Is buying an old 2009 mac pro a good choice in 2021?

[Kartwheel]

I've been thinking of buying an old 2009 or 2010 Mac Pro as an affordable way to get into using macOS and transitioning away from Windows. Been a windows user for two decades now, but can't stand what Microsoft has done with Windows 10. MacOS seems a lot cleaner and stable, with fewer things forced on you. I also work as a designer and need good photoshop compatibility, probably bootcamp or parallels too.

My main concern is, would the 2009 mac pro (upgraded with two xeon x5690s, lots of RAM, and a beefy AMD GPU) be too old of a machine to use as a daily driver and work machine for the next 5+ years?

 

[Applicator]

My main concern is, would the 2009 mac pro (upgraded with two xeon x5690s, 96gb of RAM, and a beefy AMD GPU) be too old of a machine to use as a daily driver and work machine for the next 5+ years?

You can easily squeeze another 5 years out of a 2009 machine, but you have to ask yourself if this is the path you'd want to chose.
A 2018 Mac mini has comparable power, needs one quarter the energy, can be used with an eGPU and is officially supported by Apple, probably as long as Apple will support Intel systems at all. And it runs Windows via Bootcamp and the latest release of OS X without tinkering around with patchers and installers.
And personally, I would never consider using a 17 year old machine (in 5 years) as my main productivity device.

 

[chrfr]

My main concern is, would the 2009 mac pro (upgraded with two xeon x5690s, lots of RAM, and a beefy AMD GPU) be too old of a machine to use as a daily driver and work machine for the next 5+ years?

I would say that it's not advisable to start out in macOS with one of these at this point. Obviously it's 12 years old, but they're tremendously power inefficient and not very fast compared to a modern computer and while newer operating systems can be made to run on these, you can't run current versions of Photoshop without installing one of the unsupported versions of macOS on it. I'd second the suggestion to get a 2018/2020 Intel Mini, or even an M1 Mini.

 

[Applicator]

plus you never know what you get, when you buy a preowned machine.
No warranty, no support by manufacturer, and no support by software developers because you run on an unsupported device.
Don't get me wrong, I like the Mac Pro in any way, own a 2,1 myself and would love to have a 12c cMP, and it's still a very capable machine in 2021, but it's nothing to be recommended as it's just not future proof, inefficient and officially "obsolete"

 

[MevetS]

Are you interested in tinkering? If so this could be a fun machine to play with. There is an active forum for these machines on this site I suggest you browse it to see what you are getting into.

But as others above have noted it is not the best choice if you want the “it just works” -ish Mac experience.

I had a 2010 Mac Pro that I got as soon as they came out. I retired it in December 2019, replaced with the 2018 Mini I’m using today. It was a great machine for many years. But I’m very happy with the Mini.

Good luck and have fun whatever you decide.

 

[Fishrrman]

Before I'd recommend a 2009 Mac Pro, I'd suggest an Apple-refurbished 2018 Mac Mini...

 

[Kartwheel]

You can easily squeeze another 5 years out of a 2009 machine, but you have to ask yourself if this is the path you'd want to chose.
A 2018 Mac mini has comparable power, needs one quarter the energy, can be used with an eGPU and is officially supported by Apple, probably as long as Apple will support Intel systems at all. And it runs Windows via Bootcamp and the latest release of OS X without tinkering around with patchers and installers.
And personally, I would never consider using a 17 year old machine (in 5 years) as my main productivity device.

17 years, ouch! That's one way to look at it. Looking around craigslist right now, everyone wants $700 - $1300 for them too, which is right in the price range for something a lot newer. I might give the mac mini a shot.

 

[m00rpahwer!]

Are you interested in tinkering? If so this could be a fun machine to play with. There is an active forum for these machines on this site I suggest you browse it to see what you are getting into.

But as others above have noted it is not the best choice if you want the “it just works” -ish Mac experience.

I had a 2010 Mac Pro that I got as soon as they came out. I retired it in December 2019, replaced with the 2018 Mini I’m using today. It was a great machine for many years. But I’m very happy with the Mini.

Good luck and have fun whatever you decide.

Agree on the tinkering front. I’ve had good fun getting a gutted 09 MP up to Mojave, but I would second the advice that it probably shouldn’t be your main system considering what you’ll be doing with it.

 

[Kartwheel]

I would say that it's not advisable to start out in macOS with one of these at this point. Obviously it's 12 years old, but they're tremendously power inefficient and not very fast compared to a modern computer and while newer operating systems can be made to run on these, you can't run current versions of Photoshop without installing one of the unsupported versions of macOS on it. I'd second the suggestion to get a 2018/2020 Intel Mini, or even an M1 Mini.

Also, was looking to hook up 3-4 screens. This person managed 6 screens on an m1 mac mini, so it's looking possible:

But being able to put 64gb of RAM into an intel mac mini would help a lot for loading large files into Photoshop. For running windows, I could always use my current PC from 2012.