Mac Pro 2006 Upgrade

In this episode, I mention my new Discord server 'IMNC Nerdy Natters' - please come and join in! Here's the link: / discord
It's time to grab some snacks and your favourite beverage to enjoy this feature length IMNC ramble fest! Today, we upgrade a 2006 1,1 Mac Pro with some lovely parts. This Mac Pro has been with me for a good few years, so it's definitely time to show it some love. The 1,1 is a legendary machine, the first Intel pro desktop from Apple, a machine that blew everyone away at the time.
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[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

In this episode, I mention my new Discord server 'IMNC Nerdy Natters' - please come and join in! Here's the link: discord.com/invite/2kQG7fyb

[@FrezzyYT]

The link is invalid. Can you make a new one that doesn't expire?

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Done. Thank you!

[@kidkidder]

@@ItsMyNaturalColour invalid again, can i get a new link?

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

@@kidkidder oops, here we go! discord.gg/Rvy98YArxB

[@awesomeguysuncle]

Well i'm chilling for the next 3 hours

[@Suzumi-kun]

I'm old, the flashbacks to 2012 feel like yesterday when I first discovered this channel. Great video

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Thank you! Absolutely. It was worth digging those out I think!

[@elly3713]

I think we all can relate to that. Time is brutal, isn't it?

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

@@elly3713 Oh yes.

[@TalesOfWar]

I remember those videos too! I had hair back then lol.

[@GiuseppeGalli]

@@elly3713 in 2006 I was "only" 30 years old, all this makes me feel the weight of the passing years...

[@JRcash226]

Oh how i miss those glory Apple Days 2000 - 2012

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Yes, this one comes smack bang in the middle of an absolutely phenomenal era.

[@averyplays7576]

Takes me back to the 2008 Mac Pro days! Good Stuff Tom!

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Great days! Thanks so much

[@slundal]

2 hours and 45 minutes! :D Love it! Never stop with the long "ranty" videos.

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

I won't! 😀

[@UnkyjoesPlayhouse]

I have that model here, on the floor under my workdesk, I upgraded the heck out of it, and never use it, but I always wanted one when they came out, now I could afford one 17yrs later :) Cheers, great to see another video from you :)

[@Guanaalex]

I can’t believe how absolutely Golden those times look like from today’s perspective. Time may be brutal, but the One thing that’s great about it, - the past always looks rosy from the future. Or as true Treky, I’d say: Time is the Fire in which we burn. Super great blast from the past Tom.

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

🙏🙏🙏 Thank you SO much!

[@WrightJakob0]

Man those flashbacks feel like yesterday, glad to see another one of these on the channel. Big up Tom, really enjoyed 3 hours of IMNC geeky goodness

[@archangelsean]

i remember having one of these, the 2'1 firmware override, cpu upgrade and ram max out, made it a (to this very day) a very capable machine

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Sounds an absolute beast!

[@ArnorMusic]

This video takes me way back- when I was kid 10 years ago I saved up and got a 2008 Mac Pro (3,1) off eBay because of your videos, and did the HD 5770 upgrade; but since it was a PC card, there was no boot screen same as your old GT 640. I remember the Mac version cards were sooo much more expensive back then, and I always wished for one. Used that machine up into college and way after support was dropped. Still the best purchase of my teenage self-those were the days! Thanks for sharing Tom, I'm still watching your videos 10 years later, cheers from America-

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Wonderful comment. Thank you for the many years of support 🙏

[@SlowHardware]

Hell yes! more IMNC Mac pro content! Ive been watching since the 08 mac pro days!

[@ConstantijnKool]

this video brings me back to the time when you bought the 2008 mac pro. I remember me watching it on my white 2006 macbook thinking of when i will be ever to buy such a machine and that it must be so fast. what a throwback awesome video!

[@elly3713]

That takes me back to your PPC series when I discovered your channel... like what, 12 years ago? Time sure flies, eh? Great to see you back and doing well!

[@DavidSpector]

Great job as always Tom. Keep doing the long format videos coming

[@danshaw7231]

Proper IMNC Rambley Goodness, Great video Tom!

[@GiuseppeGalli]

Fantastic video, I still have 5 old generation Mac Pros 2 2.1 + 2 3.1 and 1 5.1 all fantastic machines.

[@Conflict7701]

I am very use to these videos I have been following your channel since the first tour of a geeks desk video always fun to watch!

[@fussbucket3080]

The 2008 Ram upgrade video was one of the first I watched, I was 15. Been a fan ever since

[@fane991]

Let's goo, 3 hours of IMNC goodness! Cheers Tom and thanks for all your work! 🍻

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Enjoy it 🙌

[@staso28]

Wow...almost 3hours of IMNC goodnes :) So happy!!

[@TheMugha]

ah the good old Mac Pro! I remember seeing your vids about your 2008 one years ago and dreaming of getting one, I ended up getting a 2006 one in 2017, even back then it still packed quite a punch in El Capitan and Windows 7, I managed to keep using it until it blew a cap in 2021, though it stopped being my main machine in 2019. Nowadays I've turned it into ATX and made it into my main machine again, though with new components lol

[@defoj9282]

Wow, I'm loving the regular uploads, keep up the good work!

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Thank you so much!

[@windowsvista2653]

havent watched in 4 yearssss !! nutssss seems very oldschool video , nice to see you again dude!

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Welcome back!!

[@TheOriginalCollectorA1303]

Awesome! This Mac Pro is definitely fitting into the Pro category, that RAM is insane! Crazy to think how old these machines are, but it certainly doesn’t mean they are obsolete. I’m sure you’ll get some good use out of this, plus the dual optical drive and dual HD Raid setup is such a cool extra thing to have. Old Mac OS is awesome, it seems like I tend to use Lion and Leopard more often than modern macOS! From what I’ve used so far, Lion has been working great especially on a hard drive. SSDs are cool, but I agree, hard drives are still nice to have and it still feels really fast on a machine like this. I need to setup some Macs with various versions of Mac OS as I still haven’t used some of them, but they are still solid operating systems even today. Definitely learned even more about the Mac Pro, such a classic and awesome design. Great video!

[@josephdidato]

Love this stuff Tom!

[@RockSteddie77]

Awesome my evening viewing is now sorted! 😃

[@littleshubunkin7926]

I bought a 5,1 off EBay and it came with 128GB of ram. Awesome.

[@BavarianM]

I didn’t even knew you where still doing videos I watched your videos so much when I was young

[@benwild5083]

When I did the ram swap I moved the big heat spreaders across to the new sticks, they fit perfectly and apparently help it to run a bit cooler, the smaller style spreaders were designed for servers where much higher rpm fans were in use

[@marksapollo]

A great video Tom, joined the Discord too. Thanks 👍

[@laurencejohnson4106]

I like the design of those computers and I particularly like the 5,1 which has that removable tray that holds both processors.

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Yeah that was a really cool design! Hopefully I'll get my hands on one of those machines one day and make some videos about it.

[@SnackyPaper]

Love an awesome imnc video thanks man!

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Thank you too!!

[@club1992]

Love the long form video 😊

[@mikiotty]

Ooooh this is gonna be good! 😍

[@VikingDudee]

Im not a huge Apple guy, but I still love them cases!

[@nickwort123]

I’m obsessed with the mini vacuum

[@RetroReviewYT]

Sometimes a shuffle is all you need to get all sticks working in these Mac Pros… I recall having to do this with my 32 gig kit I installed in mine.

[@itsanarse]

Hard drive rant is spot on, I usually leave my machines with HDDs if they came with them. It's part of the experience.

[@Eclipse6195]

Still got a 5,1 running 10.6.8 beautifully!

[@MACBoricua]

I haven't see you in a long while! God bless you and your family!! Greetings from Phoenix AZ!!

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Thank you!! Have a quick nose on the channel, I've been slowly ramping up with a few episodes recently, YT haven't been showing them to everyone so you may have missed some.

[@MACBoricua]

@@ItsMyNaturalColour most likely... I was missing you, my guy! Nice to see you back!! I do need one of those Mac Pros!

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

@@MACBoricua Good time to grab one I think! Thanks for the support too.

[@MACBoricua]

@@ItsMyNaturalColour ALWAYS, MY GUY 😇😇😇😇

[@haroldfinch1955]

On my 5,1 set up I opted for a PCI-E SSD adapter, then loaded up the 4 bays with hard drives in a raid 0. I used that system as a server for many years.

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Very very nice!

[@larrycroft470]

Hello my Good Friend!!! I am simply chuffed about being able to see another video!! Please give my warmest regards to Jess, Eli, Arlo, & Odie!!!

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Great to see you Larry! Thank you VERY much. Hope all is well over there with you sir!

[@TardisMarch]

Hey Tom! How are you doing?, it’s nice to see that design Mac Pro again, I love the 2013 Trashcan design but the cheese grater is a classic!, all the best buddy 👍🏻

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

A timeless machine. Hope all is well!

[@TardisMarch]

All good Tom, hope you are too buddy 🙂

[@favoovis]

Tom - hope you’re doing well and amazing to see another video from you, the long ranty ones are the best! Lovely bit of Sunday evening viewing. Real blast from the past seeing the old Intel Macs now, feels just like the PowerPCs did back in the day. Early Intels often got overlooked back then and it’s nice to see them getting some attention. Could just be me though, as I personally had a fair number of PowerMacs and PowerBooks come my way, but vanishingly few Intels. As much as I love my M1 Air, it just doesn’t have the same special feel that these older Macs have. These days Macs just feel like glorified iPads, and it’s a bit of a shame. I say Lion started the downward spiral with Launchpad!😂

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

You’ve pinpointed it! Launchpad was the beginning of the end for sure 😂 Thanks so much. Totally agree.

[@danigonzalez4299]

I have one and I'm very interested in see what do you do to it and how does it end up.

[@joeparker5733]

Interestingly, for some reason Sony started a new company called Optiarc on April 3, 2006 which is what their drives were called going forwards some time after that. Apparently it is a joint venture between Sony and NEC.

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Ahh that explains it!

[@RetroReviewYT]

Minecraft runs extremely well with matched memory… managed 100 FPS on 1.17 or so with my GTX 950.

[@TheMugha]

I think you're probably fine with the thin RAM, I had both cards full with 16GB of the thin heatsink kind, and although they ran reeeeally hot, they lasted until the machine blew some caps in the CPU power side of things, which made me convert it to ATX.

[@cleanycloth]

Hah what timing, I just sold my 2006 1,1 Mac Pro on eBay. It was a neat machine as it had a 2600XT in it meaning it would fully support El Capitan (and that's what it was running when I got it!) but I've not had a use for it. I do now have a 2010 Mac Pro Server though so that's pretty cool, has a bunch of old marketing material for various companies on it still.

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Haha brilliant! Hope it went to a happy new home

[@cleanycloth]

@@ItsMyNaturalColour Hopefully it will (can’t send it until Tuesday, bloody Parcelforce part timers haha) - it’s going waaaay up north so it might struggle to understand the new owner’s accent at first but I’m sure it’ll do fine 🤣

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

@@cleanycloth 🤣 If the buyer messages you with an issue, just tell them to be patient and keep talking to it. The Mac Pro is pretty quick to pick things up 😆

[@CoffeeOnRails]

I have two Benq 1440p monitors (the BL2420pt) that do VGA, DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort. Thoroughly recommend if you don’t mind a 16:9 aspect ratio. Also you can get anti static/static safe vaccine (Shelby over at Tech Tangents uses one a lot). They’re pretty neat. And yes, they do baby desk Henry’s. I have the Hetty and Henry from when I was a kid.

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Thank you!

[@danielrhodes7594]

To bad the Apple memory did not have a cool blue, red, or silver color heat sink instead of the black one. I wonder if custom Copper could even be made for them?

[@jasonlee3247]

Try acetone to remove the writing on the drive sleds

[@56kWarning.]

2:08:39 I remember the early days viewers advised you to get the DataVac brand 😆Mine is nearing a decade old and still going. 2:24:31 M3 HDD/PCB anti-vibration grommets. No point in getting used OEM grommets seeing they're disintegrating due to age.

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Haha well remembered!! Amazing, thank you.

[@topmandog1]

my god your alive, didnt realise youd started making videos again

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

I am! Check the channel I’ve done a handful recently.

[@topmandog1]

@@ItsMyNaturalColour I shall!

[@stephenvalente3296]

I've got a 3,1 and a couple of the 4,1's (2 single CPU trays and a dual CPU tray that's awaiting a 3.33GHz upgrade). Need to use them for something good alongside my M1 Max Studio. Much prefer having a Mac that I can open up and upgrade a lot. Will get a 6,1 "Trash Can" some day when they get a bit cheaper to not worry about having one sitting on a shelf for a while.

[@ashleycox432]

Always great to see a new IMNC video for a Sunday evening. Lion was, in my opinion, a horrible release of MacOS. I remember running the developer preview on my 2007 Mac mini and it was just horrible. When the final public release came out I had it on the same Mac mini and a 2009 white MacBook and it brought that machine to its knees too. Going from Leopard to Snow Leopard was like a whole new computer, going from Snow Leopard to Lion was like downgrading back to Leopard. I like your 'hard drive appreciation'. I've always been kind of against putting SSDs or CF cards on old PCs, and I feel the same about older Macs. An old computer just isn't the same without the sound of a hard drive crunching away. The exception is if you plan to use the machine for actual productive work, so I think you made the right choice here. It's funny to think how combatively slow MacOS and Mac apps are now, given that our storage can hit 7GB/S quite easily and the memory bandwidth of an M1 is 200GB/S and up. You'd think the machines would be super snappy, yet it takes my 2021 MacBook Pro running Sonoma longer to boot from cold than a 2007 Mac mini booting Snow Leopard from a 5400RPM drive. Imagine how fast the modern machines could be if Apple focused on optimising code rather than adding pointless features nobody really wants (does anyone actually like stage manager?). Nice to see the old Mac Pro still in use, these are just brilliant machines.

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Great comment, and couldn't agree more. Funny thing you should mention stage manager. Exposé was introduced in Panther and was a perfect feature. Spaces added to that perfection in Leopard. Snow Leopard refined both to an ultimate level. Lion then came along and fudged everything up with the horrendous Mission Control, that also buckled any secondary monitors in use. Now we're going for round three and doing more nonsense with the shifting of windows around the interface with stage manager, whilst still simultaneously using Mission Control and god knows what else, when the existing formula 15 years ago in Snow was totally fine. Love the way they introduce stuff as groundbreaking new features when we've had the exact same functionality since super early versions, they were just buckled under other junk. Even browsing to the apps folder here made me realise how bloated everything is now. My eyes pop out at any 'fresh' install these days. iTunes morphed into about 6 million different apps, all shite lol. All that aside though, I absolutely agree. My M1 mini is a beast, but I can hand on heart say that clicking around in Snow Leopard on the Mac Pro feels quicker. It's so much more optimised, simple, refined... everything.

[@RildoDealdough]

i want to get a mac pro but i dont know if i should go for a 5,1 which is oover priced where i live or the 6,1 which is actually pretty fair priced or i might just get a steam deck

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Tough choice!

[@rythomasyt]

A proper video to sink my teeth into

[@TalesOfWar]

I think the biggest things with Snow Leopard were the move to 64bit, the more streamlined apps that ripped out of the PPC binaries and the move to base 10 from base 8 storage and file size reporting. So 1GB is 1000MB rather than 1024 etc.

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Absolutely. Even though it would've been lovely to get another release or two on PowerPC, stripping all that out of Snow gave a very refreshing result.

[@chezsnailez]

Alas, we lost our collection of (now vintage) Macintosh tat including our OS 9 desktop, our PowerBook 5300c, 2 PowerBook WallStreets (planned an SSD upgrade on the wee beastie) iBook g4 15", the 3 Quick take cameras Apple put out - the three 'flavours' of Rio500 mp3 players. Various spare hard & SSD drives. Scumlord forcibly evicted us, leaving us with just our laptop and a tablet. We had been setting up for an SSD upgrade for 1gb to 2 and had a six-pack of hd cases to start transferring data from our old desktop. Welp, the first dozen years of our online life is now gone - along with all of the 50+ years of everything else in our lives... Even worse is the loss of Nadine, our beloved 'little kittle' whom we weren't able to rescue as he'd called in goons from the gestapolice to do his dirty work...

[@chezsnailez]

Try going over the hard drive sleds with plain acetone to see if that dissolves the ink.

[@wobbled5609]

The clips from 2012 hit pretty hard, I remember watching them at the time and it feels like only yesterday. Can time slow tf down please?

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Tell me about it man! It's scary.

[@FlintG]

Yeah it was crazy that we came from using 1gb ram lmao

[@jasonpacker9607]

Anyone actually trying to daily drive Snow Leopard or even Mountain Lion in 2024? I miss the simplicity and the gorgeous look of Snow Leopard but have no idea how to make it useful in an internet-facing life.

[@Symbiiotic]

Use open core to install a newer version of macOS on that machine.

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

I may play with it one day, but can't beat a bit of Snow Leopard on here!

[@ItsMeOscar.]

Open core needs a 2008 or newer Mac Pro you can hack 10.11 on it though

[@kieronedwards5237]

How is the 1u fan holding up in your server rack

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Extremely well 👌

[@kieronedwards5237]

I can't believe 3 years I sent it to you

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

@@kieronedwards5237 Tell me about it, time has flown!

[@kieronedwards5237]

@@ItsMyNaturalColour where has the time gone

[@ms1595]

You get no bootscreen with the 5770 on the MacPro 1.1

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

This one seems to!

[@ms1595]

@@ItsMyNaturalColour In my 1.1 the HD 5770 gave me none. And its and Apple Radeon HD 5770. Well not on OSX Tiger. Its now working in my 3.1 flawlessly and the GPU from the 3.1 went into the 1.1 to replace the 7300GT

[@railwaystationmaster]

D I N O S A U R

[@laishmorse4668]

The link to the discord server isn't working. It tells me the invite has expired. Thanks!

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Sorry about that. Fixed now.

[@laishmorse4668]

@@ItsMyNaturalColour Awesome, thanks again!

[@stephencawker1565]

the mc fiver with 2 970 evo plus ssd,s

[@entaotabr]

hi could you please tell me the truth...its really good expend money upgrading this one? i found on garbage and im a very poor person. you think if i expend money to upgrade will be better than use the money to buy a computer with the same money? tks so much

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Hi, I would save your money to get something newer. The Mac Pro 1,1 is a cool machine and can definitely still be useful, but for the price of upgrades you could get a more modern computer that uses much less power and doesn’t act like a space heater. Having said that, if the machine was free and it works, it should be fairly useful in its current state. Upgrades can only enhance the 1,1 so far. The SSD is definitely not needed, if it has 2GB or more of RAM it will also be fine. 7300GT is a slouch but again if it was free then that’s not much of a problem either. Maybe use it without spending any money on upgrades and then replace it when you have the money for something newer.

[@entaotabr]

@@ItsMyNaturalColour tks so much for your answer! i have a old macbook pro 2011 this you think same? or this i can upgrade?its 4 gb memory now i never did nothing. because apple computers is too much money for me and i can't afford it maybe in the next 2 years but also im using every day for try something business on internet just to not more get this stack financial situation!!! tks so much again!!! i appreciate

[@Llyrana7]

👍👍👍

[@josephneale10215]

tip when you do a video over 1hr do it as a premiere

[@ItsMyNaturalColour]

Oh thanks! Never done one before, will have to check it out.

[@StandupTechnology]

sehat sehat ya om, senang dengan konten nya #bahasa

[@neccros007]

I'm trying to figure out how to hackintosh a Lenovo M710q Tiny PC with a i7-7700T.... LOL

[@josephneale10215]

2nd