Yes, Depending on your workload HOWEVER the faster versions had water cooling which had a tendency to leak coolant destroying the circuit boards below.
Luke, I have the 2009 Mac Pro that I have flashed to 5.1. I have ordered dual 5690 processors with 128 GB RAM, and an RX580 Graphics Card. a 2 tb NVME boot drive running Open Core Legacy Patcher on Monterey, 2 1 TB SATA Drive, and two (in a Raid) 8TB drives for my media running Plex. I absolutely love my machine and your videos from the past are what excited me about the Cheese Grater Mac. Yes, it is worth it. I have an M1 MacBook Air and an iPad mini to round out the lot. Thank you for your videos and for your support of the Mac Pro. She may be 14 years old, but she purrs like a Jaguar.
@@brucerothwell7944 I am on Monterey using Open Core Legacy Patcher. I would wait on moving to Ventura until Jessie (from Jessie's Flying on TH-cam) gives the go-ahead. He previously said to wait on the Mac Pro 4.1/5/1 upgrade to Ventura due to some issues.
I have a 2010 MacPro - a few years ago I upgraded it to 96GBRAM, dual 6-core Zenon CPUs and an RX580 GPU However, I recently bought a MacStudio. But I kept the old MacPro and use it as a NAS as it can hold a total of 6 drives if the optical drive is removed. It's great for that purpose. I feel the old cheese-grater towers were one of the best computers in their time.
I wish I could afford the power bills to run any of these old MacPros as a home nas. Honestly theres a perfectly good trashcan 2013 sitting at work I could use but leaving something like that on all the time would cost me so much
I do the same thing with mine. I just wish MacOS wasn't so dumb with waking itself up randomly... no way to stop this that I've found without turning off wake for ethernet access, which makes it not good as a constantly available fileserver. I wake mine up manually when I need to access it... I really wish there was a way around this. The random wakeups are from the mDNSresponder multicast announcing thing... and if you disable it, filesharing doesn't work.
@@IdiotRace Bro, while these Do have 1,000 watt power supplies, they are Not running 1,000 watts when they are just on in the background or when ur just websurfing...that 1000watt rating is the power supply's Max output that it can supply under a full load scenerio..when the computer is doing something like rendering, its under some stress and those dual cpu's rated at 130 watts each and gpu like an rx580 at 180 watts, you could only pull 500watts if even... in most cases these realistically pull around 300 watts when being used and Way less than that when idle...In simple terms, if your power. supply is rated at 1,000 watts, thats its Potiential but its Not using much when idle or light load scenerios..it depends on the load.. For example ,my rx570 is using 68watts as I type this and the 6 core cpu is likely under 20 watts to websurf becuz cpu useage to stream or surf only uses about 5% cpu.. you get the idea
Thing with these Mac Pros is you gotta use OpenCore to activate GPU hardware acceleration. Once you do that it’s leaps and bounds faster. Mine renders 1080p video a mere tad slower than my M1 MacBook Air.
these do h264/hevc decoding /encoding so well.. you can even play 4k video hevc or h264 with 1 to 2% cpu useage.. thats pretty damn cool! only wish the rx570/580 did VP9 decoding as well for 4k youtube playback.. its a no go in that area.
I got my 5,1 2010 dual cpu for about $47.Threw in additional 32GB of RAM, replaced CPUs with X5670, added a Radeon RX 5600 XT to it, upgraded AirPort Card to one from 2013 27" iMac, and to be honest, still runs lovely on Monterey running via Opencore.And yes, I do my gaming on it,.Still runs fine.
@@emilsecker7881 are you gonna tell every single commentor to upgrade their device or what? They have a device that works well for what they need it for, please shut up.
If you can find a copy of Mac OSX Server, these machines still make great servers. I set up our little local newspaper with one of these running Apple Server software and 2 1TB HDDs and it works great. In fact, that server has been up and running 24/7 for it's entire lifespan (it was purchased brand new in 2009) with upgrades in the memory and a couple of HDD upgrades. They make perfect servers for a Mac environment.
Dude, this seriously made my day. I still have my cheese grater Mac Pro that I purchased in '09. Upgraded the memory, filled all four hdd bays and put in an updated Radeon card over the years but it is still running, though only used when I need to offload some tasks from my, now aging, iMac. It's always been my best and favorite Mac and your video really hit home. Thank you.
Best upgrades for this: 48GB or 96GB RAM to take advantage of the triple channel memory. NVMe SSD (card + SSD). USB 3.0, Type C, and/or Thunderbolt card. CPU upgrades are getting pretty cheap too. macOS 12 Monterey works really well on this, as well as Windows 11.
Mine runs great in 2023. macOS Monterey with 2x x5690, 256 DDR3 ECC RAM (thank’s Martin Lo’s OpenCore package) and CloudNinjas in HTX, sonnet 4x4 NVMe card with 4x 2TB WD Black SN750s, Titan Ridge TB3 w/ power pass thru to my mini 6 pins, Pixlas mod, RX 6900 XT, Noctua fan replacements, 4 x6TB WD Black HDD, LG Blu-Ray player, and a SanDisk 1TB SSD in Optical Bay 2 with my emergency Mojave. It’s a little extreme, but it is my passion project. :)
One of the main reasons why I started watching your channel was the upgrades you made to a 4,1 in 2019. In early 2020 I got my hands on an 4,1 and upgraded it. I am still using it Running Ventura, a RX580 and a flashed firmware on my main logic board that allows me to have an boot screen or boot picker when I hold the option key without having to flash my graphics card. Oh and I forgot to mention a flashed Alpine Ridge thunderbolt card that works on reboot. But not on cold startups or after the machine falling asleep. 🤦🏽♂️. Great video and thank you for sharing this!
I bought a 2012 Mac Pro and have upgraded it to 12 core 3.46 ghz - 64gb RAM - RX580 graphics with apple boot screen and the McFiver NVME card with USB C . I am extremely happy with this build . The performance is awesome .
I just wanted to say that I love your channel! You showing how much old hardware can actually do with the right set up gives me hope! I have cerebral palsy and I live off government funding so I’m still on the last 2019 Intel IMac they made so I think maybe a little bit of an upgrade isn’t that much out of the realm of possibility when I watch a channel like yours. Appreciate you man!
I sold my 5.1 last year because of my MacBook Air m1. But I missed it so much that I a month ago I bought it back. Its just a beautiful machine. The design, the upgradability so many things. I don't often use it but its such a happiness to see it everyday on my desk. By the way I'm a video editor but I love to compose music. And for sure as a music production this machine still rocks. Nice video.
Big Sur runs absolutely fine on 4,1/5,1 Mac Pros. Once the OCLP team solved the booting problems, it is solid as a rock. I have mine running Monterey, which may not be a smooth, but it is another year of security updates. I have a test machine running Ventura, which does have some issues, but does run. I would not hesitate to put Big Sur on it. AS far as whether or not I would still buy one, as a hobbyist, probably yes. They are so much fun to work in, and still perform well. On the down side, they really do eat power, and an Apple silicon Mac Mini will run rings around it. So yes, they really are on the way to becoming retro hobby machines.
Also running Big Sur with mine. I do have serious issues with Monterey and particularly Ventura where the USB ports die randomly and I/O is unresponsive as a result. I am on the latest OCLP 0.65 and it still hasn't fixed the issue. Booting into Ventura often results in unresponsive keyboard and mouse so I can't even log in. It's a dealbreaker as I don't really want to keep force restarting my Mac several times a day. It still happens occasionally with Big Sur when left to go to sleep, the screen just doesn't wake up but it is fine if I manually put the Mac to sleep and the USB ports have yet to die on me. I might try Martin Lo's implementation of OC and see whether his tweaks work better with Ventura.
I had a weird issue where my WD black and one of my NVMe drives kept randomly disappearing even on official Mojave! Any other OS bar big sur same issue but big sur has been spotless so stuck with that!
I loved my Mac Pro 4,1 but recently retired it despite upgrading it to 12 cores, loads of RAM etc. 2 things, the noise was annoying (as I am a musician) and some plugins for Logic Pro need AVX instructions and those Xeons never supported that with no upgrade options. It was working perfectly using Monterey though (Via Opencore Legacy Patcher). Luke, I don't remember you ever doing a video on Opencore, it really gives so much life to these older Macs and it's nearly as easy to install as an officially supported OS.
Same here, running Ableton Live and Logic Pro in Monterey on my 5,1, though I’m just an amateur and don’t really need the latest plugin compatibility etc., so not in a “hurry” to replace it after a mere 13 years. ;) On the fan noise, I’m not sure why more people never did this when these machines were more commonly used for heavy lifting, but you can replace the stock fans with Noctua fans that are WAY quieter. I guess that doesn’t help with GPU fan noise, but using mostly audio applications, a decent card like the RX580 doesn’t even get a workout.
I have a 4,1 that I use for some production work involving old Adobe software. Upgraded to a 5,1 with dual Westmere 5690s with an nVidia GTX 1080 and 96 GB. Great machine. Still very usable.
My 2008 Mac Pro cheesegrater 32GB RAM is still kicking. I can't seem to part with. As a designer, anything I threw at it - it would take it and fly with it. I now use it as a backup. It is well built and I love how customizable it is/was.
A little behind the times Luke, you can now flash your bootrom to to get a boot screen with any GPU. Opencore let’s you run Monterey or even Ventura with Opencore Legacy Patcher also giving you boot screen without flashing the rom. Handoff, air drop work with an upgraded WiFi Bluetooth card. My 5,1 is running a rx6800xt great for gaming in windows and smokes the M1 M2 graphics. Yes the cpu is limiting but still a great machine in 2023 and still my daily driver for Pro Tools and FCPX, windows 11 runs amazingly well on the old cheese grater and 3000 read write on my NVMe Mac OS boot drive.
You can flash ur bootrom for a bootscreen? thats news to me as well bro! when did That happen? did you do a video on it? Ive been using opencore and martin lo with an rx570, so the bootscreen was available to me via these solutions.. I m still curious about flashing the rom to enable bootscreen with All video cards.
I do agree, but to be fair he did say for most of those things that they were _possible,_ just much more expensive and by that time you could get a newer and better machine. For example, handoff and AirDrop - he did say they work if you get an card for it, it just doesn’t come stock.
They work just fine today I had a 2010 dual cpu “12 core” and it ran day to day tasks buttery smooth. The only major drawback is that it uses 100 watts at idle lord knows how many under load. They’re a terrible choice as a daily driver for that reason but definitely fun to tinker around with
I just bought a 4,1 about a month ago for $100 plus shipping. It was a little beat up on the outside but all original inside. First thing I did was flash it to 5,1, installed Catalina, threw in a flashed Radeon HD 6870, a 6 core X5690 CPU, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, USB-C/3.0 PCI-E Card, and finally a 2.5 GB Ethernet PCI-E Card. For about $300 it's a respectable Workstation. This is my fist Mac of any kind, and I have to say I am VERY impressed. It's a pleasure to work on. Anyways, that's my first Aluminum Beast!
I got 4.1 flashed to 5.1. This is my favorite Mac of all times, the design is absolutely amazing , the customization is wonderful. I would say the strongest issue is PCIE 2.0 and Sata 2.0. I'm sad to see this machine becoming so obsolete.
I bought a base model 4 core 2010 Mac Pro. Upgraded it to the fastest 6 core processor it could use. RX 580 with 8 Gb ram, 12.5 GB system ram. Running Monterey with open core off of a SSD. Running Windows 11 on a nvme on a pcie adapter. It’s my main desktop computer now. It handles Photoshop and Indesign just for. I use my M1 Air for anything that I don’t want to be at my desk for. I couldn’t be happier with my Mac Pro. I’m so glad I finally found one.
@@iRedMCYT gta san andreas through steam on mac, runs okay, minecraft runs okay, Xeon’s are slowing down and becoming more and more obsolete unfortunately, reducing frames
Watching this on my very heavily upgraded DP 4,1>5,1, which is still my primary machine. To this day, I use it for audio/video/photo editing, occasional 3D graphics editing, Volvo VIDA car parts schematics (via remote desktop because larger displays), gaming in Windows, and many other weird projects outside of general use. I also built a >30TB SP 5,1 home server less than a year ago with a fanless GPU and an LP 6-core Xeon L5640. Both utilizing OpenCore. Despite being ~14-year-old machines, they're still certainly very useful in my case! Primary 4,1>5,1 specs: Dual Xeon X5690 3.46GHz (12C/24T) 192GB (6x32GB) PC3L-10600R 1333MHz RAM (And yes-You read that right) (Originally had 256GB 8x32GB, but POST was MUCH slower for obvious reasons) Powercolor Radeon RX 6600 8GB GPU macOS Monterey (2TB NVMe), Windows 11 (1TB NVMe), macOS High Sierra (128GB SATA SSD) 480GB exFAT SATA SSD (for multi-OS network file sharing) USB 3.0 4x Port PCIe card 5,1 Server specs: Single Xeon L5640 2.26GHz (6C/12T) 128GB (4x32GB) PC3L-10600R 1333MHz RAM (Yes-You read that right again) NVIDIA GeForce GT 720 1GB GPU (fanless) Over 30TB total storage (2x8TB RAID, 8TB, 4TB, & 2TB HDDs) macOS Monterey & Windows 11 (240GB SSD) USB 3.0 Type-C PCIe card
Bro's talking crap about the 2018 Mac mini, I just ran Cinebench on mine while watching this video and got 8714 pts. Not only that, but you can put 64 GB RAM in one. And you can easily get a NAVI-based eGPU setup for under $400. Really shows how much Luke has fallen behind on the knowledge of these Macs.
Allow me to share a great memory. I once had the 2010 iMac with the i7 in it. But I quickly realized that I needed the upgradeability. So I put my iMac up for sale and this executive of a company contacted me saying he intended to scale down his company and wanted a family PC. So he wanted to trade off one of his many Mac Pro 2009 with dual E5520. I told him "You do realize the difference in value here, right?" and this was back in 2011 and he said "Yeah absolutely, you're lucky because I simply wanna scale down on my business". And this guy, really nice guy shows up in a fancy car making the trade. We hooked up his machine at my house and we ensured each machine worked properly and did the trade. Guess as if I was happy? What a jackpot. I later upgraded it with dual X5675 (like in this video) and 48GB of 1333Mhz ram and a GTX 970 and man... what a beeeeaaaastttt!
@@Tvj_films8452 Yeah, I bought it like a month before they announced the transition. But tbh, I don't regret it. The new Mac Pro that just came out today doesn't have upgradable RAM, and I can run Windows to game with my 2019.
I used a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 (with a 6-core Xeon, 32 GB of RAM, 2 TB combined storage, and a W5500 video card) until just a few months ago!! I would say, they're usable nowadays TO A POINT. Works just fine for basic tasks, and even some more intense tasks, but you DO notice a slower system compared to Apple Silicon-it's just not as snappy. I loved my 5,1, and I'm sad I can't use it anymore, but, it was just getting a little too slow.
These are magnificent machines - high quality. I love vintage Macs - have a G4 mirror door tower (along with keyboard and matching screen) as well as 2 project mid 2012 13 inch MBP that I got dirt cheap and maxed out just for the heck of it. I don't use them that much but they are from a period where you could actually work on Apple products. I might spring to get one of those cheese graters just to have one. As I have said you are head and shoulders the best Mac channel because you don't breathe through your mouth only focused on what might be coming up next. You actually respect the past. Keep up the great work! Even though this machine is slower than modern Fruit company products, you cannot beat the upgradeability of this unit nor can you beat the quality of construction. This would make a great 2nd computer for a Fruit Fly ecosystem!
I agree fully with the others, I also still use my 2009 Mac Pro that I purchased back then. I changed to SSDs, but that is it. Ok, it is not fast anymore, but for my music recording setup, it still does all you need.
I’m surprised with how viable these things are still. I have a 2009 4,1(Flashed to 5,1) with a X5690, 32GBs of RAM, and a Radeon VII. It also has Monterey on the machine. It isn’t the fastest (If I compare it to my TR 5955WX, it gets completely blown out of the water), but for what it is, I like it. Even if I don’t use it often, it is fun whenever I do end up using it.
Dunno, X5690 is just so old at this point. I wouldn't go further than Haswell for older machines. I love the X79 and X99 era (Ivy Bridge & Haswell/Broadwell). But people fall into a "cheapness" trap with pre-X79 systems with Nehalem & Westmere and similar Intels. They're just really really crap at this point. Even a dirt cheap consumer i3 in the past 4 years will out do it with less cores. I mean, seriously, it's that much of a difference and while using way less electricity. The later Xeons up to V4 era are more worth it even if old purely because you can get high core counts for cheaper, especially with dual CPU systems. My X99 ASUS workstation board for example has 88 cores effectively with lots of PCIe lanes & loads of RAM. Then it's worth it in some workloads. You cannot get high core counts with anything before X79. Anything needing single core or doesn't scale well is getting completely eaten IPC wise with anything newer and still cheap. There are some really great multiplier overclockable V1, V2 and V3 Xeons also that can make up for the IPC but very few bother.
Because of you, I'd say 2 years ago I built an incredible Mac Pro 4.1 and turned it into a 5.1, and got all the upgraded parts and totally upgraded to as far as I could. It was an incredible machine and if someone is doing just music, it is incredible for that ala Pro Tools/Logic Pro. The only reason I upgraded to a Macbook Pro M1 Pro is because I bought one of the Thunderbolt cards that was patched for that system and bought a UAD Thunderbolt 3 Satellite unit. It worked well with it for about a week then it started acting weird and was to iffy. Not only that, I bought my son the Mac Mini M1 when it came out and when I A/B'ed it to that little machine, it smoked it. Ran twice as much audio tracks and plugins. I had the dual 3.46 CPU's in the machine. That didn't matter, that little Mac Mini killed it so, I started looking at the M1 Mac and got the Macbook Pro M1 Pro and never looked back. That machine was a great machine but, the new M1's etc, just puts them to shame. Also, when doing videos, that Mac Pro is really slow now matter how much ram, cpu etc. I had 128ghz of ram as well on that Mac Pro and the Mac Mini still smoked it with 16gigs of ram. Hope that helps anyone thinking about getting the Mac Pro Machine and wondering if they should get the Mac Mini etc. Thanks and love the channel!
7:43 You should always disconnect from power when removing any internal components. There is still 5v trickle power with the power supply connected to mains. You could potentially damage the backplane. 8:13 You can just perform an NVRAM reset x3 and it should purge Windows from trying to boot at startup.
That probably is best practice, but SATA is designed for hotswap, meaning that you can remove it when the computer is on, so long as it was unmounted. It's probably fine.
@@JoeTheGreat From what I've read, the cMP's do not have hot-swappable HDD bays, regardless of SATA's design capabilities. Only the X-Serve's HDD bays are hot-swappable. I'm sure plenty of people do it with no issues, but I've learned to be extra cautious with these machines and just do things the proper way.
I was told by someone who apparently worked on the design of the X-Serve that while that 'advertised' hot swap SATA, the 4,1 still had the functionality but it might not post to Device Manager. So prob safe power wise but you might not get the device to be mountable.
I love to see more videos on this generation of Mac Pro. I learned a lot from you on these and I run a 2012 dual CPU Mac Pro at home next to my PC. I like to run the low profile Radeon 560 for its lack of extra power cables. I boot to an NVMe and run DDR3 in triple channel mode. Catalina patcher forever!
Because of your videos, I bought a MacPro 5.1 2012 2x2.4Ghz, 24 Gb Ram, 240 SSD, 500Gb HDD, 640 Gb HDD, ATI Radeon HD 5770, High Serra OS for 2000 DDK(approx $283).
I put a FENVI PCIe WIFI card in my 2009 Mac Pro and it’s definitely worth it. I can see all the WIFI devices in my neighborhood for about a 500ft radius. I had to remove the original WIFI card and make custom cables for the FENVI card to work with bluetooth but its worth it. The original Apple WIFI antenna SUCK and its difficult to upgrade the original card with a NEWER Apple WIFI card and then you Still have to upgrade the Antennas. Its just Much easier to put in the FENVI card. There are posts online on how to make the cables and FENDI card pin outs. Loaded with Large capacity hard drives these still make for a good File Server or Home theater movie server.
Bought exactly this Mac about a year ago for 100 of your over-the-pond-pounds. 6 core, 16GB ram, no hdd. Absolute bargain. Installed an unused SSD on High Sierra as a boot volume, and a 16TB HDD for all my movie files. I just use it as a Plex server which the Mac is probably a tad overkill for.
I have a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 patched to Monterey with 32GB RAM, an RX 580, and a single CPU x5690, and it runs amazingly. I paired it with a 30" Cinema display, and it's absolutely gorgeous. So nice to have a Mac that I can still upgrade in 2023.
I have a genuine MacPro 5,1.First it was with a cheap NVME adapter with a Samsung 970 plus 1TB getting M2 speeds with read and writes. Later I bought a Sonnet M2 4x4 PciE card with 4 970 plus m2 SSD's 1TB's, and now my old Mac reaches 7Gb/sec in read and write speeds. I am still very happy with it. It has 3.0 USB card, and I use two different videocards, a nVidia K5000 4Gb Mac Edition(bootscreen) and a RX 580 8Gb SE the blue version without bootscreen .. I use it for music production and video editing, it does it all flawlessly. Before I buy a new Mac it should pass the break even point for energy and with the current prices that would take years. So I am completely happy with it and keeping it.
I'm still using my 5.1 12 core dual processor with Mojave and Cubase 12 in my recording studio (I have a 6 core as a backup). Having started in the '80s with a Yamaha X5, then C64, Atari and Macs since Quadra up to the Mac Pro, I don't find my rig slow at all. I will keep it as long as it works.
We're just alike!! I also have Cubase Pro 12 - I'm bn trying to upgrade to Sonoma using oclp 1.2.1 but I can't seem to get it.🤔 Although I did successfully upgrade it to Monterey abt a year ago. Still trying as of this moment. I'm going to try a different thumb drive & see if it works 👍🏾
I still use my cheesegrater 1,1 as network backup. It turns on once a day at night, clones all my drives connected to my trashcan, and turns itself off. Also, I still use my PowerMac G4 to send faxes and burn DVDs too.
Great video! I own a MacBook Pro 14" Max but I still use my 4,1 on the regular as my desktop machine. You are 100% right - with each passing year, these cheesegrater machines get less and less worthwhile investing in. I was gifted one from my professor about 7 years ago and I've been slowly upgrading over the years. Now I have it spec'd out with a Vega 64, dual X5675's, 96GB RAM, USB 3.2 card, running Monterey and Windows 11 - but that took a significant amount of time and effort to get it working. OpenCore has helped the usability of this device tremendously but each year Apple makes it harder and harder to run the latest OS. A lot of games now require AVX instructions which these Xeons do not have, which is completely understandable. While I love this machine for its hard drive trays and flexibility, I don't recommend using this as a daily driver. Save up and invest in a M2 Mac Mini that can do all of this for a fraction of the wattage.
It's nice to see other cheesegrater users; I own a 2009 12-core, firmware upgraded to have RX560, wifi/bt, and USB 3.2 from sonnet and nVME adapter, and now it has Monterey and Win10 Pro on bootcamp. The only drawback of this machine in my humble opinion, is that it only support SATA 2 not 3, making me set some SATA drives in RAID. Since it is a wellmade modular machine with plenty of power, I use highpoint SATA expander to use 8x SATA drives in total with internal drive caddy I built myself to keep'em all inside, and while SATA expander is a bit glitchy time to time, but it's alright in the end. And the RAID feature of Moneterey is very stable(while I don't recommend RAID on Win10Pro) and super fast, and it's also fast enough through USB external drives for my needs. Ironically enough, even though this should be considered as a relic from the past, I can always upgrade my RX560 with RX6600XT or even 6800XT in the "future," with boot screen if I want, and this machine will still be alright, supplying enough power for the *new* GPU. Anyway, thanks for the great video. :)
I still use my 2012 5,1 Mac Pro. I've been holding out for the silicon Mac Pro but today, I gave in. I purchased a certified refurbished Mac mini M2 Pro . It arrives on Thursday.
Still running one of these 48GB Ram, a PCI card with SSD an 4x 2TB drives. Database server and still pretty fast and most important, super super solid!
6:03 thanks or showing me the PCIe lock latch. Just 2 weeks ago, I bought a Mac Pro 4.1 upgraded to 5.1 with 80gb, 512GB NVMe ssd, USB3 card, 2 x5680 Xeons for $150. I added my Vega Frontier. Installed Open Core and Monterey from my old 4.1. I need to upgrade the Wifi/Bluetooth card, but otherwise everything I wanted in a Mac. NVMe gets between 600-1350MB/s writes and 1400-1530MB/s reads. This is nice, although, I need a SSD on the SATA bus to help with booting faster because of the way the Mac firmware initially looks for drives. It is an awesome machine. I was lucky guy sold it to me was less than 5 miles away.
I use my 2011 cheese grater Mac Pro as an overpowered web server and it’s a beast! Dual Xeons, 32GB RAM, and a GTX960. Overkill for a web server but it handles multiple medium-traffic sites with ease. And I use it from time to time as a daily driver machine too and no problems at all.
I have a 2009 Mac Pro under my desk which I use for a primary machine with an RX 580 8 GB, 2 x 3.46 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeons, 128 GB 1333 MHz DDR3. I am running the main boot drive off of an NVMe PCI card - 2500 MBs write and 2800 MBs read - this thing is a beast running on a very stable Mojave - love this thing dearly! Did all the upgrades about 3 years ago (end of 2019) for less than $1K on a machine I have had since 2009... cannot beat it - longevity + affordability + performance!
It’s 2023 and I’m editing video with FX using FCPX on a 2010 MacPro, using Open Core to run Monterey. Wifi, Bluetooth, handoff, and airdrop work great. Dual SSD. I love my Mac.
Apart from an iPad Pro 12.9, it is still my only computer. A couple of years ago I upgraded the ram, the video card, put in an SSD and upgraded the processor. For my needs it still runs great, never had any failures or slowdowns.
I got a 3,1 for free with no accessories about a month ago. I bought a wifi card and adapter from OSXwifi, 32gb of owc ram from ebay, a mac flashed 680 gpu from ebay, the owc pcie adapter and put an old ssd in it, and then got a 30" mac cinema and im bout $600 all in. ran opencore and i have monterey 12.6.5 on it and it's awesome. perfect computer for music and web browsing in my garage.
I made the Mac Pro 2011 - Mac Pro 2011 upgraded Hardware 2 CPU 3.3GHz (2 x 6) 12core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz 64GB (4x16GB) DDR3 ECC memory 18x SuperDrive with double layer support (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW) Radeon RX 580 256-bit 8GB GDRR5 Chipset - Intel x5520 1TB SSD storage I run windows and mac and it is just fine - AAA games on Windows and all my daily needs are good. All in I was about $800 - I built it in 2020 - it's working.
If you have fully upgraded dual CPU Mac Pro with EnableGOP patch and better gpu it's an amazing machine even now. Am running 6800xt with it and the performance is great even when 4K gaming.
Because of YOU bro, in my studio, I’m running a 2010 Mac Pro upgraded the way you did...minus the graphics card mod and it’s still a beast! For music, it’s a beast and I won’t be changing for the next few years...unless I absolutely have too!
Just bought a 2012 Mac Pro, and I’m super excited. It’s going to be a great home server. I’m going to throw a m.2 IHCE in it for the boot disk and NVMe for the rest of the storage drives.
I still use a 2008 Mac Pro as an Ableton machine in my studio. On a day to day basis it works fine, does all my regular tasks without complaint. The music side of things is just starting to get creaky with Ableton 11 and I realise I've been pushing my luck for a good while now. I've had the 2008 since new (it was an Apple shop return so not quite brand new). Over the years I've upped the RAM and swapped out the drives for SSD's and done a GPU upgrade. I can honestly say it has served me very well. I wish Macs were as reliable as this now.
They make great file servers. Get a Sata 3 version, install a SSD PCie card to boot super fast, install 4 SSDs in the trays, stripe them together as a Raid 5 using Soft Raid, add a UPS, combine both Ethernet ports together via a switch, install macOS client and share it over the network. I did this and it was bullet-proof. Serving files to a design studios for over a decade without a single hiccup.
I have a 2010 MP upgraded to 12 core, 96gb RAM, NVMe drives. I use it for Pro Tools. It still works great! I stopped chasing the upgrade path when I got a system that was stable and did what I need. I will stay here as long as I can.
I still have a 4,1 Mac Pro with dual 3.33GHz 6 core Xeons. I upgraded it to 128GB of RAM, and I intend on installing Windows on it. With 24 threads and gobs of RAM, it can still be a fantastic server for tons of virtual machines, if you live near cheap power like I do.
You can get faster SSD speeds by using one of the two video card slots. I bought this new in 2008 - dual quad core xeons (8 x cores)for my wedding photography business! It paid for itself along with the Cinema Display many times over and still runs perfectly today. I bought a second off eBay for my GF later, it’s her computer today. The company OWC was one of the first to offer SSD’s for Mac and I bought one that used the higher bandwidth of the video card slot. So, yep, my old 2008 has been booting from the video card slot for probably 9 years or more. I just bought a MacPro M3 Max - it’s insane and beautiful made. My 2012 MacBook quad core i7 also works perfectly off the original SSD. Once you go Mac it’s hard to go back to the bloat wear of Windows. The OS and hardware are so much better. Thanks for the video.
The data throughput speed of the video card slots in a MacPro 2008 depends on which slot you're using: PCIe 2.0 x16 slot: This slot offers the highest data throughput speed, up to 2GB/s. It is a double-wide slot and supports 16 lanes of PCI Express data. This slot is typically used for the main graphics card.
You can always get the higher performance 5,1 variant with dual Xeons.... I'm typing this on one that has a quad NVME PCI (raid) card, 64gb of 1333 Mhz DDR3 RAM, an RX590, modern bluetooth and wifi, USB 3 card, and it is a BEAST still. I also have a new Mac Studio M1max, and honestly, other than boot time, I really can't tell the difference. I probably have about a grand or so in the cheese grater upgrades (four 1gb fast NVMEs etc are a little pricey) but I also have transfer speeds of 5GB per second on Blackmagic benchmark tests, and it's been with me since 2010! A machine that is still viable after 13 years... Pretty awesome!
I really think my current machine (Mac mini Late-2014 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 Intel Iris 1536 MB) for which I paid only a few hundred bucks is perfect for my needs as an academic researcher/author. But thanx for the lovely trip down memory lane. I adored my old cheesegrater. So beautifully conceived and built.
Using open core allows me to run Monterrey with no issues plus GPU acceleration. I use it for editing 4k and occasionally multicam, no problem. Dual 3.06 6core, 32gb Ram, RX580 8gb, nvme to pci adapter for my scratch drive. It’s still a mighty workhorse. Work is in progress for Ventura support by OC community.
The Cheesegraters are, to this day, the best home computers that have ever been made. Period. Anyone who complains about the price has never swapped/upgraded a drive/RAM/cards in it. I'll never forget opening my 2008 3,1… it was like the scene in the Star Trek movie when Kirk sees the new Enterprise for the first time.
NO DOUBT. I got 2 2012 12 cores, maxxed out RAM, run like WATCHES, NO PROBS EVER, and I HATE the way Apple does business. They screwed up and made stuff TOO GOOD in 2012. TAKE ADVANTAGE, People...
@@GeoffTEEVEE Well true! Trick is, my old Mac Pros eventually did die. I can get one to boot into 10.11. But I can't run almost anything current on it, and definitely can't do my plugin-reviews TH-cam videos on it. This is the tough part with Apple: eventually you just have to move on. The Mac Studio has been a huge disappointment. It's a wonderful computer-until it kicks USB devices or hangs for no reason. Sad, for $4000
@@dahlhousestudios Yeah..... Sad truth, mine STILL run GREAT for now, and because I produce music and do graphics editing on separate machines and keep them off the web, I think they'll last a little longer.
I am retiring my 2010 12 core 3.4 / 128 gb ram / 8 tb m2 storage / usb 3.0 cheese grater this year 😢. I customized it to the max. The best computer I ever owned. I swapped the cpu and bypassed Sata 2.0 maxed ram and even update usb through pcie. The biggest limitation is there is no way to get lightning connections. I think I will keep mine forever in the basement and give it a hug every couple of years.
I run an upgraded 5,1 as a music production system. It has an nvme ssd on an expansion card, which is decently quick. Graphics and cpu are upgraded and with a 6 core 3.33ghz cpu, performance wise it’s really very capable. It’s running Monterey without any major problems, though there is a caveat. If you run an unsupported OS, the usb driver has some quirks. Hotplugging doesn’t work properly but if you plug a usb2 hub into the port and only connect devices to the hub, they work absolutely fine. It’s still a very solid machine, and far more affordable than a newer system.
Pretty much agree. My Mac Pro 4,1 was my workhorse for over a decade. I’ve upgraded every possible part of it but it’s just not a viable machine anymore now that I’m using a Mac Studio M1 Ultra. Having said that, I keep it around should I need access to an old OS, which did come up a few months ago. As a legacy machine there isn’t another system out there capable of running anything from Snow Leopard to Monterey.
I got a 5,1 for free from my office basement, came with 64gb of ram and a 1tb ssd - upgraded to dual xeons 5690’s, an rx580 and added an 8tb hdd for extra storage. It’s a dang powerhouse, running windows and steam. I can run games at max settings 1080p. Best deal ever! Haha
I bought a 4,1 uppgraded to 5,1 in 2022. Dual x5675, 48gb ram, Ssd and a GTX 1080 Ti. With bootcamp and Windows 10 it makes a fine gamingmachine. Mostly play counterstrike at around 200 FPS. Byt it runns Hogwarts Legacy in 1080p on high at almost 60fps so i’m more Than happy 😄 Greatings from Sweden!
Have a dual X5690 5,1 Mac Pro dual booting Catalina and Ventura using Catalina Helper and the latest OpenCore that fixed a long-standing issue with USB PCIe cards so it now runs current software, boots off an AHCI PCIe SSD (HyperX Predator), has a RX570 GPU and Sonnet Allegro USB 3 card. Runs great for DAW software and because I’m used to the speed of a 1400MB/s SSD, the SSD speeds of the new M2 Mac Mini wouldn’t be an issue for me and I can eventually replace it with a 24GB/256GB SSD M2 Mac Mini and it will run fine for me. Then I can keep the Mac Pro as a server and for gaming and virtualisation.
@@emilsecker7881 Bit thick suggesting that. You clearly can’t understand why older Mac Pro’s are still in use by people who aren’t throwing away the investment for some non-upgradable soldered RAM soldered SSD soldered CPU Apple silicon system. “Just get a new system” so naive and ignorant.
ah man, still got one under my desk, haven't booted it in a while. I used cheesegraters for like 7 years until the writing on the wall became clearer - I got a mac mini M1. The crazy thing is, I got three of them for free from a company I used to work for - they had a storage area with like 50 of them, that they were just throwing away. I personally think they are finally past their use by date and the once very active "community" around them has dwindled into an even more niche market than it already was. It's hard to even sell them on eBay now - nobody wants them. I spent a LOT of money over 7 years upgrading my various 5.1's and loved every minute of it - such a stunning bit of kit, Apple's finest moment.
you can ABSOLUTELY run Monterey on here, especially with a Metal supported card, + boot screen is supported with OpenCore wifi related features should also work with OpenCore. My dual Xeon 2008 Mac Pro runs very well with that, and it has a newer MacBook Pro wifi card and one of those Mac Edition GTX 680s, along with 32 GB of fully buffered DDR2.
I still have a 1,1 Mac Pro I use on the regular. I installed Windows XP on it and use it for retro gaming. Put a 2GB Graphics card , 4GB ram. Its the Quad core model so I have all the power I need for those older 90s, early 2000s games.
I love the case. I purchased a 1,1 a few years ago with an pristine case. I gutted it and built a AMD Ryzen 5900 machine inside. It was a lot of work but I love it. I might consider an 5,1 if I could run a modern mac os without much "hassel"
absolutely true bro.. most people dont understand that simple fact... 1000watts is the max potiential that its capable of supplying under a load.. however, no mac pro is using anywhere near that idling or doing everyday tasks..in those cases, the power supply is supplying Only the watts Needed for those tasks.
I still use a 2007 MacPro 2.1 8-Core for editing photos on. 32GB of Ram, SSDs and a halfway solid AMD graphics card installed. Have it for years right now, it runs two hardware calibrated NEC displays. Currently I don't need more and I'm still pretty happy with it.
Costco has M1 Mac mini for 299, it's a no brainer. The Cheesegrater doesn't make much sense to buy unless you like to tinker or have a need for some special PCI addon card.
I'm still recording on a fully loaded 2008 cheese grater with Pro Tools HD, and it works flawlessly. In my industry, upgrading would not only be a waste of money, it would be profoundly stupid.
I have a 5,1 Mac Pro currently running Monterey via OpenCore. I use it as my main computer and have no functional issues, but finally decided to get an M2 Mac Mini as a replacement. Main reasons were concerns about power consumption and longevity of the Mac Pro. The Mac Mini sits quietly on my desk and is noticeable faster in every way.
![เขามัทรี - เอ็กซ์ ศุภกฤต - จอนนี่มิวสิค [ Official MV ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/AS9ufKuQIVs/mqdefault.jpg)
Considering I'm watching this on a 2006 Mac Pro running 10.6.8 I'd say "Yeah, they still work fine."
Yes, Depending on your workload HOWEVER the faster versions had water cooling which had a tendency to leak coolant destroying the circuit boards below.
Really? There's still a browser that'll load TH-cam on 10.6? Which one? That'll come in handy for me.
@@AndrewW2733 you’re thinking of the G5, no Mac Pro had water cooling 💦
@@AndrewW2733 Was that not only for the G5 PowerMacs? Never came across an Intel box that had water cooling.
Sadly those old Mac Pro's only have SATA2, so have a max of 300MB/s read and write...So you will not get the optimal speed of ANY SSD.
Luke, I have the 2009 Mac Pro that I have flashed to 5.1. I have ordered dual 5690 processors with 128 GB RAM, and an RX580 Graphics Card. a 2 tb NVME boot drive running Open Core Legacy Patcher on Monterey, 2 1 TB SATA Drive, and two (in a Raid) 8TB drives for my media running Plex. I absolutely love my machine and your videos from the past are what excited me about the Cheese Grater Mac. Yes, it is worth it. I have an M1 MacBook Air and an iPad mini to round out the lot. Thank you for your videos and for your support of the Mac Pro. She may be 14 years old, but she purrs like a Jaguar.
totallt agree
She may purr nice, but I’m tired of dealing with opencore to update it.
Stick with Monterey and standard equipment(e.g. RX580). I have no issues
Similar setup as mine -- but only a mere 48gb ram. Ha Ha!. Runs like a gazelle. Anyone have any idea what the latest OS we can move to at this time?
@@brucerothwell7944 I am on Monterey using Open Core Legacy Patcher. I would wait on moving to Ventura until Jessie (from Jessie's Flying on TH-cam) gives the go-ahead. He previously said to wait on the Mac Pro 4.1/5/1 upgrade to Ventura due to some issues.
I have a 2010 MacPro - a few years ago I upgraded it to 96GBRAM, dual 6-core Zenon CPUs and an RX580 GPU However, I recently bought a MacStudio. But I kept the old MacPro and use it as a NAS as it can hold a total of 6 drives if the optical drive is removed. It's great for that purpose. I feel the old cheese-grater towers were one of the best computers in their time.
I wish I could afford the power bills to run any of these old MacPros as a home nas. Honestly theres a perfectly good trashcan 2013 sitting at work I could use but leaving something like that on all the time would cost me so much
Xeon not Zenon
I do the same thing with mine. I just wish MacOS wasn't so dumb with waking itself up randomly... no way to stop this that I've found without turning off wake for ethernet access, which makes it not good as a constantly available fileserver. I wake mine up manually when I need to access it... I really wish there was a way around this. The random wakeups are from the mDNSresponder multicast announcing thing... and if you disable it, filesharing doesn't work.
@@IdiotRace Bro, while these Do have 1,000 watt power supplies, they are Not running 1,000 watts when they are just on in the background or when ur just websurfing...that 1000watt rating is the power supply's Max output that it can supply under a full load scenerio..when the computer is doing something like rendering, its under some stress and those dual cpu's rated at 130 watts each and gpu like an rx580 at 180 watts, you could only pull 500watts if even... in most cases these realistically pull around 300 watts when being used and Way less than that when idle...In simple terms, if your power. supply is rated at 1,000 watts, thats its Potiential but its Not using much when idle or light load scenerios..it depends on the load.. For example ,my rx570 is using 68watts as I type this and the 6 core cpu is likely under 20 watts to websurf becuz cpu useage to stream or surf only uses about 5% cpu.. you get the idea
Same hardware here ❤
I absolutely love this Mac. Even today, if you buy a broken one for around 50$ you have an amazing case to build anything you want in it.
I got the ATX conversion kit from The Laser Hive to turn my Power Mac G5 into a PC and I love it! Best looking PC case in my opinion.
Totally love those cases as well.
@@maxdoes_ Power Mac G4 looks pretty cool too imo
Exactly a case like that new would cost a $1,000
I put a Raspberry Pi 4 in one, so it looks empty but mostly runs emulators :)
Thing with these Mac Pros is you gotta use OpenCore to activate GPU hardware acceleration. Once you do that it’s leaps and bounds faster. Mine renders 1080p video a mere tad slower than my M1 MacBook Air.
these do h264/hevc decoding /encoding so well.. you can even play 4k video hevc or h264 with 1 to 2% cpu useage.. thats pretty damn cool! only wish the rx570/580 did VP9 decoding as well for 4k youtube playback.. its a no go in that area.
Does Opencore require a PhD in Hacking to accomplish this???
@@AdrianIII No opencore legacy patcher does everything automatically.
@@AdrianIII no, drag and drop skills
@@AdrianIII Nah, I hackintoshed my 2011 MacBook Pro easily, so easily, I used it on all my Macs I got after my 2011 MacBook Pro.
I got my 5,1 2010 dual cpu for about $47.Threw in additional 32GB of RAM, replaced CPUs with X5670, added a Radeon RX 5600 XT to it, upgraded AirPort Card to one from 2013 27" iMac, and to be honest, still runs lovely on Monterey running via Opencore.And yes, I do my gaming on it,.Still runs fine.
Time to upgrade that thing
@@emilsecker7881they already have..?
@@emilsecker7881 are you gonna tell every single commentor to upgrade their device or what? They have a device that works well for what they need it for, please shut up.
If you can find a copy of Mac OSX Server, these machines still make great servers. I set up our little local newspaper with one of these running Apple Server software and 2 1TB HDDs and it works great. In fact, that server has been up and running 24/7 for it's entire lifespan (it was purchased brand new in 2009) with upgrades in the memory and a couple of HDD upgrades. They make perfect servers for a Mac environment.
Dude, this seriously made my day. I still have my cheese grater Mac Pro that I purchased in '09. Upgraded the memory, filled all four hdd bays and put in an updated Radeon card over the years but it is still running, though only used when I need to offload some tasks from my, now aging, iMac. It's always been my best and favorite Mac and your video really hit home. Thank you.
Best upgrades for this: 48GB or 96GB RAM to take advantage of the triple channel memory. NVMe SSD (card + SSD). USB 3.0, Type C, and/or Thunderbolt card. CPU upgrades are getting pretty cheap too. macOS 12 Monterey works really well on this, as well as Windows 11.
That's what I run on the two I have too. Dual booting Monterey and Windows 11. They are very decent machines.
Thanks for the cheat sheet! 📖📝📚
Mine runs great in 2023. macOS Monterey with 2x x5690, 256 DDR3 ECC RAM (thank’s Martin Lo’s OpenCore package) and CloudNinjas in HTX, sonnet 4x4 NVMe card with 4x 2TB WD Black SN750s, Titan Ridge TB3 w/ power pass thru to my mini 6 pins, Pixlas mod, RX 6900 XT, Noctua fan replacements, 4 x6TB WD Black HDD, LG Blu-Ray player, and a SanDisk 1TB SSD in Optical Bay 2 with my emergency Mojave. It’s a little extreme, but it is my passion project. :)
One of the main reasons why I started watching your channel was the upgrades you made to a 4,1 in 2019. In early 2020 I got my hands on an 4,1 and upgraded it. I am still using it Running Ventura, a RX580 and a flashed firmware on my main logic board that allows me to have an boot screen or boot picker when I hold the option key without having to flash my graphics card. Oh and I forgot to mention a flashed Alpine Ridge thunderbolt card that works on reboot. But not on cold startups or after the machine falling asleep. 🤦🏽♂️. Great video and thank you for sharing this!
Where do you get that firmware for the main logic board? I have 5,1 Mac Pro, does the same firmware work on it?
I bought a 2012 Mac Pro and have upgraded it to 12 core 3.46 ghz - 64gb RAM - RX580 graphics with apple boot screen and the McFiver NVME card with USB C . I am extremely happy with this build . The performance is awesome .
I just wanted to say that I love your channel! You showing how much old hardware can actually do with the right set up gives me hope! I have cerebral palsy and I live off government funding so I’m still on the last 2019 Intel IMac they made so I think maybe a little bit of an upgrade isn’t that much out of the realm of possibility when I watch a channel like yours. Appreciate you man!
I sold my 5.1 last year because of my MacBook Air m1. But I missed it so much that I a month ago I bought it back. Its just a beautiful machine. The design, the upgradability so many things. I don't often use it but its such a happiness to see it everyday on my desk. By the way I'm a video editor but I love to compose music. And for sure as a music production this machine still rocks. Nice video.
I have the same story but I never sold mine. It's rarely used but it looks so good on my desk
Big Sur runs absolutely fine on 4,1/5,1 Mac Pros. Once the OCLP team solved the booting problems, it is solid as a rock. I have mine running Monterey, which may not be a smooth, but it is another year of security updates. I have a test machine running Ventura, which does have some issues, but does run. I would not hesitate to put Big Sur on it.
AS far as whether or not I would still buy one, as a hobbyist, probably yes. They are so much fun to work in, and still perform well. On the down side, they really do eat power, and an Apple silicon Mac Mini will run rings around it. So yes, they really are on the way to becoming retro hobby machines.
Yeah I said elsewhere
Hi, i am considering one… one question: which boot problems ?
Also running Big Sur with mine. I do have serious issues with Monterey and particularly Ventura where the USB ports die randomly and I/O is unresponsive as a result. I am on the latest OCLP 0.65 and it still hasn't fixed the issue. Booting into Ventura often results in unresponsive keyboard and mouse so I can't even log in. It's a dealbreaker as I don't really want to keep force restarting my Mac several times a day.
It still happens occasionally with Big Sur when left to go to sleep, the screen just doesn't wake up but it is fine if I manually put the Mac to sleep and the USB ports have yet to die on me. I might try Martin Lo's implementation of OC and see whether his tweaks work better with Ventura.
I had a weird issue where my WD black and one of my NVMe drives kept randomly disappearing even on official Mojave! Any other OS bar big sur same issue but big sur has been spotless so stuck with that!
Big sur runs on 3,1 mac pros as well! I've been using it for a few months and haven't had any issues
I loved my Mac Pro 4,1 but recently retired it despite upgrading it to 12 cores, loads of RAM etc. 2 things, the noise was annoying (as I am a musician) and some plugins for Logic Pro need AVX instructions and those Xeons never supported that with no upgrade options. It was working perfectly using Monterey though (Via Opencore Legacy Patcher). Luke, I don't remember you ever doing a video on Opencore, it really gives so much life to these older Macs and it's nearly as easy to install as an officially supported OS.
agreed bro.. opencore also runs ventura on these now as well, HW encode/decode available. ...no issues and its fast.
@@skip741x3 I'm currently running Ventura on this 2013 iMac and its like a fully modern Mac, not planning on upgrading any time soon.
I'm running OPLC with Monterey as the OS on my cheese grader Mac.
Same here, running Ableton Live and Logic Pro in Monterey on my 5,1, though I’m just an amateur and don’t really need the latest plugin compatibility etc., so not in a “hurry” to replace it after a mere 13 years. ;)
On the fan noise, I’m not sure why more people never did this when these machines were more commonly used for heavy lifting, but you can replace the stock fans with Noctua fans that are WAY quieter. I guess that doesn’t help with GPU fan noise, but using mostly audio applications, a decent card like the RX580 doesn’t even get a workout.
@@AntoneJohnson I didn't realise you could do that! Would have been a good idea. 13 years is amazing Antone!
I have a 4,1 that I use for some production work involving old Adobe software. Upgraded to a 5,1 with dual Westmere 5690s with an nVidia GTX 1080 and 96 GB. Great machine. Still very usable.
Should probably upgrade the 5,1. It’s unsupported too
For graphics work or audio work, the 5,1 is fine. Where it misses out is video editing or the latest versions of some of the RAW editors.
@@emilsecker7881 your comments are unsupported, please upgrade them.
My 2008 Mac Pro cheesegrater 32GB RAM is still kicking. I can't seem to part with. As a designer, anything I threw at it - it would take it and fly with it. I now use it as a backup. It is well built and I love how customizable it is/was.
A little behind the times Luke, you can now flash your bootrom to to get a boot screen with any GPU. Opencore let’s you run Monterey or even Ventura with Opencore Legacy Patcher also giving you boot screen without flashing the rom. Handoff, air drop work with an upgraded WiFi Bluetooth card. My 5,1 is running a rx6800xt great for gaming in windows and smokes the M1 M2 graphics. Yes the cpu is limiting but still a great machine in 2023 and still my daily driver for Pro Tools and FCPX, windows 11 runs amazingly well on the old cheese grater and 3000 read write on my NVMe Mac OS boot drive.
You can flash ur bootrom for a bootscreen? thats news to me as well bro! when did That happen? did you do a video on it?
Ive been using opencore and martin lo with an rx570, so the bootscreen was available to me via these solutions.. I m still curious
about flashing the rom to enable bootscreen with All video cards.
@@skip741x3 : EnableGOP: Native Bootpicker with every GPU - A cMP Story
th-cam.com/video/o3mFlSQ1jJ8/w-d-xo.html
Without avx in the chipset.The computer cannot run modern software. It sucks
I do agree, but to be fair he did say for most of those things that they were _possible,_ just much more expensive and by that time you could get a newer and better machine. For example, handoff and AirDrop - he did say they work if you get an card for it, it just doesn’t come stock.
I own a 2008 8 core with 32gigs ram.
I decided to install Linux on the machine and Linux is running well, the machine has come alive again.
They work just fine today I had a 2010 dual cpu “12 core” and it ran day to day tasks buttery smooth. The only major drawback is that it uses 100 watts at idle lord knows how many under load. They’re a terrible choice as a daily driver for that reason but definitely fun to tinker around with
I just bought a 4,1 about a month ago for $100 plus shipping. It was a little beat up on the outside but all original inside. First thing I did was flash it to 5,1, installed Catalina, threw in a flashed Radeon HD 6870, a 6 core X5690 CPU, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, USB-C/3.0 PCI-E Card, and finally a 2.5 GB Ethernet PCI-E Card. For about $300 it's a respectable Workstation. This is my fist Mac of any kind, and I have to say I am VERY impressed. It's a pleasure to work on. Anyways, that's my first Aluminum Beast!
I got 4.1 flashed to 5.1. This is my favorite Mac of all times, the design is absolutely amazing , the customization is wonderful. I would say the strongest issue is PCIE 2.0 and Sata 2.0. I'm sad to see this machine becoming so obsolete.
I bought a base model 4 core 2010 Mac Pro. Upgraded it to the fastest 6 core processor it could use. RX 580 with 8 Gb ram, 12.5 GB system ram. Running Monterey with open core off of a SSD. Running Windows 11 on a nvme on a pcie adapter. It’s my main desktop computer now. It handles Photoshop and Indesign just for. I use my M1 Air for anything that I don’t want to be at my desk for.
I couldn’t be happier with my Mac Pro. I’m so glad I finally found one.
I love my 12 core Mac Pro, main computer, thanks for doing another video on it.
NVIDIA card?
@@iRedMCYT Sapphire Radeon RX580 8GB
@@djt1034 Ah. What games (if any) have you run on it?
@@iRedMCYT gta san andreas through steam on mac, runs okay, minecraft runs okay, Xeon’s are slowing down and becoming more and more obsolete unfortunately, reducing frames
Watching this on my very heavily upgraded DP 4,1>5,1, which is still my primary machine. To this day, I use it for audio/video/photo editing, occasional 3D graphics editing, Volvo VIDA car parts schematics (via remote desktop because larger displays), gaming in Windows, and many other weird projects outside of general use. I also built a >30TB SP 5,1 home server less than a year ago with a fanless GPU and an LP 6-core Xeon L5640. Both utilizing OpenCore. Despite being ~14-year-old machines, they're still certainly very useful in my case!
Primary 4,1>5,1 specs:
Dual Xeon X5690 3.46GHz (12C/24T)
192GB (6x32GB) PC3L-10600R 1333MHz RAM (And yes-You read that right)
(Originally had 256GB 8x32GB, but POST was MUCH slower for obvious reasons)
Powercolor Radeon RX 6600 8GB GPU
macOS Monterey (2TB NVMe), Windows 11 (1TB NVMe), macOS High Sierra (128GB SATA SSD)
480GB exFAT SATA SSD (for multi-OS network file sharing)
USB 3.0 4x Port PCIe card
5,1 Server specs:
Single Xeon L5640 2.26GHz (6C/12T)
128GB (4x32GB) PC3L-10600R 1333MHz RAM (Yes-You read that right again)
NVIDIA GeForce GT 720 1GB GPU (fanless)
Over 30TB total storage (2x8TB RAID, 8TB, 4TB, & 2TB HDDs)
macOS Monterey & Windows 11 (240GB SSD)
USB 3.0 Type-C PCIe card
Bro's talking crap about the 2018 Mac mini, I just ran Cinebench on mine while watching this video and got 8714 pts.
Not only that, but you can put 64 GB RAM in one. And you can easily get a NAVI-based eGPU setup for under $400.
Really shows how much Luke has fallen behind on the knowledge of these Macs.
Allow me to share a great memory. I once had the 2010 iMac with the i7 in it. But I quickly realized that I needed the upgradeability. So I put my iMac up for sale and this executive of a company contacted me saying he intended to scale down his company and wanted a family PC. So he wanted to trade off one of his many Mac Pro 2009 with dual E5520. I told him "You do realize the difference in value here, right?" and this was back in 2011 and he said "Yeah absolutely, you're lucky because I simply wanna scale down on my business". And this guy, really nice guy shows up in a fancy car making the trade. We hooked up his machine at my house and we ensured each machine worked properly and did the trade. Guess as if I was happy? What a jackpot. I later upgraded it with dual X5675 (like in this video) and 48GB of 1333Mhz ram and a GTX 970 and man... what a beeeeaaaastttt!
Remarkable how much longevity these machines have. I hope I get this out of my 2019 Mac Pro lol
You gona get long life out of it. Cuz no one wants that model once the M chips came out. Lol
@@Tvj_films8452 Yeah, I bought it like a month before they announced the transition. But tbh, I don't regret it. The new Mac Pro that just came out today doesn't have upgradable RAM, and I can run Windows to game with my 2019.
Got a 3,1 last week for $70 and I’m really happy with it, works great for what i do
Hopefully off the net. That thing is unsupported
I used a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 (with a 6-core Xeon, 32 GB of RAM, 2 TB combined storage, and a W5500 video card) until just a few months ago!! I would say, they're usable nowadays TO A POINT. Works just fine for basic tasks, and even some more intense tasks, but you DO notice a slower system compared to Apple Silicon-it's just not as snappy. I loved my 5,1, and I'm sad I can't use it anymore, but, it was just getting a little too slow.
I installed 2 Xeon processors in mine.
Still viable.
Not quite as fast as my AMD 7950X based PC, but still good.
These are magnificent machines - high quality. I love vintage Macs - have a G4 mirror door tower (along with keyboard and matching screen) as well as 2 project mid 2012 13 inch MBP that I got dirt cheap and maxed out just for the heck of it. I don't use them that much but they are from a period where you could actually work on Apple products. I might spring to get one of those cheese graters just to have one. As I have said you are head and shoulders the best Mac channel because you don't breathe through your mouth only focused on what might be coming up next. You actually respect the past. Keep up the great work! Even though this machine is slower than modern Fruit company products, you cannot beat the upgradeability of this unit nor can you beat the quality of construction. This would make a great 2nd computer for a Fruit Fly ecosystem!
I agree fully with the others, I also still use my 2009 Mac Pro that I purchased back then. I changed to SSDs, but that is it. Ok, it is not fast anymore, but for my music recording setup, it still does all you need.
I’m surprised with how viable these things are still. I have a 2009 4,1(Flashed to 5,1) with a X5690, 32GBs of RAM, and a Radeon VII. It also has Monterey on the machine. It isn’t the fastest (If I compare it to my TR 5955WX, it gets completely blown out of the water), but for what it is, I like it. Even if I don’t use it often, it is fun whenever I do end up using it.
Hopefully you have a more modern machine
@@emilsecker7881 I do, that Threadripper 5955WX is mine. That is my personal machine.
Dunno, X5690 is just so old at this point. I wouldn't go further than Haswell for older machines. I love the X79 and X99 era (Ivy Bridge & Haswell/Broadwell). But people fall into a "cheapness" trap with pre-X79 systems with Nehalem & Westmere and similar Intels. They're just really really crap at this point. Even a dirt cheap consumer i3 in the past 4 years will out do it with less cores. I mean, seriously, it's that much of a difference and while using way less electricity. The later Xeons up to V4 era are more worth it even if old purely because you can get high core counts for cheaper, especially with dual CPU systems. My X99 ASUS workstation board for example has 88 cores effectively with lots of PCIe lanes & loads of RAM. Then it's worth it in some workloads. You cannot get high core counts with anything before X79. Anything needing single core or doesn't scale well is getting completely eaten IPC wise with anything newer and still cheap. There are some really great multiplier overclockable V1, V2 and V3 Xeons also that can make up for the IPC but very few bother.
@@CheapSushi you shouldn’t go older than 2017/2018 machines now tbh
@@CheapSushiWell, that’s news to me
Can you put those Xeons in this Mac Pro? If so which exact models do you recommend
Because of you, I'd say 2 years ago I built an incredible Mac Pro 4.1 and turned it into a 5.1, and got all the upgraded parts and totally upgraded to as far as I could. It was an incredible machine and if someone is doing just music, it is incredible for that ala Pro Tools/Logic Pro. The only reason I upgraded to a Macbook Pro M1 Pro is because I bought one of the Thunderbolt cards that was patched for that system and bought a UAD Thunderbolt 3 Satellite unit. It worked well with it for about a week then it started acting weird and was to iffy. Not only that, I bought my son the Mac Mini M1 when it came out and when I A/B'ed it to that little machine, it smoked it. Ran twice as much audio tracks and plugins. I had the dual 3.46 CPU's in the machine. That didn't matter, that little Mac Mini killed it so, I started looking at the M1 Mac and got the Macbook Pro M1 Pro and never looked back. That machine was a great machine but, the new M1's etc, just puts them to shame. Also, when doing videos, that Mac Pro is really slow now matter how much ram, cpu etc. I had 128ghz of ram as well on that Mac Pro and the Mac Mini still smoked it with 16gigs of ram. Hope that helps anyone thinking about getting the Mac Pro Machine and wondering if they should get the Mac Mini etc. Thanks and love the channel!
7:43 You should always disconnect from power when removing any internal components. There is still 5v trickle power with the power supply connected to mains. You could potentially damage the backplane. 8:13 You can just perform an NVRAM reset x3 and it should purge Windows from trying to boot at startup.
That probably is best practice, but SATA is designed for hotswap, meaning that you can remove it when the computer is on, so long as it was unmounted. It's probably fine.
@@JoeTheGreat From what I've read, the cMP's do not have hot-swappable HDD bays, regardless of SATA's design capabilities. Only the X-Serve's HDD bays are hot-swappable. I'm sure plenty of people do it with no issues, but I've learned to be extra cautious with these machines and just do things the proper way.
BS
I was told by someone who apparently worked on the design of the X-Serve that while that 'advertised' hot swap SATA, the 4,1 still had the functionality but it might not post to Device Manager. So prob safe power wise but you might not get the device to be mountable.
@@longwelsh I think it may have to do with macOS and X-Serve software being different?
Running Monterey 12.6.6 on my flashed 5,1 early 2009 Mac Pro with MSI RX 560. No issues at all with open core legacy patcher
I love to see more videos on this generation of Mac Pro. I learned a lot from you on these and I run a 2012 dual CPU Mac Pro at home next to my PC. I like to run the low profile Radeon 560 for its lack of extra power cables. I boot to an NVMe and run DDR3 in triple channel mode. Catalina patcher forever!
Because of your videos, I bought a MacPro 5.1 2012 2x2.4Ghz, 24 Gb Ram, 240 SSD, 500Gb HDD, 640 Gb HDD, ATI Radeon HD 5770, High Serra OS for 2000 DDK(approx $283).
I put a FENVI PCIe WIFI card in my 2009 Mac Pro and it’s definitely worth it. I can see all the WIFI devices in my neighborhood for about a 500ft radius. I had to remove the original WIFI card and make custom cables for the FENVI card to work with bluetooth but its worth it. The original Apple WIFI antenna SUCK and its difficult to upgrade the original card with a NEWER Apple WIFI card and then you Still have to upgrade the Antennas. Its just Much easier to put in the FENVI card. There are posts online on how to make the cables and FENDI card pin outs. Loaded with Large capacity hard drives these still make for a good File Server or Home theater movie server.
Time to upgrade that thing. It’s unsupported
And, for $50 get a NVMe drive and $25 for PCIe card, you can get 2500 R/W speeds all day. Good points.
Bought exactly this Mac about a year ago for 100 of your over-the-pond-pounds. 6 core, 16GB ram, no hdd. Absolute bargain.
Installed an unused SSD on High Sierra as a boot volume, and a 16TB HDD for all my movie files. I just use it as a Plex server which the Mac is probably a tad overkill for.
Time to upgrade that thing. It’s unsupported
@@emilsecker7881 Bro, you're on a mission here huh. Who gives a ____ what you think considering how you are trolling.
I have a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 patched to Monterey with 32GB RAM, an RX 580, and a single CPU x5690, and it runs amazingly. I paired it with a 30" Cinema display, and it's absolutely gorgeous. So nice to have a Mac that I can still upgrade in 2023.
I have a genuine MacPro 5,1.First it was with a cheap NVME adapter with a Samsung 970 plus 1TB getting M2 speeds with read and writes. Later I bought a Sonnet M2 4x4 PciE card with 4 970 plus m2 SSD's 1TB's, and now my old Mac reaches 7Gb/sec in read and write speeds. I am still very happy with it. It has 3.0 USB card, and I use two different videocards, a nVidia K5000 4Gb Mac Edition(bootscreen) and a RX 580 8Gb SE the blue version without bootscreen .. I use it for music production and video editing, it does it all flawlessly. Before I buy a new Mac it should pass the break even point for energy and with the current prices that would take years. So I am completely happy with it and keeping it.
I'm still using my 5.1 12 core dual processor with Mojave and Cubase 12 in my recording studio (I have a 6 core as a backup).
Having started in the '80s with a Yamaha X5, then C64, Atari and Macs since Quadra up to the Mac Pro, I don't find my rig slow at all.
I will keep it as long as it works.
We're just alike!! I also have Cubase Pro 12 -
I'm bn trying to upgrade to Sonoma using oclp 1.2.1 but I can't seem to get it.🤔 Although I did successfully upgrade it to Monterey abt a year ago. Still trying as of this moment. I'm going to try a different thumb drive & see if it works 👍🏾
I still use my cheesegrater 1,1 as network backup. It turns on once a day at night, clones all my drives connected to my trashcan, and turns itself off. Also, I still use my PowerMac G4 to send faxes and burn DVDs too.
Great video! I own a MacBook Pro 14" Max but I still use my 4,1 on the regular as my desktop machine. You are 100% right - with each passing year, these cheesegrater machines get less and less worthwhile investing in. I was gifted one from my professor about 7 years ago and I've been slowly upgrading over the years. Now I have it spec'd out with a Vega 64, dual X5675's, 96GB RAM, USB 3.2 card, running Monterey and Windows 11 - but that took a significant amount of time and effort to get it working. OpenCore has helped the usability of this device tremendously but each year Apple makes it harder and harder to run the latest OS. A lot of games now require AVX instructions which these Xeons do not have, which is completely understandable. While I love this machine for its hard drive trays and flexibility, I don't recommend using this as a daily driver. Save up and invest in a M2 Mac Mini that can do all of this for a fraction of the wattage.
It's nice to see other cheesegrater users; I own a 2009 12-core, firmware upgraded to have RX560, wifi/bt, and USB 3.2 from sonnet and nVME adapter, and now it has Monterey and Win10 Pro on bootcamp.
The only drawback of this machine in my humble opinion, is that it only support SATA 2 not 3, making me set some SATA drives in RAID. Since it is a wellmade modular machine with plenty of power, I use highpoint SATA expander to use 8x SATA drives in total with internal drive caddy I built myself to keep'em all inside, and while SATA expander is a bit glitchy time to time, but it's alright in the end. And the RAID feature of Moneterey is very stable(while I don't recommend RAID on Win10Pro) and super fast, and it's also fast enough through USB external drives for my needs.
Ironically enough, even though this should be considered as a relic from the past, I can always upgrade my RX560 with RX6600XT or even 6800XT in the "future," with boot screen if I want, and this machine will still be alright, supplying enough power for the *new* GPU.
Anyway, thanks for the great video. :)
Because of your video, I bought a MacPro 5.1 2012 2x2.4 Ghz, 24 Gb ram, 240 Gb SSD, 500 Gb HDD, 640 Gb HDD for 2000 DDK(approx.$283). :)
I still use my 2012 5,1 Mac Pro. I've been holding out for the silicon Mac Pro but today, I gave in. I purchased a certified refurbished Mac mini M2 Pro . It arrives on Thursday.
Still running one of these 48GB Ram, a PCI card with SSD an 4x 2TB drives. Database server and still pretty fast and most important, super super solid!
6:03 thanks or showing me the PCIe lock latch.
Just 2 weeks ago, I bought a Mac Pro 4.1 upgraded to 5.1 with 80gb, 512GB NVMe ssd, USB3 card, 2 x5680 Xeons for $150. I added my Vega Frontier. Installed Open Core and Monterey from my old 4.1. I need to upgrade the Wifi/Bluetooth card, but otherwise everything I wanted in a Mac. NVMe gets between 600-1350MB/s writes and 1400-1530MB/s reads. This is nice, although, I need a SSD on the SATA bus to help with booting faster because of the way the Mac firmware initially looks for drives.
It is an awesome machine. I was lucky guy sold it to me was less than 5 miles away.
My 2003 was my favorite and these are my favorite videos. I want.
I think this will be my new hobby.
I have a duel x5680 Mac pro, with an RX 5700 XT, usb 3, SATA 3, etc, and it's still my main desktop to this day...
I use my 2011 cheese grater Mac Pro as an overpowered web server and it’s a beast! Dual Xeons, 32GB RAM, and a GTX960. Overkill for a web server but it handles multiple medium-traffic sites with ease. And I use it from time to time as a daily driver machine too and no problems at all.
I have a 2009 Mac Pro under my desk which I use for a primary machine with an RX 580 8 GB, 2 x 3.46 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeons, 128 GB 1333 MHz DDR3. I am running the main boot drive off of an NVMe PCI card - 2500 MBs write and 2800 MBs read - this thing is a beast running on a very stable Mojave - love this thing dearly! Did all the upgrades about 3 years ago (end of 2019) for less than $1K on a machine I have had since 2009... cannot beat it - longevity + affordability + performance!
It’s 2023 and I’m editing video with FX using FCPX on a 2010 MacPro, using Open Core to run Monterey. Wifi, Bluetooth, handoff, and airdrop work great. Dual SSD. I love my Mac.
Apart from an iPad Pro 12.9, it is still my only computer. A couple of years ago I upgraded the ram, the video card, put in an SSD and upgraded the processor. For my needs it still runs great, never had any failures or slowdowns.
I got a 3,1 for free with no accessories about a month ago. I bought a wifi card and adapter from OSXwifi, 32gb of owc ram from ebay, a mac flashed 680 gpu from ebay, the owc pcie adapter and put an old ssd in it, and then got a 30" mac cinema and im bout $600 all in. ran opencore and i have monterey 12.6.5 on it and it's awesome. perfect computer for music and web browsing in my garage.
I made the Mac Pro 2011 - Mac Pro 2011 upgraded Hardware
2 CPU 3.3GHz (2 x 6) 12core Intel Xeon W processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.4GHz
64GB (4x16GB) DDR3 ECC memory
18x SuperDrive with double layer support (DVD+R DL/DVD+RW/CD-RW)
Radeon RX 580 256-bit 8GB GDRR5
Chipset - Intel x5520
1TB SSD storage
I run windows and mac and it is just fine - AAA games on Windows and all my daily needs are good. All in I was about $800 - I built it in 2020 - it's working.
Watching this video on a 2012 mac book pro with 16gb ram still working fine
If you have fully upgraded dual CPU Mac Pro with EnableGOP patch and better gpu it's an amazing machine even now. Am running 6800xt with it and the performance is great even when 4K gaming.
Because of YOU bro, in my studio, I’m running a 2010 Mac Pro upgraded the way you did...minus the graphics card mod and it’s still a beast!
For music, it’s a beast and I won’t be changing for the next few years...unless I absolutely have too!
Just bought a 2012 Mac Pro, and I’m super excited. It’s going to be a great home server. I’m going to throw a m.2 IHCE in it for the boot disk and NVMe for the rest of the storage drives.
I still use a 2008 Mac Pro as an Ableton machine in my studio. On a day to day basis it works fine, does all my regular tasks without complaint. The music side of things is just starting to get creaky with Ableton 11 and I realise I've been pushing my luck for a good while now. I've had the 2008 since new (it was an Apple shop return so not quite brand new). Over the years I've upped the RAM and swapped out the drives for SSD's and done a GPU upgrade. I can honestly say it has served me very well. I wish Macs were as reliable as this now.
@@perrybarton hopefully it’s not a daily driver. It’s majorly unsupported
@@perrybarton I suspect I'll run mine until it dies. All the data is continuously backed up so I'm kind of preparing I suppose.
They make great file servers. Get a Sata 3 version, install a SSD PCie card to boot super fast, install 4 SSDs in the trays, stripe them together as a Raid 5 using Soft Raid, add a UPS, combine both Ethernet ports together via a switch, install macOS client and share it over the network. I did this and it was bullet-proof. Serving files to a design studios for over a decade without a single hiccup.
I have a 2010 MP upgraded to 12 core, 96gb RAM, NVMe drives. I use it for Pro Tools. It still works great! I stopped chasing the upgrade path when I got a system that was stable and did what I need. I will stay here as long as I can.
I have a 5,1 that I upgraded to a metal graphics and Catalina. It is my central hub for internet surfing and so forth. Worth it.
Time to upgrade that thing. Catalina is unsupported
@@emilsecker7881 agreed. Just have not had a chance.
I still have a 4,1 Mac Pro with dual 3.33GHz 6 core Xeons. I upgraded it to 128GB of RAM, and I intend on installing Windows on it. With 24 threads and gobs of RAM, it can still be a fantastic server for tons of virtual machines, if you live near cheap power like I do.
Don’t run windows for a VM server. That’s a BAD idea
@@emilsecker7881 fine, ESXI or [popular hypervisor]
@@lucianodinino I use ESXI atm. It works great
You can get faster SSD speeds by using one of the two video card slots. I bought this new in 2008 - dual quad core xeons (8 x cores)for my wedding photography business! It paid for itself along with the Cinema Display many times over and still runs perfectly today. I bought a second off eBay for my GF later, it’s her computer today. The company OWC was one of the first to offer SSD’s for Mac and I bought one that used the higher bandwidth of the video card slot. So, yep, my old 2008 has been booting from the video card slot for probably 9 years or more. I just bought a MacPro M3 Max - it’s insane and beautiful made. My 2012 MacBook quad core i7 also works perfectly off the original SSD. Once you go Mac it’s hard to go back to the bloat wear of Windows. The OS and hardware are so much better. Thanks for the video.
The data throughput speed of the video card slots in a MacPro 2008 depends on which slot you're using:
PCIe 2.0 x16 slot: This slot offers the highest data throughput speed, up to 2GB/s. It is a double-wide slot and supports 16 lanes of PCI Express data. This slot is typically used for the main graphics card.
Using Opencore newer unsupported mac os x still make very useable today still in 2023. I'm still using both 2012 today
The Mini PCIE Apple used is actually a standard. It's just not common for the consumer market, but OEM manufacturers used it.
You can always get the higher performance 5,1 variant with dual Xeons.... I'm typing this on one that has a quad NVME PCI (raid) card, 64gb of 1333 Mhz DDR3 RAM, an RX590, modern bluetooth and wifi, USB 3 card, and it is a BEAST still. I also have a new Mac Studio M1max, and honestly, other than boot time, I really can't tell the difference. I probably have about a grand or so in the cheese grater upgrades (four 1gb fast NVMEs etc are a little pricey) but I also have transfer speeds of 5GB per second on Blackmagic benchmark tests, and it's been with me since 2010! A machine that is still viable after 13 years... Pretty awesome!
I really think my current machine (Mac mini Late-2014 3 GHz Dual-Core Intel Core i7 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 Intel Iris 1536 MB) for which I paid only a few hundred bucks is perfect for my needs as an academic researcher/author. But thanx for the lovely trip down memory lane. I adored my old cheesegrater. So beautifully conceived and built.
Using open core allows me to run Monterrey with no issues plus GPU acceleration. I use it for editing 4k and occasionally multicam, no problem. Dual 3.06 6core, 32gb Ram, RX580 8gb, nvme to pci adapter for my scratch drive. It’s still a mighty workhorse. Work is in progress for Ventura support by OC community.
Always loved the design of these “monsters” I still get excited whenever I see one. Great video man.
The Cheesegraters are, to this day, the best home computers that have ever been made. Period. Anyone who complains about the price has never swapped/upgraded a drive/RAM/cards in it. I'll never forget opening my 2008 3,1… it was like the scene in the Star Trek movie when Kirk sees the new Enterprise for the first time.
NO DOUBT.
I got 2 2012 12 cores, maxxed out RAM, run like WATCHES, NO PROBS EVER, and I HATE the way Apple does business.
They screwed up and made stuff TOO GOOD in 2012.
TAKE ADVANTAGE, People...
@@GeoffTEEVEE Well true! Trick is, my old Mac Pros eventually did die. I can get one to boot into 10.11. But I can't run almost anything current on it, and definitely can't do my plugin-reviews TH-cam videos on it. This is the tough part with Apple: eventually you just have to move on.
The Mac Studio has been a huge disappointment. It's a wonderful computer-until it kicks USB devices or hangs for no reason. Sad, for $4000
@@dahlhousestudios Yeah..... Sad truth, mine STILL run GREAT for now, and because I produce music and do graphics editing on separate machines and keep them off the web, I think they'll last a little longer.
I daily use a 2010 mac pro, upgraded gpu, using a opencore legacy patcher i can ran Monterey
I am retiring my 2010 12 core 3.4 / 128 gb ram / 8 tb m2 storage / usb 3.0 cheese grater this year 😢. I customized it to the max. The best computer I ever owned. I swapped the cpu and bypassed Sata 2.0 maxed ram and even update usb through pcie. The biggest limitation is there is no way to get lightning connections. I think I will keep mine forever in the basement and give it a hug every couple of years.
I run an upgraded 5,1 as a music production system. It has an nvme ssd on an expansion card, which is decently quick. Graphics and cpu are upgraded and with a 6 core 3.33ghz cpu, performance wise it’s really very capable. It’s running Monterey without any major problems, though there is a caveat. If you run an unsupported OS, the usb driver has some quirks. Hotplugging doesn’t work properly but if you plug a usb2 hub into the port and only connect devices to the hub, they work absolutely fine. It’s still a very solid machine, and far more affordable than a newer system.
Pretty much agree. My Mac Pro 4,1 was my workhorse for over a decade. I’ve upgraded every possible part of it but it’s just not a viable machine anymore now that I’m using a Mac Studio M1 Ultra. Having said that, I keep it around should I need access to an old OS, which did come up a few months ago. As a legacy machine there isn’t another system out there capable of running anything from Snow Leopard to Monterey.
I got a 5,1 for free from my office basement, came with 64gb of ram and a 1tb ssd - upgraded to dual xeons 5690’s, an rx580 and added an 8tb hdd for extra storage. It’s a dang powerhouse, running windows and steam. I can run games at max settings 1080p. Best deal ever! Haha
I bought a 4,1 uppgraded to 5,1 in 2022. Dual x5675, 48gb ram, Ssd and a GTX 1080 Ti. With bootcamp and Windows 10 it makes a fine gamingmachine. Mostly play counterstrike at around 200 FPS. Byt it runns Hogwarts Legacy in 1080p on high at almost 60fps so i’m more Than happy 😄
Greatings from Sweden!
My 2007 dual quad is still in storage. This machine was a monster. We need this modular upgradable design back.
Have a dual X5690 5,1 Mac Pro dual booting Catalina and Ventura using Catalina Helper and the latest OpenCore that fixed a long-standing issue with USB PCIe cards so it now runs current software, boots off an AHCI PCIe SSD (HyperX Predator), has a RX570 GPU and Sonnet Allegro USB 3 card. Runs great for DAW software and because I’m used to the speed of a 1400MB/s SSD, the SSD speeds of the new M2 Mac Mini wouldn’t be an issue for me and I can eventually replace it with a 24GB/256GB SSD M2 Mac Mini and it will run fine for me. Then I can keep the Mac Pro as a server and for gaming and virtualisation.
Catalina is unsupported. You should stop using it and probably get a newer machine
@@emilsecker7881 Bit thick suggesting that. You clearly can’t understand why older Mac Pro’s are still in use by people who aren’t throwing away the investment for some non-upgradable soldered RAM soldered SSD soldered CPU Apple silicon system. “Just get a new system” so naive and ignorant.
@@barkmonster don’t be a dick. It’s unsupported, time to upgrade
ah man, still got one under my desk, haven't booted it in a while.
I used cheesegraters for like 7 years until the writing on the wall became clearer - I got a mac mini M1.
The crazy thing is, I got three of them for free from a company I used to work for - they had a storage area with like 50 of them, that they were just throwing away.
I personally think they are finally past their use by date and the once very active "community" around them has dwindled into an even more niche market than it already was.
It's hard to even sell them on eBay now - nobody wants them.
I spent a LOT of money over 7 years upgrading my various 5.1's and loved every minute of it - such a stunning bit of kit, Apple's finest moment.
you can ABSOLUTELY run Monterey on here, especially with a Metal supported card, + boot screen is supported with OpenCore
wifi related features should also work with OpenCore.
My dual Xeon 2008 Mac Pro runs very well with that, and it has a newer MacBook Pro wifi card and one of those Mac Edition GTX 680s, along with 32 GB of fully buffered DDR2.
I still have a 1,1 Mac Pro I use on the regular. I installed Windows XP on it and use it for retro gaming. Put a 2GB Graphics card , 4GB ram. Its the Quad core model so I have all the power I need for those older 90s, early 2000s games.
I love the case. I purchased a 1,1 a few years ago with an pristine case. I gutted it and built a AMD Ryzen 5900 machine inside. It was a lot of work but I love it. I might consider an 5,1 if I could run a modern mac os without much "hassel"
Just because it has 1000 watt doesn’t mean it’s drawling 1000 watts
absolutely true bro.. most people dont understand that simple fact... 1000watts is the max potiential that its capable of supplying under a load.. however, no mac pro is using anywhere near that idling or doing everyday tasks..in those cases, the power supply
is supplying Only the watts Needed for those tasks.
I still use a 2007 MacPro 2.1 8-Core for editing photos on. 32GB of Ram, SSDs and a halfway solid AMD graphics card installed. Have it for years right now, it runs two hardware calibrated NEC displays. Currently I don't need more and I'm still pretty happy with it.
Costco has M1 Mac mini for 299, it's a no brainer. The Cheesegrater doesn't make much sense to buy unless you like to tinker or have a need for some special PCI addon card.
I saw one of these at a local second-hand store, listed as "junk" (which means it probably works, but they wont warrant anything about it) for
I up-cycled my 2007er cheesegrater to a wall mounted mini bar...love it!
I'm still recording on a fully loaded 2008 cheese grater with Pro Tools HD, and it works flawlessly. In my industry, upgrading would not only be a waste of money, it would be profoundly stupid.
So happy to have sold mine. Too big, too heavy and too tired to update open core hacks all the time.
I have a 5,1 Mac Pro currently running Monterey via OpenCore. I use it as my main computer and have no functional issues, but finally decided to get an M2 Mac Mini as a replacement. Main reasons were concerns about power consumption and longevity of the Mac Pro. The Mac Mini sits quietly on my desk and is noticeable faster in every way.
I bought several of these for $10-20 each.
Mac M1 might be 10minutes faster in most applications but that doesn’t make it 1000x faster price wise.