MP All Models Mac Pro, General advice.

[Stingray77]

Thought I’d come here for a bit of advice before I embark on another upgrade journey.

In my studio I currently have a number of Mac Pro (Mid 2010) which have been phenomenal work horses over the years, but as they are no longer capable of installing an OS above Mojave 10.14.6 I’m looking to replace one for now as a start.

As a point of reference which may help any advice, I’m an advertising art director/graphic designer based in the UK, and do some video editing work but nothing heavy by any stretch, these current Mac Pros cope acceptably with that and obviously don’t sweat with any graphic design needs.

I’ve not ruled out specing up a new Mac Pro, for around 5k to 7k, but I’m tempted to wait on that and maybe pick up a reconditioned one in a few years from a supplier when they start appearing for a bit less as I’m sure they will.

That leaves me with two options at this time as I see it.

1. Pick up one of those (2013) ‘Airport ashtray’ black Mac Pros, the bin shaped things.
2. Or a Mac Mini M1 (2020)

I feel that either of those options would potentially work, my main concern is being able to upgrade the OS over the next 2 to 3 years before I pick up the new Mac Pro tower (assuming I don’t push that button now).

What would you all advise? All opinions and suggestions welcome and appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

 

[mattspace]

the only questions you need to ask yourself now for an Apple Silicon Mac, are:

• do I need storage that's faster than thunderbolt? And,
• do I need networking that's faster than 10gb Ethernet, or the potential speed of an adapter plugged in to Thunderbolt.

If the answer to either is Yes, say for example you wanted to have NAS storage connected via a honking great fibre connection, or 4 simultaneous 10gb Ethernet links, the AS Mac Pro is the machine, otherwise the Mac Studio is likely to be it.

For older Mac Pros, you have the 2019, which eats about 19watts while asleep, and doesn't provide any outward indicators of its sleep / wake status. Between your 2010s and the 2019, your real differentiators (between the Mini & Pro) are ECC memory (IMHO stability) and the number of displays supported. If 64 gigs of ram is an acceptable limit, the 2018 mini with an eGPU for additional display support might be a good middle-road option, provided you can find a supported graphics card.

 

[crjackson2134]

In my studio I currently have a number of Mac Pro (Mid 2010) which have been phenomenal work horses over the years, but as they are no longer capable of installing an OS above Mojave 10.14.6 I’m looking to replace one for now as a start.

If you’re okay with current performance and just want to buy some time for AS to mature a bit so as to shop for refurbs, I’d seriously consider installing OpenCore bootloader (manually configured), and running with Monetary (12.7.3) for now.

It’s quite fast and extremely stable. I can’t find any drawbacks to it so far.

It sounds as if your actual performance/processing needs are being met well as things are, and your merely wanting to upgrade macOS at the moment. If this is the case, OC makes a strong case. I was very pleased to get GPU hardware accelerated DRM back.

Test it out before spending, it might buy you some time.

 

[Ben J.]

A few thoughts;

A M1 mini will most likely handle anything you throw at it at least as good as your 2010 macpros. Better get 16GB ram on the M1 Mini. IIRC it's limited to two displays. It only has two TB3/USB-C ports, but they are so much faster than the firewire/usb on the macpro, it's probably the biggest real-life difference.

Getting the M1 will let you run one of the latest versions of macOS, which IMO are the greatest in mac history in terms of stability, functionality and snappiness.

If you're keeping the macpros, if you haven't already, get a PCIe adapter card for them that takes one or two 2.5" SSDs and use them for boot drive, apps and essential files. I did that with my 2008 macpro and it made a huge difference. Very inexpensive. And enough ram. Also cheap.

I never owned a "trashcan" mac, but I wouldn't even consider it an option today. Very slow ports, I believe. And noisy - the M1 is cool and completely silent. Also, I believe, not able to run the latest macOS without "hacking".

I'd say go for the M1 mini. It's a great machine, and it will let you try the mac experience of today, and soon you'll regret that you didn't do it sooner. Step-by-step is a good idea. You might keep the macpros for a long time, but maybe reduce their role and number of tasks as you get more modern macs ahead.

 

[apostolosdt]

For better or worse, I have all the Mac models you're mentioning: MP 2012 (until a couple of years ago, I also had a 2009 model), MP 2013 (the "ashtray"), and the base Mini M1. I'm not in your field of work but close enough (I photograph). The MP 2012 is now for sale, but I use both of the others and can tell you that the base Mini is quite impressive. And I'm comparing it to a 6-core, 64GB RAM MP.

If I were you, I would go for a 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD Mini---M1 or M2 won't matter much, in my opinion.

 

[AlexMaximus]

Thought I’d come here for a bit of advice before I embark on another upgrade journey.

In my studio I currently have a number of Mac Pro (Mid 2010) which have been phenomenal work horses over the years, but as they are no longer capable of installing an OS above Mojave 10.14.6 I’m looking to replace one for now as a start.

As a point of reference which may help any advice, I’m an advertising art director/graphic designer based in the UK, and do some video editing work but nothing heavy by any stretch, these current Mac Pros cope acceptably with that and obviously don’t sweat with any graphic design needs.

I’ve not ruled out specing up a new Mac Pro, for around 5k to 7k, but I’m tempted to wait on that and maybe pick up a reconditioned one in a few years from a supplier when they start appearing for a bit less as I’m sure they will.

That leaves me with two options at this time as I see it.

1. Pick up one of those (2013) ‘Airport ashtray’ black Mac Pros, the bin shaped things.
2. Or a Mac Mini M1 (2020)

I feel that either of those options would potentially work, my main concern is being able to upgrade the OS over the next 2 to 3 years before I pick up the new Mac Pro tower (assuming I don’t push that button now).

What would you all advise? All opinions and suggestions welcome and appreciated.

Many thanks in advance.

If you still have your Mac Pro 5.1 there is actually a good 3. option available. You can rock your current tower for another 2 years easily without spending much. This way, you can save up more, and have more budget when the time comes.
Its very easy to install Catalina with the DosDude installer and it worked flawless for years. If you need Monterey, you just install OpenCore. All you need is a Firmware upgrade and a cheap AMD Radeon RX580 card. You can easily rock your solid tower for another two years, unless Monterey OS X is not enough for your needs.
The trashcan was a good compact solution, but you would NOT do yourself a favor because you will have pretty much the same situation that you have right now with your 2010 MP 5.1. It would be actually worth because you can not put a modern GPU in the MP6.1 and you will need OpenCore on the 6.1 as well.
This changes your choices to either keep the 5.1 and upgrade to Monterey or go with the Mac mini M1.
I am sure the M1 would be a great choice now, but maybe not in 2 years from now. To be honest, I would stretch the usage of your MP5.1 and go for something real good in 2 years from now, such as a pimped up refurb Studio or a used new Mac Pro that will last you 6-7 years easily.

 

[AlexMaximus]

Deleted

 

[Stingray77]

If you still have your Mac Pro 5.1 there is actually a good 3. option available. You can rock your current tower for another 2 years easily without spending much. This way, you can save up more, and have more budget when the time comes.
Its very easy to install Catalina with the DosDude installer and it worked flawless for years. If you need Monterey, you just install OpenCore. All you need is a Firmware upgrade and a cheap AMD Radeon RX580 card. You can easily rock your solid tower for another two years, unless Monterey OS X is not enough for your needs.
The trashcan was a good compact solution, but you would NOT do yourself a favor because you will have pretty much the same situation that you have right now with your 2010 MP 5.1. It would be actually worth because you can not put a modern GPU in the MP6.1 and you will need OpenCore on the 6.1 as well.
This changes your choices to either keep the 5.1 and upgrade to Monterey or go with the Mac mini M1.
I am sure the M1 would be a great choice now, but maybe not in 2 years from now. To be honest, I would stretch the usage of your MP5.1 and go for something real good in 2 years from now, such as a pimped up refurb Studio or a used new Mac Pro that will last you 6-7 years easily.

Good advice, I am attached to the current towers! I think I may try this DosDude thing, I assume it’s a download? One thing I’ve noticed that’s prompted this journey was that Safari seems to be lacking on websites running in Mojave… images missing and so on. Most sites are fine but every now and then you get a message about an unsupported browser, I assume this is due to Safari not being updated anymore for the Mojave OS.

 

[theluggage]

I’ve not ruled out specing up a new Mac Pro, for around 5k to 7k, but I’m tempted to wait on that and maybe pick up a reconditioned one in a few years from a supplier when they start appearing for a bit less as I’m sure they will.

As I see it, the only reason for considering a 2023 Mac Pro is that it has internal PCIe expansion (with better bandwidth than you'd get with an external Thunderbolt device) that enables large, fast internal SSDs and specialist interface cards (but not GPUs). If you need that you'll know. If you don't need PCIe, you're just paying £3k over the odds for a Mac Studio Ultra in a big, over-engineered box... and it sounds like even a Studio Ultra would be overkill for your needs.

The Mac Pro Trashcan/ashtray was dropped in 2019 and is already off the supported list for the latest MacOS.

The 2020 M1 Mac Mini would probably meet your needs - any recent Mac will likely out-perform a 2010 Pro (unless, maybe, it has a fancy GPU) but don't overlook the fairly limited I/O and external display support (2 TB3, 2 USB3A, 1xHDMI, only two displays) - you'd need to get a M2 Pro Mini or Mac Studio to get better I/O.

Essentially, the modern Mac Pro has become an expensive "niche" machine for those who absloutely need internal PCIe and for anybody else the M2 Pro Mac Mini and the M2 Max Mac Studio are the "new Mac pros". You might want to hold out for the (likely) M3 versions of those to drop (except, by then, the M4 speculation will be in full flood), but otherwise I don't think there's going to be a magical new affordable mini-tower along any time soon.

 

[chrono1081]

I personally would go with none of those options and get a Mac Studio when the new one comes out. It's much less than a Mac Pro tower, super powerful, and will last many many years. The minis are great too but if you're going to spend the money and it's in your budget, I'd grab the studio.

 

[Stingray77]

I personally would go with none of those options and get a Mac Studio when the new one comes out. It's much less than a Mac Pro tower, super powerful, and will last many many years. The minis are great too but if you're going to spend the money and it's in your budget, I'd grab the studio.

Good advice, thank you.

 

[Stingray77]

As I see it, the only reason for considering a 2023 Mac Pro is that it has internal PCIe expansion (with better bandwidth than you'd get with an external Thunderbolt device) that enables large, fast internal SSDs and specialist interface cards (but not GPUs). If you need that you'll know. If you don't need PCIe, you're just paying £3k over the odds for a Mac Studio Ultra in a big, over-engineered box... and it sounds like even a Studio Ultra would be overkill for your needs.

The Mac Pro Trashcan/ashtray was dropped in 2019 and is already off the supported list for the latest MacOS.

The 2020 M1 Mac Mini would probably meet your needs - any recent Mac will likely out-perform a 2010 Pro (unless, maybe, it has a fancy GPU) but don't overlook the fairly limited I/O and external display support (2 TB3, 2 USB3A, 1xHDMI, only two displays) - you'd need to get a M2 Pro Mini or Mac Studio to get better I/O.

Essentially, the modern Mac Pro has become an expensive "niche" machine for those who absloutely need internal PCIe and for anybody else the M2 Pro Mac Mini and the M2 Max Mac Studio are the "new Mac pros". You might want to hold out for the (likely) M3 versions of those to drop (except, by then, the M4 speculation will be in full flood), but otherwise I don't think there's going to be a magical new affordable mini-tower along any time soon.

Many thanks for this, I had thought that the Tower seemed to be becoming an overpriced niche and questioned if it really was needed for studio work. Good Advice.

 

[IP0]

I am a Video Editor working on BM Resolve. Mostly commercials and image films.
6K raw footage, serious color correction, multiple filters and Fusion composites are part of the job.
I just switched from a 16 Core MacPro 7.1 to a maxed out M3 MacBook Pro because of a documentary project.
I have found the 2019 Mac Pro to still outperform the current generation in gpu tasks but not overwelmingly so.
PCI SSD raids are in a completely different league compared with Thunderbolt 4 so that is a consideration working with 6 or 8k raw or very large Photoshop files.
Dual boot into windows is another advantage.
Some software still runs better on Intel Xenon than on M but on the other hand we don't know how long Apple continues to support Intel.
That said I would suggest to get a properly configured, used 7.1 for now (about 5k € on EBay) and wait for the M4 Ultra Mac Studio to drop later next year.
Hope this helps.

 

[AlexMaximus]

Good advice, I am attached to the current towers! I think I may try this DosDude thing, I assume it’s a download? One thing I’ve noticed that’s prompted this journey was that Safari seems to be lacking on websites running in Mojave… images missing and so on. Most sites are fine but every now and then you get a message about an unsupported browser, I assume this is due to Safari not being updated anymore for the Mojave OS.

Here is the tutorial from the developer himself that is used by most forum members for 4 years straight now.
Highly recommended and very easy. It will solve those problems you mentioned above.

Link:

 

[Stingray77]

Here is the tutorial from the developer himself that is used by most forum members for 4 years straight now.
Highly recommended and very easy. It will solve those problems you mentioned above.

Link:

Great stuff, thank you. 👍

 

[avro707]

In my studio I currently have a number of Mac Pro (Mid 2010) which have been phenomenal work horses over the years, but as they are no longer capable of installing an OS above Mojave 10.14.6 I’m looking to replace one for now as a start.

If you are savvy you could install Monterey using OpenCore or one of the derivatives of that.

And you'd want to upgrade the GPU most likely and probably the CPUs to the maximum they can go to - the X5690 Xeon.

The 2013 MacPro 6,1 is still a nice machine and I really love mine, but has many bespoke components like GPUs so I wouldn't recommend it. A reference 6900XT in a 5,1 might be better.

You could wait for an M3 Mac Pro, but then the M4 will be on the way, and when that arrives, an M5 will be on the way and then an M6 - until BMW gets cranky at Apple.


But of all the machines I have, I prefer my 7,1 Mac Pro, it's a brilliant workhorse of a machine, you just load it up with tasks and keep loading it up and it just handles them.

 

[Stingray77]

Here is the tutorial from the developer himself that is used by most forum members for 4 years straight now.
Highly recommended and very easy. It will solve those problems you mentioned above.

Link:

I have now installed Catalina via DosDudes patcher, and it appears all good so far although I’ve not really tested it yet. 👍

I installed it in a separate internal hard drive that had another Mojave OS on it I used restart on for maintenance purposes of the other internal drives. I installed it on a new volume on that drive. One little thing, I now have this volume and another similarly named volume that also appear on my desktop and are a bit of clutter.

CATALINA
CATALINA - data

I have tried to hide those in terminal but I think perhaps I’m not doing it correctly as they still appear… any suggestions to hide those on the desktop?

 

[haralds]

I have now installed Catalina via DosDudes patcher, and it appears all good so far although I’ve not really tested it yet. 👍

I installed it in a separate internal hard drive that had another Mojave OS on it I used restart on for maintenance purposes of the other internal drives. I installed it on a new volume on that drive. One little thing, I now have this volume and another similarly named volume that also appear on my desktop and are a bit of clutter.

CATALINA
CATALINA - data

I have tried to hide those in terminal but I think perhaps I’m not doing it correctly as they still appear… any suggestions to hide those on the desktop?

It is easy to add OCLP v1.3.0 and Monterey into your config, and it is stable. I have kept both Mojave and Catalina. DosDude Catalina will boot natively and under OCLP, it's a great bridge.

Ventura and Sonoma are problematic due to AVX2 unsupported instructions, which will cause occasional panic. I am hoping that a very good team comes out with an AVX2 emulation shim, which would solve this. The current root patching is not good enough.

 

[Ben J.]

I have now installed Catalina via DosDudes patcher, and it appears all good so far although I’ve not really tested it yet. 👍

I installed it in a separate internal hard drive that had another Mojave OS on it I used restart on for maintenance purposes of the other internal drives. I installed it on a new volume on that drive. One little thing, I now have this volume and another similarly named volume that also appear on my desktop and are a bit of clutter.

CATALINA
CATALINA - data

I have tried to hide those in terminal but I think perhaps I’m not doing it correctly as they still appear… any suggestions to hide those on the desktop?

This is the structure of a bootable macOS drive on Catalina and later.
CATALINA is a locked, unwritable volume that contains the macOS.
CATALINA - Data is a volume that contains everything else; apps, user files, etc.
It's called a 'volume group' (this is in APFS) and it should show as 'CATALINA' in Finder, anyway just leave it alone, if you double click any one of them you should get the same window opening, with library, apps, users, etc.

Why you might see a new “Data” disk in Catalina

MacOS now splits the operating system and data files into two volumes, but they should never appear on the desktop.

www.macworld.com

 

[Stingray77]

This is the structure of a bootable macOS drive on Catalina and later.
CATALINA is a locked, unwritable volume that contains the macOS.
CATALINA - Data is a volume that contains everything else; apps, user files, etc.
It's called a 'volume group' (this is in APFS) and it should show as 'CATALINA' in Finder, anyway just leave it alone, if you double click any one of them you should get the same window opening, with library, apps, users, etc.

Why you might see a new “Data” disk in Catalina

MacOS now splits the operating system and data files into two volumes, but they should never appear on the desktop.

www.macworld.com

Yep, the ' - data' drive only appear on the desktop when Mojave is the start up disk, I have another hard drive in the same Pro with the Catalina OS on it, it doesn't appear there when using Catalina OS, which is fine. I've always had dual OS on seperate drives in the same manchines for disk maintenance purposes. Catalina works perfectly on the test rig so that will go on the other 5.1s now. I have two new Mac Studios planned for purchase in March to add to the office so all good.

As previously mentioned by a contributor, the new Mac Pro 'Cheese grater' seems to have become an over priced niche machine (I know its excellent however) so the new Mac Studios are the way forward for us.

Thanks everyone for the insightful replies, very helpful a usual.

 

[AndreeOnline]

I’m an advertising art director/graphic designer based in the UK, and do some video editing work but nothing heavy by any stretch, these current Mac Pros cope acceptably with that and obviously don’t sweat with any graphic design needs.

For context: had a 5.1 Mac Pro. Loved it. Modded it. Kept it for a looooong time (but I've come to learn that all is relative). Still love it... as a fond memory that I can visit whenever I want.

Now own: Macs in signature*

I get the 5.1 support on this forum and in this thread. But you are a working 'director/graphic designer'. Or should I airquote that: "director/graphic designer"? I honestly don't see a place for a 600-year-old, unsupported computer in your professional life. I really don't.

Apple Silicon M3 Max or better (thinking of upcoming releases) is great in 2024. Lower specs can be good too. It is especially good for mainstream computer work, by which I mean: general office work, publishing and photo + design.

A well specced Mac Studio should be an insta-buy for a new desktop solution. MacBook Pro for a more portable setup.

I wonder how many in the 'modded 5.1 camp' also have access to a modern AS Mac as their daily driver, when they offer recommendations about how to keep it alive and kicking.

One man's "....and obviously don’t sweat with any graphic design needs" is another man's "Jesus! Get a shower!"

I hope that once the M3 Ultra is out, we'll see both Mac Studio and Mac Pro offerings. They should be equally valid and I hope that Apple can reduce the 'case cost' for a Mac Pro over Studio a wee bit. Being able to extend a Mac with PCI cards and lots of SSD/HDD is not nothing. In fact, it's a great benefit.

In your case, wait for the next Apple event and the M3 Ultra release. If you don't need to extend the computer much, go with a Mac Studio and spec it according to budget.

Personally, since I do 3D and Video, I love the Mac Pro and will likely get an Apple Silicon one at some point.

* = As mentioned higher up in the thread: the M3 Max beats the Mac Pro in almost everything. My Mac Pro is a little bit faster rendering in Blender Cycles (but look at how much GPU power it takes!) and much faster in DaVinci Resolve. Again, I have an untypical amount of Mac Pro GPU power. A M3 Max would beat most typical Mac Pro configurations.