Mac Pro 4,1 GPU Upgrade/NVME

[rfomlover]

Hello everyone, just picked up a 4,1 on eBay and waiting for it to come in. It can run up to El Capitan natively which will probably be fine for the forseeable future. I am planning on running Logic X and Premier on it. It has the Quad Core Xeon @ 2.66Ghz 8GB DDR3 and a GeForce 120. Being an avid PC building enthusiast, I have several relevant GPUs laying around. I was planning on putting my 1050 Ti in there so that I could use all 3 of my moniotrs at 1440p 144Hz. I saw there were some experimental drivers out but cant seem to find anything more official. Has anyone seen this? I also have a gtx 970 that is a bit older and can serve the same purpose that might be better supported. Also, I have not yet researched, but can this machine support nVME drives via PCI-E? I have one of those PCI-E drives laying around that I was using in a gaming PC that would probably greatly improve the performance. Pretty excited to get an Intel machine to replace my now broken PMG5 quad. Thanks for any tips!

 

[iggibar]

I tried this on my 4.1. Issue is that nVME requires PCIe-3 to run at specified speeds. The Mac Pro 4.1 has PCIe 2 slots. While you can easily buy adapters to make it work, a straight connection from PCIe-2 to your nVME blade will cause a bottleneck in your nVME blade's speed. You will need to a PCIe adapter card that converts a PCIe 2 x 8 slot into a PCIe 3 x 4 in order to use the nVME card at PCIe-3 speeds.

I have 3 Mac Pros, and I didn't think all of this a good move since I use this Mac Pro for handling media, and just didn't trust it. If it were a computer that I used daily for small stuff, I probably would have kept the PCIe setup, but I switched back to the regular SATA SSD Raid setup.

 

[rfomlover]

I tried this on my 4.1. Issue is that nVME requires PCIe-3 to run at specified speeds. The Mac Pro 4.1 has PCIe 2 slots. While you can easily buy adapters to make it work, a straight connection from PCIe-2 to your nVME blade will cause a bottleneck in your nVME blade's speed. You will need to a PCIe adapter card that converts a PCIe 2 x 8 slot into a PCIe 3 x 4 in order to use the nVME card at PCIe-3 speeds.

I have 3 Mac Pros, and I didn't think all of this a good move since I use this Mac Pro for handling media, and just didn't trust it. If it were a computer that I used daily for small stuff, I probably would have kept the PCIe setup, but I switched back to the regular SATA SSD Raid setup.

Ok cool thanks! I am reading that the 2009 and the 2010 share the same motherboard and doing a 5,1 flash allows you to do more in terms of hardware and software support which is awesome! Definitely will be doing that, since it looks like the 4,1 firmware does not support booting from nVME blades anyway, also it opens up the ability to install a 6 core CPU and natively run Mojave. Did not realize what I score this Pro was . I might just end up using a 2.5" SATA SSD then as it will be leaps and bounds better than whatever mechanical drive is in there. I primarily wanted to use this for video editing now instead of my gaming PC, as my 6700k and GTX 1070 choke with 4K footage. I am not expecting this to be perfect, but with a 6 core, I am expecting to have a better experience. I got this Pro for $200 shipped so I definitely have a lot of room to upgrade as far as cost of entry, especially now that I read about the 5,1 flash.

 

[jasongoldworthy]

I have a Mac Pro and I can say go with the NVMe pcie adapter

but make sure you have upgraded the firmware from 4,1 to a 5,1

I was getting read and write speeds of over 1100mbs


so was way faster than a sata SSD


plus you can then natively run Mojave on there as well.

just make sure you have a GPU other than Nvidia and you will be ok

 

[rfomlover]

I have a Mac Pro and I can say go with the NVMe pcie adapter

but make sure you have upgraded the firmware from 4,1 to a 5,1

I was getting read and write speeds of over 1100mbs


so was way faster than a sata SSD


plus you can then natively run Mojave on there as well.

just make sure you have a GPU other than Nvidia and you will be ok

I was looking at the RX 560 since it is so cheap new and it appears that Apple supports it out of the box since it is "Metal" Capable.

 

[jasongoldworthy]

yes it will work the only issue there is you won't get a boot screen

but make sure you update the firmware from 4,1 to 5,1 first with the original GPU

you could even get a dual processor tray for the 4,1 and install two 6 Core CPU's in there

I did it and 128GB ram and the machine was faster than my current iMac,

 

[iggibar]

You're getting 1100MB/s on an NVMe blade running on a PCIe 3 adapter? That sounds like something isn't set up right.
A Mac Pro 5.1 (or 4.1 on 5.1 firmware) should net ~2000MB/s read/write speeds running even the cheapest NVMe blade on a PCIe adapter.

Even my RAID0 setup is much faster than that at ~1600MB/s.

 

[jasongoldworthy]

hi iggibar thanks for the reply

I can honestly say I dunno what's causing it but ive tried 2 different blade NVME drives and the current one im using is the fastest so far,

I originally had the pioneer m.2 pcie gen 3 x4 512GB one
then I swopped it over to the following one addlink S70 512GB nvme pcie gen 3 x4

I dunno if that's why the brand may be holding it back but

its working and boots in 2 seconds for me

 

[rfomlover]

yes it will work the only issue there is you won't get a boot screen

but make sure you update the firmware from 4,1 to 5,1 first with the original GPU

you could even get a dual processor tray for the 4,1 and install two 6 Core CPU's in there

I did it and 128GB ram and the machine was faster than my current iMac,

So I wouldnt get a boot screen ever? Or I have to update the firmware with the GT 120 first, then I would get a boot screen from then on with the RX 560? It is going to be here in just a couple days so pretty excited. Do you need CPU trays or can you just pop a new CPU in there like the "trash can" Mac Pros? I am sure if it is a proprietary daughter board thing, it will probably cost more than a run of the mill ebay Xeon.

 

[iggibar]

To be honest, not getting the boot screen isn't really a big issue. Instead of the boot logo, you will go straight to the login screen depending on how you have your login set up. You have to update the firmware with the GT120. After the update, you can switch cards.

As for the CPUs, it depends. You can buy a CPU tray that has already been upgraded through "tray swapping" service on many companies on eBay, but it can be done on your own. If your Mac Pro has only 1 processor, you can only upgrade to a mac of 6 cores. If your CPU tray has 2 processors(2 heat sinks), you can upgrade to a max of 12 cores.
Updating the CPUs is not that straight forward as the trash can Mac Pro. The Xeons typically found on the new/used market come standard with a 'lid' sealing the CPU. The Mac Pro does not use a standard lid CPU, so you are left with the options below(from easiest to hardest):
1. Find a used CPU that already had the lid removed(expensive).
2. Buy a CPU with a lid a remove the lid yourself(cheap but easy to damage the CPU).
3. Buy a CPU with a lid and raise the heat sink to make up for the extra tolerance(cheap, but can cause damage to the CPU tray if you don't create enough room for the heat sink and tighten it too much to the point the CPU tray cracks).

I did option 3, and have a thread I posted on here somewhere showing the steps involved.

 

[rfomlover]

Ok awesome thanks. Does any rx560 work from experience? I saw a guide says that the msi gaming one is supported and that any rx 560 “may” work.

 

[rfomlover]

It came in and its awesome! Already ordered an SSD, 16GB ram X5680 and RX 580, updated it to 5,1 immediately.