NVidia GTX 780 in a Mac Pro?

Macrumors forum, EVGA makes Mac Edition GTX 680 w 2 x 6-pin piwer $599

See www.barefeats.com for test results

Windows will yse anything you can supply power to.

But having ATI & NVIDIAmay not even if you use add'l power PSU

"Itr depends" on how closely non-Mac specific cards follow the reference design.

Drivers for OS X started showing up and well they do have GTXM in iMac serious of course.

570's work and had better CUDA driver support, I don't know what for games which is why Barefeats.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=1579603

10.9 Titan support

GTX 680 4GIG model and power requirements (MP 4.1)?

y MacVidCard

Did you have any luck with this? Im in the same boat... Ive done plenty of research on google but there is no definitive 'yes' and 'this is how you do it' which is frustrating for an ameteur like me. Im confident with my abilities but obviously not as much as some of the folks currently toying with the 780 at this priliminary stage.

Can anyone provide a step by step of how you would install the GPU?

Thanks

It seems the warranty is no longer valid after you do any kind of power modification to Apple hardware, so I am not recommending this merely sharing some knowledge. I spent some time researching and testing solutions before I settled on the following to get the GTX 780 running in both OSX 10.8.4 and Windows 7 64 on a 2010 Mac Pro.

Avoid 6-8 pin adapters these are a bad fix, you might get enough power to start the machine but as soon as you start any serious use of the GPU the power supply will shut off because of the demand for more power than it can safely provide.

WARNING if you don't understand how this is done then don't attempt to do it. Anyone who understands how the power system operates should have no problem understanding and performing this.

Many people believe an external supply is the only solution, however if you are only adding one card then there is a simple solution if you can bare a small compromise.

I don't really use optical drives and when I need to I have external usb versions. So i removed the optical drive and made a wiring harness which would tap off the required rails from the optical drive power cable. This harness feeds the 6-pin input connector on the GTX 780. The two 6-pin cables from the Mac Pro backplane then feed the dual 6-pin to 8-pin adapter which ships with the GTX 780 which in turn plugs into the 8-pin connector on the GTX 780.

Once this is done the power requirements don't seem to exceed the Mac Pro power supply limits and all those CUDA cores can get busy. The fan noise is low even when pushed, the temperature has not exceeded what I would expect and the performance increase is excellent.

Of course anyone wanting an SLI based power solution will probably need to add a power supply, of the research I did the internal variants seemed the way to go, having a much cleaner and safer install.

Hope this helps, after spending so much time on this, it seemed worth writing down.....

Cheers

John

Hi John,

I apologise for bringing this thread back to life months later but I wonder if you can tell me if you need to provide the 6pin connector with 2 sata power connectors (from both optical drive bays?) Or just 1? Amazon seems to sell a dual sata power to 6pin. Did you use a single sata to 6pin or a dual sata to 6pin? I ready to buy a 780 for my 2009 mac pro and this info would really help. Many thanks, JR

12Volt power is what those graphics cards are hungry for.

A single 4-pin Molex for an Optical Drive has only ONE 12Volt power wire, typically 18-gauge wire. One Molex connector can not power an 6-pin or 8-pin aux cable (with three or four power wires) all by itself.

although there are 15 wires in the SATA power connector, there is only about the same amount of 12Volt power there (many of those other leads are for "live" plugging).

So if I understand correctly you draw the power for the 6pin socket on the 780 from two optical molexes (via an adaptor cable) and the power for the 8pin socket from the X2 6pin cables (via a 2X 6pin to 8pin adaptor) present on the PCI ? in short - is this how one connects a 780 without external power in a Mac Pro? Is it possible? Thanks

DoctorStranger-

My post above exhausts my knowledge on the subject.

You should look to the hobbyist sites where folks have actually performed this surgery (and had it work) for more detailed advice than I can give.

Hi Doc,

I made a cable myself which connects just one of the optical drive Molex connectors to the 6-pin input on the 780. You are correct with the 8-pin, that gets its feed from the motherboard via a dual 6-pin to 8-pin cable which I think is provided with the 780.

The cable I made is 16 gauge with some additional heat shrink able sleeving.

Apart from the missing boot screen (which does not bother me) the card is working fine, I have been rendering for many weeks with no heat issues.

Hope that helps :-)

Cheers

John

That or the 450W PSU route with one in the optical bay or external, but those are cable mess when done. Necessary if you have a 5770 say and want to keep it and to have boot screen and your 780 is not.

Hi John,

Thank you kindly for the info. Very much appreciate it. If you have the time I'd love to see an image of the cable you made so I can replicate it. But understand if you are too busy. I will hit amazon to see if I can pick up a retail version.

Thanks again,

J

Do some Google searches for that information. Some of the new cards will work, while others will not because Mountain Lion does not have drivers for them.

The 7970 works. The GTX-650s to GTX 680s work. And, the Titan models work.