Bought a thing

"Maxima Speed" (maximaspeed)
09/01/2020 at 22:24 • Filed to: None

2012 Mac Pro. Excited to beef it up and start doing cool things with it. Pretty good deal for $30 bucks.

DISCUSSION (20)

This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja: > Maxima Speed
09/01/2020 at 22:30

I haven’t touched a Mac since the computer lab in school, 25 years ago, but for $30 I would have grabbed it as well. Nice score.

Maxima Speed > This is what we'll show whenever you publish anything on Kinja:
09/01/2020 at 22:38

Among other things, i think once upgraded i will run a home file server from it.

Nibby > Maxima Speed
09/01/2020 at 22:40

wtf how did you get one for $30? specs?

gin-san - shitpost specialist > Maxima Speed
09/01/2020 at 22:42

I never thought about getting an old Mac Pro, that’s a great deal!

BaconSandwich is tasty. > Maxima Speed
09/01/2020 at 22:45

Just the case is worth more than that.

Maxima Speed > Nibby
09/01/2020 at 22:49

Government surplus. Its an A1289 so thats a 3.2 quad core xeon, radeon hd 5770, 6 GB RAM. No Hard drive installed. I’m going to install an ssd for the OS and a platter drive raid array for file storage. Bump it up to 32-48GB of RAM, Sapphire Radeon Pulse RX 580 GPU. That will give me 8 GB of dedicated video RAM vs 1 GB right now. Then down the road will prob bump the CPU’s up to two 6 core xeons.

jminer > Maxima Speed
09/01/2020 at 22:55

That’s a hell of a deal! I saw an older one of these Mac pros ( 2009) on FB the other day for $400.

facw > Maxima Speed
09/01/2020 at 22:56

$30 seems an excellent deal, but it looks like it can’t run modern MacOS? I wouldn’t recommend running a computer that doesn’t get security updates for anything. Hopefully you can get Linux or Windows on there instead.

Maxima Speed > facw
09/01/2020 at 22:58

The GPU is what holds it back from running newer, with the gpu upgrade it works great. My coworker has one and runs Catalina on it.

lone_liberal > Maxima Speed
09/01/2020 at 23:02

Nice grab! We had a couple at work that were used for quite a while. They eventually got replaced with iMacs and a trashcan Mac Pro which in turn are being replaced by Windows workstations.

facw > Maxima Speed
09/01/2020 at 23:03

Interesting, I didn’t get the sense that Apple was that flexible, but good if it works.

For Sweden > Maxima Speed
09/01/2020 at 23:42

No GTX 3090 on Mac though :(

If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent > Maxima Speed
09/02/2020 at 03:46

I always thought those were just the best looking desktop towers

Maxima Speed > For Sweden
09/02/2020 at 07:12

Just looked up the specs, oh my word!!! That thing is gonna be a beast.

Maxima Speed > If only EssExTee could be so grossly incandescent
09/02/2020 at 07:13

Pretty cool looking, heavy too lol.

Nibby > Maxima Speed
09/02/2020 at 08:06

excellent idea! also don’t forget to grate cheese with it

JMordu becoming “savethemilanos” > Maxima Speed
09/03/2020 at 15:23

Do you have a dual cpu tray? I just rescued my dad’s 4,1 in June (it was sitting in his home office with 10.8.3 installed!) and put 48GB, 2 x5675 xeons, a Vega 56, a 2tb NVMe drive and usb 3.0 card. Plus put windows 10 on a SATA drive for fun. It’s near the end of the line for this platform but for now it kicks ass. Might still give it a newer apple BT/WiFi card with BT 4.x, and a thunderbolt 3 card to replace the usb 3, but I’m happy for now. And I can still run everything back to 10.6 when I get nostalgic. It’s the perfect machine to show off the whole spectrum of intel Macs

Also, how can I find the next surplus $30 Mac Pro, I’d buy those all day every day at that price!

JMordu becoming “savethemilanos” > facw
09/03/2020 at 15:33

As long as you don’t mind AMD GPUs and are do a little research , the Mac Pro can support a ton of expansion . They have 4 PCIe slots for a reason! Even a 2019 Mac Pro can utilize a ton of expansion options. It’s just that Apple thinks most of us “consumers” want ease of use, stability, and size/style more than expansion and tinkering so they reserve it for their pro line.

There are a few simple tricks to make these Macs play extra nice with expansion (use OpenCore to get a boot screen back with a new GPU, DosDude1 patcher to run Catalina, jettison to cleanly manage storage connected to your USB 3 expansion card, etc. ) but anyone with basic technical knowledge and google skills can have a kick ass modern take on the classic Mac Pro up and running in an afternoon.

Maxima Speed > JMordu becoming “savethemilanos”
09/04/2020 at 06:58

Im not sure if its dual or not. It has a single large rectangular processor heatsink that looks like two cpu sockets could fit under it easily. Haven’t removed that yet to see if there one or two. The model is an A1289 but finding out more in depth stats on my exact one is more difficult. As far as where to get it? Mine was a “last of its kind” find as i got lucky that it wasn’t instantly snapped up. Also the prices are going up significantly to reflect closer to value.

JMordu becoming “savethemilanos” > Maxima Speed
09/04/2020 at 12:51

The du al CPU trays hav e two slightly smaller heat sinks and 8 ram slots, so you’ll have to upgrade the CPU try to go to 2 xeons, but you can likely sell a decent spec single CPU tray for at least 10x what you paid for the whole machine to offset the cost.

A1289 model number covers all Mac Pros from 2009 to 2012, and any 4,1 or 5,1 tray should work for you (I think, never tried a 4,1 dual tray in a 5,1 chassis) , but the 4,1 (2009) dual trays used delidded CPUs, so avoid those if you don’t want to pay for delidded or do it yourself (delidding is easy and 10 year old xeons are cheap if anything goes wrong , but it is an extra thing to do).

Best bet for more in depth specs at this point is to get a HD and boot it. There should be some info on a label at the base of the PCIe slot openings at the rear of the case, but 10 years later that may not reflect the current configuration (not a single spec on my label is still accurate!)