new macpro question

labman · Post by **labman** » Mon Dec 05, 2011 11:03 am

We have a 2010 6core 3.33 macpro coming in and need to know which of the 4 hard drive bay slots run the coolest?

And I assume it is wise to stay with OSX 10.6.8 for use iwth DP 7.24?

Thanks for the input

Radiogal · Post by **Radiogal** » Tue Dec 06, 2011 12:40 pm

OSX 10.6.8 and DP 7.24 for sure.
It´s a great fast Mac Pro. DP has until now never crashed on it and I haven´t reached it´s limits yet

Donnow about the coolest HD slot. Should be 1 or 4.

Congrats to a great machine

labman · Post by **labman** » Tue Dec 06, 2011 12:48 pm

Radiogal wrote:OSX 10.6.8 and DP 7.24 for sure.
It´s a great fast Mac Pro. DP has until now never crashed on it and I haven´t reached it´s limits yet
Donnow about the coolest HD slot. Should be 1 or 4.

Congrats to a great machine

Thanks RG. What is the DP buffer size that usually run? Lots of VI's or just plugs and tracks???

Radiogal · Post by **Radiogal** » Tue Dec 06, 2011 12:58 pm

I normally use the highest buffer rate as I do not often record real time MIDI with VIs. When recording I monitor tru the mixing desk.
My usual projects have a large number of audio tracks (40+) that go straight to my desk. (PCIe 424) I use DAW plugins and outboard FX.
I also use East West PLAY and EZ Drummer etc from time to time.

Shooshie · Post by **Shooshie** » Tue Dec 06, 2011 9:10 pm

labman wrote:We have a 2010 6core 3.33 macpro coming in and need to know which of the 4 hard drive bay slots run the coolest?

Mine is a much earlier MacPro, but the basic ventilation system doesn't seem to be all that much different in regard to the drives. On mine, the first three drives are all running at 78.8 degrees F, and drive 4 is running at 80.6. That's with an ambient temperature of 64.4 degrees F. (it's cold outside, and we don't run much heat)

If that pattern remains consistent, then it would appear that the 4th bay runs slightly warmer than the rest. Interestingly, the internal drives are all running 10 to 15 degrees cooler than my external drives, which are located far from the computer. It's just a guess, but I'd say that temperature is not going to be an issue at all with any of the drive bays, unless you are in a log cabin out at Death Valley with no air conditioning.

shooshie

Phil O · Post by **Phil O** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 7:10 am

I don't know which bay runs the coolest. But I did discover that a drive in bay 3 shortens the range of my wi-fi reception. My second MacPro is in the fringe area of my wi-fi router, and for some reason I have to keep bay 3 free if I want a solid connection.

Phil

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 8:26 am

The G5 had such cooling issues that the MacPro design team paid careful attention to it. I don't know about the wifi issue.

HCMarkus · Post by **HCMarkus** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 9:19 am

I use this to keep tabs on my machine room-housed G5 "heater":

http://www.bresink.de/osx/TemperatureMonitor.html

The developer reports this freeware (which is a subset of its Hardware Monitor suite) works for all 2002-2011 Macs.

labman · Post by **labman** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 12:09 pm

One of the reasons I asked this question, was from seeing somewhere, that in slot 1 more of several folks hard drives were dying. Particularly SSDs.

macguy · Post by **macguy** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 12:23 pm

Never heard that!
Any links?

mikehalloran · Post by **mikehalloran** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 5:43 pm

labman wrote:One of the reasons I asked this question, was from seeing somewhere, that in slot 1 more of several folks hard drives were dying. Particularly SSDs.

Heard that about the G5 but not the MacPro. With SSDs running even cooler, I'd be surprised if that was true.

With the new iMacs, Apple has a new, proprietary cooling and monitoring system for the hard drive bay. It is disconnected if running SSDs in that position.

labman · Post by **labman** » Thu Dec 08, 2011 6:34 am

here are a few of the quotes I had cut out whilst researching. Of ocurse we dont know how savvy the folks are who posted this. But it begged me ask my original question. Also of note. We love the OWC SSDs here.

=========================
Which bay are you putting them in? Both of mine failed whilst in bay one. I now have it the replacement in bay 4.. This, in theory, allowed more air to be drawn into the machine via the front fan which sits directly in front of that bay. This is the fan that seems to gather the most dust.

±=========================

2 SSD's died within 2 months?!?!
I got a new 2010 2.8 Quad in August, and used a OWC Mercury SSD as the boot drive. It died within a month. Got a replacement, and it died today. That's 2 SSD's dieing within a month.

First question, is it something I'm doing? I have 2 other WD Caviar Black drives for media. My usage of the SSD only involves running apps, music ones such as Logic, and then reading and writing media to the 2 WD Caviar drives, so I would think the "stress" on the SSD is optimized and minimal. The thing has always had 90% capacity left. I cannot figure out if it's my fault??? I use the program Onyx frequently and it's Cleaning-System option before I shutdown, is that something that could possibly mess with the SSD? Just a wild guess because I'm completely at a loss here...

Second question, is there something wrong with my mac pro board that could be causing my SSD to drive twice within 2 months?

=========================

kgdrum · Post by **kgdrum** » Thu Dec 08, 2011 7:47 am

maybe the problem is the SSD's ?
I think it's too soon to trust SSD's
Maybe they will be amazing 1 or 2 generations from now and potentially they are where things will most likely go but it is a very new technology.

labman · Post by **labman** » Thu Dec 08, 2011 8:24 am

kgdrum wrote:maybe the problem is the SSD's ?
I think it's too soon to trust SSD's
Maybe they will be amazing 1 or 2 generations from now and potentially they are where things will most likely go but it is a very new technology.

yup. could be right!

lgonz · Post by **lgonz** » Thu Dec 08, 2011 5:42 pm

Got 3 ssd (only for 2 months) 2 owc's and 1 Intel, so far so good. Actually, HUGE difference. My Macpro feels so much faster now, all my sample libraries load real fast, no complains here...but crossing fingers they don't die on me a month from now. Good thing about OWC is that they have a 3 year warranty on their SSDs.

Luis Gonzalez

MOTUnation.com