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MP All Models The "I just ordered/bought/got my new/refurb Mac Pro" thread [Merged]
- Thread starter Einz
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Further to my message above, have received my new system and so far I'm very happy with it.
Being in Canada and buying from the USA, the exchange rate is something I've learned to accept as the cost
of this hobby, but I do tend to research my purchases well.
In this case the shipping cost of 2 similarly priced systems, one from Los Angeles, CA and the other from way back east in Woodstock, IL is surely surprising.
From California...
From Woodstock IL.
I've purchased from the Woodstock supplier before, good service, and I don't know how they do the shipping rates but I'm more then happy with them for these very heavy units.
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I picked up this for £2400:
Apple Mac Pro 5,1 2010 12 core 2 x 3.46 64GB GTX 1080 8GB GT120 1TB SSD, 3TB HD
Update...
my new-to-me MacPro3,1 is now happily running macOS Sierra 10.12.5.
With any luck I'll die before this beautiful beast bites the bullet.
Booting from an Sata3 SSD mounted on a Sata3 PCIe card
my new-to-me MacPro3,1 is now happily running macOS Sierra 10.12.5.
With any luck I'll die before this beautiful beast bites the bullet.
Booting from an Sata3 SSD mounted on a Sata3 PCIe card
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I think I just landed a very good deal for just over USD1,000 including shipping from USA to Hong Kong - the new beast has been up and running Sierra 10.12.5 for almost a week now with just one black screen so far:
Mac Pro 5,1 2010
3.33GHz 12-core
32Gb ECC
1x120GB SSD (OWC Accelsior)
1x 1TB HDD
1x 3TB HDD
Couldn't be happier (though that black screen worries me a bit), and I'm waiting on the following to arrive from Amazon:
Gigabyte RX 560 2Gb Windforce
Inateck 4-port USB 3.0 PCie
IOGear Bluetooth 4.0 USB
Mac Pro 5,1 2010
3.33GHz 12-core
32Gb ECC
1x120GB SSD (OWC Accelsior)
1x 1TB HDD
1x 3TB HDD
Couldn't be happier (though that black screen worries me a bit), and I'm waiting on the following to arrive from Amazon:
Gigabyte RX 560 2Gb Windforce
Inateck 4-port USB 3.0 PCie
IOGear Bluetooth 4.0 USB
That's a huge upgrade from Mac mini then.
But it's hard to tell if it's worth, unless we know the price. If you mean buy from Apple, my personal answer is NO, it's too expensive for that spec now.
And you have to accept that the nMP is lack of upgrade path. Lack of repair parts. And the D700 seems has a pretty high failure rate.
I just picked up one of the quad core, D300 nMP's last week when B&H had them on clearance for $2k. I do audio production, and my 2013 15" rMBP was starting to have some serious issues after 4 years. Also, the rMBP's fans have always screamed under full CPU load. I wanted a computer that was as quiet as possible under full load while still being fast enough to record and mix, and the nMP is that computer. I love all the thunderbolt 2 ports, and the near-silence is incredible. I'm running 2X dell P2415Q displays, and the nMP drives them very smoothly. I've had a few iMac's in the past, but I don't like having the computer attached to the monitor. Despite all the hate on here about the nMP being "old tech," I'm incredibly impressed with its performance, even in 2017. I'm hoping to get at least 5 good years out of it.
Haha most guys complaining the nMP's old tech actually running a Mac Pro that even older. We usually mean the tech is not worth for that price now (Apple listed price), but not really mean that the component inside a nMP is rubbish old and useless. If you can pick that up at a reasonable price, don't need any high end GPU, no need to have large internal storage, doesn't look for any self upgrade path… but very need its quiet fan noise profile and ability to run MacOS natively. Then nMP is actually a good choice for you. No matter how we upgrade the cMP, it can't be as quiet as the nMP, but still with that processing power / speed.
FWIW my wife just got one of the new base model 13" MacBook Pros and it seems to be just as fast or even slightly faster at exporting h.264 from Final Cut than my nMP.
So if you are going to pay more for the nMP than a Macbook Pro would cost I would think twice.
That's because of QuickSync. However, it can only speed up H264 export, and have lots of restriction. If anyone prefer to fine tune the parameter to more utilise the H264's ability (e.g. 2 pass), QuickSync won't help.
As general rule, for medium quality, QuickSync is good, it save lots of time / power. But if looking for high quality product, CPU raw power still required.
So I've taken the plunge and ordered the replacement for my early 2011 15 inch MacBook Pro as discussed here: Looking to upgrade from MBP 8,2 to MP 5,1...
The specs are:
/csd
The specs are:
- 3.33 GHz six-core 5,1 with 32GB RAM
- 256GB Angelbird PCIe SSD boot disk
- 960 GB Crucial SATA-3 SSD taken from my MBP
- 1.5TB Samsung HDD
- RX 560 4GB graphics
- 27" LG IPS 4K screen
/csd
I'm pretty new to the nMP.
I bought a refurb for 1500 euro's.
The quad 3,7, D300 I already upgraded the ram to 64GB.
TB PCIe enclosures and disks are on the way ...
Upgraded to High Sierra before putting all my apps on it.
I do wonder, how does the nMP behave in sleep mode.
My cMP's go full silent and the power led goes on and off.
If I put the nMP in sleep mode.
It goes a lot more silent, cooler I guess.
But air keeps flowing and the power button logo doesn't dim on and off.
Is this normal?
This would make it the most quit portable mac under heavy workload
but also the noisiest mac in sleep mode?
( I dissabled internet sharing, now It goes to sleep )
I bought a refurb for 1500 euro's.
The quad 3,7, D300 I already upgraded the ram to 64GB.
TB PCIe enclosures and disks are on the way ...
Upgraded to High Sierra before putting all my apps on it.
I do wonder, how does the nMP behave in sleep mode.
My cMP's go full silent and the power led goes on and off.
If I put the nMP in sleep mode.
It goes a lot more silent, cooler I guess.
But air keeps flowing and the power button logo doesn't dim on and off.
Is this normal?
This would make it the most quit portable mac under heavy workload
but also the noisiest mac in sleep mode?
( I dissabled internet sharing, now It goes to sleep )
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Yep, a 12 core d700 with dual Titans or 1080Tis in an eGPU enclosure packs quite a bit of punch for such a tiny package. That's 29 TFLOPS of GPU power. 10 years ago you'd have needed a rack (or several) to reach that.
Well, my Mac Pro 3,1 just came in for my birthday. Spent the entire day cleaning it inside and out, installed Snow Leopard, and it's absolutely BLISTERING. I've never used, let alone owned such a monster before.
The difference between this beast and my Power Mac G5 (which was my main desktop for a year, and before that an iMac G4) is stunning. I'm simply floored. I can now actually have a comfortable experience on the Internet and everywhere else!
I come from the PowerPC forums, but I have a feeling I'll be around here a lot more often. How are your 2008 Mac Pros treating you guys? How is El Capitan on them? How about Sierra? Is there an installer for High Sierra, or is that still in development?
I look forward to working with you all!
The difference between this beast and my Power Mac G5 (which was my main desktop for a year, and before that an iMac G4) is stunning. I'm simply floored. I can now actually have a comfortable experience on the Internet and everywhere else!
I come from the PowerPC forums, but I have a feeling I'll be around here a lot more often. How are your 2008 Mac Pros treating you guys? How is El Capitan on them? How about Sierra? Is there an installer for High Sierra, or is that still in development?
I look forward to working with you all!
If you don't need the new features, better to stay with 10.6.8. None of the newer OS provide that kind of stability and responsiveness.
But 10.6.8 doesn't have anywhere near the same support as 10.11, which I need.
In that case, you have to upgrade whatever out comment is. Your software require 10.11 or later?
Anyway, Not sure if you have SSD or not in the 3,1, but for 10.11 and onward, you definitely need one for OS. These OS are highly optimised for SSD. If you run them with HDD, it will be painfully slow.
Typing this from El Capitan with a 1 TB HD. It isn't as fast as Snow Leopard, obviously, but it is still very fast. Not quite "painfully slow" as it should be. So I'm pretty sure High Sierra is the one optimized for SSDs. That's the one with APFS, after all, which was pretty much built for SSDs in the first place. Not quite sure about Sierra, though. Maybe it has APFS through an update.
I just wanted people's input on the performance of their 3,1s, especially on the newer OSes. I don't particularly need support, per se, but it should be present. After all, why NOT put the latest OS on your machine when it can handle it, has plenty of space, and it's easy to backtrack?
Being optimistic here, man.
IMO! Windows 10 only is much better for 3,1 and older Mac Pros.
More modern, and faster. And SUPPORTED.
More modern, and faster. And SUPPORTED.
...Except it violates your basic privacy rights, is far inferior to Windows 7, is built off of Windows 8, and is heavily tailored to tablet inputs.
Bang up job there, Micro$oft.
slow clap