Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Discussion HiFi & HT Chat MacPro - Fitting Simple Design PSU Cards

So the SATA power supply board and the fan power supply board arrived this morning and I spent a couple of hours indulging in some open-heart surgery on the Mac Pro to see what they would do.

Just to recap, the purpose of the boards is to provide power supply isolation in the RF-noisy environment of a PC.

First impressions: they are very nicely-made boards, and they genuinely make a difference to the sound in my system - although the usual disclaimers about the impact in anyone else's system obviously apply. The sound stage has a little more depth, there is slightly more definition between instruments and the whole system sounds a touch more effortless. Not transformational, but still an improvement.

However the practicality of fitting the cards is going to vary from system to system. In my case the fan card inserts nicely into the cabling between the motherboard and the fan, but the SATA card doesn't physically work at all. This is primarily because the Mac Pro is based on a Xeon server board rather than a conventional ATX-type motherboard, which means there are no SATA cables running between the hard drives and the motherboard; the drives just slot directly into the sort of hot-swap bays that you'd typically see in a server. The connectors are surface-mounted, so there's not really any practical way to install the noise filter board. So my impressions are based solely on the improvement with the fan boards.

And the key thing is that this change is as cheap as chips. You need to order one board per fan and one board per SATA drive, but even so it's hardly a major outlay, and the sound improvement is about the same magnitude (on my system, anyway) as adding the Halide Bridge - which is a much more expensive upgrade. If you're using a relatively conventional PC as a source, this is a no-brainer.

So I have no doubt that similar improvements could be achieved by adding the boards to a Control 15, but it is going to depend on the physical constraints of the system - if the relevant components are surface-mounted directly to the motherboard, then it may not be practical to install the boards at all. I'd suggest opening up the Control 15 to have a look before spending any money, and the same would also apply to doing the mod on a Mac Mini.

I'm happy to post a few photos of the boards and installation issues in the remote event that anyone is interested!

I concur with the improvements, subtle in my set up but repeatable - I suppose it depends how sensitive the next component in the chain is to jitter. I'm sure in the lab the difference would be significant. As for the spacing, your fears are confirmed - in the factory configuration the little SATA filter boards conflict with the casing on bth the HD and the CD ROM. I'm researching different SATA / Molex cable options on eBay to find a combination that works!

All good fun...