MP 1,1-5,1 MacPro 3,1 - Really worth it?

[paardenkapper]

In times of rising energy costs I'm really hesitant in using my Mac Pro 3,1.

That means I do not really need all that power and as I read the PSU is not really efficient.
What I'd do with it could be done with a Mac Mini and since it's a 3,1 it cannot be upgraded to a 4,1 or 5,1 firmware.

Is my Mac Pro really useless these days? I have seen people building Hackintoshes from the cases.

In comparison to later PowerPC arch the early Intel Macs were not that great after all.
Should I hide it away in the attic again until it's retro enough?

What are your thoughts on this?

 

[majus]

Gut the case, install a Mac Mini or Studio inside along with all its peripherals you may need. That is its best use now. Also, it is in a small way burglar-proofing the Mini or Studio; who wants to steal what appears to be an obsolete computer?

 

[paardenkapper]

Gut the case, install a Mac Mini or Studio inside along with all its peripherals you may need. That is its best use now. Also, it is in a small way burglar-proofing the Mini or Studio; who wants to steal what appears to be an obsolete computer?

I have found a laser-cut Mac Pro to ATX conversion kit but rather not throw away a perfectly good computer only due to its age.

 

[mateo14]

I have found a laser-cut Mac Pro to ATX conversion kit but rather not throw away a perfectly good computer only due to its age.

That is a great machine to run the PowerPC and early-intel games on Mac OS X 10.6.

 

[DouglasCarroll]

In times of rising energy costs I'm really hesitant in using my Mac Pro 3,1.

That means I do not really need all that power and as I read the PSU is not really efficient.
What I'd do with it could be done with a Mac Mini and since it's a 3,1 it cannot be upgraded to a 4,1 or 5,1 firmware.

Is my Mac Pro really useless these days? I have seen people building Hackintoshes from the cases.

In comparison to later PowerPC arch the early Intel Macs were not that great after all.
Should I hide it away in the attic again until it's retro enough?

What are your thoughts on this?

I use my 3,1 Mac Pro weekly to copy my Blu-Ray movies off the discs and then transcode the files with Handbrake to HD .mp4 versions to watch on all my devices. The 3,1 works great for this I think.

I also have Mojave on it to run my old 32bit Steam games.

It’s not my main machine but for these tasks it excels I think.

I’m also running the latest versions of Skype, Zoom, Firefox, LibreOffice, Steam, VLC….

That certainly doesn’t fit my definition of “worthless”….

🙄

Any machine works great if you find a task for it.

😃

 

[paardenkapper]

Any machine works great if you find a task for it.

😃

In the end it all comes down to your personal use case scenario.

I did not think of my MP as useless but given how many Macs I own it's a cost-benefit-calculation.
Maybe I'll donate it or something.

 

[mateo14]

In the end it all comes down to your personal use case scenario.

I did not think of my MP as useless but given how many Macs I own it's a cost-benefit-calculation.
Maybe I'll donate it or something.

This Mac Pro is the easiest Mac to diagnose and replace broken components.

In this case, you can quickly upgrade RAM, a graphic card, an SSD, and so on. You can still use OP for Mac or Linux/Windows to have a modern computer.

Mac Mini and iMac are more problematic. I was changing three times a logic board in Mac Mini 2010, and it was a waste of money.