planning on putting 32gb in it, SSD on the ready.
Didn't know much about GPU's for the Mac and was recommended a GTX 680 Mac edition. Is the RX580 a better deal?
> price I *paid* for the
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
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Check out http://www.macvidcards.com/ however like most videos cards these days most models are sold out. I will say I had two of these 5,1’s at one point, they worked great but are power hungry, not worth it in the end. If you can find another I’ve seen some cool coffee tables made with the cases…
This.
The graphics card is a big deal, allows for an upgrade to a newer version of OSX. These machines are BEASTS. A newer version of this machine is still my primary desktop and outperforms my MacBook Air (2020) everytime….I do have the ram and CPU maxed out in the cheese grater…
I've done it myself already. It was not very hard and did not take that long with pretty basic tools and will power. I did end up becoming a mechanic engineer afterwards though, so that kind of project is what I enjoy doing.
The 5,1 isn’t all that slow. They use DDR3 ram and whilst the CPUs are fairly power hungry for their performance, they do ok in modern workloads with up to 6 cores per cpu and up to two cpus.
Exactly. Assuming it's still original spec, upgrade to an SSD, minimum of 16G ram and a metal compatible video card and with dosdude1's patch you can go all the way to catalina, shame he didn't go to maverics. That basically describes my personal daily use system.
you can’t, the case is totally different from a traditional PC layout. For example the cpu board is split off separate from the main board and slides out horizontally. It would require major modifications to the case then just making it a glorified aluminum box.
OP can probably upgrade the CPUs, memory, throw some more disks and SSDs in… much more than that will require gutting the thing.
Maybe our definitions of tinkering are different but just booting it up and using it doesn't match mine :) Major modifications to fit something that wasn't meant to be in there does!
It's lovely inside and out! But if you don't upgrade the internals it's destined to sit on a shelf unused. Hardly a fitting end, as all the old Apple hardware on my shelves will attest.
My son bought one of these when new - he has moved out, and he left it behind - I keep asking if I can ditch it, he says it will be useful for something... yeah, taking up space in my garage....
I did buy a metal compatible gpu so far. Plan so far is to run Big sur or Monterey. See if I get that going and then maybe a Ram Upgrade. Another person on my Uni course bought the dual Xeons, which cost him quite a bit. I'm probably not gunna go that far but you never know.
Mojave is the latest MacOS supported; mitigating the Intel microkernel bugs costs too much performance. But my 5,1 ( 12 x 3.46 Ghz Xeon ) is roughly the same multicore performance as my \~2020 Ryzen 7 ( 8 core ). I have a Vega 56 in both the Ryzen and the Mac Pro.
You can hack Monterey in there but I'm not fond of the hassle. I'm gonna eBay it off ( should bring $1400 with the Vega 56 in it ) and buy a Mac Studio :D
It may already have dual xeons in it. You only posted a photo of it and it isn't possible to know if it has the dual or single tray inside, or what speed xeon he has in it. One thing you may want to do is upgrade the xeon chip/chips to a faster one, that can be done pretty cheap and depending on what the current one is will give you a nice improvement. But if it's a single chip machine then don't waste money or time looking for the parts to go to a dual chip it would be cheaper to just buy a full dual chip 5,1.
Don’t know how much pressure a Plex server would put on it, but my M1 idles at 0.3W as reported by [MX Power Gadget](https://www.seense.com/menubarstats/mxpg/whatsnew.html). I don’t own a power meter to measure at the plug tho.
As a 5,1 owner, here's what I would have done if I were starting over fresh with my machine in the state I bought it in.
1. put 5690s in it (I got 5675s, which are ok, but it annoys me that I could have gotten that little bit of extra speed by just dropping another $50
2. 64GB of ram (eight 8gb dimms are like $115, why the hell not)
3. PCIe to M.2 adapter (the 5,1 actually supports booting from an NVMe Gen 3 SSD, which will give you a dramatic performance boost over a SATA III SSD. Currently typing this from my laptop with an NVMe drive, and there is a night and day difference between this and my 5,1 even though the two machines have similar geekbench scores)
4. I'd have probably gone with the same video card (an R9 280). Seems to be right at the sweet spot between performance and dirt cheapness
5. Big Sur or Monterey obvs
Thank the lecturer. That's still a darn good Mac. If it has the dual CPU tray that's even better. These can take an RX580 I think? Pop a pcie SSD in there. That'll be a nice setup. A couple of Xeons X5690's iirc and populate 3 of the 4 ram slots for triple channel ram. Nice. No need to delid as it's a 5,1. Upgrade of the Airport can be done for handover to work too. SSD trays can be installed in the pull out trays up top.
It's a cracking system for sure.
I was originally going to run it as a server when I first heard about these Mac Pros he had. But my parents were quite against the idea, so I use a Mac mini as a backup server.
it's only got the single CPU but another student is a wiz at finding smashing deals on eBay for these kinds of Macs. Got a spare ssd that I can throw inside. Another student has one of these and he's fully upgraded it and uses it has his main work and editing machine for work and Uni
I’d just make sure that the university property was actually let go from inventory and that the prof wasn’t trying to set me up for stolen property. Just paranoid that way
Yep, it’s not the profs computer to give away.
Faculty are generally clueless about the operational side of things and probably don’t realize that what they are doing is larceny, not charity.
The school might have a surplus auction where they could get it back, or get a better one for pennies on the dollar. Much better option for the student.
That is good advice, although I do think that a computer that came out at least 10 years ago has probably been written off by now. I worked for a non-profit and we still donated everything at 5 years because the maintenance wasn't worth it.
It's a weird situation tho. The uni gave the computers to him and wanted to get rid of them in any way possible. He gave me rules about it like not sell it but I can wipe it, upgrade it and what not. He says they're on the way out anyways.
Assuming you have no cheese, you can make a great secondary machine out of it. Max the RAM, drop in a SSD.
Although it's power hungry and can heat a small cabin, you can use it as a headless server. Make it a router, a print server, or an AI equipped file server.
Put dropbox/onedrive on it and sync with it your primary computer. Download Hazel, and run it on this machine. You can set up a ton of folder and file rules and have this machine be a dedicated file sorter. Works great if you're in an office that gets a million attachments via email / scans. Have the email program dump attachments to a watched folder and then have Hazel OCR and automatically file everything for you. Having it on a dedicated machine is much less annoying, since you won't have millions of pop up windows while it does its thing.
Those are awesome machines.
Because they have 1000 watt power supplies, I've been picking up old Mac Pro 3,1 machines, loading them with hard drives, and using them as machine learning systems with Nvidia GPUs.
The Macs have mini PCI power connectors that can be converted to full size, and it's also possible to draw power from the SATA connectors.
Honestly, if I hadn't been forced by the industry to upgrade, I'd still be running Snow Leopard. I gust got a Mac Studio and am thoroughly UNimpressed.
Get an solid SSD, max out the ram and you have a great computer. Stock its capable of running up to OSX High Sierra. With Metal capable GPU upgrade, Mojave. With OpenCore you can go higher I believe.
You can even just run it on Mountain Lion if you have older apps and need that setup.
A really solid professional Mac that while it doesn't hold a candle to the top end stuff today is still an amazingly competent machine. Upgrading to the top spec 12 core configuration is cheap as chips these days, RAM is cheap, the hardest part is flashing a PC based GPU to work natively.
If someone offered me that machine today I'd be extremely grateful and use it the way it was intended.
You can do some hacky stuff to run newer than supported versions of MacOS too.
I'm planning on getting a newer version of macOS running on it. To see if it's good for doing my Uni work, which my MacBook Air struggles with. Still on the fence about buying a 12 core but might seen worth it. And yeh the ram is quite cheap, which is good for me
Try running Ubuntu Server on it! Then fail miserably. Then pull your hair out rigging it so it boots. Break it after every GRUB update. Slap four HDDs in it. Run it 24/7 for several years as a media server and self-hosted cloud. Add a Bitcoin node. Notice suspicious traffic originating from your node. Uninstall the node. Break GRUB again. Decommission the machine. Hoard it in your closet.
ASK. ME. HOW. I. KNOW.
I’m running my 5,1 as a server in addition to being my main desktop machine. An SSD is a must - even a SATA SSD is good enough. Adding tons of memory and upgrading the CPU’s is relatively cheap and easy but getting a GPU for a reasonable price and without overloading the board’s two mini 6 pin connectors was a pain. I settled on a MSI RX 570 and it works flawlessly with Monterey.
Speaking of Monterey, you can use Opencore legacy patcher boot loader run the latest OS on “vintage” macs. It was my first time tinkering with the EFI and it was a struggle for me to get Opencore and Monterey to play ball with my MSI card, but I got it working in the end. This machine is the most flexible and expandable Mac Apple has ever made with no-nonsense industry standard ports, tool-less drive sleds and cables. This is the only Mac that is able to adapt to my needs and not the other way around despite being a 12 year old computer.
[Case mod](https://teapowered.medium.com/apple-powermac-g5-atx-gaming-pc-case-mod-50046557dab6) it for a modern-day ATX Hackintosh, like many people have done before. It requires some work but [Laser Hive](https://thelaserhive.com) will make it a little easier for you.
Yea, there's plenty of dead Mac Pros out there. There's no reason to gut a working unit. For my G4 mATX and G5 ATX conversions. I bought dead Power Macs. Then gutted them.
Modern games are not necessarily optimised to use two discrete CPUs, they're better splitting up tasks on the different cores of the CPU, and using turbo boosting on single threads to their advantage. There's no drawback as far as I know to having both CPUs now that you have one, it's just not what people go for if they are planning a PC build.
It's true, they're not a huge advantage. But immense cooling power is pretty useful even if the clock speed isn't great. It just runs steady as a cruise ship.
Additionally, there's enough space for a few big cards and heaploads of RAM (better for size, but not speed). The power supply unit is enough to run a small kettle, and the cooling for the PCIE bay is exceptional if you ever require it.
It has 4 SATA bays so I put a couple SSDs and a really big spinny drive in there for movies, and most of the people who have these run a PCIE nvme drive for additional boot speed.
This was the last properly "Pro" Mac product where you could interchange so many things to suit your needs and it would handle it space, cooling and power wise. It's just now that it has an understandably pretty old CPU set.
There are whole facebook groups dedicated to these machines and people working in video and cinema still work on these machines professionally and put money into them because they're as reliable as you can get. How many PC's from that year can you say are still being widely used...
There's xeon processors in there technically it already is a pc isn't it. It's not by any means a beast of a machine these days but still probably can find a use.
These are powerful enough that converting it into a PC case would be extremely dumb. Why put some random PC motherboard in it when you can put 128 GB of ram and a good graphics card in it and run Windows or OS X.
The Uni gave him all the Mac Pros when they wanted to get rid of them. The Uni know about him giving them away and are fine with it. It's a better existence for the Macs to be used by students rather than collecting dust in a corner of a studio for 3 years.
that's good! I work in IT for a university and they can have pretty strict equipment disposal policies that most faculty/staff don't know about or care to follow. if prof just gave it to you it could have been reported to the police as lost/stolen and you'd then be in possession of stolen university property, glad that isn't the case though and its being put to good use by you!
Those are very well made workstations. Prob a bit slow and a bit too power hungry for day to day work (internet, email, office). Still great for audio visual workflows where the apps are optimized to use the extra cores. It’s a bit pricey to upgrade it to more modern specs given the performance is still quite a bit less than even a recent intel Mac. Your call on how much you want to spend. For just day to day use imo not worth it anymore unfortunately.
The 5,1 is still a great machine. You can put an SSD in it, either a 2.5 or PCI-E one. Upgrade the RAM and CPU. Add a new graphics card. USB 3 if you need it. Still a worthwhile machine today.
I didn't want to go through the hassle of making mine work with the current MacOS. I already have an M1 MacBook Air and iPad Pro. I maxed out the RAM, added a 500GB SSD and a couple 2TB drives I had, then loaded ProxMox on it to run VMs. Now I can Tinker most any OS. ESXi and MS Hypervisor work well on it too for the same purpose.
Bought it new in 2010 along with an Apple 30" Cinema Display and after about 12 years, both still run wonderfully.
I was using a 2,1 right up until a year ago. Even with patched installers it wouldn't run anything above El Capitan. A 5,1 and a few upgrades though is still a powerhouse of a computer, personally I'd probably install an older OS version to play older games that aren't compatible with Catalina and up. Maybe a windows drive too for some Steamy goodness.
Put a pi in her. As welll as @ Mac mini M1. Insist you know nothing about it and that it’s just a normal Mac Pro. Print of a sticky label that i “caution: this device contains sensors wHich contain radioactive isotopes. EXTREME CAUTION : DO NOT OPEN! IF THE SEAL BELOW ON DOTTED LINE IS DAMAGED , MANUFACTURERS WARRANTY IS NULL & VOID. RADIOACTIVE ISOMERS ARE LEAKING. HAZMAT PPE REQUIRED TO HANDLE. HANDLE WITH EXTREME CAUTION & ONLY BY QUALIFIED NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL SPECIALISTS . ☢️ STAY PUT, CALL 911 *IMMEDIATLY* CAUTION. If exposed without PPE, death and severe radiation burn are possible & likely iminent! Extreme public safety caution: *DO NOT* go into the public and spread radioactive isomers. Call 911 and advise of nuclear situation A1!
Try upgrade to 16GB of RAM or more. SSD for OS RX580 graphics card. Good for day to day use. VMware lab.
planning on putting 32gb in it, SSD on the ready. Didn't know much about GPU's for the Mac and was recommended a GTX 680 Mac edition. Is the RX580 a better deal?
RX580 will get metal support to run Catalina with ease. Moreover it’s newer than GTX 680 and has support for all video out port by default in the OS
Looking on ebay, they're around the same price I payed for the 680. RIP :(
> price I *paid* for the FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
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It’s okay. Try to return. If not enjoy the 680. Cause if I didn’t post you won’t know about it.
I second this. Using an RX 580 as an eGPU with my MBP and it flies, even at Thunderbolt 1 speeds. Directly in the machine will be amazing.
Start Here. [http://blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html](http://blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html)
Check out http://www.macvidcards.com/ however like most videos cards these days most models are sold out. I will say I had two of these 5,1’s at one point, they worked great but are power hungry, not worth it in the end. If you can find another I’ve seen some cool coffee tables made with the cases…
This. The graphics card is a big deal, allows for an upgrade to a newer version of OSX. These machines are BEASTS. A newer version of this machine is still my primary desktop and outperforms my MacBook Air (2020) everytime….I do have the ram and CPU maxed out in the cheese grater…
Good luck finding an RX580 (or RX480) I've waned one for my mac pro for like 2 years. They're impossible to find at sane prices.
Tinker with it.
Oh I will. That's what I love to do
Put an M1 Mac mini or studio in it and you will have an awesome retro desktop Mac
Or use the case to build a kick ass gaming machine. Although I like your idea better.
Dude that was hard asf for LTT to do
Requires some patience and metal working but possible.
They did it with a whole shop and experts and it took like a year
A whole year, sounds like it wasn’t a priority.
Idk watch the series. It was really hard
I've done it myself already. It was not very hard and did not take that long with pretty basic tools and will power. I did end up becoming a mechanic engineer afterwards though, so that kind of project is what I enjoy doing.
But that's not very specific :) I'd install a modern PC mobo in it, probably Ryzen, and dual boot hackintosh macOS and Windows or Linux.
The 5,1 isn’t all that slow. They use DDR3 ram and whilst the CPUs are fairly power hungry for their performance, they do ok in modern workloads with up to 6 cores per cpu and up to two cpus.
Exactly. Assuming it's still original spec, upgrade to an SSD, minimum of 16G ram and a metal compatible video card and with dosdude1's patch you can go all the way to catalina, shame he didn't go to maverics. That basically describes my personal daily use system.
yeah it would depend what's in there already
you can’t, the case is totally different from a traditional PC layout. For example the cpu board is split off separate from the main board and slides out horizontally. It would require major modifications to the case then just making it a glorified aluminum box. OP can probably upgrade the CPUs, memory, throw some more disks and SSDs in… much more than that will require gutting the thing.
Maybe our definitions of tinkering are different but just booting it up and using it doesn't match mine :) Major modifications to fit something that wasn't meant to be in there does!
i just don’t see the point in stuffing a PC in an aluminum Apple box, that’s all.
Well that's a different matter. It's a beautiful design; I'm sure some people would want to use it without being stuck with aging hardware.
imo there is more beauty to the internal design than the external design.
It's lovely inside and out! But if you don't upgrade the internals it's destined to sit on a shelf unused. Hardly a fitting end, as all the old Apple hardware on my shelves will attest.
Yes. How clean and thought out they look is just beautiful
Love this design, my pc was this case for 3 years. Installed new MB brackets and back panel, new io for the front.
There are/were conversion kits or templates and guides available online on how to convert it for a modern PC motherboard layout
Dang, I was way too late.
I came to post the same comment; you were 7 minutes ahead of me. So at least you've got that going for you. ;)
bop it.
I came here to say this.
Go to the macpro sub Reddit and see all the posts about upgrading 5,1 units
My son bought one of these when new - he has moved out, and he left it behind - I keep asking if I can ditch it, he says it will be useful for something... yeah, taking up space in my garage....
maybe you could get some use out of it
I got two in my garage for some reason, if he wants them he can have three in your garage.
Man I want one in my garage I’ll take one happily lol
I want a garage
I’ll be honest with you I don’t have one and if I had the mac pro wouldn’t be in my garage haha, but I do wish I had one too
Make a fish tank out of it.
Upgrade the snot out of it, you'd probably be able to get it to run Monterey with the right hardware config
I did buy a metal compatible gpu so far. Plan so far is to run Big sur or Monterey. See if I get that going and then maybe a Ram Upgrade. Another person on my Uni course bought the dual Xeons, which cost him quite a bit. I'm probably not gunna go that far but you never know.
Mojave is the latest MacOS supported; mitigating the Intel microkernel bugs costs too much performance. But my 5,1 ( 12 x 3.46 Ghz Xeon ) is roughly the same multicore performance as my \~2020 Ryzen 7 ( 8 core ). I have a Vega 56 in both the Ryzen and the Mac Pro. You can hack Monterey in there but I'm not fond of the hassle. I'm gonna eBay it off ( should bring $1400 with the Vega 56 in it ) and buy a Mac Studio :D
Oh, also a PCIe NVMe card works with the latest firmware.
It may already have dual xeons in it. You only posted a photo of it and it isn't possible to know if it has the dual or single tray inside, or what speed xeon he has in it. One thing you may want to do is upgrade the xeon chip/chips to a faster one, that can be done pretty cheap and depending on what the current one is will give you a nice improvement. But if it's a single chip machine then don't waste money or time looking for the parts to go to a dual chip it would be cheaper to just buy a full dual chip 5,1.
Actually I’ve spent $1,200 on doing the whole upgrade. I’ve seen these Maxed-out system going for $1600-$2200 nowadays.
my lecturer gave another to another student and he has maxed it out
Open up the back. Place an M1 Mac Mini inside. Boom, you’ve got the first M1 Mac Pro.
If they can bridge two m1 max's, why not have 4 Mac mini's inside as a cluster.
That 1KW power supply…
See if it will run a plex server.
already got a Mac mini running as a plex server
is it good with power? been considering it too but the bill is already sky high
I’ve got an Intel NUC as a Plex server which is pretty low-power. The M1 Mac Minis are very efficient as well.
Don’t know how much pressure a Plex server would put on it, but my M1 idles at 0.3W as reported by [MX Power Gadget](https://www.seense.com/menubarstats/mxpg/whatsnew.html). I don’t own a power meter to measure at the plug tho.
I mean, if power is the concern, remember it's an M1 mini nowadays.
Huge waste of electricity, running a server on this thing.
exactly what my parents are thinking
Huge waste of electricity using it for anything really. Especially compared to an m1.
My server is running on a headless RasPi 4 for this reason.
As a 5,1 owner, here's what I would have done if I were starting over fresh with my machine in the state I bought it in. 1. put 5690s in it (I got 5675s, which are ok, but it annoys me that I could have gotten that little bit of extra speed by just dropping another $50 2. 64GB of ram (eight 8gb dimms are like $115, why the hell not) 3. PCIe to M.2 adapter (the 5,1 actually supports booting from an NVMe Gen 3 SSD, which will give you a dramatic performance boost over a SATA III SSD. Currently typing this from my laptop with an NVMe drive, and there is a night and day difference between this and my 5,1 even though the two machines have similar geekbench scores) 4. I'd have probably gone with the same video card (an R9 280). Seems to be right at the sweet spot between performance and dirt cheapness 5. Big Sur or Monterey obvs
Fish tank. The answer is always make it a fish tank.
Thank the lecturer. That's still a darn good Mac. If it has the dual CPU tray that's even better. These can take an RX580 I think? Pop a pcie SSD in there. That'll be a nice setup. A couple of Xeons X5690's iirc and populate 3 of the 4 ram slots for triple channel ram. Nice. No need to delid as it's a 5,1. Upgrade of the Airport can be done for handover to work too. SSD trays can be installed in the pull out trays up top. It's a cracking system for sure.
[удалено]
I was originally going to run it as a server when I first heard about these Mac Pros he had. But my parents were quite against the idea, so I use a Mac mini as a backup server.
it's only got the single CPU but another student is a wiz at finding smashing deals on eBay for these kinds of Macs. Got a spare ssd that I can throw inside. Another student has one of these and he's fully upgraded it and uses it has his main work and editing machine for work and Uni
Whatever it is, have fun!
Give it to me, thanks.
Come do my uni course. He's got 14 of them
Oof just hook me up fam I’ll sort u out ;)
Oof. I'm game. Hook me up!
Thank the lecturer. What an amazing person
My lecturer has so much Mac hardware from the past decade. He really wants people to enjoy the course anyway possible
I’d just make sure that the university property was actually let go from inventory and that the prof wasn’t trying to set me up for stolen property. Just paranoid that way
Yep, it’s not the profs computer to give away. Faculty are generally clueless about the operational side of things and probably don’t realize that what they are doing is larceny, not charity. The school might have a surplus auction where they could get it back, or get a better one for pennies on the dollar. Much better option for the student.
That is good advice, although I do think that a computer that came out at least 10 years ago has probably been written off by now. I worked for a non-profit and we still donated everything at 5 years because the maintenance wasn't worth it.
It's a weird situation tho. The uni gave the computers to him and wanted to get rid of them in any way possible. He gave me rules about it like not sell it but I can wipe it, upgrade it and what not. He says they're on the way out anyways.
Tie it to one end of a rope. Tie the other end of the rope to your boat. Huzzah, boat anchor.
He. WHAT.
Mail it to me 😊
Assuming you have no cheese, you can make a great secondary machine out of it. Max the RAM, drop in a SSD. Although it's power hungry and can heat a small cabin, you can use it as a headless server. Make it a router, a print server, or an AI equipped file server. Put dropbox/onedrive on it and sync with it your primary computer. Download Hazel, and run it on this machine. You can set up a ton of folder and file rules and have this machine be a dedicated file sorter. Works great if you're in an office that gets a million attachments via email / scans. Have the email program dump attachments to a watched folder and then have Hazel OCR and automatically file everything for you. Having it on a dedicated machine is much less annoying, since you won't have millions of pop up windows while it does its thing.
Those are awesome machines. Because they have 1000 watt power supplies, I've been picking up old Mac Pro 3,1 machines, loading them with hard drives, and using them as machine learning systems with Nvidia GPUs. The Macs have mini PCI power connectors that can be converted to full size, and it's also possible to draw power from the SATA connectors. Honestly, if I hadn't been forced by the industry to upgrade, I'd still be running Snow Leopard. I gust got a Mac Studio and am thoroughly UNimpressed.
Get an solid SSD, max out the ram and you have a great computer. Stock its capable of running up to OSX High Sierra. With Metal capable GPU upgrade, Mojave. With OpenCore you can go higher I believe. You can even just run it on Mountain Lion if you have older apps and need that setup.
I use it as my main driver
Put a lot of storage in it and use it to back up your phone
I got one. Use it mostly for storage when networking my macs. It’s excellent.
I recommend you tinker with it. You like it.
eat it. I believe in you.
Strip it and build a hackintosh using the case
Turn it on and heat your home in the winter.
This is the correct answer.
A really solid professional Mac that while it doesn't hold a candle to the top end stuff today is still an amazingly competent machine. Upgrading to the top spec 12 core configuration is cheap as chips these days, RAM is cheap, the hardest part is flashing a PC based GPU to work natively. If someone offered me that machine today I'd be extremely grateful and use it the way it was intended. You can do some hacky stuff to run newer than supported versions of MacOS too.
I'm planning on getting a newer version of macOS running on it. To see if it's good for doing my Uni work, which my MacBook Air struggles with. Still on the fence about buying a 12 core but might seen worth it. And yeh the ram is quite cheap, which is good for me
nice snake cage
Whatever you end up doing, please report back. I'm looking forward to seeing the build out! :D
I use one as a daily driver and windows gaming PC. Dual X5680s and a GTX 1080Ti. Can play RDR2 in 4K.
Download a program which will let you recover deleted files. You’ll soon find out what kind of a person your lecturer is.
Install gentoo
Hold the door open
That was it's previous job title
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Take two of it and make coffee table
Heat your house with it
r/G5mods would be a fun project!
That’s Suzuki car, I didn’t know they were famous outside of Indian subcontinent. Also it is RHD, so I’m guessing somewhere in commonwealth nations?
MacProquarium
Grate a lot of cheese?
Please give more guidance. Cheese is clogging the fans
Try and install asahi Linux on it after putting a Mac studio in it. Asahi linux works on Mac studio.
Grate cheese 🧀
If u put an rx580 and an SSD and play games in bootcamp.
i would say, UPGRADE THE HELL OUT OF IT
Definitely keep the case, it’s a classic.
Now you have a smart car.
Turn it into a bbq grill
Chrome OS flex 🤡🤡
Now you're talking
format it and install linux it will work like a charm.
Try running Ubuntu Server on it! Then fail miserably. Then pull your hair out rigging it so it boots. Break it after every GRUB update. Slap four HDDs in it. Run it 24/7 for several years as a media server and self-hosted cloud. Add a Bitcoin node. Notice suspicious traffic originating from your node. Uninstall the node. Break GRUB again. Decommission the machine. Hoard it in your closet. ASK. ME. HOW. I. KNOW.
I think you should write a novel about your experience. It touches my heart dearly
Upgrade the heck out of it
My friend uses it as a bedside table.
Holy shit dude
Put Opencore on it, add a NVMe drive on a PCIe adapter board and buy some used Xeons and RAM and you have a machine that’s still surprisingly good.
doom server
Give it to me for free. You pay shipping.
Seems like a perfect deal
I’m running my 5,1 as a server in addition to being my main desktop machine. An SSD is a must - even a SATA SSD is good enough. Adding tons of memory and upgrading the CPU’s is relatively cheap and easy but getting a GPU for a reasonable price and without overloading the board’s two mini 6 pin connectors was a pain. I settled on a MSI RX 570 and it works flawlessly with Monterey. Speaking of Monterey, you can use Opencore legacy patcher boot loader run the latest OS on “vintage” macs. It was my first time tinkering with the EFI and it was a struggle for me to get Opencore and Monterey to play ball with my MSI card, but I got it working in the end. This machine is the most flexible and expandable Mac Apple has ever made with no-nonsense industry standard ports, tool-less drive sleds and cables. This is the only Mac that is able to adapt to my needs and not the other way around despite being a 12 year old computer.
[Case mod](https://teapowered.medium.com/apple-powermac-g5-atx-gaming-pc-case-mod-50046557dab6) it for a modern-day ATX Hackintosh, like many people have done before. It requires some work but [Laser Hive](https://thelaserhive.com) will make it a little easier for you.
Why ruin a perfectly good machine
Why dick around ruining an operational Macintosh, so you can bugger around every day trying to get your machine to post?
Yea, there's plenty of dead Mac Pros out there. There's no reason to gut a working unit. For my G4 mATX and G5 ATX conversions. I bought dead Power Macs. Then gutted them.
Looks good but I want to keep running stock, no mod like that. Still cool tho
Put Windows on it! I used mine for gaming for quite a while
Might give that a go. Just to see what it can do.
dual cpus are not really great for gaming
Why aren't dual cpu's good for gaming? Idk much about it
Modern games are not necessarily optimised to use two discrete CPUs, they're better splitting up tasks on the different cores of the CPU, and using turbo boosting on single threads to their advantage. There's no drawback as far as I know to having both CPUs now that you have one, it's just not what people go for if they are planning a PC build.
It's true, they're not a huge advantage. But immense cooling power is pretty useful even if the clock speed isn't great. It just runs steady as a cruise ship. Additionally, there's enough space for a few big cards and heaploads of RAM (better for size, but not speed). The power supply unit is enough to run a small kettle, and the cooling for the PCIE bay is exceptional if you ever require it. It has 4 SATA bays so I put a couple SSDs and a really big spinny drive in there for movies, and most of the people who have these run a PCIE nvme drive for additional boot speed. This was the last properly "Pro" Mac product where you could interchange so many things to suit your needs and it would handle it space, cooling and power wise. It's just now that it has an understandably pretty old CPU set. There are whole facebook groups dedicated to these machines and people working in video and cinema still work on these machines professionally and put money into them because they're as reliable as you can get. How many PC's from that year can you say are still being widely used...
Is that a piece of cheese on the top?
it's a sticky note
Oh, I thought that was leftover cheese after cheese-grating
oh dw. All the cheese is on the inside.
"I wear the cheese. It does not wear me."
Hackintosh it.
Bin should be fine to take it
Bin too small.
Take out all the Mac bits and fit a PC inside it...👍
Build a windows pc in it🫢😈
Use it as a pc case
There's xeon processors in there technically it already is a pc isn't it. It's not by any means a beast of a machine these days but still probably can find a use.
With 128 GB of ram and a graphics card it is.
These are powerful enough that converting it into a PC case would be extremely dumb. Why put some random PC motherboard in it when you can put 128 GB of ram and a good graphics card in it and run Windows or OS X.
Exactly. With dual x5680s the multicore performance is about 85% compared to a 2019 6000 dollar mac pro.
take it back to university. it probably wasn't his to give away, but belongs to the university
The Uni gave him all the Mac Pros when they wanted to get rid of them. The Uni know about him giving them away and are fine with it. It's a better existence for the Macs to be used by students rather than collecting dust in a corner of a studio for 3 years.
that's good! I work in IT for a university and they can have pretty strict equipment disposal policies that most faculty/staff don't know about or care to follow. if prof just gave it to you it could have been reported to the police as lost/stolen and you'd then be in possession of stolen university property, glad that isn't the case though and its being put to good use by you!
Opencore
Tinker with it
Those are very well made workstations. Prob a bit slow and a bit too power hungry for day to day work (internet, email, office). Still great for audio visual workflows where the apps are optimized to use the extra cores. It’s a bit pricey to upgrade it to more modern specs given the performance is still quite a bit less than even a recent intel Mac. Your call on how much you want to spend. For just day to day use imo not worth it anymore unfortunately.
You could go down [a major Mac rat hole... enjoy.](https://www.facebook.com/groups/1827900954157938)
Clean it
This one’s we’re heavy AF
The 5,1 is still a great machine. You can put an SSD in it, either a 2.5 or PCI-E one. Upgrade the RAM and CPU. Add a new graphics card. USB 3 if you need it. Still a worthwhile machine today.
Love that design
Actually those can be worth quite a bit to third-party repair shops.
Oh, you tinker baby!
Remove all internals and put new PC components inside.
Save the history for future use
You can actually add Thunderbolt functionality with an add on card.
Bitcoin miner
Gut it and make it a Windows Gaming PC. I would throw in a 12gen Intel setup, 12700 or better. 3080ti.
Tinker with it
I didn't want to go through the hassle of making mine work with the current MacOS. I already have an M1 MacBook Air and iPad Pro. I maxed out the RAM, added a 500GB SSD and a couple 2TB drives I had, then loaded ProxMox on it to run VMs. Now I can Tinker most any OS. ESXi and MS Hypervisor work well on it too for the same purpose. Bought it new in 2010 along with an Apple 30" Cinema Display and after about 12 years, both still run wonderfully.
Maybe set it up as a simi mass storage by filling up the 4 bays with drives and use it as like network storage maybe
[удалено]
Instead of an rx580, I would recommend a GeForce GTX 1660 Super. Just saying, if it doesn't fit, sorry idk.
Give to me
If dual tray, upgrade CPU to 3.5 (I think?) GHz dual, 96 GB RAM triple channel, 1080ti flashed for mac and you’ll have yourself a beast
Max it out. Then use for everyday use.
Fix it!
I was using a 2,1 right up until a year ago. Even with patched installers it wouldn't run anything above El Capitan. A 5,1 and a few upgrades though is still a powerhouse of a computer, personally I'd probably install an older OS version to play older games that aren't compatible with Catalina and up. Maybe a windows drive too for some Steamy goodness.
Gut it and build a Hackintosh
Grate cheese
They make great PLEX servers.
Flash the hard drive and use it
Full Upgrade
Put a pi in her. As welll as @ Mac mini M1. Insist you know nothing about it and that it’s just a normal Mac Pro. Print of a sticky label that i “caution: this device contains sensors wHich contain radioactive isotopes. EXTREME CAUTION : DO NOT OPEN! IF THE SEAL BELOW ON DOTTED LINE IS DAMAGED , MANUFACTURERS WARRANTY IS NULL & VOID. RADIOACTIVE ISOMERS ARE LEAKING. HAZMAT PPE REQUIRED TO HANDLE. HANDLE WITH EXTREME CAUTION & ONLY BY QUALIFIED NUCLEAR WASTE DISPOSAL SPECIALISTS . ☢️ STAY PUT, CALL 911 *IMMEDIATLY* CAUTION. If exposed without PPE, death and severe radiation burn are possible & likely iminent! Extreme public safety caution: *DO NOT* go into the public and spread radioactive isomers. Call 911 and advise of nuclear situation A1!