So, I have a Mac Pro (early 2008) with an Nvidia Quadro 5600 video card. While
it has reasonable airflow, the Mac Pro itself is heavy, and it was behind a
monitor on a table that was hard to easily get at it. So I did not blow out
the dust often and never really in the video cards (also has an ATI 2600 card).
Lately I have been having occasional glitches when the card gets pushed hard,
and more likely when the room is warm than cold. I've been thinking that I
should take the computer, blow all the dust out, as well as off (out of) the
video card. But I've been busy -- real busy -- the last week or two and did
not get to it, even when I thought I should make time.
Well, yesterday I was down in my basement working on some stuff (moving tables
from an office to the man-cave :-) ). I came back up and the Mac Pro was off.
I did not remember putting it to sleep and it is not set to go to sleep
automatically. (Though I do put it to sleep manually, the last few months,
when I am away for a longer period). The light [power led] was on like it was
sleeping, but not pulsing. The monitors (Apple monitors) were sleeping. I
tried to wake it up. No go. Finally I got all the cables disconnected and
took it in to the kitchen, and opened the side. A thin layer of dust but not
as bad as I have seen some computers. I took it out back on the porch and my
cans of compressed air as well, and gave it 10 mins of blowing in every
conceivable nook and cranny to get all the dust out.
Still no go when trying to boot. You could hear some sort of relay or
something go when you plugged it in, and see the fan on the Nvidia card try to
move, but it would not start. I took the card out and blue out more dust from
it. Then I saw the internal ducts in front of the heat sink were basically
totally clogged. I got it all blown out. The ATI card as well. Put it all
back together. Nothing. Replaced the MB battery (CR2032). No go. Finally I
removed ALL PCI-E cards and trued, and it would start up. (No video obviously
so I quit the startup after showing it would start). So I tried each card one
at a time. The ATI worked. The Nvidia not. :-( It was the main driver of
my 30 screens. I've ordered an ATI 5770 Radeon overnight delivery to replace
the Nvidia, but the cost could have been avoided if I had just dusted it out
and cleaned out the video card once in a while. The Nvidia 5770 should be a
lot faster and get around an OpenGL Nvdidia bug that makes 1/2 the websites out
there crash the WebProcess stuff in Safari, but with overnight delivery and one
third party display-port-DVI adapter, it was almost $290 -- money I did not
need to spend if I had done a better job keeping it clean.
Chad
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