macpro build - day 0
May 12, 2020
Now that we now what we’re going to try to do here and why, let’s formulate some kind of plan for this project.
the plan #
I’m going to start with the lowest spec 2 processor tray. I might have been able to find a better deal on a single processor machine and then source a dual proc CPU tray, but from a cursory search of ebay and craigslist, that might take a while, and I’m a little concerned about extra shipping cycles and part availability. Ultimately, I landed on:
Apple Mac Pro 5,1 MC561LL/A (2010) 8 Core/16GB/1TB/ ATI Radeon 5770
(Note that the 8 Core specification spells out two quad core CPUs)
More details around that particular Mac available here.
Most of those specs are stock - that is the GPU that shipped with that machine in 2010, which is important for getting the bootscreen and will be a useful thing to keep around for troubleshooting, and a 1 TB 7200 RPM rotating drive also could well be original. The RAM isn’t stock (the original machine shipped with six 1 GB DIMMs), but that’s a super common upgrade, and I don’t imagine we’ll need the factory RAM for anything.
From the listing, the machine is running High Sierra. Unclear which firmware it will ship with.
What’s the plan?
There are a few interlocking steps here. To upgrade from High Sierra to Mojave, I’ll need a metal capable graphics card. Switching to a metal capable graphics card probably means giving up the boot screen (there are flashed firmware cards, and folks who offer firmware flashing as a service, but I don’t think it’s worth it for my use case). I’ll likely end up running OpenCore anyway to allow me to update to Catalina with hardware acceleration and Thunderbolt 3 support, so the boot screen isn’t a big loss.
So I need a metal capable GPU. I’ve gone back and forth a bit, trying to decide between the 5700 XT and the Radeon VII. The 5700 XT is a newer Navi card, with some significant benefits to power draw and cooling. They’re both 7nm processes, but the Radeon VII is much more power hungry. To the Radeon VII’s credit, it appears to benchmark better than the 5700 XT in several performance characteristics, and, most importantly, is supported in both Mojave and Catalina (the 5700XT requires a relatively new version of Catalina). Both would likely require modifying my power supply. In the end, I landed on the Radeon VII for the slightly increased flexibility, slightly better performance and slightly better price. I will need an interim card, a card that runs in both High Sierra and Mojave so that I can perform the litany of firmware updates and the crucial update from High Sierra to Mojave. It will also take some time to get the parts required for the power supply mod, so I’ll be using an MSI RX 580 Armor 8G OC with a dual mini 6 pin to 8 pin power adapter in the interim.
I’ll keep the 1 TB HDD on High Sierra so that I can use the original 5770 (once I upgrade to Mojave, the 5770 won’t be able to boot the OS). The plan starts to look like:
- Document and benchmark the initial system
- Run High Sierra firmware updates, wipe 1 TB HDD and clean install High Sierra
- Install Radeon RX 580. Power the card with a dual mini 6 pin to single 8 pin adapter.
- Run all firmware updates bundled in the Mojave installer. This will bring the
machine’s firmware to
144.0.0.0.0, and crucially adds the ability to boot off of NVMe drives. - Install PCIe NVMe bifurcation Riser and boot NVMe drive in slot 2
- Install Mojave to NVMe drive. Remove 1 TB HDD, store in safe place.
- Flash Titan Ridge thunderbolt 3 card
- Install Thunderbolt 3 card
- Upgrade CPUs
- Upgrade memory
- Perform pixlas mod on power supply
- Install Radeon VII
- Upgrade optical drive to Blu-ray drive
- Install Windows 10 (to either SATA SSD or, if I’ve installed OpenCore, to the second NVMe drive)
componentry #
This will leave me with a machine that looks like (from the bottom of the box up):
| Location | Component |
|---|---|
| CPU Tray | 2 x Xeon 5690 (32 nm 6 core, 12 thread 3.46-3.73 GHz processors) |
| Memory Slots | 96 gigabytes (6 x 16) DDR3 ECC memory at 1333 MHz |
| PCIe Slot 1 | Radeon VII |
| PCIe Slot 2 | Syba I/O Crest SI-PEX40129 Dual M.2 NVMe Bifurcation Riser |
| Syba Slot 1 | 1 TB Samsung 970 Evo NVMe (macOS boot drive) |
| Syba Slot 2 | 1 TB Samsung 970 Evo NVMe (Windows 10) |
| PCIe Slot 3 | Sonnet Allegro USB-c 4 port PCIe card |
| PCIe Slot 4 | Gigabyte GC-Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 card |
| Drive Bay 1 | 8 TB Seagate HDD (Time Machine, EFI host for OpenCore) |
| Drive Bay 2 | 3 TB WD Red HDD (Mac rotational storage) |
| Drive Bay 3 | 3 TB WD Red HDD (Windows rotational storage) |
| Drive Bay 4 | 3 TB WD Red HDD (Vanilla Mojave bootable snapshot, for OpenCore troubleshooting) |
| Optical Drive Bay 2 | Empty |
| Optical Drive Bay 1 | LG WH16NS60 16x Internal Blu-ray BDXL M-Disc Drive (flashed for UHD rips) |
references #
The Definitive Classic Mac Pro Upgrade Guide - just an outstanding resource. Lots of information, lots of links. This single post provides almost all of required info for this project.
MacRumors thread, Thunderbolt 3 - ever evolving, source of some great information about flashing the Titan Ridge for use in the cMP 5,1
OpenCore on Legacy Apple Hardware - another fantastically maintained wiki post. Improved by leaps and bounds even as I’m writing this up.
Thunderbolt Mac Pro Early 2009 - good summation of the flashing process, with some very useful pictures and links
Flashing for 4k UHD - not cMP 5,1 specific, but great information on flashing the Blu-ray drive for 4k UHD rips
Gigabyte designare flashing - the micro guides provide a ton of useful background information, and tend to be a little more technical in their explanations. Useful for trying to understand why some steps are required.