeon X5355's. but have had a mix bag of people on this thread and others saying Lionworks or it doesnt work. Software Raids causes KP's or Specific Ram Configs or GPU'S. I know with other configs i read about could have these sorts of problems. My configuration so far shouldnt have these problems except mabye the sofware RAIDS or Lion. So, to my question's.

Does Software Raids not seem to work and Create different KP's with X5355's?

Does Lion Have anything to do with the KP's?

What are any other major KP's that anyone with this upgrade has had?

Also just some insight as well into my machine incase anyone answering this may need to know. And yes i'm running Little Snitch on 2.4.2 so i should have that problem either.

I Have:

MacPro 1,1 2x Intel Xeon 5150's as Said above W/ 18GB of FB DIMMS DDR2 667MHZ of Ram. Have orignal Nvidia 7300 GT and ATI 5770 HD Powering 3x 23" LG Monitors and 1x 40" TV. 3x Seagate 1TB HDD, 1x 2TB Hatatchi in Optical bay and a Corsair 128gb SSD Boot Drive.

Sry for long post just trying to through and helpfl to anyone that can answer these ?'s

Message was edited by: stevefromtempe

Well Steve I have a Mac Pro 1.1 with the X5355 CPU's which works a treat, and you will see by earlier posts performance improved over the 5100 Dual Core CPU's by 92%. Run Lion with absolutely no problems at all, with a Mercury Extreme SSD, Seagate Barracude backup drive in position two and a flashed ATI Radeon HD4870 1GB graphics card.

Touching wood, have never experienced a kp since buying the computer from Apple in Elk Grove CA as a refurbished model in August 1967 and shipping home to Australia replacing original 2GHz CPU's with 2.66 Dual Core and later to the X5365 Quad Core.

Having said that, with room for four hard drives, have never used Raid and Little Snitch is a Utility I have kept well and truly away from because of long term reported kp problems. Would have though the best option was thre SSD in position one which manufacturerts recommend, and replace Seagate with 2TB drives if necessary.

http://ask.metafilter.com/183480/OSX-Little-Snitch-Internet-problem

Hi Steve -- I too have a Mac Pro 1,1 and was successful putting in x5355 CPUs. I saw a similar "near doubling" of the geekbench results for my box as well (makes sense, there are twice as many cores now). The old girl is almost as frisky as real expensive MacBook Pro. FWIW, I have not had a KP or unexpected crash, no strange behavior at all. I'm running Lion (a developer seed, because I am a developer!), and didn't have any trouble with Little Snitch 4.2.1 although I did upgrade to 4.2.2. Alas I still boot from rotating media and don't bother with a RAID and have only 7GB of RAM which makes Aperture bog down but that's not the processor's fault.

I do believe though that you have to use more thermal compound on your installation than is "taught" by Arctic Silver. See the thread--perhaps allthepoo will report on how his system is behaving after redoing his thermal compound. I'd also recommend the use of Hardware Monitor or some other utility that will report the actual core temperatures of your procs after installation because utilities that just report the heatsink temperature will not warn you if your thermal compound isn't doing its job properly.

Go for it, it's really not al all difficult if you have the long long long long T-15 wrench (the Gearwrench T15x18" is about $20 on Amazon with shipping) and are absolutely sure to use a size 1 philips screwdriver on the teeny screws that hold the bottom of the memory card cage. Those screws strip easily and if they do you're going to be unhappy... it's worth spending the money to buy a new screwdriver for those babies, get a GOOD, precision size 1 with a short handle... $10 ought to do it.

Yeah i bought Double the artic silver and running ISTAT MENUS. So i hope thats as good as Hardware Monitor.

So, then with you and Harryb both of you are ruling out Lion and Little Snitch 2.4.2 to cause kernal panics. So as long as i apply well enough Artic Silver to covewr the cpu i should be fine and if the RAID is the problem as well then to go nop=rmal and figure out a way to make my SSD become a booter or just buy a RAID card and flash it. If this is possible of course. But can you post a link to Artic Silvers website showing how much thermal paste you should put on love to see that thx for all info cant wait for others to tell about there experience to have more info. Ecspeacially allthepoo to see if his KP's are from not his thermal paste and the way he applied it.

EDIT: Found the best and professional way to throughly apply thermal paste so will go that route. But from Few sources i have seen covering the cpu makesure its well coated should unsure that there is no KP's because of heat. Hopefully please correct me if i am wrong

Just for completeness I'd download Hardware Monitor too... it has a free trial mode and it does monitor the actual core temperatures--I don't know anything about iStat Menu but if it's only showing the heatsink temperatures it isn't good enough. http://www.bresink.com/osx/HardwareMonitor.html

Be worried about your thermal compound or heatsink attachment if the core temperatures go over 90C... they really shouldn't ever go that high. Mine peak in the low 80C range under full load for 6+ hours, no KPs and comfortably within the absolute maximum temperature range specified by Intel.

And you want to be careful with Artic Silver... it's almost all silver which means it is also conductive and if it gets on places where it's not supposed to be it can cause short circuits which at best will make the computer not work until the short circuit is cleared up. At worst a short circuit can fry your computer with sparks and smoke and lots of heartache. Don't let it get on the "bottom" side of your CPUs or slop over the sides. Be careful and you'll be fine.

Also thx for the advice so pretty much just apply the themal paste "Artic Silver" to the top of the cpu but be very catious, slow and mithodical. If this isnt enough for IStat Menus and Hardware Monitor does more i will buy that thx again.

IStat Menus Shows this: In Fariehiet

Also had a question about CPU's and having them in pairs. What is the reason to get a pair of cpus rather then two same type of individual. Is there a difference? Say if i Bough Two Individual X5355's SLAEG or a Pair X5355's wiith same serials. Is ther an advantage or disadvantage between the two

Those temps look very similar to what I get after my upgrade, except my fans are running 500 RPM, not 1800 RPM... (very quiet!).

The high fan speed means that you will probably find your heatsinks completely clogged with dust, nothing a bit of compressed air or a vacuum cleaner can't handle once you get the heatsinks out and then after you do your upgrade you'll enjoy both speed and quiet. BTW, it is very unwise to stick an ordinary vacuum nozzle inside your computer and use it to clean the chips in there--the high speed air movement and the plastic vacuum hose will generate static electricity which can kill or maim parts.

Tribal lore speaks of "matched pairs" of CPUs being "necessary" for the 1,1 Mac Pro but nobody is real clear as to what has to match. The common theme I've heard is that the spec code (stepping) needs to match, and this makes sense to me. (SLAEG is the Intel "spec code" for their G0 stepping in the PLGA771 package and is what I purchased, check the mac pro upgrade section of accelerate your macintosh where he has a nice link that decodes all of the spec codes into steppings). It makes sense because a "stepping" is a manufacturing process identifier that reflects some change that Intel made as the processor design matured. And that means that processors from different steppings *may* perform differently... some steppings indicate small changes to features, others might affect internal timing changes or power consumption or something else. But the message is that different spec codes (diifferent steppings) are actually slightly different versions of the processor.

But as far as I can read, if the two processors have the same spec code I think you should be good and should be able to buy from two different sources (no promises though, I don't know for sure!). That said, my x5355s were a pair "pulled from a working server" and I took that to mean that the two processors came from a single server box so they had worked together in the same box before. But they could just have well been pulled from two different single processor servers, I don't know. I just checked the spec code to make sure they were the same and haven't had any problems. There is always some risk buying used parts because you don't really know where they came from or how they've been handled. My processors could die tomorrow due to something that happened when they were pulled, or because they were making all kinds of errors and that's why the server ended up in the spare parts bin! (I hope not...).

You can still buy new x5355s for ~245USD each (EBay from China, so I'm not sure that's any more comforting)

Did I mention that hardware monitor has a free trial? You can compare it to iStat without having to spend any more money... iStat is probably just fine, I just don't know anything about it. And I have no relation to the maker of hardware monitor, I'm just a satisfied customer.

Great yeah thats what iam doing ill compare hardware monitor and ill clean my machine tonight now that you mention it. Also i am buy 2x X5355's hope fully i can get a pair but will do both SLAEG's if i cannot get a pair. that was my plan sound like its the best. I appreciate the time you r takinn to help me get some more insight into this.

Matched pairs are identifiable by the same serial number on each processors. Apple, Dell, HP etc who used the X5355/X5365 put them in originally in pairs so the chances are pretty good they will be a pair unless purchased from an outlet that sells lots of processors.

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Whilst it is desirable it is not essential to have matched pairs. And for what it is worth brand new processors could also fail at any time.

great just ordered mine should be here wed hopefully i will see no problems like you