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Which Mac 5.1 to get?

K

Kooki9

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Oct 3, 2018
24
5
Switzerland
hello,

I'm looking to get a Mac pro 5.1 to replace my imac. I don't mind tinkering a bit, but I don't want to spend my lfe tinkering too much.

So I found 3 options that are possibilities, but not sure which one is the best deal/best system. So if you can help or point me in the right direction I'd appreciate that.

Option 1:
Mac Pro 5,1 2009 6 cores CPU 3.46GHz:
32 GB RAM
500 Go SSD
1Tor HDD
Carte Graphique d'origine: NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
Mac Os X 10.14 Mojave

Option 2:
Mac Pro 5.1 Xeon Quad Core 2.8Ghz, 16Gb, 2x 1TB, DVD-RW, Radeon HD 5770 1Gb, OSX 10.13.6 High Sierra, Mid 2010,

Option 3:
MacPro 5.1 Mid 2010
2.8 GHz Quad-Core Xenon
Läuft, 250 GB SSD and 3 TB Harddisk,
18 GB DDR3 Speicher.

They are all the same price (give or take).

So which do you think gets more bang for the buck and require less playing around with?

I'm a photographer who's looking to go into video as well.

Thanks!

Kerim
 
Kooki9 said:
hello,

I'm looking to get a Mac pro 5.1 to replace my imac. I don't mind tinkering a bit, but I don't want to spend my lfe tinkering too much.

So I found 3 options that are possibilities, but not sure which one is the best deal/best system. So if you can help or point me in the right direction I'd appreciate that.

Option 1:
Mac Pro 5,1 2009 6 cores CPU 3.46GHz:
32 GB RAM
500 Go SSD
1Tor HDD
Carte Graphique d'origine: NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
Mac Os X 10.14 Mojave

Option 2:
Mac Pro 5.1 Xeon Quad Core 2.8Ghz, 16Gb, 2x 1TB, DVD-RW, Radeon HD 5770 1Gb, OSX 10.13.6 High Sierra, Mid 2010,

Option 3:
MacPro 5.1 Mid 2010
2.8 GHz Quad-Core Xenon
Läuft, 250 GB SSD and 3 TB Harddisk,
18 GB DDR3 Speicher.

They are all the same price (give or take).

So which do you think gets more bang for the buck and require less playing around with?

I'm a photographer who's looking to go into video as well.

Thanks!

Kerim
Click to expand...
Forget one, go for 2 or 3. If in the future you'll want to buy a dual processor tray, a 2009 Mac Pro will cause a lot of grief since it uses lidless processors.

You can get a X5680 3.33MHz hexacore for less than $50 and upgrade option 2 or 3. If the price is the same, I'd go for 3. You will need to buy more RAM later, but it's a good config for you to start. RAM and CPUs are cheap upgrades for Mac Pros, dual trays are the most expensive item.
 
tsialex said:
Forget one, go for 2 or 3. If in the future you'll want to buy a dual processor tray, a 2009 Mac Pro will cause a lot of grief since it uses lidless processors.

You can get a X5680 3.33MHz hexacore for less than $50 and upgrade option 2 or 3. If the price is the same, I'd go for 3. You will need to buy more RAM later, but it's a good config for you to start. RAM and CPUs are cheap upgrades for Mac Pros, dual trays are the most expensive item.
Click to expand...

Ok, so in order of preference, 3, 2 and last 1. I was thinking 1 was going to be most popular. And actually the 3rd is the most cheapest, at the moment. There's no buy now option.

Does both the 2 and 3rd come with dual trays?
 
Kooki9 said:
Ok, so in order of preference, 3, 2 and last 1. I was thinking 1 was going to be most popular. And actually the 3rd is the most cheapest, at the moment. There's no buy now option.
Click to expand...
If you'll never want to install a dual cpu tray, you can get 1.

You will need to change the GPU from the start, since nowadays GT120 barely works. At least HD 5770 works fine with 10.13.6.

Mojave don't work with GT120 or HD 5770.

Does both the 2 and 3rd come with dual trays?
Click to expand...
No, all three Macs are single CPU trays.
 
Ok. Great and thanks. The bid for the 3rd ends today, I will try and nab that one. Otherwise it's the 2nd one. Super psyched about it, to be honest.

I think I'd Def want a 2nd tray so, as the recommendation goes, I'm opting for that.

Sorry for the slow response, been traveling over the last few days.
 
Kooki9 said:
Ok. Great and thanks. The bid for the 3rd ends today, I will try and nab that one. Otherwise it's the 2nd one. Super psyched about it, to be honest.

I think I'd Def want a 2nd tray so, as the recommendation goes, I'm opting for that.

Sorry for the slow response, been traveling over the last few days.
Click to expand...

The two tray upgrade option is expensive though, if you start with a single CPU MP , which all of them are .
If you want dual CPUs it's usually cheaper to buy one which has those to begin with, in my limited experience .

Option 1 has already had a CPU upgrade it seems, it is a 6 core and has a decent amount of RAM; you will need a GPU upgrade though .

I'd go for #1 plus GPU upgrade, or look for a dual core 2010/2012 MP if you need that .
 
barmann said:
The two tray upgrade option is expensive though, if you start with a single CPU MP , which all of them are .
If you want dual CPUs it's usually cheaper to buy one which has those to begin with, in my limited experience .

Option 1 has already had a CPU upgrade it seems, it is a 6 core and has a decent amount of RAM; you will need a GPU upgrade though .

I'd go for #1 plus GPU upgrade, or look for a dual core 2010/2012 MP if you need that .
Click to expand...


Hiya. Well initially I thought people would suggest the 1st option for exactly that reason. But from what I understand I can't do a dual tray later. Plus it's a six core.

Currently the 3rd one is 130 dollars cheaper than the first two.
 
Kooki9 said:
Hiya. Well initially I thought people would suggest the 1st option for exactly that reason. But from what I understand I can't do a dual tray later. Plus it's a six core.

Currently the 3rd one is 130 dollars cheaper than the first two.
Click to expand...
You can upgrade a 2009 single cpu to a dual cpu tray, the problem is the lidless Xeons. With a 2009 tray most owners have lots of trouble making it work with upgraded processors. Go for a 2010, forget 2009 unless you know what you are doing.
 
Kooki9 said:
Hiya. Well initially I thought people would suggest the 1st option for exactly that reason. But from what I understand I can't do a dual tray later. Plus it's a six core.

Currently the 3rd one is 130 dollars cheaper than the first two.
Click to expand...

As said above, upgrading the CPUs in a 2009 can be difficult .
But option 1 is already upgraded to the fastest 6 core CPU available ( single CPU ) .
( 6 core is good, btw. ) .

You might want to look at the cost for single to dual CPU conversions - it can be substantial .
It's not like a fairly cheap CPU upgrade .
Depending on how much you can do by yourself and on finding cheap offerings, the conversion alone can cost you more than a low spec dual CPU MP , even a genuine MP 5.1 .

I was in a similar spot recently - the question for me was if I needed a 12 core or 6 core cMP - as a photographer I chose a cheaper, fast 6 core , that will be even faster than a 12 core in the apps I'm using, which are mostly not optimized for multithreading .

If you want to future proof your investment, a later model Mac might be a better choice .
 
barmann said:
As said above, upgrading the CPUs in a 2009 can be difficult .
But option 1 is already upgraded to the fastest 6 core CPU available ( single CPU ) .
( 6 core is good, btw. ) .

You might want to look at the cost for single to dual CPU conversions - it can be substantial .
It's not like a fairly cheap CPU upgrade .
Depending on how much you can do by yourself and on finding cheap offerings, the conversion alone can cost you more than a low spec dual CPU MP , even a genuine MP 5.1 .

I was in a similar spot recently - the question for me was if I needed a 12 core or 6 core cMP - as a photographer I chose a cheaper, fast 6 core , that will be even faster than a 12 core in the apps I'm using, which are mostly not optimized for multithreading .

If you want to future proof your investment, a later model Mac might be a better choice .
Click to expand...

While it's been a year or so since I looked at the prices of used Mac's in Germany dual processor MacPro's were twice to three times as expensive as single processors and I'd imagine Switzerland is worse still. He can get a dual tray from the States for a reasonable price shipped w/vat and have less in an older computer than buying the DP there.

==

OP I wouldn't sink vast sums into any of these computers since none are anything close to new or up to date get the best one you can then pick up a GPU and let it go, it's all to easy to spend lots of money on something that just saw it's last OS upgrade.
 
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lowendlinux said:
While it's been a year or so since I looked at the prices of used Mac's in Germany dual processor MacPro's were twice to three times as expensive as single processors and I'd imagine Switzerland is worse still. He can get a dual tray from the States for a reasonable price shipped w/vat and have less in an older computer than buying the DP there.

==

OP I wouldn't sink vast sums into any of these computers since none are anything close to new or up to date get the best one you can then pick up a GPU and let it go, it's all to easy to spend lots of money on something that just saw it's last OS upgrade.
Click to expand...

Well that's the thing. I can pick this up for 650 and upgrade the gpu for a little bit more. If I look at the new mac mini it becomes quite expensive with a decent screen.
[doublepost=1543243198][/doublepost]
barmann said:
As said above, upgrading the CPUs in a 2009 can be difficult .
But option 1 is already upgraded to the fastest 6 core CPU available ( single CPU ) .
( 6 core is good, btw. ) .

You might want to look at the cost for single to dual CPU conversions - it can be substantial .
It's not like a fairly cheap CPU upgrade .
Depending on how much you can do by yourself and on finding cheap offerings, the conversion alone can cost you more than a low spec dual CPU MP , even a genuine MP 5.1 .

I was in a similar spot recently - the question for me was if I needed a 12 core or 6 core cMP - as a photographer I chose a cheaper, fast 6 core , that will be even faster than a 12 core in the apps I'm using, which are mostly not optimized for multithreading .

If you want to future proof your investment, a later model Mac might be a better choice .
Click to expand...

6 core isn't bad for sure. I will run lightroom, photoshop and also I want to get into video with the Adobe suite. I can't afford the new mac pro or the iMac pro. And the laptops are getting expensive too.

My alternative option is buy the MacBook pro 13 inch and get a screen. but that increases the budget again.

Are you happy with the purchase? And would you buy it again if you were in the same position as you were a while ago? :)
 
IndioX said:
don't know about the 5770, but the 5870 working well on mojave with an installed system
you can't install with the 5870 (only the installer checks for metallcard)
Click to expand...
Any unsupported card don't "works well", works via EFI only, so totally un-accelerated. You can use it in an emergency…
 
Ok so update. I ended up buying option 3, from the great responses here, I took to main things.

1. Reason 1 (tsialex): I can upgrade the GPU and the RAM for starters and then accordingly, if I want to tinker some more, I can upgrade the CPU and maybe a tray later on, if needed/

2. Reason 2: It was the cheapest by about 125 dollars. I picked it for 525 dollars when the others were 650. Barmann mentioned not to go crazy on this and upgrade that.

So I appreciate the time you guys took to respond and help me out. It's so much appreciated!

Before we close the thread, if you wanna let me know your thoughts on which GPU to get, that would be awesome too. :)

Thanks so much again!
 
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Kooki9 said:
Ok so update. I ended up buying option 3, from the great responses here, I took to main things.

1. Reason 1 (tsialex): I can upgrade the GPU and the RAM for starters and then accordingly, if I want to tinker some more, I can upgrade the CPU and maybe a tray later on, if needed/

2. Reason 2: It was the cheapest by about 125 dollars. I picked it for 525 dollars when the others were 650. Barmann mentioned not to go crazy on this and upgrade that.

So I appreciate the time you guys took to respond and help me out. It's so much appreciated!

Before we close the thread, if you wanna let me know your thoughts on which GPU to get, that would be awesome too. :)

Thanks so much again!
Click to expand...
Sapphire Pulse RX-580, $199 today at CyberMonday Newegg promo.
 
Kooki9 said:
Hey buddy. I have a question, the 580 (non nitro). How do I power it? Is it 6-8 pin or or do I need to pull in extra power from somewhere?
Click to expand...
The Pulse uses one eight pin cable, buy a dual mini 6-pin to single 8-pin adapter.
 
Hello All! How are you? Happy New Year.

Just wanted to say that I finally got to upgrade the 5.1. - This evening I added the Radeon 580 8gb GPU. That was a hard one to put in (I thought I might break it at one point). The 2x 6 to 8 pin took 1 month to arrive.

Just wanted to say thanks for the responses and inputs. It is/was much appreciated.

Kerim
 
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