Getting to the pesky buggers
A closer look at the two extra-large heatsinks that are tasked to cool the pair of 80W E5462 beasties that lie underneath. Note that they're the same for the 150W X5842, 3.2GHz Xeons, as well.
Here is the plastic duct that we removed, as detailed on the previous page. It integrates a couple of 80mm fans and is engineered to funnel cooler air towards the CPU(s) and graphics card(s).
Interestingly, Apple uses PATA-based optical drives. You can add SATA-equipped models, and the connectors are directly underneath.
Such is the internal construction of the chassis and layout of the motherboard, the memory-holding riser cards and cage need to be removed before access is gained to the right-hand side of the heatsinks.
To do this, we had to remove two screws which hold the cage to the chassis. They're easy enough to get to, though, and are located to the right-hand side, too.
Then we had to remove the screws holding the cage to the 5400-series motherboard.
The cage also position-locks the exhaust fan and grabbing on to this slides the entire appendage out.
Here, we were about 20 minutes into the procedure and had gained clear access to the heatsink and CPUs - the straightforward bit starts next.
Then it was unscrewing time! Two screws need to be removed from around the northbridge area, right below the CPUs' heatsinks. We needed to use a long-ish screwdriver that was taller than the heatsinks, as access was literally straight down.
