I Bought a Mac Pro for $250- is it any Good? 

I found a mid 2010 Mac Pro in the recycling at work with a sticker saying “broken” on it. As gramps used to say as we spent hours upon end fixing CRT tv’s, ‘it ain’t broke until I say so’. Stuck my mini’s operating system on it and it’s now MY new work computer. Everyone else is running cheap windows pc’s, the jealousy is palpable lol. I absolutely love it just for the tower, never mind the rest.

If you get the 5,1 patch for the 09' Mac Pro, you can actually have a pair of X5690's installed which will make for a total of 12 Cores and 24 Threads running at 3.46 GHz, the fastest processor upgrade you can ever do to a Pre-2013 Mac Pro! They can also rock up to 128GB's of RAM, 6 Hard Drives (If you take out the optical ones) and a stock 1080 Ti, all which make an absolutely monstrous computer that can still shred through anything you throw at it today.

Don’t get me wrong, the ‘09 Mac Pro is the best price to performance ratio Mac you can get....in America. This particular Mac in the uk is upwards to £500 on eBay!

In Germany you have to pay from 500€ up to 1300€ for the 2009 Mac Pro

Those are the best Macs ever made. Work horses.

I have one, 2010 upgraded to 12 cores and 64 gigs of ram AAAAAANNNNNND I LOVE IT! Other than the fact it is a personal heater 🤦‍♂️

The 4,1 / 5,1 Mac Pros are a great value, though you have to factor in extra cost for a decent display and GPU if you don't already have one. I've been able to score them locally for even cheaper than the prices you find on eBay, and have a 2010 5,1 upgraded to 12 cores @ 2.93 GHz + GTX 970 which is quite a beast for tasks that take advantage of multiple cores.

I turned my old 2008 in to a server, it has 32 GB of ram. It runs 5 game server instances at once + smb server. I’m really astonished how well these machines were build, after so many years of hard work at the office, I have it running 24/7 and it performs flawlessly.

My 2008 Mac Pro still going strong

I'm watching this on mine... Got 2 of them for $500 bucks. Freaking love em. Might get 2 more!

lmao, why you appearing suddenly on 6:31

and if you decide to spend an extra $100 making it $350, you can get the dual processor model (if you're lucky)

I live a ways out of town in the Yukon, Canada. Last Saturday on our way home from town, my son and I stopped at the dump out our way which has the best "free store" around. I always do the stop on Saturday on the way home. You never know what you will find...I have found Macbook Pros, iPods, Apple stuff galore...all working now or even NEW accessories in the boxes. Well, Saturday I got out of the truck and saw it right away, sitting in the broken electronics section on the table. A “vintage” all aluminum Mac Pro, complete and in tact. I hefted the 40 lb. tank of a computer into the truck and brought it home. I got it home and let it warm up a few hours. Then…It turned right on. It is a 2009 Mac Pro "Eight Core" 2.26 (Early 2009) powered by two 2.26 GHz Quad Core Xeon E5520 (Nehalem) processors...12GB RAM, a 640GB HDD, and a 250GB HDD. It is running Snow Leopard, a clean fresh install it seems. It can take EL Capitan, but that is the newest I could go on it as it is. I have all of the cords it needed already (it came with nothing from the free store) It can run up to 128 GB of RAM! It can take 4 full hard drives. And much more. It is blazing fast already. It runs perfectly, and works flawlessly. It is easy to open up and work on, and easy to upgrade. I have wanted one of these for many years. I even cleaned the casing and much of the grime and marks actually came right off. I also took off some stickers. It is an 8 out of 10. Just wow. All for FREE.

I have a 2009 Mac Pro and I use it for live streaming with wirecast I am impressed how well it can handle 3 cameras, two monitors while pushing out HD content both locally on the hard drive and out on to the Internet without glitches or cut outs. I love having the ability to upgrade it. My school was retiring them before I graduated so it was perfect timing. I think the overall age of it is over 6 years old without signs of slowing down by the time I got it. I do agree best built computer by Apple.

I just picked one up off of eBay for all together including shipping and sales taxes for $285. Thanks Luke for inspiring me to buy one of these gems! I making a video of me unboxing it and shouting you out.

Wow, loving the new quality. This style is great. Keep it up!

I snatched a 2010 5,1 Mac Pro at an ITS sale where I work for $150. It was a steal, and upgrading it is so easy.

Excellent video. I just picked up a nearly new condition Mac Pro 2009, Quad core. Came with an Apple wired keyboard and mouse, all three for $100. I do plan on upgrading it in the next few days. I estimate by the time I upgrade the RAM (to 32GBs), GPU, and add a 1TB SSD I'll be in for less then $450. Apple prices for their new products are sky high; more then I'm willing to pay. I'll stick with my 2012 product line, couple of mac minis (maxed out), iMac 27, and MacBook Pro 15" and now the 2009 Mac Pro.

Well, it's 5 years later but I just bought one off Ebay for 83 bucks including shipping (the Mac was 49 bucks from a high rated seller). It only has 8 gig of RAM and a one terabyte SATA drive but for about another $75.00 I got a METAL compatible GTX 680 graphics card and 32 gig of RAM. I've upgraded the firmware and, while it doesn't run great (I already had another one) the thing will run Ventura.

I've got one of these fully upgraded, drive, graphics, 48 gb RAM and the Xeons upgraded to 3.46 hex core. It is the best value Mac Pro by far. It has been a good buy at $ 250, as in the UK the 4,1 still makes pretty fair money.

My goodness, you got quite a great deal. God bless you for posting this -- I type this comment from my Early 2009 Mac Pro, 6-cores at 3.33 mHz and 32 GB of RAM, so it's a pretty beefy machine. Can't remember how much I paid for it, but certainly more than that. And now with SSDs in the drive slots, well, let's just say it's a s fast as any computer I could ever need. The only two downsides are (1) that it is orphaned at Mac OS version 10.11.6, and (2) it is not forward-compatible with Thunderbolt.

Just finished a new build designed for performance and low power consumption and a really cool operating temperatures. I was running a system from 2008 but new components are just so much more efficient.

Three months ago I finally retired my 2005 Mac Pro (first aluminum box). It was a great machine and extremely reliable.

This is exactly what I did - 2009 upgraded to 5,1 X5690, 24GB (3x 1333Mhz triple channel), 1TB SSD on SATA3 card, 2x2TB mirror, GTX 1080, USB3, Cinema Display 27" DP. Thing is a beast, run it in win 10 bootcamp with oculus rift and it runs perfect!

Ah, back when apple knew how to build good computers.

I still have this 2009 Mac Pro 4,1 => 5,1 with 32GB RAM, and RX560 + ATI Radeon 2600XT 256MB (for bootscreen) I mostly run LOGIC PRO X and its super stable. 😇

These machines will never die. Bullets bounce off them. Still using my 2006 Mac Pro1,1 on 10.6.8 as a second machine; works as well now as it did when I bought it new. 4 drives, several USB cards. All I really want from Apple is another one of these with 2018-level guts, though I doubt we'll get anything close to that.

I enjoy your videos! I recently got a 2012 MBP 13". Something I noticed about this particular video though - several of the scene changes have a random frame inserted. Is it just me?

I bought a 2009 Mac Pro this year with 32 GB of RAM with 2X 2.93 GHz, which is 8 cores total for 425 dollars. It runs 2 Plex servers, VMs, and it's connected to my 4k tv. I upgraded the graphics card. I just use Remote Desktop to control it for streaming or play something on the TV. Perfectly happy with it and it doesn't run as hot as 1,1 Mac Pros. The 1,1 Mac Pros are space heaters. I bought 2012 Macbook Pro with manufacture date 8.12.13 for the nearly the same price. It's i5, 8 GB of RAM and 240 SSD.

This machine on MacPro5,1 firmware can support chips like Xeon X5675 (6C/12T 3.06/3.46GHz) which is still no slouch even in the face of Skylake and Coffee Lake processors. Add in a reference AMD Radeon RX 580 or nVidia GeForce GTX 1060, and you get a fairly modern machine up to the task of being a daily driver. If you can find that elusive dual socket version and throw in a pair of X5675's you would get a beast of a machine. macOS will work with standard XHCI USB 3.0/3.1 adapters so with an PCIe card you are not missing out on that. That card can also give you some PC-style internal USB headers, allowing you to use one of those adapter cards that takes a Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module from a recent model MacBook Pro, giving you access to features like 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0, Handoff and Continuity.

Great video. I like the new style and congrats on the sponsor!

Just bought myself a 2008 Mac Pro 3.1 - 2 x quad core Xeons, 8GB RAM - £207. Put an SSD in it and it's just great. Running two screens on it. If I'd realised I could get this sort of performance I'd not have had two Mac Minis before it. These old Pros are the best kept secret in the Mac world.

I picked up a wiped dual processor (mid-2010) Mac Pro for free off Craigslist a couple days ago. Even came with a RX 580 GPU. I do not kid. All I had to do was put a SSD in it and then install Windows... Free computer for my sis

That transition from exterior to interior was sweet

Do you believe this, 200AUD for Mac Pro 2008 32gigs of RAM!!! 6Tb storage and 120ssd!!! Crazy deal I got

I just bought non working Mac Pro 2009, but just for the case. As insides, I used an old cpuless server (HP DL160 G6) that was also cheap and had 72GB of ram! I just had to bought processors (2x six core xeons X5680) and some parts like PSU and CPU coolers, used RX550... Overall I payed under 500 euro for a PC that is insanely powerful. Well, relatively to anything I ever had :) As until this point, I did all my work on laptop with i5 5200U...

Nice video. I'm also using a 4.1 Quad-Core and a 5.1 2xQuad-Core. They are the best macs in my opinion. You can also install High Sierra on 4.1 Mac Pro without a firmware "upgrade", search for "macOS High Sierra Patcher Tool for Unsupported Macs". I'm using it since it's Sierra version and currently using it with High Sierra on the 4.1.

2009 with 3.45 with high Sierra great computer! Plan on 12 core soon

2009, 2010 and 2012 Mac pro is the best computers Apple ever released! just like Luke said "Totally upgradeable" This type of machine will never be produced again because everything is not meant to be replaced. I have a 2012 that dual 6-Core 3.46 Ghz with a GTX 980 Ti and 64GB 1333Ghz Ram. Its a workhouse for Pro Tools, Avid and Adobe Premiere, Dual SSD Raid 0, Blu-Ray etc. The main concern is not the no thunderbolt or fast 3.1 USB for it to go another 5 plus years its the power supplies. The 2009 will be 10 years old next year and power supplies will be the next need life support for these machine. Also if you have a solid running machine I highly recommend not to upgrade the OS. Bottom line is OS upgrades always screw up something. If your running even 10.11.6 don't go all the way up to 10.14 and expect it to work fine. The way I did a recent upgrade just to 10.12.6 is I used Carbon Cloner and made and exact duplicate of my OS SSD drive. Then I upgraded the clone and used the clone for a few weeks. When I saw everything was working fine then I copied it back. Also if you cant afford a good GPU thats Mac flashed just install the Nvidia 120 into one of the PCI 3 slots and use a HDMI AB switcher for when you need Boot and safe boot etc, Cost me under $30 to set that up.

I’m a really amazing and incredible guy and I have a 2009 model, I bought it a few years ago and upgraded it to the max. My hot wife likes it too and we often sing duets while our 2 beautiful children acknowledge our superiority. Ok I must admit I lied about the duets and my wife is not that hot now days, but I do feel more superior than the average person and I think it’s probably because I have an awesome Mac Pro.

still runiing mine, its watercooled with 2 xeons

Love the video and subbed. A friend and I recently split on a "PALLET" of Macs from the "As seen on TV" HQ in Toronto Ontario. He bought me out for most of it but in the end I paid $200 for an 8 core 2.4ghz 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 with 28gb of ram and a 27" Cinema Display. These are hands down the best value for sure. I love mine. The Pallet had 4 Mac Pros, 4 27" Cinema Displays 3 older 23" Cinema Displays, all the full sized keyboards and 3 27" 2009 iMacs. We paid $1800 for the lot. Couldn't Believe it.

watching this 6/2019 ... today* I just bought a "mac pro 2009" from Ebay for $338 incl. shipping. has a quad core/32gigs of ram/ 1 tb hdd/running Mojave .. I'm super excited for it to arrive, in 6-8 days!! planning on doing some upgrades later like ssd, gpu etc. really I can't wait. (now, I think I'm complete* 4 now) ... I now own: 2017 Imac, 2017 macbook pro, 2018 macbook, 2012 macbook air, 2011 macbook pro, 2x: 2014 mac mini's, 2014 ipad air & now, this mac pro 2009 !!! wow, i know right. LOL. I've gone bananas over apple computers, but in my defense I have used windows pc's since 4ever, dell's, hp's, laptops & desktops and I have found apple computers to be more reliable then my pc's I have. don't get me wrong pc's R ok, but mac's R just a better experience for me thus far! very pleased, also gr8 video Luke, a yr later. 👍👍

Luke Miani , Serious question Sir. First what I'm working with. I have a Mac Pro 5,1 2x3.46 12 Core, which was running High Sierra but had to jump to Mojave with the purchase of a RX580 graphics card. The 5,1 is loaded w/124GB DDR3, OWC provided Sonnet Raid Card w/ 2X2TB SATA Crucial SSD's making a 4TB Boot Drive, plus 4x10TB HDD's in trays (2 HDD's are storage and 2 are Clones), Gigabyte GC- Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3, USB-c, Display and Mini Port Card Currently it has a RX580 Sapphire which runs- 2x4K 27' displays and my newest Work from home tool a... WACOM 32" Cintiq Pro The adding of the WACOM PRO has just started some serious LAG when I draw to the surface of the unit. SO, getting to the question... If I go the route of a Radeon VII (which you stated and we see is now supported on Mojave) But I have just jumped to Catalina (Damn it!), Using DosDudes patch (Thanks for making it possible DosDude1.com). Hoping that driver upgrades would decrease lag on the RX580. However it didn't! It appears better Graphics performance is needed to run all three monitors with Touch/Draw capabilities. So I'm considering your Radeon VII upgrade. Here is the question - Will the Radeon VII run better on the Catalina OS, is it better supported now without driver limitations that it experienced with Mojave?

Honestly, thank you so much for this video. I have had this MacBook Air for a bit and wanted to buy something else. I bought it for school but it’s a 2012 one so I needed something better. Thank you so much. I will get the 2010 one of this!!!!

Just got 5.1 with 2.8 quad core, 16gb, Radeon HD 5770 1 GB Vram, 3.5 TB Storage... gonna be upgrading the shit out of it !!!! same price $250....:)

According to Apple, a 2009 or 2010 Mac Will not work with Apple TV for the purpose of iTunes. It’s too old. I had a 2010 Mac and could not transfer my music in the files over to the Apple TV. This is why I have to buy a newer Mac than this.

I picked up a 2008 last year for $200, so slightly cheaper, but with dual 4 core 2.8GHz Xeons, threw some extra ram in it and new drives and use it as my daily desktop. More than capable for anything I need it for. I believe the 2009s you get the Xeons with hyperthreading, but when I looked there was quite a price jump. If you got one for $250 that's a good deal!

I'm still rocking an 09 Mac Pro for all my video editing. 2.8 GHz quad core CPU, 24 GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD boot drive. Also 4 1TB WD reds.

YOUR Right on Dude - I have purchased mine when it was on sale some years ago. I hope you know that you can purchase up to 128G Rm in 16GB Chips purchased by the Pair from OWC or one of its Dealers or Amazon suppliers. Make sure it is OWC Chips. I purchased mine from Amazon OWC dealer so i could claim my 5% Amazon.com Prime Card Rebate and get free shipping. Lets all keep sharing tips. I purchased this when i compared a Mac Mini and with upgrades was more than the Mac Pro. With 128Gm of Ram upgradeability, I do not see this being old for a longtime.

Trust me do NOT get rid of your stock video card if you upgrade. You will need the stock GPU if you need to re-install or do anything outside of the OS. A PC video card will work but you will not get a boot screen and the installer screen will not work. My stock video card went out and it was a PITA to get the OS re-installed when my hard drive crapped out.

Even my 'old' Early 2008 /3.1 / 8-core rocks. Simple as that.

06:30 - 31 well hello there! The price difference for macs between the USA and Europe is hilariously painful.

Nice, aesthetic shots. I like that a lot.

Helo Luke! great video! nicely thought. BTW as constructive feedback, the only thing I will suggest is for you to get or make a better front light. Try to get at least a 150 leds lamp and dimmed it with some white paper in front. Your face looks a bit darker compare the background, and on closeups you want the attention to be in the thing up front, being you or the computer. The rest...flawless. Peace

If only we knew how far this computer would take you down the cMP rabbit hole....

I"ve mulled it over before. But the lack of thunderbolt 2/3 makes it a no-go for me.

I actually have one, i got it locally for around 79$ with a iMac G5 20 inch and a PowerMac G3. i would say the MacPro itself was just brilliant but the wifi card inside was broken so yeah.

New sub! Great quality vids, I was surprised to see you only had 10k subs!

The truth is you want to get a 5.1 Mac Pro and they were released in 2010. The reason is for their upgrade potential. There is tons of great info on the web on this.

Congrats on the sponsor!!

I remember having 24gb of ram back then it was considered to be insane :) since i was only working with 1080p and 720p videos

gosh.. its modularity makes me think getting one even today. hope new Mac Pro will be modular.

SCDKeys are the DBrand of key selling sites, I'm seeing them sponsoring loads of channels.

i still have my 2010 cMP, 8yrs old and still runs great

US prices for Mac Pros are so cheap compared to Japan. My 2008 cost me about $600 USD a couple of years ago, and that's just how it is in Japan. And that was me waiting and watching it fall before finally doing it. I wish I could have gotten a 2009 or 2010 for $250. Be aware, that the 2008 can run High Sierra and is running High Sierra, I am on it right now.

Yeah, the 2009 is great, I just wish it didn't consume 150 watts at idle. It really heats up a room, but the value cannot be beat.

Mac pro 2010 with 16gb ram and dual cpus . Add a gpu and SSD s

i just got a 2009 mac pro for $100 today in mint condition and it has 16gb ram and a 1t hd lol

Tip:if your getting an old Mac never use a dos dudes patcher to get the exact newest os use the oldest one that still gets security updates (I am getting a early 2008 MB for 20 dollars so yeah)

My macpro 1,1 still runs today

can't wait to see the upgrade video's

You can also run High Sierra on a 2008 mac pro FYI. I'm running it dualbooted with Windows Server 2012 R2 on mine.

I would argue that the 2010 Mac Pro is superior, if you want more user upgradability you don’t need to worry about the complex and expensive cpu delisting that the 4,1 has. The 2010 Mac Pro has built in better wifi and Bluetooth capabilities as well. When we’re talking about old used Mac pros, the power supply is always at risk of failing, having a newer one is just more secure. The 2009 is still very capable and if you can find it for 250$ I’d definitely go for it. But you’ll need some tech savvy and Mac experience if you’re willing to upgrade.

Now eBay sellers are going to overprice the shit out of these.

There was an upgrade of the 2010 Mac Pro cheese grater in 2012. For me, that is the best Mac Pro, you can upgrade that to the newest nvidia GPU's. I really really like that design, it's not even an "old" design, it could easily existing today! I hope that whatever they ar doing, they will do something similar again. A lot of people think they won't but i don't believe that, they clearly said it would be customer upgradeable, so we'll see. But it's still a long wait till (probably) end 2019.

Would love to get one! Energy efficiency would be a sore point though.

Great vid dude!

in 2009 the razor was NOT a high end smartphone.

"Limited to El Capitan" still using Yosemite! LOL, secret to keeping your mac/apple machine fast, don't upgrade the OS!! Running on mid 2014 macbook pro 15 btw

Fuck yeah it is. Upgrade firmware to 2012 then pop in some hex core 5680s, and an r17 resistor removed r7970 and you’re good to go.

Really intrested in seeing what upgrades can you make on this

Great Vid! I've upgraded and modified a 2012 Mac Pro to take a modern Nvidia GTX1080ti. First thing if you have a not Mac Flashed 1080ti everytime you login in you won't be able to see Apple's bootloader and the Apple Logo won't display on start-up. So if you want to use Bootcamp you can't hold Option to switch back and forth, you would have to go manually tell OSX to start in windows. Also with Nvidia's web driver, if OSX updates the Mac Pro won't boot because OSX resets toy using the default OSX display drivers, So keep that GT120 around if you want to update smoothly. A Mac Flashed Bios Nvidia Cards are available but they're quite expensive. The Website Macvideocards.com sells them. Also for powering a modern GPU. The chassis doesn't support modern power connectors. on something like a 1080ti it requires a 6+8 pin power connectors, the old Mac Pros only have 2 6pins. I fixed this by getting a Dual 6pin to a single 8pin adapter and removing the DVD/CD drives to steal the two SATA power connectors and got an adapter for dual SATA to single 6pin power connect to power this one card. Its a tad rough and involved. I just wanted to let you know the rabbit hole i went down to get a modern GPU to work. Awesome Content. If you have any questions let me know. Cheers. Fellow Mac nerd just trying to help.

How long until even the Mac Pro 2010 doesn't support the latest Mac OS. Seems like that could be soon.

Very nice video. You deserve way more views! :-)

I still have the '10 MacBook Pro but the AirPort isn't working. Couldn't find any spare part

No hate, but it clearly is having a rough time with FCPX if I go with the amount of frame jumps around the transitions... Still I agree with you this is a pretty good machine for the price.

Someone’s back home for the summer!

Dont buy such an old computer, unless you plan on recapping in the future. All electronics have a specific number of hours before they start to fail. I recap all my classic vintage computers, just to be sure. Biggest issue, is SMD caps.

I have one of these computers Spec's Model Identifier 5,1 Mac Pro (Early 2009 2.93 GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon X5670 16 GB 1066 MHz DDR3 128 gb SSD+ 7 tb of 7200 RPM 64 Cache NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 512 MB Its quite fast with SSD, I have clocked it at under 30 seconds

I love mine. Such a beast.

Love these towers, and thankfully they're going down in price... If only it didn't cost a fortune to ship it!

Ok Luke, it’s mid-2022. How about an update? Is this Mac Pro still any good?

Did you get a new set? It looks super good!

Wow this is cheaper than building a Hackintosh.

What an apple computer should be.

need a link to that awesome music

What's with the random frames of footage sprinkled throughout the video?

Well I tried your upgrade on my Mac Pro 4,1 and the response I got from my computer was the upgrade software will not run on it. Unless you have a new fix I don't think you should be promoting this idea.

I tested my Mac Pro 2,1 (costed me 60$ lol) It works with every single card but only on windows. Newer cards will work on macOS too.