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MP 1,1-5,1 Apple Mac Pro A1289, Worth it now?

buttongerald

buttongerald

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jan 29, 2016
341
629
St. John's, Newfoundland
Greetings all,

I may be in a position to buy an Mac Pro, A1289, from 2009, with an Intel Xeon W3520. I am wondering how functional this system would be by todays standards? In terms of usability and speed? It comes with 8GB of ram which not long after I would aim to max out, as well as a 500GB HDD, which I could also upgrade a little ways down the road.

Compared to the janky i5 Dell Laptop I have now (i5 7200, 16GB memory), would this system be a little better given its upgradability? Or is it to far gone? I guess I should mention, I would be able to buy it for about $400 give or take.

Thanks in advance.
 
it depends what you are going to do with it. You will get a lot of answers. Just note that even though you can possibly run the second to latest operating systems is going to take time and tinkering.

it also uses alot of electricity, but most people are here because the love the expandabilty of a mac pro.
 
Here are the specs for my cMP (before I upgraded to my current 7,1 earlier this year):

2009 Mac Pro "5,1"
CPU: 2x X5690 @ 3.46GHz
RAM: 96GB DDR3 @ 1333MHz
Storage: 2TB Crucial MX500 SSD, Inland Pro 480GB SSD, 4TB Toshiba HDD, 2TB Samsung 870 QVO SSD
Optical: LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray Drive
Monitors: 2x LG Ultrafine 27BP85U-W
GPU: Gigabyte RX-6800XT OC 16GB GPU [Syncretic] and Pixlas Mod
BT/Wifi: BCM94360CD
Bootloader: OpenCore 0.8.5
OS': macOS Monterey 12.6.1 | Windows 11 Pro
Other: MATT Card

I am posting the above specs to give you an idea of how far you can push this system (I was using a Navi 21 GPU in a 14 year old machine ffs).

The bottleneck for these computers now are the CPU and RAM speeds, but in my experience, if you build a machine like mine (totally maxed out hot-rod), you will be able to use it for quite a lot of things in this day and age (which speaks volumes of how solid a system it is). I was using mine for music production, mixing and mastering, watching blu rays, and heavy 4K gaming in Windows, and it fit all of those needs very well (as surprising as that sounds).

The only (slight) caveat is that this machine does take some input from the user in order to really unlock her full potential. By that I mean that you would need to get your bootROM rebuilt (easy), and I would highly recommend adding a MATT Card to protect the EFI; and lastly, utilizing the latest version of one of the best things that exists today, which is OpenCore.

OP -- I would say, if you can get the cMP for a really good price, then it is worth it, but if you are overpaying, then probably just better to save a little more and get something more modern. Although there is nothing on current apple silicon that is worth it (we are all awaiting the announcement of the AS Mac Pro, to see if it will be modular).

HERE is a thread with my setup showing the RX-6800XT

Hope this helps.
 
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buttongerald said:
Greetings all,

I may be in a position to buy an Mac Pro, A1289, from 2009, with an Intel Xeon W3520. I am wondering how functional this system would be by todays standards? In terms of usability and speed? It comes with 8GB of ram which not long after I would aim to max out, as well as a 500GB HDD, which I could also upgrade a little ways down the road.

Compared to the janky i5 Dell Laptop I have now (i5 7200, 16GB memory), would this system be a little better given its upgradability? Or is it to far gone? I guess I should mention, I would be able to buy it for about $400 give or take.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

I strongly recommend buying at least Mac Pro 2010 (2012 is more pricey) because it supports Mojave. The fastest is with two 6-core Intel Xeon processors. Some more experienced users on this forum could give you tips about buying affordable trays or other cheap upgrades.

It's a great machine if you want to run Windows/Linux and Mac OS X for the 32-bit intel applications.
 
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Hey all, I have read your replies and I want to say thankyou very much for taking the time to lend some insight. Still mulling over the decision. For any further reading, I'll post the link to the machine below.

Link to Sale.

Looking at this, what could I update in this machine? Would I be able to toss in a SSD or two? Would the maximum ram amount be 32GB or 64GB? I may do some video editing on it, but it would be no higher than 1080P. My wife and I do photography and currently use Lightroom, not sure how far back one can reach when it comes to that software anymore.
 
buttongerald said:
Hey all, I have read your replies and I want to say thankyou very much for taking the time to lend some insight. Still mulling over the decision. For any further reading, I'll post the link to the machine below.

Link to Sale.

Looking at this, what could I update in this machine? Would I be able to toss in a SSD or two? Would the maximum ram amount be 32GB or 64GB? I may do some video editing on it, but it would be no higher than 1080P. My wife and I do photography and currently use Lightroom, not sure how far back one can reach when it comes to that software anymore.
Click to expand...

See my post above -- that is the max you can take it.

RAM -- you can go as high as 128GB, though 96GB is the recommended max, since it will be in triple channel mode

Storage -- you can toss up to 4 SSDs within the SATA bays, and then if you want to install some NVMe or other PCIe storage, you can do that as well.

GPU -- as I showed in my post above, if you are interested, you can take the GPU all the way up to an RX6800/6900XT, though as you mentioned you will work solely in 1080P so perhaps you might only need an RX-580 (which does not require flashing or pixlas mod) so just plug and play with the proper cables.

CPU -- You can update to dual core processors, but I think you might need to upgrade the firmware.

Lastly, THIS GUIDE should answer all of your questions.
 
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Although one thing you might want to make note of is that 2009 Mac Pros require firmware flashing (sometimes called "cross-flashing") to MacPro5,1 firmware. There are many guides 'round here about how to do that, it's pretty easy!

I believe you need to do this in order to throw in an NVME drive, to use Westmere-based CPUs (such as the X5690), as well as to upgrade to Mojave (or past)
 
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buttongerald said:
Greetings all,

I may be in a position to buy an Mac Pro, A1289, from 2009, with an Intel Xeon W3520. I am wondering how functional this system would be by todays standards? In terms of usability and speed? It comes with 8GB of ram which not long after I would aim to max out, as well as a 500GB HDD, which I could also upgrade a little ways down the road.

Compared to the janky i5 Dell Laptop I have now (i5 7200, 16GB memory), would this system be a little better given its upgradability? Or is it to far gone? I guess I should mention, I would be able to buy it for about $400 give or take.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
That price is a bit high for a single core machine (assuming it is). Mine cost half that for the 6 core Westmere version.

Otherwise it's a fine machine. Updating the boot rom was the hardest part of getting mine going. (There is a magic button press you have to do.) It came with no drives, so it was install Sierra, High Sierra, then after the video card upgrade (GTX 680 for me) for Metal I installed Mohave. It works great.

However, the on-board SATA is level 2. I splurged on an PCI-e NVME adapter and that speeded things up nicely. I also added a USB 3 card. Memory is 24 GB, ECC is required.

Updating to Monterey went very well with Open Core. Mohave is still installed on an SSD drive it shares with Windows.

Complaints; Wi-Fi is poky, and the case seems to block the signal from some directions. Use a wired connection if possible. And with Open Core you have to do a full install of Apple updates. That makes it a bigger pain, and takes longer, but it does work. The Open Core guys have done a great job.
 
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buttongerald said:
(…) not sure how far back one can reach when it comes to that software anymore.
Click to expand...
Not sure if I understand you correctly, but a small remark regarding the operating system and the graphics card. Be sure you know what software you want to use and which version of macOS it runs on because:
You will have to use Open Core to install at least Big Sur 11.4 if you want to use AMD Navi 21 RDNA2 GPUs (like the 6800/6900 XT).
The RX 6600/6600XT (Navi 23) offers great performance without a Pixlas mod but even requires Monterey 12.1.
 
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