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Making a beastly 2006 Mac Pro, worth it?

gavinstubbs09

gavinstubbs09

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 17, 2013
1,386
256
NorCal boonies ~~~by Reno sorta
I've been looking at ebay lately and took a look at the old Mac Pros, and they are going for cheap enough, like $300. Just sold the iMac in my sig to buy a MP, cause I want to have the ease to upgrade things like hard drives and whatnot.

So, here's my plan. Buy the Mac Pro (of course), throw in 16GB of Ram (I actually bought FB-DIMMs on accident a while back and now have a use for them), upgrade firmware to 2,1 from 1,1, upgrade to a 8 core machine with 2x Xeon 5355 3GHz (which seem to be cheap enough on ebay, could buy a pair for $100 total), throw in a modern graphics card, and then load up with some hard drives and of course a SSD.

My only downside is I can't run ML or MV natively.

Think it's worth it or just spend the extra $ on a 2008 model? Plans are to use lots and lots of Photoshop and rendering often in Premiere.
 
Honestly, I can see no reason for anyone to buy a 1,1 or 2,1 Mac Pro these days, especially with what your planning to do with it. IMHO, a 3,1 should be your minimum Mac Pro Purchase.

And, I hope you realize that RAM is not common to all Mac Pros.

Lou
 
I would say that a 2009 / 4,1 is the minimum that should be looking at now. Flash to a 5,1 and should be good for quite some time, as the currently shipping unit are 5,1.

Whilst the 3,1 should run Mavericks, as it runs ML, I am wondering if will shutout the 2008 afterwards with the next OSX release to try and push the upgrade.
 
I paid £400 for my octo 3.2 3,1 with 32gb ram the other week which works out at 643 usd and I'm doing the SSD/apricorn solo x2/usb 3.0 upgrades now. Selling the unwanted raid and fibre cards on eBay eventually will help subsidise it even more. I really like the upgradability aspect and the fact I can move these upgraded parts to a 4/5,1 at a later date.

Even with a slow hard drive it smokes my SSD based 2010 i5 17 MBP into total dust running batches on Photoshop and transcoding video and that's pre upgraded parts.

I wouldn't have considered doing it on a 1,1 or 2,1 though full stop.
 
Like what the others suggested here, go for a 3.1 2008 or later models so you have more flexibility with upgrades and OSX.
 
If you'd manage to get 1,1 for next to nothing, why not? It's always fun to tinker with hardware. Installing ML or MV on 1,1 isn't complex too. It will allow to use full CUDA acceleration in Premiere. Nice GTX 570 will do it well. CPUs and RAM are cheap.
 
gavinstubbs09 said:
I've been looking at ebay lately and took a look at the old Mac Pros, and they are going for cheap enough, like $300. Just sold the iMac in my sig to buy a MP, cause I want to have the ease to upgrade things like hard drives and whatnot.

So, here's my plan. Buy the Mac Pro (of course), throw in 16GB of Ram (I actually bought FB-DIMMs on accident a while back and now have a use for them), upgrade firmware to 2,1 from 1,1, upgrade to a 8 core machine with 2x Xeon 5355 3GHz (which seem to be cheap enough on ebay, could buy a pair for $100 total), throw in a modern graphics card, and then load up with some hard drives and of course a SSD.

My only downside is I can't run ML or MV natively.

Think it's worth it or just spend the extra $ on a 2008 model? Plans are to use lots and lots of Photoshop and rendering often in Premiere.
Click to expand...

Even though I have a 1,1 I got for a steal a while back and love it to bits and am running Mavericks on it, I'd second the previous suggestions on getting at least a 3,1. Even that might be dropped from support in next OS release. Go 4,1 that you can upgrade to 5,1.

You realize that X5355 is 2.66Ghz? X5365 is what you want for 3.0Ghz and considerably more expensive.
 
666sheep said:
If you'd manage to get 1,1 for next to nothing, why not? It's always fun to tinker with hardware. Installing ML or MV on 1,1 isn't complex too. It will allow to use full CUDA acceleration in Premiere. Nice GTX 570 will do it well. CPUs and RAM are cheap.
Click to expand...

Have to go against the general consensus & agree here. They are still really capable machines. I picked mine up for a mere £190 (€230/$280 - was listed as a G5) & have been over the moon with it. I had Mountain Lion running on it beautifully (arguably better than Lion runs) with the stock 7300GT, reverted back to Lion & SL as I needed to stick my ATI card back in - which is currently unsupported in MLPostFactor. I'm in the process of popping in a GTX 660 or 550 Ti & (especially) a decent boot drive.

For the price they're going for for over here in comparison to the 2008's I'd say go for it. Couldn't recommend one enough.
 
MacinJosh said:
Even though I have a 1,1 I got for a steal a while back and love it to bits and am running Mavericks on it, I'd second the previous suggestions on getting at least a 3,1. Even that might be dropped from support in next OS release. Go 4,1 that you can upgrade to 5,1.

You realize that X5355 is 2.66Ghz? X5365 is what you want for 3.0Ghz and considerably more expensive.
Click to expand...

I realized after I made it that it is a 2.66GHz, my mistake!
 
Goftrey said:
Have to go against the general consensus & agree here. They are still really capable machines. I picked mine up for a mere £190 (€230/$280 - was listed as a G5) & have been over the moon with it. I had Mountain Lion running on it beautifully (arguably better than Lion runs) with the stock 7300GT, reverted back to Lion & SL as I needed to stick my ATI card back in - which is currently unsupported in MLPostFactor. I'm in the process of popping in a GTX 660 or 550 Ti & (especially) a decent boot drive.

For the price they're going for for over here in comparison to the 2008's I'd say go for it. Couldn't recommend one enough.
Click to expand...

Looks like what I'll have to do. Time to buy one!
 
Goftrey said:
Have to go against the general consensus & agree here. They are still really capable machines. I picked mine up for a mere £190 (€230/$280 - was listed as a G5) & have been over the moon with it. I had Mountain Lion running on it beautifully (arguably better than Lion runs) with the stock 7300GT, reverted back to Lion & SL as I needed to stick my ATI card back in - which is currently unsupported in MLPostFactor. I'm in the process of popping in a GTX 660 or 550 Ti & (especially) a decent boot drive.

For the price they're going for for over here in comparison to the 2008's I'd say go for it. Couldn't recommend one enough.
Click to expand...

It is really going to depend on the price and most people are going to struggle to pick one up for the price you paid.
 
Get a 3.1 or better

I am doing exactly what you are doing but I started with 3.1 8 core instead. This thing is running 667 ram instead of 800 and its still faster than a scalded dog encoding video with hand brake, or exporting video editing projects with final cut pro X.

I got mine for 700.00. Then I tossed 32 gigs of ram it and it smokes anything I have ever owned in the past.
 
Umbongo said:
It is really going to depend on the price and most people are going to struggle to pick one up for the price you paid.
Click to expand...

Quite a few folks out there flog their Mac Pro's thinking they are either Power Mac G5's or older models that are stuck only booting lion. Goftrey got his 1,1 for peanuts for the former and I got my 2008 for pistachios cos of the latter :)

Keep looking I say - here in the uk on eBay or Gumtree or Craigslist over the pond and you'll eventually unearth a great deal.
 
MP 1.1 CPU upgrade

Hi there,

I hope it's not off topic, but I have the MP 1.1 with the original 2x 2.66 Ghz dual-core Intel Xeon and also consider upgrading using a pair of 3 Ghz Intel Xeon SLAED X5365 Quad Core LGA-771 socket 8MB L2 Cache 1333 MHz that I recently bought via Amazon from Vibrant Technologies Inc, USA.

On several forums and threads I read a lot of different comments, and fact is that my i-Centre and other (I suppose) knowledgeable sources refuse to do this because of 'support and future issues that may come up'.

So is there anyone out there who has actually done exactly this, installing the same 3 Ghz X5365's, who can tell (us) if this really can be done safely ? And how ?
I should add I'm not exactly an expert, and I'd be quite happy to stick with OS X 10.6 SL. Thanks for helping (us) out and/or pointing in the right direction !
 
Here's an update since I've owned the Mac. Love it dearly! Ended up getting it mostly stock (ram was upped to 2GB) for $225 with free shipping from a company called techreplay. No broken feet or anything! Next up I think will be Storage then possibly more ram or a better GPU. We'll see!

Xeon x5355 2.66GHz Quads (8 Core POWER!)
12GB RAM
AMD Radeon 5750 1GB (hacked with some kexts, no boot screen)
Blu Ray Burner
64GB SSD, 2x160GB in RAID0, 320GB Bootcamp
OS X Mavericks 10.9.1
 
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gavinstubbs09 said:
I've been looking at ebay lately and took a look at the old Mac Pros, and they are going for cheap enough, like $300. Just sold the iMac in my sig to buy a MP, cause I want to have the ease to upgrade things like hard drives and whatnot.

So, here's my plan. Buy the Mac Pro (of course), throw in 16GB of Ram (I actually bought FB-DIMMs on accident a while back and now have a use for them), upgrade firmware to 2,1 from 1,1, upgrade to a 8 core machine with 2x Xeon 5355 3GHz (which seem to be cheap enough on ebay, could buy a pair for $100 total), throw in a modern graphics card, and then load up with some hard drives and of course a SSD.

My only downside is I can't run ML or MV natively.

Think it's worth it or just spend the extra $ on a 2008 model? Plans are to use lots and lots of Photoshop and rendering often in Premiere.
Click to expand...

just get nMP. period.
 
Gav Mack said:
Quite a few folks out there flog their Mac Pro's thinking they are either Power Mac G5's or older models that are stuck only booting lion. Goftrey got his 1,1 for peanuts for the former and I got my 2008 for pistachios cos of the latter :)
Click to expand...
ugh, what the hell is wrong with people? :confused: at least you guys got great deals!
 
4x 2.66 Issues

I performed a similar upgrade on my 1,1.

The main issues are extra heat. You'll need a fan control program to boost the fans to 1000rpm. The extra heat killed two of my RAM modules. The system is more prone to kernel panics. Some applications will cause intermittent kernel panics like DVD player or heavy based graphics programs.
 
davidb367 said:
I performed a similar upgrade on my 1,1.

The main issues are extra heat. You'll need a fan control program to boost the fans to 1000rpm. The extra heat killed two of my RAM modules. The system is more prone to kernel panics. Some applications will cause intermittent kernel panics like DVD player or heavy based graphics programs.
Click to expand...

How long did it take for the RAM to die? I will end up finding something to control the fans. I did notice that when I had the 5150's the rear fan was at 600rpm and now it's about 800rpm with the new CPUs.
 
it gets hard to keep that machine going, the variables start to stack up. Ram / hard drives go bad, sometimes only intermittently which makes it hard to diagnose. The Ati 4870 had a power incompatibility problem (even though it was bought from an apple reseller) which was also intermittent. I got 7 good years out of it, but when said and done i am glad it is a file server / desk jocky now
 
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