Apple

I decided to upgrade my old 2.66GHz Xeon 5150 Mac Pro rather than buy a new one, so installed the following over the past week:

Two quad-core 3GHz X5365 Xeon (8 cores total; sourced from eBay)
Two 4GB FB-DIMMs (bringing total installed RAM to 13GB; sourced from eBay)
XFX HD4870 1GB (flashed with EFI ROM; hand-me-down from GTX 285 upgrade in Hackintosh)
Additional 1TB Hitachi SATA drive with Windows 7 Ultimate x64 w/Boot Camp 3.0 and AHCI SATA fix (drive was an unopened spare I had on hand, Windows 7 Ultimate was bought new)
Apple Internal Bluetooth module (sourced from eBay)
Apple Internal 802.11n Airport Extreme module (sourced from eBay)
LG 8X Blu-ray RW (bought new)

All that probably sounds terribly expensive, but it worked out to be not much more than a new Mac mini, and the performance jump was huge. eBay was essential in keeping costs reasonable as the the X5365 CPUs ran around $1200 each retail but can be had for a quarter of that used.

Changing the processors wasn't bad at all - the CPU heatsinks came off quite easily and were no trouble to reinstall. You just need a long hex wrench or torx bit.

This system lives in my living room. So far I've done some gaming on it and watched a couple of Blu-ray titles

Here are some links that were helpful in putting this together:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=760482 (Windows AHCI SATA fix)
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=811768 (ATI flashing tool)
http://www.anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2832&p=3 (CPU upgrade process)
http://www.wintellect.com/CS/blogs/jrob ... -love.aspx (Boot Camp 3.0 driver installation workaround)

Now I have a set of Xeon 5150 CPUs I need to figure out what to do with.

Very cool! Someday I will man up and put out the cash for an MP. Someday...

I decided to upgrade my old 2.66GHz Xeon 5150 Mac Pro rather than buy a new one, so installed the following over the past week

I've been thinking about upgrading my MacPro1,1 (Woodcrest 5130s) but haven't really looked into yet - the system isn't really doing much right now except for file serving (10.6 server), and your research/work gives me confidence it can be done with minimal effort and cost

Pretty much the same situation here - I really wasn't using the machine much anymore aside from streaming video from my file server to my projector and HDTV (something a Mac mini could do in a smaller footprint). Now I also use it for gaming (Aion presently) and Blu-ray playback. Watched JJ Abram's Star Trek on it last weekend and picked up "Up" (Pixar) while I was out yesterday.

Cool cool - I'll look into it! Thanks for the posting!

Aion presently

That's on my horizon as well, since I let my WoW account expire last spring - probably pickup a copy once Christmas break starts and I get some time off

I've been having a lot of fun with it so far; I'm on the Fregion server and have playing mostly with a Chanter and Gladiator. Leaning towards the Chanter though

One point I neglected to mention concerns memory. If you're upgrading a first gen Mac Pro (2006 or 2007), you're probably aware it calls for 667MHz FB-DIMMs.

Memory vendors are crafty though. They're actually charging considerably less for the 800MHz modules normally used in the 2008 Mac Pros. An example: Memory Giant has 667MHz 8GB kits (2x4GB) priced at $320 on their web site. The 800MHz flavor of the same is $240 - a whopping $80 less. The amusing thing is that 800MHz RAM works just fine and dandy in a 667MHz machine - just a bit of an underclock. If anything, it saves you the worry of RAM clocked at the ragged edge. Don't waste money if you don't have to!

You can even save a bit more by buying the RAM on eBay (from the same vendor as above - Memory Giant). I paid $215 (free shipping) for my 8GB kit, though that's up a bit from last month when the going price was around $165. Ah, the volatile whims of the memory marketplace.

no kidding, last may I paid $45 retail for a 2x 2gb kit of ddr2-800. The exact same kit is now $100 at the same place. Damn capitalism

Yeah, last Spring was definitely the time to buy RAM; I paid $170 for 12GB of DDR3 for my i7 (6x2GB). Same memory is $325 now.

4 Giggers in each slot, times 8 slots equals a whole lot of RAM!

Yeah, it can hold 32GB. I may go ahead and grab another 8GB kit before the prices go up even more - replace that 1GB kit the machine came with

nekonoko wrote: I've been having a lot of fun with it so far; I'm on the Fregion server and have playing mostly with a Chanter and Gladiator. Leaning towards the Chanter though

Nice - most of the reviews I've read thus far have been positive, and the game looks fantastic (its using the Fry Cry engine I think).

nekonoko wrote: Memory vendors are crafty though.

Yes, yes they are - memory prices have been climbing (holiday season influence, maybe?) - I'm currently shopping around for 4GB DDR2-1066 (about $100 - $120) for a Phenom - I remember looking up prices early this year and seeing them $20-$30 cheaper.

semi-fly wrote: Nice - most of the reviews I've read thus far have been positive, and the game looks fantastic (its using the Fry Cry engine I think).

CryEngine? It doesn't look like that to me... Looks more like a revamped GuildWars engine. Just my IMHO though, I didn't do any research. haha.

Oh, well, there you go. According to Wikipedia it says it is on the CryEngine. Well then. <insert_foot>mouth</insert_foot>

zmttoxics wrote: Oh, well, there you go. According to Wikipedia it says it is on the CryEngine. Well then. <insert_foot>mouth</insert_foot>

hehe, indeed http://aion-online.net/cryengine.php

The Aion boot screen has the CryEngine logo on it as well. It does look really good though.

nekonoko wrote: The Aion boot screen has the CryEngine logo on it as well. It does look really good though.

Sadly, I never managed to pull out enough free time for Aion over the break - too much family and shopping, I guess

Couple of recent updates; upped RAM to 20GB and replaced the 4870 with a HD5870:

Also started messing around with the Final Fantasy XIV beta in Windows 7 x64 Ultimate (via Bootcamp); my character standing in the adventurer's guild:

How are you liking FF14? Pretty awesome? I downloaded the beta but haven't installed it yet.

I'm having some fun with it. The interface definitely takes some getting used to though, especially coming from WoW or Aion. I spent a few hours last night completing the Gridania starting quest chain which was entertaining - pays out a lot of gil too I'll probably mess around with it some more this weekend.

Oh, and my character is Arzefina Tydeine on the Wutai world server. I'll probably keep the character name and appearance when it goes live.