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Mac Pro 5,1 heating

my Mac Pro 5,1 reach temperatures of 118 Celsius on the "Northbridge diode" under emulator work. (checked with fan control) is this normal?

Mac Pro, macOS 10.14

Posted on Dec 20, 2019 11:53 PM

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Posted on Dec 22, 2019 5:23 PM

After you dismiss that one, the next issue is Dust bunnies. Remove the Mac to an area rated "don't care" for dust, and launch the dust bunnies airborne and out of your Mac with blasts of compressed air. Try not to be unrelenting in spinning the fans, as you could damage a fan bearing if you are unreasonable. There are also fans in the power supply.


Household vacuum cleaner is NOT to be used, as its plastic tools generate large electronics-killing static long before you feel the Zap of a large static discharge.


The next most likely is that the heatsink compound or pad on the Northbridge has dried up and is now crumbly, instead of being moist with silicone oil. This takes some skill to remove, clean surfaces, and re-apply in the proper amounts, but online resources are available. You will also have to "invent" a new retention method, such as insulated nuts-and-bolts, although the springs can be re-used. On the dual socket models, this may require you to pull the processors, and clean and re-apply their heatsink compound as well, as the Northbridge heatsink appears to be under one of the processor heatsinks.


Do your research, and collect all the needed materials before you dis-assemble anything!

15 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 22, 2019 5:23 PM in response to Nicolò_silvano

After you dismiss that one, the next issue is Dust bunnies. Remove the Mac to an area rated "don't care" for dust, and launch the dust bunnies airborne and out of your Mac with blasts of compressed air. Try not to be unrelenting in spinning the fans, as you could damage a fan bearing if you are unreasonable. There are also fans in the power supply.


Household vacuum cleaner is NOT to be used, as its plastic tools generate large electronics-killing static long before you feel the Zap of a large static discharge.


The next most likely is that the heatsink compound or pad on the Northbridge has dried up and is now crumbly, instead of being moist with silicone oil. This takes some skill to remove, clean surfaces, and re-apply in the proper amounts, but online resources are available. You will also have to "invent" a new retention method, such as insulated nuts-and-bolts, although the springs can be re-used. On the dual socket models, this may require you to pull the processors, and clean and re-apply their heatsink compound as well, as the Northbridge heatsink appears to be under one of the processor heatsinks.


Do your research, and collect all the needed materials before you dis-assemble anything!

Dec 21, 2019 9:01 AM in response to Nicolò_silvano

The Northbridge is by far the hottest component in your Mac Pro. But even for it, temperatures above the boiling point of water (100 C ) are a concern.


You should use this article to check for "wiggly Northbridge" caused by having one of the retaining pins that holds down the northbridge heatsink fail and shear off. They retain the heatsink with captive springs, which can fly around inside the machine if the pins shear off.


No tools are needed for this test! Do not disassemble the processor heatsinks for this test! Just find the Northbridge heatsink and push it. If it is wiggly, you may need to repair it.




http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/archives/jul14/071114.html



Dec 23, 2019 2:31 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

thanks for helping but I found another solution ( it's not the best but it work): I set the "intake" fan to the max rpm right at the start so temperatures remain between 78-85 C and when I do heavy work I set them all to max rpm so the temperature maintain itself at around 80 C. I know it?s not the best solution but now the temperatures are much lower than before and I do not particularly care about the noise so...... thanks for helping again! : )

Dec 24, 2019 1:46 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

yes I actually have a HDD in bay 1 and I'll try remove it and look up the temperatures whenever I could and I'll report back to you. There are other things I want to ask about the Mac Pro while we are Here: how much storage do you have in your Mac Pro? (I personally have 5 Tb for now [4 Tb HDD + 1 Tb SSD] but I've already bought a 8 Tb drive to put inside my machine [and have a raid 0 12 Tb big disk by "putting together" the 4 Tb and the 8 Tb] and in the future I'm probably gonna buy another 2 HDDs [8 Tb + 10 Tb] for time machine backup and I'll buy another 1 Tb SSD because of large application that need to be open fast. when I finish all of those upgrade I'm gonna have 32 Tb of internal storage.) What amount of storage do you have? (it's just a curiosity question because I haven't ever found anyone else with a Mac Pro)

Another question: have you manage to get airdrop, handoff and continuity to work between your iOS/ iPadOS device? how? have you bought an adapter for it?

Last question: is it plausible to put 256 Gb of ram inside the 5,1 Mac Pro? I'm asking this because I read on the intel official site that the "12" core processore in my machine can technically support 288 Gb of ram (each processor) so you can """"""support"""""" 288*2= 576 Gb of ram. Now, without going too far, is 256 Gb plausible on a 5,1 Mac Pro with macOS 10.14 Mojave?

sorry for bad English and exaggerated curiosity

Dec 31, 2019 2:21 AM in response to BDAqua

i double checked all the fans again testing them 1 by 1 at max for 2 solid minutes each and this are my results:

PCI: 100 C

PS: 100 C

EXHAUST: 81 C

INTAKE: 76 C

BOOSTA: 82 C

BOOSTB: 89 C

all at max: 74 C


as expected "PCI" and "PS" fans are not effective at all, "EXHAUST" and "BOOSTA" are a little effective and "INTAKE" and all fan at max are the most effective (at least for me).

Mac Pro 5,1 heating

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