After months and months of searching on Ebay and Gumtree I finally bagged the two x5355 processors at a reasonable price! But even when I received them it wasn’t just a case of inserting it in.

I didn’t have thermal paste, acetone and a very long screwdriver to reach down the heatsinks to unscrew the CPU.

I also had a massive issue trying to get the memory cage off; the screws that hold them in place strip very very easily. In a matter of minutes I manged to completely render them useless. In the end, I read an article where they had a similar problem so they just used a bit of brute force to remove the heatsink cover, the front fan assembly and a memory cage slot holder.

I am very happy with the results. I have put new life into a 4 year old Mac Pro. I didn’t have the finance to upgrade to a 2009 Mac Pro but I have no regrets, it is far more rewarding knowing that I upgraded it myself.

My one advise is to don’t bother trying to unscrew the front screws on the memory cage, just unsrew the back ones so you can lever it out to pull out the plastic heatsink cover. From there on it’s easy peesy, so long as you have the right tools.

Mac Pro opened. Memory module, front fan assembly and heatsink covers removed.

Side view of heatsinks with lots of dust collected over the years. Easily removed with compressed air.

As you can see, I could not remove the memory cage assembly so I had to use brute force to remove everything except the memory cage.

So much dust!!

The pair of Intel Xeon x5355 processors in place.

Heatsink with all the old thermal paste still on.

With a bit of Nail Polish remover, I cleaned the heatsink plating.

2 Quad core X5355 processors in place

Intel Xeon x5355 Quad Core 2.66GHZ Processor

GEEKBENCH RESULTS: 52% speed increase

MAC PRO 1,1 QUAD CORE – 4952


MAC PRO 1,1 EIGHT CORE – 9436

Please leave comments below. I’d like to hear your experiences in your upgrade.