A Mac Pro 2013 hater finally uses one 

Gaming performance either via "native" Windows or via a VM, with & without an eGPU 👍

Yeah, install all the earlier versions of macOS on it. You can run 32-bit Mac apps with pretty good performance, probably the best performance of any Intel Mac? And then happily run Parallels with Windows on an external disk. Parallels even lets you install x86-64 Windows 11 on a virtual hard disk (not Boot Camp) - can confirm, works on Mac Pro 2013 - so that means it's possible to span a whole decade of OSs.

Install a modern eGPU, something that's RDNA 1 or 2 based. Try to edit a video using Final Cut again, bet it's a much nicer experience. Or maybe not, I am not sure what exactly your workflow is and how much can a GPU help it (as if you largely only work with ProRes, a GPU upgrade does nothing)

​@ri800 As much as I'd like to try and eGPU on this machine, there's a lot fo costs with that: enclosure + (GPU (if I wanted to use something better than my 580X in my Mac Pro 2008) + Thunderbolt 2 -> 3 adapter. Also, it'd mean I'd need to stay on macOS Monterey. I could do the ol' Amazon buy-and-return but on the off chance I couldn't return it for whatever reason I'd be kinda stuck with something I don't want/need/have any sort of sane use case for. I'm not ruling out such experiments in the future, but I'd need to up my income to justify the time, effort and risk. RU-vid is a hobby that basically gives me a small budget monthly. I'm a weird space as not big enough for respectable sponsors, or Patreon.I'd like to get to a space where my hobby pays for itself as I've never approached this as a career.

I don’t know much about the Trash Cans, but you have been great help with the others. You are a big reason I have 6 5,1’s I don’t run them all at the same time any more because of the electric bill too high

For. Real. I think I'd be celebrating the Apple Silicon Mac Pro if you could pop out the RAM, CPU and GPUs like this.

they're not user upgradeable but you can send your ARM macs off to repair shops who can solder the new flash and RAM onto your board for you

@@mahzorimipod It is pretty unacceptable tbh for a pro machine.

@@mahzorimipodif only you can solder in new ram, but you can’t

@@galasitygamingwhy is that? Is that because software on the machine recognizes the foreign part, or because people can’t access compatible chips?

Lmao same. It’s cheap and looks nice

lol same here too.

Isn’t it sweet? Quiet as a mouse. More beautiful than most of my furniture.

Yes but that’d require buying an egpu case which is more than I spent on the computer itself, let alone the GPU.

I’m running a eGPU AMD VEGA 56

@@dmuggot mine 100 on offer up

whophd Why is this guy crying, he never needed a Mac at all, just a cry channel ! We all loved these Mac's, ATi PRO, Final Cut pro, retina, WOW ! We knew already intel was dead, needing ARM chips ! Thunderbolt monitor !

@@lucasrem Are you talking about the RU-vidr? He wrote one of the best upgrades guides for it ever (which doesn't need you to physically have one, if you work hard enough). It's entirely possible to love this machine and have it fall completely outside your work requirements during the years 2013-2021 when it was supported.

I don’t know if I made my point clear enough but I do kind of understand why some people love this computer, it’s very quirky, and it is modular.

@@dmug oh absolutely youre clear as skies! i definitely also understand why a lot of ppl dont like it, the internal gpu selection is so limited and like you said its also annoyingly picky about ssd's, i had to try 2 different ones before it clicked, i also would have preferred to stay on final cut but davinci was the only place video would run nice

@@brafya Very interesting, I should try Da Vinci on this machine

Are you editing intra-codec (ProRes/DNXHD and others) footage on that Mac? Cause long-gop seems to stutter as hell on these

@@iskandervaliullin5708 oh not even, just generic 60mbps xavc from a sony a7s2 and then running it on reduced resolution in the preview window, my screen at work is only 1440p so i cant actually see the timeline in 4k

Yeah, I figured I probably needed to buy adapters but I didn't want to spend more money a computer I don't have a use case for. I think my mini display port to HDMI adapter must suck as it's only doing 4k30

​@@dmugDP to HDMI needs an active adapter for 4k60

@@dmug yeah that’s a good point. I’m not putting any more money into mine either! I’m not quite a power user but I’m not a casual user either… when Monterey stops receiving updates later this year, I’ll swap it for something (used or refurb) with Apple Silcon

@@turbo-yn7le I kinda wish I'd experienced this machine with the D500s or D700s and bothered to buy another SSD as I imagine I'd been more impressed with it. The Apple 128 GB SSD was tolerable but editing off an SSD capped to USB3.0 was less so.

Yeah, Apple can’t wait to dump Intel :/

Every mod I’ve ever done to accelerate my MP5,1 reduced power consumption and thus fan noise. Serendipity, no?

Every professional user can enjoy the basic performance of 4,1 through 6,1 MacPros with extensive mods. I found those mods to be so much fun, I did them for a number of my friends as well. The point is, a professional user does not need to run macOS versions with the latest dancing emoji to match their phone. That is Apple’s tactic and I’ll have no part of it, thank you. All of mine are currently Monterey, with a second boot of Ventura, and are very happy with Pro Tools and related apps. As Apple, in collusion with pro app makers, writes their new macOSs deliberately to break on startup, I sandbox my computers for specific work, buying each one [used] and setting it up accordingly. It is much, much easier than engaging the enemy (Apple) and struggling to find the one OS that is friends with all my needs.

Yeah, I noticed after I made this video a lot of 2013 I’m guessing like me everyone now can afford it. I have a sequel vid planned.

I'm planning a follow up vid where I re-paste it and i ordered a compatible 256 GB NVMe off of eBay and was going to add MacsFanControl + Sonoma to it. I plan to do some benchmarking to see if the repasting helps and just record some general impressions with Sonoma as I haven't paid a ton of attention to the state of OpenCore on these or OpenCore in general. Still trying to think of a creative use for it, for a video or longer term as I don't have a use for this machine, so unclear if I'll hold onto it.

I somehow got the d700 tho

Much luckier than me, I saw that this listing has multiple for sale and I was the last one. I’m guessing a fleet was retired or pulled from storage and SSDs removed / destroyed

@@dmug that's what I'm thinking. I was really expecting the d300 and was surprised. It's good for regular usage and can do 1080p gaming through boot camp just fine

Working on a follow up comparing it against a Mac Mini M1, using a few synthetic benchmarks but more "real world", like Logic Pro, FCPX, compile times, image upscaling. I'll just say, there's some surprising results.

I would expect the M1 is better in most aspects, whilst also not needing it's own power substation to do the same work. But my purchase decision was twofold. I always loved the design of the trashcan despite their numerous flaws so I wanted to scratch the itch of finally owning one now they're so affordable, but also I wanted to see if I could use one as a daily driver and not feel limited by what I assumed would be gaping performance differences against Apple Silicon systems.. my workflow is not especially demanding and I'm not crunching video or anything like that, and so far I'm finding feels comparable to something far more modern in terms of performance. I certainly look forward to watching the follow-up video! On the subject of video out, I've got a TB2 -> DisplayPort cable driving my 4K monitor at 60hz no problem though I do only have a single monitor..

Yeah, I wish I still had nearly maxed out Mac Pro 5,1 which was dual 3.33 GHz with a Radeon VII + 96 GBs of RAM, 3 NVMe SSDs and Sonnet Pro USB 3.2 Gen2 card as I edited a few videos using it for this channel. It ran FCPX much better than the Mac Pro 2013. I'll say one thing: I don't know if I'll edit a video on anything less than my M1 Max or Mac Pro 2019 for a very long time.

I wish I still had my Mac Pro 5,1 to compare against as it was a 12-Core, 96 GB of RAM, Radeon VII, Multi-SSD, USB 3.2 Gen 2 setup. I edited 4k on it and it wasn't nearly the chore as 2013.

@@dmug I have updates on both of my Mac Pros. :D A couple of weeks ago, I replaced the 2.4 GHz six-core CPUs in my 5,1's dual-CPU tray with two 3.06 GHz six-core CPUs. Previously, I traded core count for core speed by running a single 3.46 GHz six-core CPU, but now I have the best of both worlds: fast cores AND many of them! And on Friday, I upgraded my trashcan Mac Pro's CPU from the base 3.7 GHz quad-core to a 3.0 GHz TEN-CORE CPU!

There is a future where Apple could make apple, silicon upgradable, even the Nintendo, 64, which used unified memory had upgradable ram, and we’ve seen PCs with upgradable GPUs. I do agree the Mac Studio is kinda boring though.

I have a follow-up video in the works on this, but I a few videos to finish before I get to it.

It’d been nice if Apple had at least bumped the specs once in its 6 years of selling it

Exactly.

You could but probably wiser going with something that has less power draw. It’s not terrible though when it comes to idling

Whoops, I meant to grab the Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 graphic. Good catch, chalk that up to being in a rush while editing and getting the wrong item.

Not sure where you are in the world, on eBay in the USA, you can often find the d700s maxed out ram and cpu for $350-$400

Thanks, I feel like a goober taking out a computer and taking photos of it during a hike.

@@dmug the results are always spectacular!!

​@@dmug😂

Was it pure cpu or using the GPUs? My m1 air was soooooo much faster at editing video.

it was just the usual render test, never switch anything on or off. my 2013 has the d500s, for me a sweetspot.

Yep, it's not really an upgrade. I had a better experience editing my classic Mac Pro, granted I'd stuffed it with 3x 2 TB NVMe, a Sonnet Pro USB 3.2 Gen 2 card, and a Radeon VII and the obligatory 2x 6 Core CPUs + 96 GB of RAM. It didn't hitch or stutter. The Mac Pro 2013 should have been a G4 cube, on the market then off the market as a curiosity and replaced by a boring tower. They finally achieved their dream of a tiny professional computer with the Mac Studio but I'm still unclear as to why they're so hung up on the form factor. VFX and audio guys are happy to have a big ass tower if it gets the job done.

Thanks, good to know

I’ll be doing a follow up vid with this.

It'd be interesting. For 60 Hz gaming, the CPU is fine as rarely are you being limited by the CPU at high resolutions. I compared a 6600 XT in a Mac Pro 2019 and a Mac Pro 2010 and its not that different at 4k. More FPS = more CPU calculations per second. Even fairly modern games like Red Dead Redemption are 4k-able with 6800 XT/6900 XT on a Mac Pro 2010. However, 120 Hz/240 Hz gaming is pretty much a non-starter. While people overestimate how much bandwidth a GPU uses. (Previously it was about 5%~ between 16x PCIe 2.0 vs 3.0 16x ports) Thunderbolt 2 operates 4x PCIe 2.0 is only theoretical of 2 GB/s and I imagine this would have an impact on performance. I'd love to test it but just don't have the budget to buy an eGPU + GPU. However, I do have a Mac Pro 2013 vs Mac Mini M1 video which should be my next upload. With any luck I'll be done in a week or two.

The Mac Pros 2013s are weirdly picky, I ended up buying a 256 GB Crucial NVMe which worked fine before boxing up the Mac Pro 2013 and sending it to a friend. That did make it mildly more pleasant to use than the old AHCI 128 GB Apple SSD. Perhaps I'll pick a Mac Pro 2013 again and try it with the D700s but I really don't have a use for it. I tried one, was taken with how it looked but that's about it.

@@dmug its a collectible like the g4 cube and g4 imac. I got mine in 2015 as my main machine. Using a boring Mac Studio now because i need to but the trash can always looked so much better on my desk 😆

Yeah, I'm not a Protools guy, own pretty much everything else: Ableton a Push 2, Logic Pro and Cubase. If I were buying just for those apps, I'd probably just get a used M1 Pro with 32 GB of RAM.

Funny you ask, I’m debating a video with my Mac Pro 2019 vs the 2013. I can say from a 2019 owner’s perspective: we’ve come a long way since the 2013. It’s night and day.

@@dmug It's smooth with all formats?

@@WarriorsPhoto I only shoot in ProRes 4k and mp4 4k (and 1080p as both my camera and iPhone only 120 fps in 1080p) and upscale to ProRes 422 and use ProRes 4444 for animations. I don’t have an exotic workflow nor do much in the way of grading. I’m much more composite heavy than probably the average RU-vidr but I’m also not working like a professional. My Mac Pro, 2019 M1 max or fairly interchangeable for performance for video editing. The video editing is really your goal, a used M1 Pro or Max would not be a bad move as they can be had these days for as little as $1200. The media engine on the M series is very real, and chomps ProRes like crazy.

@@dmug Sir. Much appreciation for your input.

I’ll have a follow up video, it won’t be a total 180 but I’m hopping to improve it a bits

Probably don’t need to push the fan curve up much if running d300s or d500s. Also, I’ve seen people who use laptop coolers with the Mac Pro 2013 but no idea if they do anything

@@dmug thank's for the cooler tip - I have 8 core 64Ram D700 dedicated to Adobe Bridge, set to 100% highest quality / high GPU preview - the machine is an absolute blessing ...

Fascinating that don’t notice much difference between the 2013 and 2019. I actually left out where I tried to AI upscale and the Mac Peo 2019 was hitting about 1.3 FPS and the Mac Pro 2013 was about 0.1 FPS. It was a very very stark different. As far as transportability, it is certainly more movable but even when I contracted for a short spell in Hollywood, people would just drag their beefy Mac Pro or PC to the editor location and set it up and edit for the few months or whatever the contract was. The guys hyper concerned about portability used laptops and would edit off the 720p transcodes and resync the EDL. It’s neat that it was small but no one cared

I don’t use my Mac pros for video editing. Obviously it depends on the workload you are throwing at it. Most people are not video editors, but it seems like reviewers on RU-vid judge the machine on their particular use, which is only video editing. Try them with word processing, excel, web browsing, photo editing, running virtual machines, etc and I bet you’ll won’t see there isn’t enough of a difference that going to make you significantly more productive.

… and now another cube when the clear choice was a tetrahedron

Hey, don’t spoil my next video ;) the SSD wasn’t compatible so consulted my own guide to actually pay attention enough to get one and plan to repaste the cpu. Almost certainly it was an aftermarket job but who knows how long it’s been. However I won’t commit the sin of trying to edit on it again.

Hmm that’s interesting. I’m almost 100% sure I’ll do a video about running Sonoma, and benchmark it.

You can use eGPUs but the cost of buying a case and GPU, minus the limited bandwidth of thunderbolt 2, your are well past the cost of a used m1 Mac for less performance in most tasks.

It’d certainly do that just fine.

Sounds a bit more cursed than mine. I read somewhere there were quality control issues at the US plant where they were assembled, perhaps each of us have machines that suffer that?

your right there, it is a bit cursed. @@dmug

Yep

Well, my most recent video was about the Mighty Mouse.... imagine how that went

Yeah, there’s been a bit of expressed interest with using Linux on it, but I’m not sure the angle. I may just compare its speed to macOS and maybe Windows.

@@dmug Yes, that would be worth seeing. Windows is a rather bloated OS., these days so it's hard on older computers, whereas Linux gives them a new lease of life. I mentioned Ubuntu Studio because you use creative programs and an informed opinion of that OS., would be relevant. I recently tried Sparky Linux 7 the Mate version on a spare PC., and so far it's working well.

Yeah, I could try messing around with Windows on this machine. I don't think the video editing would be any different but I could run some benchmarks and compare to the two.

I got crossfire working in Windows 10, but not on OSX, so maybe that will give it a boost?@@dmug

Chrome now ? Why you need it now ?

Do you mean when you can see video out of the monitor in b roll? That’s my monitor auto switching to my MacBook Pro’s video. Also, it’s Firefox, I don’t have chrome installed on any of my Macs ;)

@@dmug I installed Sonoma on a Mac Pro 2013 after installation I downloaded chrome it worked great but after I shut down my computer and re turn it on, chrome crashed my system

Literally should have been the easiest Mac to make: toss an Xeon with some pcie slots and ship it and yet that was too difficult.

@@dmug When in anger, blame Jony Ive. He's the one who designed the damn thing. 😂

Yep, pretty much after 2010 the Xeons trade clock speed for core count

The sweet spot is 8 cores

The MacBook Pro 2019 laptops are pretty nice albeit hot. My buddy had one provided to him for work a few years back, and I was a bit envious as I still had a MacBook Pro 2017 15".

Yep, still the best Mac Apple has produced. I miss mine, I would have loved to compare it as I edited 4k video on it and it wasn't bad, but I also had it nearly maxed out and the Radeon VII didn't hurt things.

Second person to mention Promox, just not a homelab server sort of guy. I don't have any use cases for it and as a dev, I use Docker for the sort things once-upon-a-time (about a decade ago) that you'd want a VM array for.

Thanks, there's a dichotomy I like to mess with since I'm an avid hiker who likes to unplug but there's something so weird to about sticking a computer or hardware in organic landscapes.

@@dmug I know this feeling

For how much time do you use it? It is reliable?

I’m going to agree, I run Live on it and it’s great for that, run two 4k monitors as well. Works everyday all day long. I only want my TB2 ports to work properly so I can use bigger SSDs

La frecuencia del RAM a cuánto corre? Es verdad que. Hay downgrade a 1066 o 800mhz?

@@adv8nturenickI use 2 4TB G-drive on Thunderbolt ports

Another guy said he bought from the same listing and got a D700 w/64 GB of Ram and 12 core cpu for $200. I saw a few lower spec around the $170 mark but upgrading the ram and cpu would have been more expensive…

Two things: As I mentioned from the get go in the vid, I don't have a use-case for this machine so I bought from a grab bag listing as it was cheap. A few commenters walked away with D700s for under $200 from the same listing. I got D300s. It was a gamble, and I didn't win. The original video idea was to upgrade one but it didn't make any sense as the E5-2697v2 was about $25 and 64 GB of RAM is about $50, and lesser models were going for only about $30 cheaper at the absolute cheapest. Secondly, in workstation workloads all the GPUs are kinda garbage at this point in time, as the D700 vs D300 is only about 25% more powerful in compute, and about 20%-30% faster in real world tasks. Even a lowly RX570 bests the D700 in compute. Would my impressions been better had I bought D700 version? Maybe slightly, but again, it wasn't worth a paying nearly double the price for. As someone who wrote the upgrade guide for these machines, I figured I really should have first hand experience with them. Now I do.

Pretty sure my DisplayPort adapter didn't support 4k60, I'd have to pick a different one up

Got a vid coming that I think you'll appreciate comparing a 2013 vs an M1 Mac mini

I don't think I have any real angles or stories to tell, always open to ideas. I haven't had a lot to say, besides the fact I feel let down that Apple isn't releasing GPU drivers for 7000 series GPUs. About the only thing I could do is "Here's what it's like to use this in 2024" but would be a bit of retread on my previous video on my Apple store experience. I may do that when the 2019 is actually 5 years old as a retrospective after there's been more time between my Apple store video. To do really crazy stuff I'd need to be raking in a helluva lot more than I do currently so extreme upgrades are out. Upgrading the CPU is prohibitively expensive for not QS CPUs. Same goes for extreme storage like getting a Sonnet 4x PCIe card and loading it up with 16 TB or 32 TB of NVMe, and I've been rolling the 6900 XT ever since the GPU crisis was closing. I already made a video detailing it's gaming performance and a GPU upgrade guide, neither of which were particularly strong performers.

@@dmug I see. Well, thanks anyway for the info man! 🙂

@@DBLCreations Yeah, there'll be more Mac Pro 2019 videos to some degree. Just not sure what.

They are very much vintage sadly.

why is this channel crying with 2012 issues ? weirdo haighters here !

Yeah, I'm gonna try Sonoma on the Mac Pro 2013, I got a 512 GB NVMe that's compatible, and I plan to redo the thermal paste. I have like 3-4 more videos before I can get to it.

@@dmug@dmug I got a Timetec specifically made for Mac and everything, but Sonoma has been running great. Could the SSD be the issue with not letting me boot with Sonoma?

@@troymd2009 I don’t think so, I’d check with one of the OpenCore groups to see if there’s a flag you needed to set

To get the Mac Pro 2013 with the D 700 GPUs runs on eBay for a good deal about $350. The Mac mini M1 starts about at $350. For most tasks even with the Ramar configuration, the M1 mini will run circles around the 2013. There are a few certain cases where the Mac Pro 2013 would excel but they are few and far between. For most people, the M1 is a better choice.

I'm thinking to get one just for casual use (I am more PC Master race style) but the style of this Mac Pro Is unique I don't live in the US but México here the M1 mini Is More like $500-$600 USD (New) so that's why I said that

Also the USB on the Macpro 2013 is slow, they are not usable for SSD's ... external disks should be connected to the thunderbolt.

@@FunkyAlphonzoit’s completely reasonable to edit off the boot drive in the era of fast NVMe, I’ve done it on multiple machines with a solo SSD, from a Mac Pro 2008, Mac Pro 2010, MacBook Pro 2017 and M1 Max. Back the day I’d 100% have agreed. As far as Thunderbolt goes, I mentioned I didn’t use Thunderbolt as I’d had buy Thunderbolt 2 to 3. I already spent too much getting the 2013. I have a video planned as I got a proper NVMe SSD that’s compatible so it won’t be limited to a tiny AHCI SSD, a different display port adapter for 4k60 and want to redo the thermal paste and see if it changes much. What I won’t be doing is using it to edit .

⁠​⁠​⁠@@dmugbut can you replace the internal drive when it failes from multiple read and writes. Do you only do short form video’s … can your business handlle downtime… A thunderbolt to usb-c adapter doesn’t cost much. Professional video editors still use external raids for safety, speed and capacity. Our projects are counted in TB not GB … hence the “pro” tip 😉

@FunkyAlphonzo I don't mean "long post", but I think introducing the maths into this is helpful to visualize where SSDs are. Good SSDs advertise the "endurance" or TBW, aka Terabytes Written. I recently bought 4 TB NVMes from WD, each with an endurance of 2400 TBW. This is extremely impressive. We can calculate the daily writes using the simple formula: endurance ÷ (years x 365) = writes per day. 2,400 TB ÷ (5 years × 365 days/year) = 1.3150684932 TB/day. Video editing, while read-intensive and with cache files, simply wouldn't achieve anywhere near this. Normal usage is generally considered 5 GB-20 GB a day of writes (be it from web surfing, OS updates, running various apps, using virtual memory, and so on), very heavy usage is considered 40 GB, and extremely heavy usage is 100 GBs a day, usually considered high-end servers with large databas. Even after ten years, this is still nearly impossible for non-server users. 2,400 TB ÷ (10 years × 365 days/year) = 0.6575342466 TB/day or 657.5 GB a day. When I contracted on two Comedy Central TV shows (this was over a decade ago), the AVID server would handle the dailies and do the transcodes. You could pull the downconverts for editing, or the transcodes in 4444 for VFX. Even at the rate of daily TV shows, you were talking, usually pulling down only a few hours of footage max in a day, and editing those scenes down, which might take a day or three, depending. The amount of writes was high, but even if it were 6k footage in 2024, you wouldn't be breaking 600 GBs for dailies. Plus, this doesn't account for weekends, holidays, delays etc. I agree backups are very important for mission critical data but in the era of large very fast SSDs, it's safe to work off your boot drive.

Not a problem at all. I’ve been trying to incorporate more of where I’m from, which is the Pacific Northwest (for the internationals out there that’s the United States). The Power Mac G4 shot is on the southern Oregon coast, not far from where I grew up. The majority of the shots are from the Columbia Gorge both Washington, and Oregon. I think there’s a few shots of Portland, Oregon in the mix. I happen to live in a beautiful part of the world, and I’ve experienced a lot of it as an avid hiker, plus I like the weird dichotomy of technology and nature.

@@dmug Very Nice 😊