Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Used Mac Pro - Worth It?

J

jcschlic

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 13, 2009
104
1
Hi,

A local person is trying to sell his 1.1 Mac Pro (with the dual Xeon 2.66 configuration) and I have been interested in purchasing it.

He upgraded the RAM to 11gb and threw in a few other drives to equal just over 3tb throughout the course of him owning it. It looks like it's in pretty good condition.

Is $450 just for the computer a good deal? Or am I going to regret the purchase because it's 2006 hardware? I am mainly looking for a computer that will do some heavy lifting of video transcoding and also act as a general use/media server rig.

Thoughts? BTW he's also including a Bluetooth Apple keyboard with the Mighty Mouse.
 
I think your money would be better spent in a 2008 or newer if you can afford it. What is your budget. One issue with the 2006-2008 Mac Pros is the memory is very expensive ans and as you may know you have to use hacks to install Mountain Lion on models prior to 2008.
 
You'd be better off with a mini for that price. That Mac Pro is power hungry, inefficient, and just oversized. The only advantage it has is that you can put more storage and RAM into it, but any of the i7 or i5 Mac Minis would trounce that machine, and they have Thunderbolt for your storage concerns.
 
While the 1,1 is definitely showing its age, if the machine is fast enough for you (check and compare Geekbench scores) and the 11gigs of memory adequate, you can add internal hard drives and SSD's for a nominal amount.

The newest iMacs start at $600. Memory is cheap and USB3 ports abound, but Thunderbolt peripherals are not, and you'll still need to buy a keyboard and mouse.

If you are flexible on price, the newer options would probably be a better way to go.
 
get a Mini

unless you really need expandable HDDs, GPU or RAM.

I bought used 2009 machine and I'm happy.
 
jcschlic said:
Hi,

A local person is trying to sell his 1.1 Mac Pro (with the dual Xeon 2.66 configuration) and I have been interested in purchasing it.

He upgraded the RAM to 11gb and threw in a few other drives to equal just over 3tb throughout the course of him owning it. It looks like it's in pretty good condition.

Is $450 just for the computer a good deal? Or am I going to regret the purchase because it's 2006 hardware? I am mainly looking for a computer that will do some heavy lifting of video transcoding and also act as a general use/media server rig.

Thoughts? BTW he's also including a Bluetooth Apple keyboard with the Mighty Mouse.
Click to expand...

Des Moines Craigslist right? Saw that. Frankly even a base Mini will do a better job transcoding. However if you drop a couple of Xeon 5355'a or 5365's it can be a pretty decent computer. Just remember it can not run Mt Lion natively. You have to hacking to get it to run. I love my 1,1 Mac Pro but if I was spin so heavy processor stuff I would go with a 4,1 or better.
 
Yeah its the Des Moines one. Im in Ankeny.

Good advice everyone, as I am not familiar with the Pro side of Apple products
 
That's a pretty good price for local pickup

That's a pretty good price for local pickup, especially if you are getting 3TB worth of drives

Usually right now its 2 GB RAM 250 GB HD for $500, and then maybe shipping.

Your video transcoding speed for DVD quality to MP4 with 2 pass is 1:1 so for a 2 hour video, 2 pass will take 2 hours, or 1 hour for constant quality 1 pass hand-braking.

If I remember correctly 1080p rips at like 7.5 fps so like 1:4, which is a 2 hour movie, 1 pass takes about 6-8 hours depending on 24 fps or 30 fps...

You'll only get Lion unless you want to use other boot loaders, like Chameleon.

Have fun...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back