2009 Mac Pro help with upgrade.

Mr.Mago · August 11, 2018

Hey! I just recovered,cleaned and turned on my 2009 Mac pro (4,1), updated the software and installed a couple of things to discover how well or poorly it aged. Surely not good. I bought it for 3.000$ and it has two Xeon E5520 processors, 6gb ddr3 and some crappy and useless nvidia card (I think it's the gt 120), I checked what socket it uses and it uses the lga 1366.

I need help finding compatible and powerful CPU's for this socket, also if I can install a modern GTX card on this pc, and if it's worth the money or not.

Sauron · August 11, 2018

Honestly for lga 1366 you're pretty close to the top, you can get a couple of x5650 xeons in there which are 6 core chips but don't expect massive performance improvements.

You can install a more modern card (as long as it fits) but a high end card will be held back by your cpus.

Ground · August 11, 2018

1 hour ago, Sauron said:

Honestly for lga 1366 you're pretty close to the top, you can get a couple of x5650 xeons in there which are 6 core chips but don't expect massive performance improvements.

You can install a more modern card (as long as it fits) but a high end card will be held back by your cpus.

E5520 is rock bottom.

If you are willing to update the EFI on the mac pro, it is possible to upgrade it all the way to either the X5690s (6x3.46 GHz x2), a pair of x5687s (4x3.6 GHz x2, cheaper) or x5675s (6x3.06 GHz x2, about the same as the x5687 but slower single core)

However, there are some problems with these mac pros. They were running their CPUs without lids for some odd reason; so you would either have to delid the soldered xeons (you can find a couple guides on youtube on doing it, if you go this route try some cheaper xeons first) or use washers (https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/4-1-processor-upgrade-install-help.1701420/#post-18710268). You can also find some overpriced already delidded xeons on ebay if you want.

Those xeons I listed should be able to keep up with a HD 7970/ r9 280X easily, above that its gonna be close at stock clocks. The PSU is a 980W unit and should be capable.

RAM upgrade is a no brainer, 16 GB in 2 GB DIMMs are really cheap on ebay. Alternatively, 8x4GB kits of ECC specified to work in the Mac Pro can be found for about 100$ on ebay, with 8x8 GB kits costing about twice that much.

Oh, and if you don't have an SSD yet get one.