Is the cheesegrater Mac Pro still viable in 2023? 

Considering I'm watching this on a 2006 Mac Pro running 10.6.8 I'd say "Yeah, they still work fine."

Luke, I have the 2009 Mac Pro that I have flashed to 5.1. I have ordered dual 5690 processors with 128 GB RAM, and an RX580 Graphics Card. a 2 tb NVME boot drive running Open Core Legacy Patcher on Monterey, 2 1 TB SATA Drive, and two (in a Raid) 8TB drives for my media running Plex. I absolutely love my machine and your videos from the past are what excited me about the Cheese Grater Mac. Yes, it is worth it. I have an M1 MacBook Air and an iPad mini to round out the lot. Thank you for your videos and for your support of the Mac Pro. She may be 14 years old, but she purrs like a Jaguar.

I have a 2010 MacPro - a few years ago I upgraded it to 96GBRAM, dual 6-core Zenon CPUs and an RX580 GPU However, I recently bought a MacStudio. But I kept the old MacPro and use it as a NAS as it can hold a total of 6 drives if the optical drive is removed. It's great for that purpose. I feel the old cheese-grater towers were one of the best computers in their time.

I absolutely love this Mac. Even today, if you buy a broken one for around 50$ you have an amazing case to build anything you want in it.

Thing with these Mac Pros is you gotta use OpenCore to activate GPU hardware acceleration. Once you do that it’s leaps and bounds faster. Mine renders 1080p video a mere tad slower than my M1 MacBook Air.

I got my 5,1 2010 dual cpu for about $47.Threw in additional 32GB of RAM, replaced CPUs with X5670, added a Radeon RX 5600 XT to it, upgraded AirPort Card to one from 2013 27" iMac, and to be honest, still runs lovely on Monterey running via Opencore.And yes, I do my gaming on it,.Still runs fine.

If you can find a copy of Mac OSX Server, these machines still make great servers. I set up our little local newspaper with one of these running Apple Server software and 2 1TB HDDs and it works great. In fact, that server has been up and running 24/7 for it's entire lifespan (it was purchased brand new in 2009) with upgrades in the memory and a couple of HDD upgrades. They make perfect servers for a Mac environment.

I just wanted to say that I love your channel! You showing how much old hardware can actually do with the right set up gives me hope! I have cerebral palsy and I live off government funding so I’m still on the last 2019 Intel IMac they made so I think maybe a little bit of an upgrade isn’t that much out of the realm of possibility when I watch a channel like yours. Appreciate you man!

I loved my Mac Pro 4,1 but recently retired it despite upgrading it to 12 cores, loads of RAM etc. 2 things, the noise was annoying (as I am a musician) and some plugins for Logic Pro need AVX instructions and those Xeons never supported that with no upgrade options. It was working perfectly using Monterey though (Via Opencore Legacy Patcher). Luke, I don't remember you ever doing a video on Opencore, it really gives so much life to these older Macs and it's nearly as easy to install as an officially supported OS.

A little behind the times Luke, you can now flash your bootrom to to get a boot screen with any GPU. Opencore let’s you run Monterey or even Ventura with Opencore Legacy Patcher also giving you boot screen without flashing the rom. Handoff, air drop work with an upgraded WiFi Bluetooth card. My 5,1 is running a rx6800xt great for gaming in windows and smokes the M1 M2 graphics. Yes the cpu is limiting but still a great machine in 2023 and still my daily driver for Pro Tools and FCPX, windows 11 runs amazingly well on the old cheese grater and 3000 read write on my NVMe Mac OS boot drive.

Dude, this seriously made my day. I still have my cheese grater Mac Pro that I purchased in '09. Upgraded the memory, filled all four hdd bays and put in an updated Radeon card over the years but it is still running, though only used when I need to offload some tasks from my, now aging, iMac. It's always been my best and favorite Mac and your video really hit home. Thank you.

I love to see more videos on this generation of Mac Pro. I learned a lot from you on these and I run a 2012 dual CPU Mac Pro at home next to my PC. I like to run the low profile Radeon 560 for its lack of extra power cables. I boot to an NVMe and run DDR3 in triple channel mode. Catalina patcher forever!

My 2008 Mac Pro cheesegrater 32GB RAM is still kicking. I can't seem to part with. As a designer, anything I threw at it - it would take it and fly with it. I now use it as a backup. It is well built and I love how customizable it is/was.

Best upgrades for this: 48GB or 96GB RAM to take advantage of the triple channel memory. NVMe SSD (card + SSD). USB 3.0, Type C, and/or Thunderbolt card. CPU upgrades are getting pretty cheap too. macOS 12 Monterey works really well on this, as well as Windows 11.

picked up a 4,1 mac pro early 2009 flashec to 5,1 with a dual cpu tray and the original gt120 with efi on it, all for just 40 bucks. threw in 32gb of ram and a few 4tb hard drives and an ssd for boot. so happy with this little guy.

One of the main reasons why I started watching your channel was the upgrades you made to a 4,1 in 2019. In early 2020 I got my hands on an 4,1 and upgraded it. I am still using it Running Ventura, a RX580 and a flashed firmware on my main logic board that allows me to have an boot screen or boot picker when I hold the option key without having to flash my graphics card. Oh and I forgot to mention a flashed Alpine Ridge thunderbolt card that works on reboot. But not on cold startups or after the machine falling asleep. 🤦🏽‍♂️. Great video and thank you for sharing this!

They work just fine today I had a 2010 dual cpu “12 core” and it ran day to day tasks buttery smooth. The only major drawback is that it uses 100 watts at idle lord knows how many under load. They’re a terrible choice as a daily driver for that reason but definitely fun to tinker around with

I sold my 5.1 last year because of my MacBook Air m1. But I missed it so much that I a month ago I bought it back. Its just a beautiful machine. The design, the upgradability so many things. I don't often use it but its such a happiness to see it everyday on my desk. By the way I'm a video editor but I love to compose music. And for sure as a music production this machine still rocks. Nice video.

I bought a 2012 Mac Pro and have upgraded it to 12 core 3.46 ghz - 64gb RAM - RX580 graphics with apple boot screen and the McFiver NVME card with USB C . I am extremely happy with this build . The performance is awesome .

beautiful video as always!

Big Sur runs absolutely fine on 4,1/5,1 Mac Pros. Once the OCLP team solved the booting problems, it is solid as a rock. I have mine running Monterey, which may not be a smooth, but it is another year of security updates. I have a test machine running Ventura, which does have some issues, but does run. I would not hesitate to put Big Sur on it. AS far as whether or not I would still buy one, as a hobbyist, probably yes. They are so much fun to work in, and still perform well. On the down side, they really do eat power, and an Apple silicon Mac Mini will run rings around it. So yes, they really are on the way to becoming retro hobby machines.

I got 4.1 flashed to 5.1. This is my favorite Mac of all times, the design is absolutely amazing , the customization is wonderful. I would say the strongest issue is PCIE 2.0 and Sata 2.0. I'm sad to see this machine becoming so obsolete.

I’m going to try to build that exact mac! Great video!

I’ve got one that I haven’t fired up in a long while, along with a 30” Cinema Display. I just love the design aesthetic so might take some time to get it up and running again! Thanks for the video!

I have a 4,1 that I use for some production work involving old Adobe software. Upgraded to a 5,1 with dual Westmere 5690s with an nVidia GTX 1080 and 96 GB. Great machine. Still very usable.

These are magnificent machines - high quality. I love vintage Macs - have a G4 mirror door tower (along with keyboard and matching screen) as well as 2 project mid 2012 13 inch MBP that I got dirt cheap and maxed out just for the heck of it. I don't use them that much but they are from a period where you could actually work on Apple products. I might spring to get one of those cheese graters just to have one. As I have said you are head and shoulders the best Mac channel because you don't breathe through your mouth only focused on what might be coming up next. You actually respect the past. Keep up the great work! Even though this machine is slower than modern Fruit company products, you cannot beat the upgradeability of this unit nor can you beat the quality of construction. This would make a great 2nd computer for a Fruit Fly ecosystem!

I still use my cheesegrater 1,1 as network backup. It turns on once a day at night, clones all my drives connected to my trashcan, and turns itself off. Also, I still use my PowerMac G4 to send faxes and burn DVDs too.

Great video Luke ❤

I used a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 (with a 6-core Xeon, 32 GB of RAM, 2 TB combined storage, and a W5500 video card) until just a few months ago!! I would say, they're usable nowadays TO A POINT. Works just fine for basic tasks, and even some more intense tasks, but you DO notice a slower system compared to Apple Silicon-it's just not as snappy. I loved my 5,1, and I'm sad I can't use it anymore, but, it was just getting a little too slow.

I love my 12 core Mac Pro, main computer, thanks for doing another video on it.

Watching this on my very heavily upgraded DP 4,1>5,1, which is still my primary machine. To this day, I use it for audio/video/photo editing, occasional 3D graphics editing, Volvo VIDA car parts schematics (via remote desktop because larger displays), gaming in Windows, and many other weird projects outside of general use. I also built a >30TB SP 5,1 home server less than a year ago with a fanless GPU and an LP 6-core Xeon L5640. Both utilizing OpenCore. Despite being ~14-year-old machines, they're still certainly very useful in my case! Primary 4,1>5,1 specs: Dual Xeon X5690 3.46GHz (12C/24T) 192GB (6x32GB) PC3L-10600R 1333MHz RAM (And yes-You read that right) (Originally had 256GB 8x32GB, but POST was MUCH slower for obvious reasons) Powercolor Radeon RX 6600 8GB GPU macOS Monterey (2TB NVMe), Windows 11 (1TB NVMe), macOS High Sierra (128GB SATA SSD) 480GB exFAT SATA SSD (for multi-OS network file sharing) USB 3.0 4x Port PCIe card 5,1 Server specs: Single Xeon L5640 2.26GHz (6C/12T) 128GB (4x32GB) PC3L-10600R 1333MHz RAM (Yes-You read that right again) NVIDIA GeForce GT 720 1GB GPU (fanless) Over 30TB total storage (2x8TB RAID, 8TB, 4TB, & 2TB HDDs) macOS Monterey & Windows 11 (240GB SSD) USB 3.0 Type-C PCIe card

Great video, I retired mine for a Trash Can 6,1 a few years ago and use that as my daily driver along side a M1 Pro for all of my video editing. I Gave up my 5,1 12 core system as the trash can out performed it at a fraction of the power draw / heat. Not to mention the footprint. If Anything I would look for a 2nd trashcan Mac to have around over getting a tower version.

7:43 You should always disconnect from power when removing any internal components. There is still 5v trickle power with the power supply connected to mains. You could potentially damage the backplane. 8:13 You can just perform an NVRAM reset x3 and it should purge Windows from trying to boot at startup.

Remarkable how much longevity these machines have. I hope I get this out of my 2019 Mac Pro lol

got the 5,1 with a apple cinema display and i love it. i use it as my secondary machine and i love to experiment with it and push it to its limits. i always wanted exact that setup and now ive got it for a bargain. awesome computer.

thanks for doing a video on my favourite apple product!!

I’m surprised with how viable these things are still. I have a 2009 4,1(Flashed to 5,1) with a X5690, 32GBs of RAM, and a Radeon VII. It also has Monterey on the machine. It isn’t the fastest (If I compare it to my TR 5955WX, it gets completely blown out of the water), but for what it is, I like it. Even if I don’t use it often, it is fun whenever I do end up using it.

Bro's talking crap about the 2018 Mac mini, I just ran Cinebench on mine while watching this video and got 8714 pts. Not only that, but you can put 64 GB RAM in one. And you can easily get a NAVI-based eGPU setup for under $400. Really shows how much Luke has fallen behind on the knowledge of these Macs.

Running Monterey 12.6.6 on my flashed 5,1 early 2009 Mac Pro with MSI RX 560. No issues at all with open core legacy patcher

Thanks Luke for the Video, another great old Mac to think about! FR

I put a FENVI PCIe WIFI card in my 2009 Mac Pro and it’s definitely worth it. I can see all the WIFI devices in my neighborhood for about a 500ft radius. I had to remove the original WIFI card and make custom cables for the FENVI card to work with bluetooth but its worth it. The original Apple WIFI antenna SUCK and its difficult to upgrade the original card with a NEWER Apple WIFI card and then you Still have to upgrade the Antennas. Its just Much easier to put in the FENVI card. There are posts online on how to make the cables and FENDI card pin outs. Loaded with Large capacity hard drives these still make for a good File Server or Home theater movie server.

Bought exactly this Mac about a year ago for 100 of your over-the-pond-pounds. 6 core, 16GB ram, no hdd. Absolute bargain. Installed an unused SSD on High Sierra as a boot volume, and a 16TB HDD for all my movie files. I just use it as a Plex server which the Mac is probably a tad overkill for.

Hi Luke, first I love your videos, especially your upgrade/repair ones. After watching many of your repair videos, I bit the bullet and bought an old 2012 non-retina MacBook Pro. I replaced the storage, upgraded the ram, but I’m struggling to find a battery that doesn’t have a multitude of bad reviews. What battery replacement do you recommend?? I’m open to everyone’s suggestions. I’m at a loss here.

Using Opencore newer unsupported mac os x still make very useable today still in 2023. I'm still using both 2012 today

My 2007 dual quad is still in storage. This machine was a monster. We need this modular upgradable design back.

I always watch your channel and was inspired to get one a few years ago by one of your vids from back then, so I did get one about a year ago slowly upgrading it. Still love it still rate it and still use it 👌 although the tech we have today is amazing like my 2021 iPad Pro I still love my Mac Pro a solid machine to use 👌🏻. Parts are quite expensive in the uk though lol

I up-cycled my 2007er cheesegrater to a wall mounted mini bar...love it!

Always loved the design of these “monsters” I still get excited whenever I see one. Great video man.

Love this grator. I use mine for audio production. Only the 4 core with 32gb Ram. Plays nice with reaper and protools.

I loved working on those things back in the day!!

Nica video i was tempted to buy a similar machine but my question is. Is this worth for only audio software work today?

The Mini PCIE Apple used is actually a standard. It's just not common for the consumer market, but OEM manufacturers used it.

Allow me to share a great memory. I once had the 2010 iMac with the i7 in it. But I quickly realized that I needed the upgradeability. So I put my iMac up for sale and this executive of a company contacted me saying he intended to scale down his company and wanted a family PC. So he wanted to trade off one of his many Mac Pro 2009 with dual E5520. I told him "You do realize the difference in value here, right?" and this was back in 2011 and he said "Yeah absolutely, you're lucky because I simply wanna scale down on my business". And this guy, really nice guy shows up in a fancy car making the trade. We hooked up his machine at my house and we ensured each machine worked properly and did the trade. Guess as if I was happy? What a jackpot. I later upgraded it with dual X5675 (like in this video) and 48GB of 1333Mhz ram and a GTX 970 and man... what a beeeeaaaastttt!

And, for $50 get a NVMe drive and $25 for PCIe card, you can get 2500 R/W speeds all day. Good points.

6:03 thanks or showing me the PCIe lock latch. Just 2 weeks ago, I bought a Mac Pro 4.1 upgraded to 5.1 with 80gb, 512GB NVMe ssd, USB3 card, 2 x5680 Xeons for $150. I added my Vega Frontier. Installed Open Core and Monterey from my old 4.1. I need to upgrade the Wifi/Bluetooth card, but otherwise everything I wanted in a Mac. NVMe gets between 600-1350MB/s writes and 1400-1530MB/s reads. This is nice, although, I need a SSD on the SATA bus to help with booting faster because of the way the Mac firmware initially looks for drives. It is an awesome machine. I was lucky guy sold it to me was less than 5 miles away.

Using open core allows me to run Monterrey with no issues plus GPU acceleration. I use it for editing 4k and occasionally multicam, no problem. Dual 3.06 6core, 32gb Ram, RX580 8gb, nvme to pci adapter for my scratch drive. It’s still a mighty workhorse. Work is in progress for Ventura support by OC community.

I'm still using my 5.1 12 core dual processor with Mojave and Cubase 12 in my recording studio (I have a 6 core as a backup). Having started in the '80s with a Yamaha X5, then C64, Atari and Macs since Quadra up to the Mac Pro, I don't find my rig slow at all. I will keep it as long as it works.

i love those retrospectives. very original.

Because of YOU bro, in my studio, I’m running a 2010 Mac Pro upgraded the way you did...minus the graphics card mod and it’s still a beast! For music, it’s a beast and I won’t be changing for the next few years...unless I absolutely have too!

Mine runs great in 2023. macOS Monterey with 2x x5690, 256 DDR3 ECC RAM (thank’s Martin Lo’s OpenCore package) and CloudNinjas in HTX, sonnet 4x4 NVMe card with 4x 2TB WD Black SN750s, Titan Ridge TB3 w/ power pass thru to my mini 6 pins, Pixlas mod, RX 6900 XT, Noctua fan replacements, 4 x6TB WD Black HDD, LG Blu-Ray player, and a SanDisk 1TB SSD in Optical Bay 2 with my emergency Mojave. It’s a little extreme, but it is my passion project. :)

@Luke just now watching this at the end of 2023. I'm interested in putting an RX580 (or better?) in my 5,1 as I want to play Battlefield 3, 4, etc. What RX580 (or better) would you recommend? What cable did you use?

I did a bunch of research and learned how to flash my own mac cards. Still dependent on finding good firmware, but I found a good GTX 780 mac rom and I got a 780 for $100 and I use it in my 2009 mac pro.

Because of you, I'd say 2 years ago I built an incredible Mac Pro 4.1 and turned it into a 5.1, and got all the upgraded parts and totally upgraded to as far as I could. It was an incredible machine and if someone is doing just music, it is incredible for that ala Pro Tools/Logic Pro. The only reason I upgraded to a Macbook Pro M1 Pro is because I bought one of the Thunderbolt cards that was patched for that system and bought a UAD Thunderbolt 3 Satellite unit. It worked well with it for about a week then it started acting weird and was to iffy. Not only that, I bought my son the Mac Mini M1 when it came out and when I A/B'ed it to that little machine, it smoked it. Ran twice as much audio tracks and plugins. I had the dual 3.46 CPU's in the machine. That didn't matter, that little Mac Mini killed it so, I started looking at the M1 Mac and got the Macbook Pro M1 Pro and never looked back. That machine was a great machine but, the new M1's etc, just puts them to shame. Also, when doing videos, that Mac Pro is really slow now matter how much ram, cpu etc. I had 128ghz of ram as well on that Mac Pro and the Mac Mini still smoked it with 16gigs of ram. Hope that helps anyone thinking about getting the Mac Pro Machine and wondering if they should get the Mac Mini etc. Thanks and love the channel!

Absolutely. My flashed 4,1 dual-CPU is used for everything from photo work, plex server, to FH5. I genuinely don’t know what I’d replace it with since it’s so useful.

I have 2 as ornaments! Nice video by the way 🎉

I installed 2 Xeon processors in mine. Still viable. Not quite as fast as my AMD 7950X based PC, but still good.

Apart from an iPad Pro 12.9, it is still my only computer. A couple of years ago I upgraded the ram, the video card, put in an SSD and upgraded the processor. For my needs it still runs great, never had any failures or slowdowns.

I got a mac pro 1.1 in 2006, didn't stop using it until little over a year ago, thats 16 years of constant use. Sure I had to use dos dude to get high sierra on it but honestly it always worked well for me. I mainly used it for logic pro and most my mixes were all audio so no real need for many soft synths so I really didn't run out of power. The only thing that made me upgrade to a M1 mac mini was the power consumption. I noticed that the 37watts being used on the M1 justified me buying it as it would have paid for itself in energy savings over the space of a year, which it did do noticing a huge drop in my electric bill in the first month of use. For me the cheese grater is mac's finest moment due to the build quality and upgradability.

I own a 2008 8 core with 32gigs ram. I decided to install Linux on the machine and Linux is running well, the machine has come alive again.

I have mine sitting next to me right now! Haven't started it up in a while.....now I'm going to have to do it!!

My 2003 was my favorite and these are my favorite videos. I want. I think this will be my new hobby.

I have a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 patched to Monterey with 32GB RAM, an RX 580, and a single CPU x5690, and it runs amazingly. I paired it with a 30" Cinema display, and it's absolutely gorgeous. So nice to have a Mac that I can still upgrade in 2023.

Loving the smooth jazz cleaning music. 🎶

Would there be any value to having one of these next to (maybe under) an Apple silicon mini or studio? Slap 2-6 large 5 1/4 in hard drives and use it as a NAS for example?

I picked up a 2012 5,1.. like this video getting MacOS back on it was a challenge, then upgrading to supported OS, then adding the RX580. I did almost everything done in this video. Now I can dual boot windows or Ventura. I got the 5,1 for 60 bucks (small additional amounts for the graphics card, more ram, SSD)... I'll agree with Luke, I'm not sure it actually makes sense but I liked doing the project. Certainly beefy enough for a while. I have an M1 Macbook Air for my laptop which I can use to video edit or whatnot should I choose to. I like to keep it in my work bag though, so a desktop seemed like a thing to do.

Yes, definitely!!! i love upgrading it & cleaning it. It's my favorite Mac desktop.

I agree fully with the others, I also still use my 2009 Mac Pro that I purchased back then. I changed to SSDs, but that is it. Ok, it is not fast anymore, but for my music recording setup, it still does all you need.

Still rockin my 5,1 and have it pretty kitted out. Love this thing. Definitely no longer the king it once was, but it still does great for everything I use it for (mainly music production and some creative work). I also am like 99% done with my first full PC build in an old G5 chassis. Took a bit of dremel work and some epoxy, but its solid (save for some cable management, but not like you can see it from the outside anyway)

I just bought a 4,1 about a month ago for $100 plus shipping. It was a little beat up on the outside but all original inside. First thing I did was flash it to 5,1, installed Catalina, threw in a flashed Radeon HD 6870, a 6 core X5690 CPU, 32 GB RAM, 1 TB SSD, USB-C/3.0 PCI-E Card, and finally a 2.5 GB Ethernet PCI-E Card. For about $300 it's a respectable Workstation. This is my fist Mac of any kind, and I have to say I am VERY impressed. It's a pleasure to work on. Anyways, that's my first Aluminum Beast!

My school gives me up to 8 2008 macs for free. Idk a anything about PCs, so your video helped me a lot already. Thank you for that! I'd mostly use it for school matters, like Adobe illustrator, inDesign Photoshop and such. Do you have any tips, as to what components i should get? I have all the parts, like the original graphics card, till now only 8gb

I did the dosdude1 Catalina update on my Late 2011 MacBook Pro. Seemed to install fine, but keep running in to "secd" process hanging up my computer. I've seen mixed fixes for this issue, but what has worked for you? It causes the CPU to run at max then drag the whole system down. Quad core 2.2GHz i7, 16GB memory, and an SSD with Intel HD graphics.

The data throughput speed of the video card slots in a MacPro 2008 depends on which slot you're using: PCIe 2.0 x16 slot: This slot offers the highest data throughput speed, up to 2GB/s. It is a double-wide slot and supports 16 lanes of PCI Express data. This slot is typically used for the main graphics card.

OK so if I was just wanting to use my 2008 3,1 for logic pro x, etc, and not bothered about using it on the net etc, what upgrades would you recommend? PCI / GPU / SSD / RAM.....?

If I already had one I would add-on (possibly) and definitely utilize the setup OR sell it to someone who would ❤ THANKS FOR THE VIDEO AND TESTIMONY on your experience with editing for this channel on a cheese grater Mac PRO

I might actually pick one of these up and use it as a server!

I have a macpro 5,1 with a HD7950 Mac version, running Ventura perfectly 👍

for the ssd you can use trim enabler to speed it up

Just this past week I put my 2012 5.1 dual cpu to rest. Now it is holding on top of it a Mac Studio Max and the only thing I miss is the drive bays. I switch too many hard drives. But for the moment a OWC stx will do the job. And it was hard to do the switch. Because I could still work with it, I do audio mixing, but last year I did a Film Score project and it just couldn’t handle well virtual instruments. But also it was time to move on.

I still use a 2007 MacPro 2.1 8-Core for editing photos on. 32GB of Ram, SSDs and a halfway solid AMD graphics card installed. Have it for years right now, it runs two hardware calibrated NEC displays. Currently I don't need more and I'm still pretty happy with it.

I have a duel x5680 Mac pro, with an RX 5700 XT, usb 3, SATA 3, etc, and it's still my main desktop to this day...

I have a 5,1 Mac Pro currently running Monterey via OpenCore. I use it as my main computer and have no functional issues, but finally decided to get an M2 Mac Mini as a replacement. Main reasons were concerns about power consumption and longevity of the Mac Pro. The Mac Mini sits quietly on my desk and is noticeable faster in every way.

Just because it has 1000 watt doesn’t mean it’s drawling 1000 watts

Love the built on these machines

I've had loads of issues with most OS bar big sur on my 5.1 with disappearing hard drives! Big Sur has been rock solid. I've got loads of storage in there so I mainly use it for backups and VMware but get a steady 1400 read/write on my nvme drives. Have an RX580 in there and best of all mine was kindly given to me for free. I've got the dual tray 12 core in there as well. For reason you said about power only an occasional machine.

I have one of these 4,1 machines also with the 2.66GHz Quad Core Xeon, but I only have 8 gigs in mine. I use it to run a couple of VMs, including a pi-hole VM. Running Catalina which is fine for now, but I was unaware that you can put Big Sur on it. I guess I need to look that up.

I saw one of these at a local second-hand store, listed as "junk" (which means it probably works, but they wont warrant anything about it) for

Hi Luke, thanks for the super informative vid! I think a very relevant video along the same lines would be one of a last generation intel Mac (like the 16" MacBook Pro) with current model top spec graphics card in an EGPU. The current powerhouse in the Mac line up is the unbinned M2 Mac Ultra but it still can't keep up with PC that has a 4080 for working in 3D with an app like Blender. This is also very relevant for people using their Macs with Unreal Engine 5, especially now that it is natively supported by Mac Silicon. This is a video I wish would be made. I currently have a Mac Studio M1 Max and a MacBook Pro Intel 16" laptop and often wonder what would be my next step for upgrading to do help speed up my work flow. I use my Mac Studio for Unreal Engine 5 and DaVinci Resolve's Fusion program for some 3d motion graphics, both scenarios start showing their age as I push them. For Video, the M1 Max I'd say is more than enough, it's just the 3D factor that is limiting....

I have a 2010 5,1 with X5690 and R9 280X as my main macOS computer running Monterey. It's awesome!

Mine was retired for 2018 Mac Mini with a 8 bay hard drive box connected.

you can ABSOLUTELY run Monterey on here, especially with a Metal supported card, + boot screen is supported with OpenCore wifi related features should also work with OpenCore. My dual Xeon 2008 Mac Pro runs very well with that, and it has a newer MacBook Pro wifi card and one of those Mac Edition GTX 680s, along with 32 GB of fully buffered DDR2.