a1exus Posted April 7, 2010 Share Posted April 7, 2010 Hello, I just purchased (what i think is very first generation of Mac Pro) which is 1,1 from a friend, he claims that computer gets overheated really easy but as a work around he used some 3rd party utility to increase RPMs and that help in order to keep it running. I just opened it (it was very dusty inside), I tried to clean it as much as I could, but I think back fan is about to die, when I turn computer on it usually won't even spin up unless I help it by manually spin it a little bit and then it's starts spinning no problem. I obviously don't want to worry about that so I'm looking to get another fan to replace this one. however this isn't the only problem with the computer... the other issue with it is that computer has ATI 3870 and it was also very dirty around fan area and I've tried to clean it as much as I could as well, but even after all that when I turn computer on, that fan on video card makes awfully a lot of noise and I either need to replace fan or card itself. can you suggest what I should do? maybe its an old card and I should just forget about it and get myself something nicer/faster ? or this is "ok" and i should just somehow magically fix that fan (which I'm not so sure how to do it yet) Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/214998-mac-pro-11-ati-3870-lot-of-noise/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
bonestonne Posted April 12, 2010 Share Posted April 12, 2010 Take that bad boy outside with a few cans of compressed air and go wild. Seriously. If there are dust bunnies taking up residence in those heatsinks it will severely impact performance. If the fans are dying, hit ebay for a new set of fans, they're really not expensive, and for that version Mac Pro, it's still worth keeping it running, it's still a good computer. As for the ATI 3870, that's still a pretty good card. If you're willing to fiddle with it (carefully) you can get an aftermarket cooler for it, those do work on Macs, sometimes need some mods, but generally work well. I had replaced the cooler on my girlfriends dad's G5 Dual which has an ATI x800XT in it. $30 fix that keeps him running for a while longer, because the fan on the card was dying, and it was actually a common case. Accelero S1 Rev 2 is a beautiful aftermarket cooler that you could use. It's a little difficult to install, but worth every penny. That Mac should be a quad core with expandability up to 16gb of RAM. You have every reason to keep that bad boy running Link to comment https://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/214998-mac-pro-11-ati-3870-lot-of-noise/#findComment-1446961 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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