My first MacPro

[macoman]

I bought on July 15th from amazon an used Mid 2009 MacPro. I was debating in a Mac mini or MacPro. I choose the MacPro because you can basically expand the power of the computer. The advantage of the Mac mini is the portability. I am very excited, I currently own a 2003 Powermac mdd and I will sell it in eBay. It is pretty much useless and pretty outdated. My mom love it but I told her that she will be in great shape with the Mac Pro. It come with an Intel Quad-Core Xeon @2.66GHz, 8GB DDR3 RAM ECC, 1TB HDD, Mac OS X El Capitan installed. Graphic card is a NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512MB, in very good condition overall. I paid $445 dollars.

[Circaflex]

I was just talking about these with a co-worker, I still consider the case itself to be one of the most beautiful to ever come from an OEM. I remember there was a huge cult gathering in the overclocking community for these cases and modifying them to work with off the shelf parts + watercooling. Snap some pics when you get it if possible, loved the mesh front.

[macoman]

4 minutes ago, Circaflex said:

I was just talking about these with a co-worker, I still consider the case itself to be one of the most beautiful to ever come from an OEM. I remember there was a huge cult gathering in the overclocking community for these cases and modifying them to work with off the shelf parts + watercooling. Snap some pics when you get it if possible, loved the mesh front.

I will do that when I get it

[adrynalyne]

Sounds like a good workstation.

 

What is the max RAM you can put in those?

[macoman]

10 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

Sounds like a good workstation.

 

What is the max RAM you can put in those?

For the Mid 2009 is 16GB RAM the maximum. I think the 2010 MacPro you can expand to 32GB RAM.

[adrynalyne]

1 hour ago, macoman said:

For the Mid 2009 is 16GB RAM the maximum. I think the 2010 MacPro you can expand to 32GB RAM.

Ah. Still decent. A shame about the ram limit though.

[macoman]

1 hour ago, adrynalyne said:

Ah. Still decent. A shame about the ram limit though.

For what I will be using for, even 8GB of RAM is enough. But I will be looking to upgrade it to the maximum of 16GB. I always wanted a MacPro but the price was the issue. Now that the price is in par to the Mac Mini, they are looking a much better alternative to a Mac mini or even an used iMac.

[beanboy89]

I bought a 2008 Mac Pro a few months back for a really good price. It came installed with 20 GB RAM. I've upgraded the graphics card, added an AirPort card, and replaced the hard drive with an SSD. It's a nice workstation.

[macoman]

3 hours ago, beanboy89 said:

I bought a 2008 Mac Pro a few months back for a really good price. It came installed with 20 GB RAM. I've upgraded the graphics card, added an AirPort card, and replaced the hard drive with an SSD. It's a nice workstation.

That's nice, they are like a beast... You can pretty much add maximum ram, best video card and you have a multimedia / gaming machine. Plus the advantage of running Mac OS and Windows if you have the ISO

[adrynalyne]

3 minutes ago, macoman said:

That's nice, they are like a beast... You can pretty much add maximum ram, best video card and you have a multimedia / gaming machine. Plus the advantage of running Mac OS and Windows if you have the ISO

I can't imagine today's video cards working. Unless pro cards have OS X drivers?

[macoman]

47 minutes ago, adrynalyne said:

I can't imagine today's video cards working. Unless pro cards have OS X drivers?

There are 3GB Mac video cards that work with the MacPro. But they are expensive as hell... I was checking the price in Amazon... They are close to $500.

[ITOps]

3 minutes ago, macoman said:

There are 3GB Mac video cards that work with the MacPro. But they are expensive as hell... I was checking the price in Amazon... They are close to $500.

That is about the average price for professional grade graphics cards, it is normally a little extra for Macs due to the extra testing and development required.

[offroadaaron]

7 hours ago, adrynalyne said:

Ah. Still decent. A shame about the ram limit though.

You can actually firmware upgrade the 2009 to the 2010 and you can get 32GB. It's posted all over the Internet and not hard to do.

[macoman]

1 hour ago, offroadaaron said:

You can actually firmware upgrade the 2009 to the 2010 and you can get 32GB. It's posted all over the Internet and not hard to do.

Yup, I was checking that and I am amazed how a little firmware can saved you few hundreds dollars and make your 2009 MacPro into a 2010 model. Now the only thing that you will have to expend money is to upgrade the processor and the memory to match the 2010 models.

[macoman]

Can a Dell PC3-8500 DDR3-1066 240-pin Registered ECC SDRAM DIMM made by Gigaram work without issues in this MacPro? 

[macoman]

Can someone confirm please?

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

9 hours ago, macoman said:

Can a Dell PC3-8500 DDR3-1066 240-pin Registered ECC SDRAM DIMM made by Gigaram work without issues in this MacPro? 

Yes.

 

https://support.apple.com/kb/sp506

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/faq/mac-pro-early-2009-nehalem-how-to-upgrade-memory.html

[macoman]

Thank you... Buying now 4 4GB modules and replacing the one that came with this MacPro.

[macoman]

I am very happy with this MacPro... I successfully upgraded the firmware with the netkas one and transformed my MacPro 2009 firmware to a 2010 firmware and is working pretty good. Now question, it's the internal speaker on the MacPro crap? Because the sound quality is just awful when you listen videos or music.