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MP All Models The "I just ordered/bought/got my new/refurb Mac Pro" thread [Merged]

Isn't the Samsung EVO 850 (PRO) the only option if you want a 2TB SSD?

BTW What's the difference between the standard EVO 850 & the EVO 850 PRO? There is a considerable difference in price. Here in the UK Amazon has the 2TB 850 for £499 & the 850 PRO for £711.
 
nigelbb said:
Isn't the Samsung EVO 850 (PRO) the only option if you want a 2TB SSD?

BTW What's the difference between the standard EVO 850 & the EVO 850 PRO? There is a considerable difference in price. Here in the UK Amazon has the 2TB 850 for £499 & the 850 PRO for £711.
Click to expand...

AFAIK, mainly the expected durability. The Pro expect have 2x the Evo's life span. And Samsung gives you double the warranty period.

In terms of performance, the difference is very minor.
 
I had a thread on here for the last few days getting my Mac Pro 1,1 working, but it now works. Time to start throwing modified OSX versions, expensive but yet useless GPUs, and lots of HDD space for a neat HTPC.

1,1
3GHz
4GB Memory
240GB SSD
SATA DVD
4x 1TB WD Green RAID (Soon)
HD5770 (Soon, or a 5870 if I can find one for similar price, when in Rome...)

 
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I just got a 2009 4,1 that was upgraded to 5,1 with a 2.93 12-core. 64gb 1333 ram. 1tb drive. GeForce GT120.

$1250 USD.

I'm using this to run pro tools 10 and 11. I waited over a year for a trash-can update and gave up after WWDC.

I'm looking at the Lycom adapter with the Samsung SSD. Any leads on the cheapest place to buy these?
I would eventually like to put 4 2tb drives in raid 1 for audio storage and samples. Is this a smart idea?

I also want to run a dual 1080p monitor setup. Looking at 2 of the curved 29" LG. Can my current graphics card support this? what would be a good card to look at if not?

Cheers
 
rhetorikal87 said:
I just got a 2009 4,1 that was upgraded to 5,1 with a 2.93 12-core. 64gb 1333 ram. 1tb drive. GeForce GT120.

$1250 USD.

I'm using this to run pro tools 10 and 11. I waited over a year for a trash-can update and gave up after WWDC.

I'm looking at the Lycom adapter with the Samsung SSD. Any leads on the cheapest place to buy these?
I would eventually like to put 4 2tb drives in raid 1 for audio storage and samples. Is this a smart idea?

I also want to run a dual 1080p monitor setup. Looking at 2 of the curved 29" LG. Can my current graphics card support this? what would be a good card to look at if not?

Cheers
Click to expand...

I just got my Mac Pro 2009 and the GT120 has a DisplayPort and a DVI connector, so if the LG can connect by DisplayPort and DVI, you can plug one into each connector.
 
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rhetorikal87 said:
I just got a 2009 4,1 that was upgraded to 5,1 with a 2.93 12-core. 64gb 1333 ram. 1tb drive. GeForce GT120.

$1250 USD.

I'm using this to run pro tools 10 and 11. I waited over a year for a trash-can update and gave up after WWDC.

I'm looking at the Lycom adapter with the Samsung SSD. Any leads on the cheapest place to buy these?
I would eventually like to put 4 2tb drives in raid 1 for audio storage and samples. Is this a smart idea?

I also want to run a dual 1080p monitor setup. Looking at 2 of the curved 29" LG. Can my current graphics card support this? what would be a good card to look at if not?

Cheers
Click to expand...

I think the cheapest is eBay etc, but you have to spend some time to do your own research. Also, be care not to buy the poor quality product.

May I know why you choose RAID 1, I can tell if it's a good idea if don't know your reason.

AFAIK GT120 can run 2 monitors at the same time as long as you pick the right monitors which can utilise the correct ports.
 
Bought a Mac Pro 3,1 (Early 2008) last week. Got it for AUD$600 (US$450) including a 22" 1080p display and a A1048 keyboard and M5769 mouse.

Of course, a "stock Mac Pro" is a rare creature. This one came with 8GB of RAM and two hard drives (1x 640GB and 1x 1TB). It is only the 2.8GHz Quad-Core model. It also came with two video cards, both the stock 2600XT and thus supports up to four displays, though I have only ever used two, and I usually stick with just the single 27" 1080p display.

I got it home, and immediately upgraded from Yosemite to El Capitan. Did some speed tests and found that the 1TB drive was 20% faster than the 640GB, so I did a fresh install of El Capitan on that drive and made it the boot drive. The 640GB has gone into an old PowerMac G5 which I am fixing up, but that is another tale.

Of course, being a tinkerer, I could not resist doing some work on the Mac Pro. I bought an SSD and an adaptor box and did a fresh install of El Capitan 10.11 onto that and copied all my applications over. Boot time went from about 1:10 to 0:32. It is only a fairly cheap Kingston SSD and is peaking at about 240MB/s read and write. The 1TB drive peaks at 120MB/s. Theoretically, the SATA-II Bus should be able to handle 384MB/s.

I also did some hunting around on eBay for a new keyboard and mouse. The A1048 is actually quite a nice keyboard, but I have a very small desk, and it takes up just way to much room. I managed to get the A1314 Bluetooth keyboard, A1296 Magic Mouse (original type with removable batteries) and A1339 Trackpad all for AUD$160 (about US$120) The new versions of these items would cost about AUD$500 from the apple store, so I am quite happy to have the older versions.

So what else will happen to the 2008 Mac Pro? I have a pair of E5742 3.0GHz Quad-Core CPUs waiting to go in, once the heatsinks arrive. I also have another 8GB of RAM (2x4GB modules) which will bring me to a total of 16GB. I am looking at putting a different SSD into it - the old one will go into my mother's old laptop to give it a performance boost. Either a Sandisk or Samsung - depends what I can get for a reasonable price. I will also be looking into a better GPU. The stock 2600XTs do work nicely, but I would like something newer, and preferably DirectX compatible.

Despite being technically obsolete, I find that real-world usage it feels just as current as any new Mac. It runs the same software, it certainly doesn't feel slow or laggy compared to my laptop (MacBook Pro 2011 Core i5 2.4GHz, 16GB RAM, 240GB SSD) And it very nicely works with bluetooth with the keyboard, trackpad and mouse, which are not all that different to the newest models anyway.

***EDIT/UPDATE***

22/07/2016

I originally put a 120GB Kingston SSD in for the boot drive (OSX and Apps) but I changed it to a 500GB Samsung 750EVO. (Got it on sale). The rear speed is slightly higher. Though I think that it will go into my MBP and the MBP's 240GB Sandisk will go into the MBP. I could get an Apricorn PCIe-SATA card, but I somehow doubt that the expenditure will be worth it. I think the RAM upgrade will prove to be a better investment once that has arrived.
 
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I received the new (second-hand) 3.0GHz Xeon 5472 CPUs recently, and I also picked up the new heatsinks today.

GeekBench3 score is now a very tidy 12,300 for multi-core and 1,780 for single-core. The most powerful computer in my household is also the oldest.
 
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hartleymartin said:
I received the new (second-hand) 3.0GHz Xeon 5472 CPUs recently, and I also picked up the new heatsinks today.

GeekBench3 score is now a very tidy 12,300 for multi-core and 1,780 for single-core. The most powerful computer in my household is also the oldest.
Click to expand...

Sounds like you got it all setup nicely, enjoy. I went through a similar process with mine last year, great machines.
 
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I've got it set up with a 27" 1080p screen that I bought earlier this year. Got it for a steal when Dick Smith Electronics went bust. I really wish that they made 27" or 28" screens in 16:10 aspect ratio 1920x1200 resolution. Then I could display two A4-sided pages at 100% zoom without having to do any scrolling when I do typesetting.

Still waiting for the additional RAM to turn up in the post. I found a supplier which can supply a set of eight 4GB modules for much cheaper than what I was originally quoted. Although, I have found that 8GB runs almost everything quite comfortably and 16GB gives plenty of room. 32GB is probably far in excess what I would ever need, but it is like having a Jag with a V12 engine. No-one actually needs anything above a V8, but it's nice to have the power reserve.
 
Purchased my first ever Used Mac Pro earlier this month (MP2,1) 3 Ghz, since then I've been enjoying myself doing upgrades to my new (to me) toy.
Installed Samsung SSD's, a better Video card and got Yosemite installed using information gleaned from the web.
Overall this is a very solid, capable and quiet performing system.

Screen Shot 2016-07-26 at 9.43.34 AM 2.png
 
jbarley said:
Purchased my first ever Used Mac Pro earlier this month (MP2,1) 3 Ghz, since then I've been enjoying myself doing upgrades to my new (to me) toy.
Installed Samsung SSD's, a better Video card and got Yosemite installed using information gleaned from the web.
Overall this is a very solid, capable and quiet performing system.

View attachment 641902
Click to expand...

What arrangement did you use for the Samsung SSDs? I've put a 750EVO into an Icy Dock adaptor and get about 270/260 MB/s Read/Write.
 
hartleymartin said:
What arrangement did you use for the Samsung SSDs? I've put a 750EVO into an Icy Dock adaptor and get about 270/260 MB/s Read/Write.
Click to expand...
I used 2 samsungs in Icy Dock adapters in a raid0 configuration and I pretty much get as good as SATA3 (520 MB/s R/W).
I'm fully aware of what the nay-sayers think about the risks of using raid, but my system is not mission critical and secondly I'm probably a tad OCD when it comes to backups, my choice being CCC bootable clones of which I maintain 3.
Plus the fact I've yet to experience any failure while using Apple raid for about 5-6 years now.
 
jbarley said:
I used 2 samsungs in Icy Dock adapters in a raid0 configuration and I pretty much get as good as SATA3 (520 MB/s R/W).
I'm fully aware of what the nay-sayers think about the risks of using raid, but my system is not mission critical and secondly I'm probably a tad OCD when it comes to backups, my choice being CCC bootable clones of which I maintain 3.
Plus the fact I've yet to experience any failure while using Apple raid for about 5-6 years now.
Click to expand...
I have two 1TB Samsung EVO 850s in RAID 0 on an Capricorn Velocity PCIe card & get around 750MB/s R/W.
 
I bought a Mac Pro 2,1

I upgraded the graphics card to the 750 Ti gaming works good in windows except on DOOM but so far it works but might get the new Pascal Cards in the near future it was a pain in the ass to get windows to install so I went to my other computer and installed it on the hard drive and transferred it back to the mac pro and now I have windows and mac os x side by side :)
 
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I bought a late 2011 CTO 5,1 that came from the factory with 2 x 6 core 2.93GHz, 6 x 2GB RAM modules for triple channel, a pair of WD Black 1TB in RAID0 with Apple RAID card, and AMD 5770 GPU. $500 asking price on Craigslist.

IMO it's a great deal given the specs and condition of this Mac Pro. The fan blades have no dust on them! o_O
 
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Hi everyone, I just picked up a mid-2010 5,1 quad 2.8 that seems to be in really good condition! It's my first Mac Pro. I installed a spare 850 EVO, installed El Capitan on it, and although I haven't had time to really put it through its paces, it seems fairly speedy, especially for a six year old computer! I did remove the RAID card, as it couldn't recognize more than 2.2 TB of any drive connected to it.

There seems to be some debate on how much faster a computer will feel with its boot drive connected via SATA 3 vs. SATA 2. If the card is inexpensive enough, though, it wouldn't hurt to try the upgrade. :)

Can anyone recommend an inexpensive PCI SATA card for my SSD that supports booting? It doesn't need RAID or anything fancy. Although if the card also has eSATA ports, that would be a nice bonus.

Thanks!
 
smirk said:
Hi everyone, I just picked up a mid-2010 5,1 quad 2.8 that seems to be in really good condition! It's my first Mac Pro. I installed a spare 850 EVO, installed El Capitan on it, and although I haven't had time to really put it through its paces, it seems fairly speedy, especially for a six year old computer! I did remove the RAID card, as it couldn't recognize more than 2.2 TB of any drive connected to it.

There seems to be some debate on how much faster a computer will feel with its boot drive connected via SATA 3 vs. SATA 2. If the card is inexpensive enough, though, it wouldn't hurt to try the upgrade. :)

Can anyone recommend an inexpensive PCI SATA card for my SSD that supports booting? It doesn't need RAID or anything fancy. Although if the card also has eSATA ports, that would be a nice bonus.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

IMO, the card is quite expensive (especially if compare to the PCIe SSD adaptor). And it virtually has no help for boot time. But it indeed can double the speed for large file copying if compare to SATA 2.
 
I am currently running a Sandisk 240GB SSD in an ICY DOCK as the boot drive. It takes about 10 seconds to POST and another 22 seconds to load OSX. Not bad for a 2008 Mac Pro. It could be faster, but I don't think that there is a whole lot of performance to be gained for the money spent.
 
smirk said:
Hi everyone, I just picked up a mid-2010 5,1 quad 2.8 that seems to be in really good condition! It's my first Mac Pro. I installed a spare 850 EVO, installed El Capitan on it, and although I haven't had time to really put it through its paces, it seems fairly speedy, especially for a six year old computer! I did remove the RAID card, as it couldn't recognize more than 2.2 TB of any drive connected to it.

There seems to be some debate on how much faster a computer will feel with its boot drive connected via SATA 3 vs. SATA 2. If the card is inexpensive enough, though, it wouldn't hurt to try the upgrade. :)

Can anyone recommend an inexpensive PCI SATA card for my SSD that supports booting? It doesn't need RAID or anything fancy. Although if the card also has eSATA ports, that would be a nice bonus.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

Any PCIe SATA III card with the Marvell 88SE9230 chipset will allow boot in Mac OS X and Windows environment. I bought a few of these cards (Syba SI-PEX40057) 2 years ago for $30 apiece. It's 2x speed which is capped at around 700MB/s. For a single SSD drive, this is more than enough to achieve the full speed of the drive.
 
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