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MP 1,1-5,1 I'm upgrading a Mac Pro 5,1. Any ideas?

C

Conradish006

macrumors member
Original poster
May 16, 2019
34
1
Catawampus Land
So I have a 2011 iMac, That had a GPU failure. I was told it wasn't worth fixing. It started a forum. (If you haven't seen it yet. It's right here.)

So. . . I bought a 2009 Mac Pro. Here are the specs:

It's been flashed to a 5,1.
Single quad-core Xeon. I will be upgrading it to dual 6 core Xeons.
32 GB of RAM. I figure I won't need any more than that.
Dual AMD Radeon S7000 4 GB GPU's.
Dual 256 GB PCIe NVME boot and scratch drives.
I will be throwing in a 1 TB HHD that I have. Along with a couple 1 TB SSD's.
I will also be putting in a PCIe USB 3.0 hub. Here's the link.

Let me know what you think about it. If you have any suggestions feel free to tell me.
 
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Congrats on your new machine. Hope you love it. You will most likely not be upgrading to dual CPU Xeons. That requires a tray swap at a minimum that would likely cost you as much as an entire 5,1 MacPro. I would recommend going with the largest 6 core single CPU. If you are only going to be using 32GB RAM, the extra cores and more RAM availability would really just be wasted. Save the money and avoid the extra heat. (This is coming from someone with a dual CPU machine.)
 
usna92 said:
Congrats on your new machine. Hope you love it. You will most likely not be upgrading to dual CPU Xeons. That requires a tray swap at a minimum that would likely cost you as much as an entire 5,1 MacPro. I would recommend going with the largest 6 core single CPU. If you are only going to be using 32GB RAM, the extra cores and more RAM availability would really just be wasted. Save the money and avoid the extra heat. (This is coming from someone with a dual CPU machine.)
Click to expand...
The OP purchased a 4,1 Mac Pro. Dual CPU trays for 4,1 Mac Pros are much more reasonably priced than for the 5,1 Mac Pros.
 
usna92 said:
Congrats on your new machine. Hope you love it. You will most likely not be upgrading to dual CPU Xeons. That requires a tray swap at a minimum that would likely cost you as much as an entire 5,1 MacPro. I would recommend going with the largest 6 core single CPU. If you are only going to be using 32GB RAM, the extra cores and more RAM availability would really just be wasted. Save the money and avoid the extra heat. (This is coming from someone with a dual CPU machine.)
Click to expand...
Wow, you're right. It is expensive. I might have a friend who can sell me one for cheap.
[doublepost=1562027134][/doublepost]
AidenShaw said:
What applications and use cases? Do you want to stay with current Apple OSX releases? How much do you pay for electricity?
Click to expand...
This will be a family computer. So there will be a little of everything. I'll be gaming some. Rendering some, Browsing a lot, Watching movies, and a lot more.

As for the power bill, it's not too bad. Decently high price. But I'm not worried.
[doublepost=1562027292][/doublepost]Also, what's a top of the line thermal paste? I need some for my Mac Pro build and for my laptop.
 
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Conradish006 said:
This will be a family computer. So there will be a little of everything. I'll be gaming some. Rendering some, Browsing a lot, Watching movies, and a lot more.
Click to expand...

For this kind of usage, a single W3680 is more than enough. If you want to further reduce the cost, you may even go for the X5677.

In general, pick the cheapest W3680, W3690, X5680, X5690 you can get.

A single RX580 8GB is good for some casual gaming and keep you Mac with at least the latest Mojave. It also help if you want to watch some HEVC HDR movie (need hacktivate the hardware acceleration).

4x8GB RAM sounds reasonable. Storage management also sounds reasonable.

But if you want to use a USB 3.0 hub, you better get a USB 3.0 PCIe card.

Most high end thermal paste perform roughly the same. Lots of cMP users using AS5. It’s not the best, it’s old, but known work well with cMP and easy to apply.

I am now using liquid metal. It has unbeatable performance. But can kill the circuit, corrode aluminium, etc. Must apply with caution.
 
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Conradish006 said:
So I have a 2011 iMac, That had a GPU failure. I was told it wasn't worth fixing. It started a forum. (If you haven't seen it yet. It's right here.)

So. . . I bought a 2009 Mac Pro. Here are the specs:

It's been flashed to a 5,1.
Single quad-core Xeon. I will be upgrading it to dual 6 core Xeons.
32 GB of RAM. I figure I won't need any more than that.
Dual AMD Radeon S7000 4 GB GPU's.
Dual 256 GB PCIe NVME boot and scratch drives.
I will be throwing in a 1 TB HHD that I have. Along with a couple 1 TB SSD's.
I will also be putting in a PCIe USB 3.0 hub. Here's the link.

Let me know what you think about it. If you have any suggestions feel free to tell me.
Click to expand...

Wow! You got a very rare GPU configuration, - interesting to say the least. This is for sure an above average purchase from someone that was into Mac Pros and did his homework on upgrading firmware to get NVME drives going.
Sounds like you have got a really good one.
 
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AlexMaximus said:
Wow! You got a very rare GPU configuration, - interesting to say the least. This is for sure an above average purchase from someone that was into Mac Pros and did his homework on upgrading firmware to get NVME drives going.
Sounds like you have got a really good one.
Click to expand...
So, is it a quality GPU? I was told to put an RX580 in it. But I think these will be good.
 
Conradish006 said:
So, is it a quality GPU? I was told to put an RX580 in it. But I think these will be good.
Click to expand...

Well, to be honest, - they are so rare that you are the first person in more then a decade that brought a GPU to my attention that I previously did not know working in a 5.1. Thats actually the reason why I looked them up and googled.
Quality? I am not sure about that. They seem to come with a passive heat sink, which means the previous owner valued a very low noise system. I guess they have a higher anecdotal value to some. 4GB Video Ram is not too shabby compared to a single GT120 Nvidia joker card. But the 580 is most likely a lot faster and more modern.
The fact that you have two of them may have some small bonus value for some people that uses Resolve or Software that can work with an additional GPU booster cards for render jobs. See what you can squeeze out of those two cards and if you have this exact application to benefit from.

Otherwise, - reading so many articles about the best possible GPUs for 5.1, - I would recommend a Vega 56 Red Dragon card with the low power bios setting together with a PowerLink bracket from EVGA to power it in the long run. It would be waaay faster then the 580 with the same price tag. I give you a hint... you would have same GPU as the black, expensive 5K iMac Pro..
Wouldn't that be something? ;)
 
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