An absurd upgrade in a 2008 Mac Pro (NVMe/USBc/10 Gb enet aka MacFiver)

[@dmug]

Heads up, written guide due by October 31st. I wanted to publish this sooner than later and web host beign annoying. if you're looking for something else to watch, I reviewed the Sonnet 4x4 card and stuck it in this same computer just for the absurdity. kzbin.info/www/bejne/rqi4lGWCh9SIr7M

[@QuinsTechCorner]

I really don't care if these are past their use-by date, because here you are having fun with this old fella. This is exactly the kind of thing I like to spend free time doing. 🙂 I have a 2008, maybe I should make some strange financial decisions and start upgrading it... I do have an RX 570 which lives in my Dell Precision hackintosh.... hmm......

[@dmug]

[@samuraiartguy]

Thank you for this, definitely shows the aspirational realms of the possible! I am running two cMPs (Mac Pro 5,1) as my production design workstations and have been lovingly maintaining them for years. I’ve been hesitant about going the open core route with my daily drivers, but that process seems to have been steadily improving and getting less terrifyingly hacky. Thank you for showing us what’s possible and a comprehensible (geekiness tolerance your milage may vary) roadmap to how to go about. Takes some of the terror edge off! I am approaching the point where software evolution will turn these two perfectly functional beasts into 40lb doorstops! The DMPUG has been my “stayin’ alive” bible for years!

[@dmug]

OpenCore Legacy Patcher really makes it a lot easier. Monterey with most GPUs and configs really stable for most people. I barely used OpenCore prior to OCLP as I used Martin Lo's config, set it and forget then got a Mac Pro 2019 so I'm late to OpenCore and just now really geeking out with it.

[@Toebex]

Possibly the best piece of tech ever made. I love this computer. It lasted me for 13 years straight. Im not one for "custom" upgrades and forcing unsupported os's so I sadly said goodbye a few years ago, but Apple really made history with this monster.

[@toseltreps1101]

so basically you're dumb?

[@dmug]

Same, best computers Apple has ever made as they vastly over preformed. Mine only exists for the silliness of KZbin videos. It sat on a shelf in a shed for 2 years.

[@Toebex]

@ do you think it would be a pretty bad idea to use it as a main setup? Making videos, backing up etc. I feel like it wouldn’t be too smart, unfortunately

[@floridaman0219]

@Toebex It’s like using a 2024 low-end computer but with the 2008 high-end power consumption. These are beautiful machines but I’ll admit I haven’t turned mine on in a while. It’s hard going back from Apple Silicon

[@sacredgeometry]

The only reason I upgraded to the 2019 was to extend OS support. Its not performance. The computer is still performing and operating just fine. Ironically with all the talk of being more ecological and sustainable dropping support for a computer that is otherwise perfectly functional turns them into liars.

[@TheOriginalCollectorA1303]

Very cool! Sonnet always makes awesome upgrades for the Mac, this looks like a great addition! The 2008 might be an old system, but the fact that this card can work with it just shows how great the classic Mac Pro is. The setup/workaround might not be the easiest thing to do, but at least OpenCore makes it a bit simpler especially for modern macOS.

[@leefas8245]

To be honest, after spending so much time, effort and patience getting my MacPro 3.1 to run later Os, I dual booted with Ubuntu 24.04. It runs so smoothly, and it is at least twice as fast as the official El Capitan. So, what do I have? A MacPro 3.1 running El capitan for my music production (it is suffice) and Ubuntu for up to date apps, browsing, everyday usage etc. I could only recommend setting up cMP 3.1 with Ubuntu. So, there goes my frustration getting it to work with latest MacOs's. This really extended its life!!!

[@jksensei]

Nujabes as the background music! 🎶🎼

[@dmug]

Yeah, I recreated the beat, did a bit more bringing in another piece of Yusef Lateef sample. Same video, you'll catch a recreation of "One Love" by Nas with the Heath brothers sample. Doing my own flips lets me use familiar music without getting hit with copyright strikes and it's fun deconstructing stuff from beatsmiths like DJ Premier, J.Dilla, Pete Rock, Nujabes, Q-Tip etc.

[@jksensei]

@ Sounds great! Far better than some generic music other channels put under their videos. I like the way the first beat transitions into the beat of "Feather".

[@loczek1990]

Great Taste!

[@JoshmanLP]

Love my Mac Pro 2008 3,1. I still use it for Final Cut Pro 7 projects. Still a very capable machine for my needs. Love the video as well! ^_^

[@SamCoder.]

The good old Apple days! Where everything was upgradable and henceforth long-term usable :)

[@dmug]

Yep. My M1 Max will be a brick one day and I won’t have the skills to fix it :/

[@SamCoder.]

@@dmug True that... Today's Macs will be just non-useable once in like, 10-15 years... Also not only you, most geeks too will lack the skills to fix these modern macs...

[@TonyLasagna]

this was fun. i miss my 08. kept it, too. lost it in a basement flood 😢 on a positive note, i love sonnet. have their four nvme carrier in my 19 mac pro. been using their stuff for years!

[@dmug]

For real, Sonnet is basically why the Mac Pro 2022 exists with their host cards.

[@TonyLasagna]

@@dmugword, i’m not a huge fan of the M mac pro at this point, hence have not purchased one. i understand but also don’t understand the lack of ability to just use whatever graphics you want, and it’s just kind of a waste of space now for the “enthusiasts” such as ourselves - just me though. i will say they’re fast as all hell, having before i got sick and poor again briefly had an m1 macbook pro. glad i’ve been able to hold onto the mac pro. has no resale value anymore 😂

[@dmug]

That sucks but yeah, I’ve kinda come to terms that I’ll skip Mac desktops from here on out. I’ll probably just move to an expensive MacBook Pro, and live off of a dock + my NAS. It’ll be expensive, less stupid than how I have a desktop and a laptop. The latest MacBook Pros have thunderbolt 5 which means the ability to get a PCIe enclosure and just toss in the sonnet PCIe card and hopefully get PCIe 4.0 speeds. That’s good enough.

[@TonyLasagna]

@ exactly! i will probably keep my 2019 forever and use it until i can’t. its still plenty fast, even for video editing. that’s my thought as well. i’d like to get a new macbook pro soon enough. i was hoping they’d axe the notch this year. do you think it’ll ever go away? haha it would otherwise be perfect - especially now that i can get it in black. fun fact: a friend of mine still owns my black macbook from back in the day.

[@dmug]

No clue on the notch. I’d hope it gets smaller

[@ΜΙΧΑΛΗΣΓΟΥΝΕΛΑΣ-ο3β]

As a hackintosh opencore user I always use propertree to modify my config plist and basically, after adding kexts and drivers and even when replacing opencore when a new version comes out, I always run the config plist via propertree and go to clean snapshot to basically automatically add the files to the config without needing to go to a code editor every time to add them manually.

[@dmug]

Hmm, never heard of Proptree until this, I need to give it a whirl. Sounds pretty cool.

[@briansterling5912]

Hands-down my favorite computer system I ever used. SO upgradable and well constructed.

[@dmug]

Personal pick for best Mac ever

[@rrcoster]

Opencore life saver it was able bring my 2012 Mac Pro new life so i can continue using it as daily driver

[@markyoung01maccom]

Great video, loved watching!

[@dmug]

I appreciate it!

[@Ajay-hb1rc]

Hey! I know the song in the background! Awesome video btw

[@dmug]

Feather by Nujabes, later its One love by Nas in this video. I found recreating tracks I like fun as I have to figure out someone sampled a song, and it also won’t be flagged by KZbin

[@QUANTUMJOKER]

Great job. :) My 2010 5,1 Mac Pro has a 2 TB 970 EVO Plus NVMe SSD in a Simplecom RGB adapter. I can't control the lighting on this Simplecom adapter like with my Jeyi adapter, but the Simplecom adapter takes up the whole slot and thus feels a lot more secure. My Mac Pro also has SIX USB-C ports: four in a Sonnet Allegro card, and two (plus two USB-A ports) in a generic card. As for graphics, my Mac Pro has an RX 580 with 8 GB of video memory, which I'm perfectly happy with.

[@dmug]

That's pretty similar to what I had in my 5,1 for a long time. I lucked out scored a VII when they were on clearance from best buy for about $500, but had a 2 TB 970 Evo as my boot drive and I had an Allegro.

[@velocity211]

Great video. I just bought one for my 5,1.

[@dmug]

Should be one hell of an upgrade for your computer.

[@tyanite1]

Two part question on the Mac Pro 2010 5,1, please. Please keep in mind I have a very, very low budget: 1.) What is the best and cheapest metal card I can use? My goal would be to have it as a way to bring my firmware up to date, not for daily GPU use. I have two 2010 5,1 Mac Pros that were given to me, and I could swap the one metal card between them for upgrading. 2:) Can I easily use an NVIDIA GPU in the 5,1 with a Linux drive? If so, do I need to leave the other metal card in? Background: I already have the Linux disk with installed AI models, so I'm not going re-downloading 100 GB+ to run them on the OCLP Sonoma drive or the High Sierra drive. I have a data limit. And, yes, these Mac Pros should run AI models just fine, because of the many cores. I have a much slower 4 core Intel i7 computer with no relevant GPU, and it runs them just fine from the CPU.). Thanks in advance.

[@Realist-m9c]

I still have a 2010 MacPro, 48GB RAM, 6 internal drives by using the 2 DVD bays, the OS drive is a OWC SSD. PCI e USB3 card, GTX 980 4GB video card. I hardly use it but it still works like new. I can’t part with it.

[@dmug]

That's how I am with my Mac Pro 2008 although it's not nearly as kitted out.

[@robertoaguiluz7350]

MCfiver! Ive had my eyes on this for a while!

[@davejohnsonmusic]

Anytime I do upgrades like this in the cMP's, I find it's always better to just temporarily remove any drives that aren't absolutely necessary, to avoid confusion when using diskutil list, etc. I got a 3,1 to replace my borked 2,1 and honestly I was a little disappointed. Spec-wise it was obviously a superior machine, but I felt like the 2,1 had more raw CPU horsepower (both had max CPU configs). That's what ultimately led me to just move up to the 5,1. So my 3,1 honeymoon didn't last that long.

[@dmug]

Interesting, I've barely used a 2,1 as the Mac Pro 3,1 was first Mac Pro I bought back in 2008, dual 4-Core 2.8 GHz. I was surprised though how much faster my dual 5,1 was over my 3,1. I really felt it.

[@davejohnsonmusic]

@ I do remember the 3,1 being quieter than the 2,1, but I felt like my Pro Tools sessions were using up more CPU resources with the 3,1. I had more fun with the 2,1 because of all the hackintosh stuff and getting it to run Mavericks at the time.

[@Johnsormani]

My 5.1 is still in use every day here. Nvme, new graphics card . I love the design

[@BrainDamageIV]

I remember one of my libraries having one of these macs in the 2010s, still wonder if it’s there

[@nowave7]

I mean it certainly is nice you were able to do something like that with a computer that old, but the price of the card begs the question, why? On a sidenote, any tips on how to get that Radeon working on the latest Sonoma version? I keep getting an error in OCLP when building the driver cache for it. It used to work, but, for one reason or the other, I had to reinstall the OS, and after that, I just can't get it to work now. I did, of course, go through your really exhaustive list of supported cards, and installation howtos, but, I beliebe it has something to do with the combination of KDK, OS and OCLP versions. By the looks of it, we have the same Sapphire RX580 model. Though I have a 5.1 Mac Pro. Also if you'd need more details, I can proved a reddit link where there is a detailed log.

[@dmug]

A good chunk of what I do on KZbin you could ask "Why?" and the answer would be "Because I can". The reality is, this card will go back into my cMP but I'll continue to boot NVMe on my Mac Pro 3,1 with a generic card. For some 5,1 owners with legacy setups for say, Audio production, or functioning a host, you could jam 16 TB of NVMe storage + 80 GB of HDDs and access it via 10 GBit Enet, be it as a Media PC or otherwise as it'd be about the cheapest way to cram oodles of storage into a reliable box if you already own a cMP.

[@nowave7]

@dmug That is a reason as good as any, I guess. And don't get me wrong, I've enjoyed watching the video, but as you said, you'd be putting the card back into your 2019 MP, so it was just a nice experiment.

[@RenatoPernett]

In your opinion, what’s the best OS a 5,1 can run smoothly, stable,like a beast, since Monterey?

[@dmug]

@@RenatoPernett I don’t have a Mac Pro 5,1 anymore and hardware matters but Sequoia seems to run slightly smoother than Ventura on multiple systems I’ve tried.

[@Antiextremistdude]

El Capitan and Windows will install on a 3,1 onto a Kingston HyperX Predator PCI card with M.2 although it's not really NVMe (it works as an AHCI drive). But it will do read speeds over 700MB/sec, a little under for write. If you want to install Windows, you need another drive for boot manager. For the 4,1 and 5,1, without OpenCore you can install Windows onto the Predator card using EFI install boot. I don't think Windows will install onto NVMe but HS and Mojave can be.

[@dmug]

I had Windows installed on an NVMe on my Mac Pro 5,1 you don’t need AHCI, just needed to be installed via legacy bios mode (off a dvd). However, I don’t think it’s opencore compatible using this method, I did this around 2018 before opencore

[@Antiextremistdude]

@@dmug I couldn't get mine to boot Windows from a DVD unless it was an EFI boot and it wouldn't see the NVMe devices. Probably an issue with my installer disk.

[@polymatrix]

Since I literally just bought a Mac Pro 5,1 that already has OCLP & Monterey installed - with an RX6800 - I was looking for something like this to help me understand what upgrade options are out there. I'm definitely going to be checking out that Sonnet 4x4 video! Any recommendations for a USB-C/USB-3.0 card? I've seen some people saying the Innatek works well & they aren't super expensive on Amazon.

[@dmug]

It really depends on what you're after, if you just need faster-than-usb-2.0 ports, then just get a cheap USB 3.0 card. If you have a really particular use case (like VR), a quality card matters. One of the earliest videos I made might be of interest. kzbin.info/www/bejne/mIXQYYRnqtmWjJY Also check my upgrade guide: blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html

[@jdkap201]

OpenCore Legacy Patcher does have a chekbox to enable nvme boot, no hacks required. Should work on a Mac Pro 3,1 AFAIK, plus that would persist during an update.

[@dmug]

101% want to be wrong but when I checked NVMe booting in the build tab, it didn't work. That said I can try it again to make sure. I left that out in the video but probably should have tried again due to my dual OpenCore situation.

[@jdkap201]

@@dmug I'm not certain either, as I don't have a Mac Pro to test it on (yet). But hey, if it works it works, if it doesn't there is at least a work around like you've shown in the vid!

[@LocalStranger13]

There's a typo in thumbnail.

[@dmug]

Wow, this is a pretty good one isn’t it? I’ll have to get to that when I’m not at work.

[@asanseil5553]

I have three 3,1s, One won't work at all, no matter what I do, board is fried. The other two are upgraded with some kind of "latest" OCLP version from this past year that I did successfully, with SSDs, original GPU. I tried selling them for $200 or so, and no one cared. lol. Gonna try $100 soon. I never use em, but maybe I'll upgrade OCLP again before I go.

[@dmug]

When I was selling all my computers during the pandemic and GPU crisis to fund my Mac Pro 2019 purchase I didn't bother with my 3,1. It has a fan revving issue that requires MacsFanControl. I figured I might be able to get $50 for it because of that. I decided to keep it as it just didn't seem worth the hassle.

[@piecaruso97]

for the efi drivers please source them from the official open core releases they are included inside the release bundle and are from a trusted source

[@dmug]

Pretty sure isn't part of OpenCore, but if you have a proper source, do link me.

[@macbitz]

I have a 2008 Mac Pro in my loft. In 2008 it was my primary Mac, in 2013 when I got a 27" iMac, it became a file server, then when Synology started releasing their 'j' NAS devices it got switched off and mothballed. This video got me thinking as I love tinkering... but it soon got super geeky 😁

[@dmug]

Yeah, this computer sat in storage for 2 years and I decided to grab it again

[@mvmnt.]

Where does the time and cost effort end and just buying an M generation Mac mini start these days? Because that card is a great chunk of investment towards one.

[@dmug]

At this point it’s really a card for limited use cases: people who need to dual boot, audio guys with legacy hardware or software, people who need x86 VMs, or hobbyists or people who want to use it as a NAS. I may reach out to sonnet to try a PCIe to thunderbolt case and explore that for m series Macs.

[@mvmnt.]

@@dmug I've got an M1 Mac Studio, but still find myself reaching for cheesegrater, especially to run older Steam games on High Sierra. It certainly has it uses for legacy apps and games, but we're getting to that critical point now it feel when it comes to cost vs performance.

[@dmug]

@@mvmnt. oh for certain, the minute Apple Silicon dropped, everything else was obsoleted. I preordered a m1 air 16 GB / 1 TB and ran circles and my work 2017 MacBook Pro 15” and my Mac Pro 5,1 with dual 2 TB of NVMe + Radeon VII + 96 GB of ram. I’m a diehard Mac Pro guy and the Mac Pro community seemed mad I was declaring the classic Mac Pros over. I much preferred to edit video and do web dev on my m1 air as it was faster. Still love them, just now it’s for fun and not for any work or serious hobbies.

[@dragonheadthing]

A quite fun video!

[@techpchouse]

Sonnet is ❤️

[@jmd1743]

How are there enough PCIE lanes in that dinosaur?

[@dmug]

The 2008-2012 have 40 total lanes which was pretty heavy duty and still fair amount even today. I think only 16x are direct cpu (single slot) the Mac Pro 2019 is just nuts with something like 80 and has 32 direct access lanes which is nutty. It might be PCIe 3.0 but it’s a monster.

[@GaetsKrop]

I use a 2008 Mac Pro with a 4Gb vRam graphic card, 16Go Crucial Ram and a Crucial 1To SSD drive for the OS. I can't upgrade anything but it just works.

[@dmug]

I bet you could upgrade the OS with OCLP if you’re not already using it. I’m kinda stuck at Monterey.

[@Matt-oq4jq]

Don't worry about being geeky, you're preaching to the choir

[@CodyShell]

my unraid server needs this card TODAY

[@frankwalder3608]

The card is a 4x card, which gives you 16Gb/sec. Putting a 4x card in a 4x slot will yield maximum 16Gb/second bandwidth. Putting a 4x card in a 16x slot will yield maximum 16Gb/second bandwidth. You can only move at the speed of your slowest component.

[@dmug]

16 GB/s is true for PCIe 5.0, but this is a PCIe 2.0 computer. Wikipedia has a handy table listing the transfer speeds. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express#Comparison_table As far as gaining more bandwidth, 4x cards will physically not have enough pin outs for the additional lanes. I think I said this in the video, that sticking a 4x card into a wider slot will not result in more bandwidth.

[@LossyLossnitzer]

I have 2 of these, they are great looking machines I was going get a glass top and join them together and create a coffee table.

[@moetarded7757]

Ok I’m moving in…I just need a corner to hold my macz. If you hear a strange sound late at night please disregard I’m just flashing my drives.

[@derd3]

My 5,1 is currently unbootable. 😮😢 I built a gaming pc but its only six cores.

[@NuncNuncNuncNunc]

Why do I get the feeling you've been demonitized in the past for talking about dictionary entries in plist files?

[@miguimau]

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh. I STILL use it as my primary computer. XD

[@dmug]

A Mac Pro 2008?

[@miguimau]

Nature + hot rigs takes, always welcomed , Sir.

[@derd3]

I wish I never touched opencore.

[@Sharan25]

i wish the apple silicon mac pro was as upgradable as the intel ones

[@dmug]

I would have done a happy dance it'd at least supported dGPU, and even with my low expectations they managed to be disappointed.

[@chelsona2574]

i did the exact same thing!

[@dmug]

Picked a MacFiver? It's a great card.

[@tigersusyt]

Why not just use the mac pro 2019 as your main? Because it's much more powerful and new, so why use this dinosaur?

[@dmug]

Alright this is a curve ball, I pulled the card from my 2019 in the beginning as it is my main desktop and mentioned because I offlined it for the vid, I didn’t HDMI capture the screen. My 2008 is a project computer these days. I have a good series about my experiments on it you might enjoy as it sat on a shelf for about 2-3 year in a garage. It’s been a popular series (at least for me).

[@tigersusyt]

@dmug ohh, i thought it was your main computer

[@WhenWillILearn]

Just hide a few of the new Mac minis in the case and call it a day

[@dmug]

Those guys are super cool but holy hell, Apple charges $800 for 2 TB…. You could buy a MacFiver and 4 TB of storage for that price. Bonkers.

[@xbrun3356]

almost makes me miss my 5,1 frankentosh.

[@dmug]

I miss mine, dual cpu, Pixelas psu mod, Radeon VII, NVMe, USBc… but selling it was how I was able to afford a Mac Pro 2019 along with another cMP and various things.

[@techtipsuk]

I’m a regular viewer.

[@dmug]

There's dozens!

[@adriantraczyk]

Just get a Mac mini m1 8cpu 8gpu and job done 😊

[@dmug]

Wouldn't make for the most interesting video ;)

[@YouTube2021FM]

MacFiver will run like shit with all that stuff because the Mac Pro is PCIE2.0 at best

[@dmug]

It’s a 16x card, 8 GB a sec for 10 gig net, two ssds, and usb 3.1c. It’s unlikely anyone would tax all four things at once.

[@ElliottDay-ok6ti]

Pointless with the old motherboard and cpu

[@dmug]

It would be pointless if you are an audio engineer, who has a bunch of old hardware or legacy software but the practical use cases aren’t many.

[@emotionalintelligence776]

Favorite and logical are not the same thing. Yea I know youre a content creator and so forth, but be upfront with your audience about throwing away money. Any money spent on a outdated cMP should be invested in something with an actual return value and at least 7 years future proofing. With the release of the M4 Mac mini you'd be certifiable to spend easily $1k to upgrade these machines just to be slower then a iPad, even a 5, 1 should be a hard pass. Furthermore peek on Reddit forums of another post of please help, my Mac doesnt work after installing Opencore or OCLP. It is a reminder youre running a hacked machine not approved by Apple, you broke it you fix it. Sure we may love those people for keeping our outdated Macs viable. But comparable performance to anything in the last 5-7 years they are not.

[@markhewins8517]

still running my protools HDX 10.7.5 making money!

[@dmug]

"be upfront with your audience" I appreciate constructive feedback and realize the internet is a big place so I don't expect anyone to really dig into my catalog of videos but I have a video comparing a well configged Mac Pro 2013 vs a base model M1 Mac Mini as they cost roughly the same. I unequivocally recommend almost everyone buy the Mac Mini. I've also advocated in another video where I invested $75 into this computer that spending much more money on it doesn't make sense as if you spend too much, you could get a used M1, and the list goes on and on. This also a bit surprising. I don't know if this will sway your opinion and I'm not sure if you watched the entire video, I mention in this very video that this card isn't exactly a smart buy and that it was released too late, unless you have a very particular use case.. I also mention for Mac Pro 2019 or 2022 owners you probably should get a different card.

[@mikuhatsune690]

Appreciate your geek spirit, but apple computers are so complicated to use and too privycy. This config is sh*t.

[@Drummer55]

So much for Mac's being easy to use...

[@sacredgeometry]

This computer is almost 6 years out of support. Everything in this video is how to keep it running on OSs that are no longer supported.