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Kona LHe PCIe Slot Placement in Early 2008 MacPro
Can someone help out in determining the placement of my Kona LHe in my new (early 2008) MacPro. According to the AJA site, I should use Slot 3 … (https://www.aja.com/html/support_kona_rec_sys.htm) … however, when trying to use the Expansion Slot Utility application, it won’t run and therefore i’m wondering if this information is for the old MacPro’s and the website just isn’t updated to reflect the early 2008 models.
According to an ArsTechnia review (https://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/mac-pro-2g-review.ars) the early 2008 MacPro’s have two PCIe 2.0 x16 … should I be running my Geforce 8800GT in slot 1 and my Kona LHe in slot 2?
Thanks for any help.
Cory -
8 Replies
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If you have a PCIe 2.0 MacPro, there’s no expansion slot utility as you have more bandwidth to play around with (lucky devil). At that point, it shouldn’t matter what slot you put your Kona in as long as the graphics card is in slot one to take care of the double height slot it needs. Do you have any other cards to put in your machine?
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Yeah Jeremy, it’s a sweet new MacPro that I’m loving every minute of 🙂 I figured after giving it some thought, that the slot utility was probably not for my Mac and after reading about PCIe 2.0, I figured as much. On the other hand, I have moved the Kona LHe down into Slot 2 (which is also labeled, I found out when I opened the case last night, as 16x along with slot one being labeled as 16x). Slots 3 and 4 are labeled on the motherboard as 4x.
I have nothing else to put in at the moment (and really don’t see putting anything else in until a need develops down the road) and there is plenty of space for the Nvidia 8800GT in slot 1, so is it advisable to just leave the Kona LHe in slot 2, as I have it now? It certainly won’t hurt anything to have it there, correct?
Thanks again for all you help Jeremy.
Cory -
Yep. You’re good.
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Excellent, thanks again.
Cory -
Cory
Put your KONA card on Slot #3 or #4. This will allow more air to flow over it and it will work just fine in either slot, both are 4X and the KONA is 4x.
You will some day need a RAID Host Bus Adapter and it may be up to 8X so reserve you slot #2 for that purpose.
Fred
The Troupe – Modern Media Design & Production
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Thanks for the advice Fred. There’s a good bit of space between slots 1 and 2 actually, but more is probably better still … and if the Kona is only 4x, then there’s no point in keeping it in slot 2.
Cory -
FYI, I had recently issues in a 2008 Mac Pro with the Kona in slot 3 and a RAID SAS ATTO card in slot 2. I had issues with ProRes HQ playback dropping frames with loss of sync on external video/sound. AJA Support suggested to move Kona LHe to slot 2 and ATTO card to slot 4. And this change was done, it runs now smoothly. so, Mac Pro 08 do not behave the same than the 2007 units.
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Jean-Philippe
That is interesting. They had you slow down the SAS Raid and you problems went away?
Fred
The Troupe – Modern Media Design & Production
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