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Mac Pro 5,1 12-core - 256GB RAM possible?

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Spacedust

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 24, 2009
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I would like to know if in future it will be possible to upgrade this model to 256GB RAM ?

The CPU's itself supports up to 288 GB so I would say yes, but will the board support so much RAM ?
 
Not an answer, but 256GB = 8 x 32GB modules. This is likely going to be expensive and would be in the region of $4,000.

OWC sells a 128GB kit for MP5,1 at this time for $1,600.

You must also run at least 10.9 Mavericks.
 
Not really, the W3690 only support 24G RAM officially, but end up it can boot with 56G RAM. The X5690 officially support up to 288G, that mean the CPU itself may able to boot with much more than that.
 
Spacedust said:
I would like to know if in future it will be possible to upgrade this model to 256GB RAM ?

The CPU's itself supports up to 288 GB so I would say yes, but will the board support so much RAM ?
Click to expand...
This topic has already been discussed here.
 
My understanding is OSX has a limit of 96GB - so unless you're running linux or windows, that wil llimit you before the hardware.

Can't remember where I read that, so its possible its not accurate, but worth finding out before you blow that kind of $$$
 
Interesting - so they fixed it in 10.9. Wonder if it goes all the way to 288GB that the processor supports
 
h9826790 said:
That's the current OSX, but future will only be limited by hardware.
Click to expand...

Prices will go down in future and OS X will support 256 GB for sure ;) Even old Windows 7 Pro/Ultimate supports 192 GB RAM out of the box.
 
Spacedust said:
Prices will go down in future and OS X will support 256 GB for sure ;) Even old Windows 7 Pro/Ultimate supports 192 GB RAM out of the box.
Click to expand...

Sure, but they make linux/windows servers with >= 48 DIMM slots, so its not hard to load up on ram. Certainly not cheap though - I think my companies big-memory servers were >$50k ea.
 
h9826790 said:
That's the current OSX, but future will only be limited by hardware.
Click to expand...

Don't think so. With the cMP havhing Eight RAM slots and the nMP having only Four, IMHO, it's in Apple's interest to not let the cMP overtake the nMP in the amount of RAM it will hold. Thus there will be a software limitation.

Lou
 
Last edited:
flowrider said:
Don't think so. With the cMP hashing Eight RAM slots and the nMP having only Four, IMHO, it's in Apple's interest to not let the Cmp overtake the nMP in the amount of RAM it will hold. Thus there will be a software limitation.
Click to expand...

May be you are right. However, OP is talking about Possible to use 256G RAM in cMP in future.

Hardware wise, it's quite possible at this moment.:)
 
Any news in Yosemite final version ?

That would be kickass machines if they would support 256 GB RAM :D
 
The new iMac Pro is now soon out, so with it the OS supports at least 256GB of RAM.

The previous limitation of 160GB in the Mac Pro 5,1 should be gone by that, I suppose from MacOS 10.14.5, if not before.
I would personally then opt for 32GB x 6 = 192GB memory, so triple channel is enabled. Unless the full 256GB is needed (science, simulation etc).
 
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