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Post by aquamac on Dec 25, 2009 6:58:47 GMT
Keep at it spanky, you are at the worst stage really. If you can get through that, then it will start smoothing out eventually. PS with the above processor heatsink, I have been running @ 4.2 GHz for 3 weeks without issue, if you were still undecided as to which cooler to get!
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Post by derpuma on Dec 25, 2009 9:38:12 GMT
Aquamac, I can confirm that the megalem cooler is top. For my Xeon 3520 also enough cooling for all day 4,2 GHz withount stability probs...
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Post by spanky on Dec 25, 2009 18:24:53 GMT
Cheers aqua, I really hit a low last night. It was 4am on Christmas Eve and I had bloodied hands, a room littered in computer parts everywhere, a lung full of three year old dust and metal shavings. All after I'd struggled to get my orders through on the 23rd in time for delivery yesterday and had to shout at my bank for stopping payments due to fraud protection (for the third time this month) and then one of the guaranteed deliveries didn't even arrive. It felt a bit like all that could go wrong did go wrong!
Nice OC! I'm really hoping to hit 4GHz - the prospects of hitting that are what convinced me to build a hackintosh. I'm trying to keep my expectations low right now so I'm just praying I can hit 4 24x7 stable. Anything more is a bonus. I've only heard good things about that cooler but I haven't installed it yet. I don't really want to have to keep moving it around while I'm hacking the case up.
I'm away at family for today and tomorrow so can't do anything more until Sunday at the earliest. I'd really like to avoid having to cut out the back. I was planning on building a back plane adapter type thing using usb sockets, ethernet sockets and the like. There's less space back there than I was hoping though and it looks like the optical cable couplers and 90 degree bends I've got won't fit there. I'd really hate to lose optical audio out but I guess there's no real problem with that.
In terms of the internal firewire 800, I was having a look at a PCI card in Maplins yesterday and I'm wondering if it might be possible to buy a cheapish PCI board here and bend the sockets 90 degrees and then use a bit of aluminium to cover the hole. I haven't been able to find that board with an internal Firewire 800 socket anywhere other than the US site and that looks insanely expensive for what it is.
I'd really like to try to keep this build as stock as possible so that it feels like my old Mac Pro. Part of the downer last night was seeing the machine that has been my favourite to ever own lying around in pieces. The cat was also upset that she couldn't sleep on it so I need to get things up and running!
When I get back I'll get straight to work with the SATA cables and the front panel and then I'll look into mounting the PSU properly - annoyingly it uses a non standard kettle lead, apparently some 1kw PSUs use different connectors. Hopefully Maplins will be open on Sunday and hopefully they'll have the different connector needed.
I'm still not entirely sure on the fans. I've heard great things about the Scythe Kama PWMs and really want PWM fans since my board supports four of them but the Mac Pros existing fans can take far deeper ones so maybe I should look for some other ones. I've got a few days at least since no order from anywhere is going to be dispatched until Tuesday now anyway.
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Post by aquamac on Dec 25, 2009 20:46:20 GMT
Spanky, Good post - I been there many times believe me. Getting that top bracket out I cut my hand quite badly and splashed blood all over a nearby cream sofa. That went down well I can tell you. Your family can become modders widows /ers for a while.
I had the same problem as you and had ordered 2 120mm fans that never came due to snow - they were due last Monday and I was having them delivered to work so I won't be seeing them for a while (4th Jan - rats).
Yeah, I noticed everyone seems to have stopped selling the Belkin FW 800 PCIe card, strange.
Power management works with 3 pin fans too, and still shows RPM in the bios, thought that may be helpful info on both P6T6 & P6T7 boards.
I have been looking around for a duff Mac Pro motherboard to cut off the back connectors but have not yet found one.
If you need any other info give a shout.
By the way, I like the avatar, I guess you are boldly going where only a few have gone!
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Post by spanky on Dec 26, 2009 15:35:29 GMT
Ouch, I don't envy you with the sofa blood mess. My fiancée keeps going on about wanting to get new cream fabric sofas to replace the black leather ones we've got now. I'm trying to dissuade her as much as possible though, partly because I wouldn't trust myself with it and would rather avoid future arguments! I'm itching to get back home now to do some more work. Now that the evil bracket bit is gone it should start coming together a lot faster. The destruction part of the mod should now largely be over with only the nice construction part ahead. I'm not sure how much luck you'll have with a faulty Mac Pro motherboard since the rear section's quite large. I'll have a look at it when I get home and can get you a photo of the rear section of it if you like. I'd really like to try to build a kind of adapter that can be stuck to the back and replicate all of the normal ports with cables to plug into the motherboard. This should be doable with usb, ethernet, firewire (if I can find firewire 400 and 800 sockets) and probably analogue audio although unless I can find far more compact optical audio connectors then that'll have to go. Ha yeah, I admit, I'm a big fan of Trek. Mind you, I like your avatar too and I'm a big fan of whoever that is too.  Shame avatars are limited to only 100px! |
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Post by spanky on Dec 27, 2009 13:49:55 GMT
Made some good progress now. I've got the front panel all wired up apart from firewire and audio. I still need to solder the usb part of it because I wanted to make sure it was the right way round first. I've got the first drive sled working now too and have wired up the second one (not tested yet though). I'm having some hassles getting OS X up and running though. I managed to get a hard drive with the Snow Leopard install disk restored to it and with myHack installed on it to boot up to installation however now I can't replicate that for some reason. I'm getting the old "Still waiting for root device" error even though I'm pretty sure I haven't changed anything. I couldn't get Empire EFI to work at all last night and got the same error. I don't know why this USB drive will no longer boot though.  |
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Post by spanky on Dec 27, 2009 18:55:05 GMT
Woo! Success, well kind of. I've now got 10.6 running off of my Mac Pro hard drive in the hackintosh. For some reason I have to use a second HD to boot off with Chameleon on since it's simply not detected on the MP drive. No biggie really since I should be getting a new drive delivered in the next few days onto which I'll do a fresh install. Seeing all my stuff safe and sound and having the machine booting really makes a difference. Now to finish off the case modifications.  |
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Post by spanky on Dec 29, 2009 4:51:23 GMT
Woo, made some good progress now! I've got most of it put back together now although I still need the new fans and hdd. I also need some SATA cables for the optical bay and I've got no idea how I'm going to get all those cables behind the optical bay so that the drive sled slides in ok.
I'm going to have to put my rear panel work and power connector on hold for a while since my soldering iron seems to have failed and I don't have the time for it all.
Two questions though, maybe you can help me with them:
1. How on Earth can one get the memory cover back on. I realise I need to cut some of it out but I really don't get how I'll be able to get it back in, especially when I have the Megahalems on there.
2. OS X is now mostly working. I haven't got audio out yet but that's something I can work on. However one thing that I'm not sure about is that my second 4870 spins up to maximum speed once hitting OS X. Any ideas?
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Post by aquamac on Dec 29, 2009 7:06:33 GMT
You are going to have to perform some pretty extensive surgery on the ram cage if using the megahalems CPU cooler! I have not tried one of these with a ram cage but the bar across the back of the ram cage is going to have to go for sure and I suspect some of the floor of the ram cage too. Hopefully it does not interfere with the top of the ram cage. I am pretty sketchy on ATI hackie cards, but unless a graphics card is initialised, then the fan will not slow down. This will not be bios controlled where 2 cards are used and the second card is controlled by software eg the drivers that initialise the card in the operating system. So what you are saying is that you have 2 cards in there. What method are you using to work the first card? Netkas has spent some time on ATI cards and has various methods to get them up and running, try this: rapidshare.com/files/327386472/Enabler_for_Nvidia_and_multiple_ATI_cards.pkg.zip |
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Post by spanky on Dec 29, 2009 13:58:36 GMT
I've just finished doing some major surgery on the ram cage just to get it to fit over my board and Intel cooler. The ram slots are under the lower left bracket so that had to go, the lower right bracket was in the way of the board's extra power connector and the end of the heat pipe from the southbridge (I think), the top lip (by the graphics cards) had to be trimmed down by a centimetre or so due to the memory slots on the left and the southbridge above the CPU cooler and I trimmed down the bottom lip by a fair chunk so as to fit easier around the cooler. I think the Megahalems shouldn't be too much of an issue now (touches wood) because so much of the metal work has already gone. I may have to mount them sideways though but maybe not.
Unfortunately I've now lose the rear exhaust fan housing since it won't mount in and so don't have that nice bit of gray plastic there. The only alternative I see is to hack away at the housing and then glue it on to the ram cage. How did you mount the rear exhaust fan? Also, for the front fans, how did you mount yours there since it looks like the rubber fan holdery bits used on the Apple fans will destroy when I try to remove them (they did for the fan in the PSU area).
Cheers for the link, I'll have a look at that when I'm ready to boot into OS X. I was hoping the 4870s would 'just work' since they're essentially the same as Apple's cards (flashed). I know I've seen others have had dual 4870s working so it should be doable.
I'm actually beginning to run out of things I can do now. I can try to modify the plastic on the ram cage and if I can find a working soldering iron then I may be able to fix up the power socket and make a small enough usb extender to go out the back. I'm really hoping the extra stuff I need (fans, HDD and 1m long SATA cables) will arrive tomorrow as promised so that I can finish it up (for now). The rear sockets are going to have to wait for another day. I've got optical, audio and ethernet extensions going out the back and will hopefully have a usb one too. I need to get this up and running and get my office back to working order pronto so stuff out the back can be hidden for now.
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Post by blackknight on Dec 29, 2009 21:42:28 GMT
Spanky, you also need to get some pics up so we can see where you are, lol. Seriously, we'd love to get an idea of how it looks. Glad to hear of your progress.
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Post by spanky on Dec 29, 2009 22:21:05 GMT
I'm taking loads of pics but I do all my photo management with my main machine, which is the one I'm working on.
I had another go at soldering in the power socket but to no avail. I've buggered up the Apple socket so need to replace the pins with a standard one. Although the PSU I'm using is really nice, I really wish they hadn't used this stupid UPS power cable. It is completely not needed since the Mac Pro's PSU was 1KW and didn't need a centimetre thick cable!
For now I'm going to have to leave the rear looking pretty ugly. It doesn't really matter I guess since I never see it but I wanted to get it done now - I know what I'm like, if I get used to it I'm likely to just leave it. I'm going to have a quick go now at getting the front panel's headphone jack to work. The rest of the stuff I need to finish up should arrive tomorrow so then I can get it packed up and move on to getting the system set up just right and get it overclocked.
Blackknight, how did you attach your fans when replacing the Apple ones? The plastic gromits holding the Apple fans in are likely to break when I take them out and I don't think there's a way to screw them.
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Post by blackknight on Dec 30, 2009 5:35:31 GMT
I used some 3M double-sided tape (amazing stuff as it is very strong) and just cut four small squares and stuck them on the fan, then pressed the fan into the shroud. You could also use regular fan screws or buy some more of those grommets if you want, but the screws cause the fans to send vibrations to the shroud which is not secured very well and the grommets are very difficult to get to when installing a fan. The double-sided tape is pretty cheap and I use it for just about everything. I have a Media Center Remote receiver that I installed inside my case above the DVD drives and just used that tape to stick it to the top of the case. Has been there for months now without detaching.
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Post by spanky on Dec 30, 2009 8:40:25 GMT
Haha, I know exactly the stuff you mean and have been using it to hold my PSU in place. Insanely strong stuff! I had a feeling I'd have to resort to it again.
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Post by spanky on Dec 30, 2009 16:48:06 GMT
Ok, I am *not* impressed. Both Royal Mail and DHL have failed to deliver today. DHL delayed sending the package on simply because "there was a delay" and Royal Mail special delivery reckoned there were delays due to the weather. Next day delivery, my left bumcheek.
I'm going to try to finish up as best I can now though and have it all ready for the fans tomorrow. So I want to fit the megahalems really. Only problem is, I don't have a 120mm fan to go on them apart from the Apple fans and I can't get them to spin up. +5v ground ground +5v didn't work for me alas and neither did having on of the end pins on 12v.
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