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PowerMac Mod: 2x XEON E5-2620 v1 - Intel S2600CP - 20GB RAM - Geforce GTX 750

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PowerMac Mod:
2x XEON E5-2620 v1 - Intel S2600CP - 20GB RAM - Geforce GTX 750 passive


Components
(all components were bought secondhand)

PowerMac G5 1,8Ghz case used

Intel S2600CP dual LGA 2011 Motherboard

2x Xeon E5-2620 v1 (6-core)

10x 2GB DDR3 1333Mhz (can be upgraded later on)

120GB Kingston SSDNOW V300

Geforce GTX 750 1024mb (Medion Edition, changed cooler for passive Arctic accelero s1)


Comments

For my study I have to do some 3D modelling and video rendering, I saw this PowerMac G5 case and decided to build a machine in this old nice enclosure. Modifying the case took a lot more time than I was expecting. Buying all the parts second hand, to keep the costs low, also took some time. However, it turned out nice! Of course this machine should at least have the option to run OS X

Installation Notes
GPU has to be in the PCI-e slot which is managed by CPU1. Later on in the process GPU can be moved to the PCI-e slot belonging to CPU2.



Bios settings
Disable the two serial ports of the mobo in the bios, and make sure that the PCI-E slot of CPU1 is used for your GPU. The rest of the settings can stay on the default settings.

Installation
Used UniBeast with legacy bios setting.

During installation process boot with the boot flags: -cpus=1 -nv_disable=1 -npci=0x3000 -v
The computer is terribly slow during install so don't get annoyed, this will be better later on.

Post installation

Using MultiBeast (10.2.0) install:
  • Clover legacy Boot Mode
  • FakeSMC plugins
  • FakeSMC HWMonitor Application
  • AppleIGB v5.3.5.3
  • Nvideagraphixfixup

Using Kexthelper install:

  • FakeSMC.kext
  • AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext
(from rampage dev, dual cpu.dmg - somehow this patched edition of AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext already enables turboboost to x23 without SSDT)

Install Nvidea web drivers

Use Clover Configurator (4.60.2.0) to put in the permanent bootflags:

  • -npci=0x3000 -nvda_drv=1
  • add the patch "change EHC1 to EH01" and the patch "change EHC2 to EH02" on the tab "Acpi" (to keep usb working with macpro6,1 smbios)
  • Insert MacPro6,1 smbios on the tab "smbios"
  • finally tick the box "NvideaWeb" on the tab "System Parameters"
You should now be ready to go.
You can put the GPU in the PCI-e slot of the second CPU if you like to (don't forget to also change this in your BIOS)
The screen will become inactive after the clover boot menu and gets active again on loading the Nvidea webdrivers.


What works?
-All 4 Ethernet ports
-pci-e GPU
-USB 2.0
-Sata controller

What does not work?
-Processor C states
-Integrated video adapter (which is a 6mb Matrox G200 2D adapter, so these days useless for desktop environments anyway)
-Turbo boost only up to 2.3Ghz, not to 2,5Ghz
-> I'm trying to fix this by making an SSDT the using SSDTPRGen script which was written by Pike R. Alpha, updates will follow later on. Thread: https://github.com/Piker-Alpha/ssdtPRGen.sh/issues/429
 
Last edited:
Got any pics of the build?
I've added a picture of the current status on the top of the thread! More pictures will follow when I finish the build.
Your powermac Mod looks fantastic Charlee78!!

The problem I'm trying to solve at the moment;
For now, my Geekbench (v4) results are quite low; about 1800 single threaded and 14000 multi threaded.

The weird thing is that installing the patched AppleIntelCPUPowermanagement.kext results in a higher single threaded performance (without patch 1482) but in a lower multithreaded performance (was 16979 without patch)

In windows the machine reaches 2313 single threaded and 16768 multithreaded.

edit; the throttling of AppleIntelCPUPowermanagement.kext seems to make the system preform worse on multithreaded performance, this can be solved by increasing the minimum allowed P-state in the bios to x17 (which increases power consumption over the x12 preset, but still using AppleIntelCPUPowermanagement.kext increases performance (max multiplier is now increased to x23 and lowers energy consumption is present because; x17 is still lower than continuously x20)

I'm not yet using a SSDT because the SSDTPRGen script does not work as it should. Hopefully I can solve that and use a proper SSDT to solve this issue, maybe it's best to start a threat for that at the github page were the script is hosted.

Thread: https://github.com/Piker-Alpha/ssdtPRGen.sh/issues/429
 
Last edited:
PowerMac Mod:
2x XEON E5-2620 v1 - Intel S2600CP - 20GB RAM - Geforce GTX 750 passive


Components
(all components were bought secondhand)

PowerMac G5 1,8Ghz case used

Intel S2600CP dual LGA 2011 Motherboard

2x Xeon E5-2620 v1 (6-core)

10x 2GB DDR3 1333Mhz (can be upgraded later on)

120GB Kingston SSDNOW V300

Geforce GTX 750 1024mb (Medion Edition, changed cooler for passive Arctic accelero s1)


Comments

For my study I have to do some 3D modelling and video rendering, I saw this PowerMac G5 case and decided to build a machine in this old nice enclosure. Modifying the case took a lot more time than I was expecting. Buying all the parts second hand, to keep the costs low, also took some time. However, it turned out nice! Of course this machine should at least have the option to run OS X

Installation Notes
GPU has to be in the PCI-e slot which is managed by CPU1. Later on in the process GPU can be moved to the PCI-e slot belonging to CPU2.



Bios settings
Disable the two serial ports of the mobo in the bios, and make sure that the PCI-E slot of CPU1 is used for your GPU. The rest of the settings can stay on the default settings.

Installation
Used UniBeast with legacy bios setting.

During installation process boot with the boot flags: -cpus=1 -nv_disable=1 -npci=0x3000 -v
The computer is terribly slow during install so don't get annoyed, this will be better later on.

Post installation

Using MultiBeast (10.2.0) install:
  • Clover legacy Boot Mode
  • FakeSMC plugins
  • FakeSMC HWMonitor Application
  • AppleIGB v5.3.5.3
  • Nvideagraphixfixup

Using Kexthelper install:

  • FakeSMC.kext
  • AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext
(from rampage dev, dual cpu.dmg - somehow this patched edition of AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement.kext already enables turboboost to x23 without SSDT)

Install Nvidea web drivers

Use Clover Configurator (4.60.2.0) to put in the permanent bootflags:

  • -npci=0x3000 -nvda_drv=1
  • add the patch "change EHC1 to EH01" and the patch "change EHC2 to EH02" on the tab "Acpi" (to keep usb working with macpro6,1 smbios)
  • Insert MacPro6,1 smbios on the tab "smbios"
  • finally tick the box "NvideaWeb" on the tab "System Parameters"
You should now be ready to go.
You can put the GPU in the PCI-e slot of the second CPU if you like to (don't forget to also change this in your BIOS)
The screen will become inactive after the clover boot menu and gets active again on loading the Nvidea webdrivers.


What works?
-All 4 Ethernet ports
-GPU
-USB 2.0

What does not work?
-Processor C states
-Turbo boost only up to 2.3Ghz, not to 2,5Ghz
-> I'm trying to fix this by making an SSDT the using SSDTPRGen script which was written by Pike R. Alpha, updates will follow later on. Thread: https://github.com/Piker-Alpha/ssdtPRGen.sh/issues/429


Hi,

Nice to see your build. I have also done one with the same MB. I have more powerful processors E5-2670v1 and 128GB of RAM.

Interesting to see that you placed your board high up and the power supply in the bottom. After a lot of testing I did the opposite, MB down and power supply and hard-disks on top.

I have not tried to install MacOS yet. Running windows 10 with several Linux VM running under hyper-v. This works great. But now that I see it is possible I might follow your instructions just to test it

Regards
Peter
 
Hi,

Nice to see your build. I have also done one with the same MB. I have more powerful processors E5-2670v1 and 128GB of RAM.

Interesting to see that you placed your board high up and the power supply in the bottom. After a lot of testing I did the opposite, MB down and power supply and hard-disks on top.

I have not tried to install MacOS yet. Running windows 10 with several Linux VM running under hyper-v. This works great. But now that I see it is possible I might follow your instructions just to test it

Regards
Peter

Hey,

Wow! Nice to hear that there is someone who put the same board in the same case and is also called Peter :) you must be a nice person ;)

Nice that you already put in some better components. I like to do so in the future. At first i could pick up these components cheap. I did so because I wanted to know if everything would work fine.

I've decided to put the psu and harddrives low in the case to lower the center of gravity, because the original power plug is there and to be able to use both of the mobo video pci-e slots with the existing pci brackets in the back of the case. What let you decide to turn it around?

It would be very interesting if you would try to install osx! Especially when you could get the turboboost to work on the e5-2670's and get some good performance. I think the chance of succes is better with the e5-2670's because there is more information about those in hackingtoshes on the web and there are more ssdt files for these dual processors made by others and downloadable.

Let me know when you take the challenge!

Kind regards,
Peter
 
Hey,

Wow! Nice to hear that there is someone who put the same board in the same case and is also called Peter :) you must be a nice person ;)

Nice that you already put in some better components. I like to do so in the future. At first i could pick up these components cheap. I did so because I wanted to know if everything would work fine.

I've decided to put the psu and harddrives low in the case to lower the center of gravity, because the original power plug is there and to be able to use both of the mobo video pci-e slots with the existing pci brackets in the back of the case. What let you decide to turn it around?

It would be very interesting if you would try to install osx! Especially when you could get the turboboost to work on the e5-2670's and get some good performance. I think the chance of succes is better with the e5-2670's because there is more information about those in hackingtoshes on the web and there are more ssdt files for these dual processors made by others and downloadable.

Let me know when you take the challenge!

Kind regards,
Peter

What a coincidence, two Peters build each a Powermac with the same unusual MB!

I think it took me a moth to decide how I wanted to place the MB. I have a broken one that I used to try out different positions measure and made drawings, also some CAD drawings. I also wanted a completely uncut case on the outside so spent also time figuring out how to access ethernet and USB. But I also liked to place the power supply on top. it fits perfectly there and also preserves some of the original thinking with heat zones. But you are right the center of gravity is high. I had it fall over a couple of times. But that is better with the door in place and coolers on the CPUs. By changing the cooler to pull instead of push I could also fit the original plexi.

For the moment I am very pleased with how Windows is running on it. I have actually never used MacOS and some of my programs are not available for the Mac.

Here is a picture of mine. I still have plans to do some more cleanup but for the moment I am working on it!

BR
Peter
IMG_20171216_170716121.jpg
 
What a coincidence, two Peters build each a Powermac with the same unusual MB!

I think it took me a moth to decide how I wanted to place the MB. I have a broken one that I used to try out different positions measure and made drawings, also some CAD drawings. I also wanted a completely uncut case on the outside so spent also time figuring out how to access ethernet and USB. But I also liked to place the power supply on top. it fits perfectly there and also preserves some of the original thinking with heat zones. But you are right the center of gravity is high. I had it fall over a couple of times. But that is better with the door in place and coolers on the CPUs. By changing the cooler to pull instead of push I could also fit the original plexi.

For the moment I am very pleased with how Windows is running on it. I have actually never used MacOS and some of my programs are not available for the Mac.

Here is a picture of mine. I still have plans to do some more cleanup but for the moment I am working on it!

BR
Peter
View attachment 319192

Nice to see! I can imagine that the chance of flipping over gets a bit smaller with the cpu coolers installed.

MacOS is nice to work on! But indeed some software, especially cad program are lacking support for OS X.

Did some work to get better performance:
By generating a SSDT file with ssdtPRGen.sh I still get some errors when I try to run the script for my 24 logical cores.
Code:
ssdtPRGen.sh -cpus 2 -l 24

ssdtPRGen.sh v0.9  Copyright (c) 2011-2012 by † RevoGirl
             v6.6  Copyright (c) 2013 by † Jeroen
             v21.5 Copyright (c) 2013-2018 by Pike R. Alpha
-----------------------------------------------------------
Bugs > https://github.com/Piker-Alpha/ssdtPRGen.sh/issues <

System information: Mac OS X 10.13.3 (17D47)
Brandstring: "Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz"

Override value: (-cpus) number of processors, now using: 2!
Override value: (-l) number of logical processors, now using: 24!

Version: models.cfg v171 / Sandy Bridge.cfg v150




Scope (_SB_) {3458 bytes} with ACPI Processor declarations found in DSDT (ACPI 1.0 compliant)
Generating ssdt.dsl for a 'MacPro6,1' with board-id [Mac-F60DEB81FF30ACF6]
Sandy Bridge Core E5-2620 processor [0x206D7] setup [0x0a01]
With a maximum TDP of 95 Watt, as specified by Intel
Number logical CPU's: 24 (Core Frequency: 2000 MHz)
Number of Turbo States: 5 (2100-2500 MHz)
Number of P-States: 14 (1200-2500 MHz)
Injected C-States for CP00 (C1,C3,C6,C7)

Error: board-id [Mac-F60DEB81FF30ACF6] not supported by Sandy Bridge – check SMBIOS data / use the -target option

Do you want to continue (y/n)? y
Warning: 'system-type' may be set improperly (1 instead of 2)
     - Clover users should read https://clover-wiki.zetam.org/Configuration/ACPI#acpi_smartups
Compiling: ssdt_pr.dsl
Intel ACPI Component Architecture
ASL+ Optimizing Compiler version 20161210-64(RM)
Copyright (c) 2000 - 2016 Intel Corporation

ACPI Warning: NsLookup: Type mismatch on APSS (Package), searching for (Method) (20161210/nsaccess-732)
/Users/priegelaar/Library/ssdtPRGen/ssdt.dsl    225:         Method (APSS, 0, NotSerialized)
Error    6074 -                             Name already exists in scope ^  (APSS)

/Users/priegelaar/Library/ssdtPRGen/ssdt.dsl    235:         Method (APSS, 0, NotSerialized)
Error    6074 -                             Name already exists in scope ^  (APSS)

/Users/priegelaar/Library/ssdtPRGen/ssdt.dsl    245:         Method (APSS, 0, NotSerialized)
Error    6074 -                             Name already exists in scope ^  (APSS)

/Users/priegelaar/Library/ssdtPRGen/ssdt.dsl    255:         Method (APSS, 0, NotSerialized)
Error    6074 -                             Name already exists in scope ^  (APSS)

ASL Input:     /Users/priegelaar/Library/ssdtPRGen/ssdt.dsl - 264 lines, 7922 bytes, 66 keywords

Compilation complete. 4 Errors, 0 Warnings, 0 Remarks, 0 Optimizations
Error: IASL status: 255 (Failed)

Do you want to open ssdt.dsl (y/n)?

The errors above come from IASL, which is the SSDT compiler, this means that the scrips somehow outputs some uncompilable code.
However, you still get the SSDT.dst so with MaciASL I tried to manually replace the double cpu addresses in this file. So that it can be compiled and inserted on the EFI partition. (Just numbered the addresses which are selected in the screenshot from 08 to 11)
Screen Shot 2018-03-17 at 18.50.59.png

I'm still not able to reach the highest turboboost multipliers as can be seen below.
Code:
CPU Ratio Info:
------------------------------------
CPU Low Frequency Mode.............: 1200 MHz
CPU Maximum non-Turbo Frequency....: 2000 MHz
CPU Maximum Turbo Frequency........: 2500 MHz
CPU P-States [ (12) 19 23 ]
CPU P-States [ (12) 19 22 23 ]
CPU P-States [ (12) 18 19 22 23 ]
CPU P-States [ 12 18 19 21 22 (23) ]
CPU P-States [ (12) 18 19 20 21 22 23 ]
CPU P-States [ (12) 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 ]
CPU P-States [ (12) 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 ]

But I do now get some better performance on OS X
Screen Shot 2018-03-17 at 18.38.34.png
Multithreaded score is now what it should be (same as in windows) but the single threaded score is still lower (which is because of not reaching the highest turboboost multipliers)

Edit;
The higher score was due to the fact that I increased the minimum P-state in my bios to 17, so no performance gain by the SSDT but this bios setting gives a bit of extra performance in the meanwhile. (And increases power consumtion)


Hopefully someone knows what to do to get the right (x25) multiplier!
 
Last edited:
Super exciting topic.

I too have a few spare Powermac G5 cases lying around, and am too, interested in a stock(ish) 2 x Xeon build.

Will be watching closely, your projects are inspiring!

More pictures of the mods themselves, please! :D
 
hello guys. Has anyone tried this for High Sierra? Also what sound/Wifi card are you using? I have the same board but using low-power 8-core Xeons at the moment.

Any help is greatly appreciated! thanks
 
just a question please. did you buy the back plate or you made it yourself? been looking at classifieds to look for a case. what's the hardest part of the task? thanks
 
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