Mac pro losing internal drives after GPU upgrade

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Mac pro losing internal drives after GPU upgrade

I've recently added a PC style 3GB graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660) to my early 2008 8 core mac pro.

Apart from living without the boot logo, this has worked very nicely...

But since then I've had some clicking/chirping noises, especially when running graphics intensive apps (e.g. Video editing, some 3D heavy games), and have subsequently lost one of my four internal drives (my iTunes media library), and another drive regularly 'ejects' during these periods.

Is this liable to just be drives failing, or possibly a psu issue, to do with powering this new card?

Has anyone else had issues running 4 internal drives, with a video card like this?

Any thoughts/suggestions would be welcome, thanks!

Posted on Apr 27, 2014 7:25 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 27, 2014 7:32 PM in response to Hammers69

Did you have to hack the power or use a six-pin cable onto an 8-pin input to get the graphics card to run?

If so, you may be over-drawing the 12 Volts and causing problems.

(12 Volts runs the spindle motors on desktop drives) (SSDs don't spin, so they don't need any 12 Volts).

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Answer 2

Hammers69 Author

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Apr 27, 2014 7:39 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I didn't hack anything (I don't think), but just used a six-to-eight-pin cable into the graphics card.

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Answer 3

Apr 27, 2014 7:51 PM in response to Hammers69

And why do you suppose the manufacturer decided to spend the money to put eight pins on their card instead of six?

Maybe because it draws more than the amount of power per cable that a 6-pin connector can supply? And maybe now with four rotating drives in the Bays there is not enough 12 Volt power to spin their motors?

How much power does this particular card require?

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Answer 4

Hammers69 Author

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Apr 27, 2014 7:59 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Beg your pardon, I've just checked again, and the card does just use a 6pin connector. Sorry got confused.

The card lists its minimum requirements as a 450W psu with min 24 amps on the +12V rail (based on i7 3.2 machine)

Does that narrow things down at all? For the record, with only 2 drives mounted at the moment, I still get the odd click from the machine when under some graphics load. Thanks for the replies.

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Answer 5

Apr 27, 2014 8:40 PM in response to Hammers69

If it just needs one six-pin, and you gave it what it specifies without any hacks, then your drive troubles are likely unrelated to the graphics card.

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Answer 6

Hammers69 Author

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Apr 27, 2014 9:42 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Thanks. From there it's a bit of guesswork I suppose. Given the age of the machine, and the coincidence of 2 drives having trouble, would you suspect the PSU next? I might start investigating a replacement, expensive though they are...

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Answer 7

Apr 27, 2014 10:14 PM in response to Hammers69

I would not suspect the Power supply unless there were more obvious probelms related to power.

I think you just had bad luck with the drives, but maybe it is getting hotter inside your Mac with the new card.

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Answer 8

Hammers69 Author

Level 1

13 points

Jun 22, 2015 7:27 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Well, I know it's been a while, but just adding a footnote as the problems continue:

I've lost a couple of drives in this machine in the meantime. And have taken the opportunity to get a new WD black as a boot drive in the process. I had thought that Bays 3 and 4 seemed most susceptible, so Installed this in Bay 1.

Sadly the issue is persisting to some degree and is definitely most prevalent during more intensive GPU activity. I've just also tried putting Bootcamp on a partition of this new drive, and with one game, Skyrim, it hung, and actually ejects the Bootcamp Drive while Windows is still running. Needless to say, that doesn't work too well...

I've also discovered a bad sensor on the LB and have had to use Mac Fans Control to keep the fans from going full-tilt. So maybe PSU, Logic Board, heat and not a lot of $ to experiment. Will just hobble along for now and see how it goes.

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Answer 9

Jun 22, 2015 7:37 PM in response to Hammers69

Any idea which sensor?

There is a rare problem that some users have seen where one or both of the black plastic pins on the NorthBridge chip snap, and its heatsink becomes loose.

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