Recently I had purchased a dual-CPU MacPro 4,1 (flashed to 5,1) to upgrade from my 2,1 running El Capitan. I had to have High Sierra in order to run my work's VMware tasks, and the 5,1 is capable of this. (Not, however, without the 6-core CPU's.) I'd bought a low-speed 4,1 single-CPU tray, cheaply, one that had been upgraded to a 6-core X5650 device. This was 'slow', at 2.66GHz, but honestly it did a fine job as it was. (This was for interim use while I collected upgrade parts, and for testing and as a backup.)
I, however, was determined to upgrade the dual-CPU card to the max, just as I had done its 2,1 predecessor. I bought two X5690's, these are 6-core 3.46GHz devices. Nothing better is available for a dual-CPU configuration. That was about $150 right there. For thermal reasons, though, the heat sinks are different on the dual-CPU 4,1 machines. There isn't enough room to fit two of the single-CPU sinks, so Apple spec'd de-lidded CPUs for the duals, and those are a bit hard to come by. They're also more expensive. But, you can de-lid them yourself. (The aftermarket attempts to try to fit lidded CPU's in these is pure butchery, and I want no part of it. Especially since they've done nothing to cure any thermal problems that were the reasons for using lidless CPU's to begin with.) I did this. Paranoid, though, I'd bought another X5650 to practice on, $6. Good thing I did, I managed to destroy it, two different ways, while de-lidding it. Having learned what NOT to do, though, meant that the de-lidding of the expensive X5690's went smoothly. I'm typing this on the newly-upgraded machine. 12 total 3.46 GHz Xeon cores; 24 hyperthreads. 48GB of 1,333 MHz DDR3 ECC DRAM. SSD for booting, terabyte spinny disks for data storage. Blu-ray and DVD/CD optical drives, both can burn. It should be good for several years of use. The 2,1 predecessor served me for 4 years, and only its inability to run my work VMware prompted the upgrade; everything else worked great. -- Jim _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
