@Gavin I could do amazon affiliates but I doubt I'd amass more than a dollar or two. Monetizing the Definitive Mac Pro Upgrade Guide is tricky. I can't sell it as I want it to be open and its largely based off of community support. I've certainly dumped more man hours on this project than any other digital project I've done for ages. I could put adverts all over it but that'd be awful and the traffic levels it gets (while about 20,000 people a month view it) is pretty small potatoes. I'd happily take sponsorship from someone like Sonnet Tech as I'm a fan of them, but my guide is a curiosity. I may end up turning into a dedicated website and revisiting it from there. I lamely tossed up a half hearted Patreon but have nothing to offer and a tip jar.
You’re making me very happy, my friend! 6-7 years ago I did the 4,1-5,1 flash and installed Westmere 3.46 hex. It has been very successful but the lack of TB backed me into a corner with Pro Tools upgrades. Solved!!
There's a bunch of guys with Thunderbolt cards in their classic Mac Pros, mostly for.... audiogear as everyone loves the Apollos. There entire groups on it, the biggest caveat even with a modified Thunderbolt 3 card, you can't do hot swapping but with an interface like those, you won't be doing much of that with a desktop.
Holy crap, it’s 4am and I started reading your definitive bla bla! You worked your rear off with that. Thank you again. Given me a lot to think about. I’ll be back. Thanks again.
Hi Greg, love your guide and I am very happy that you have decided to branch out into making videos, Please continue, as the old saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words and a video is worth about 2 1/2 million.
Thanks. The plan is to focus on the Mac Pros to build out the Definitive Mac Pro Upgrade Guide. Already have a second vid on M.2 host cards I'm working on that'll be longer than this one, but have some other stuff that should be of interest to Mac users in general in the pipeline. Stay tuned.
This is your first UA-cam video ever? It’s gotta be the most professional video out there including all your resources . I’m retired and can’t afford a lot , currently I have a mid 2011 iMac. I’m a guitar player that doesn’t gig anymore just want to be able to record in my home studio. I have had sonar in my life as a windows user but in 2010 I got so sick of the Windows constant slow down and crash blue screen, I just totally gave up on Windows. My first Mac was a 2012 Mac mini with a 2.3ghz core I7. I loved it. Sold it and got a 2011 iMac because they were still upgradeable I see there are ways to get the latest upgrade but it’s not supported by Apple which worries me. So I’ve been shopping for an affordable 2012 5.1 but I’m probably better off getting a 2010 and upgrading it myself. Too many questions about Mac pros. Like there’s a million Xeon cpus where to start. I don’t want to get too old for fear of being stuck again in a couple years. I’ve read reviews that the 6,1 aren’t that good. I’ve seen some for 700 bucks, that might be doable but then is it better than the 2012? I know Rush Limbaugh always bought the Mac Pro and when the trash can came out he said finally because his didn’t have thunderbolt . Anyway, thanks so much your video is a huge start. Can’t wait to watch more. I’d love to get the 2019 but then I’d have to sell my truck first lol. Cheers
Yep, first UA-cam video, the 5,1s are pretty versatile machines and with a good GPU able to edit 4K. They require though a lot of self education to keep going, hence why I wrote my guide and decided during covid to expand into video. I already though had a media background but I hadn’t made any videos of my own since college, back in the DV era.
Thanks so much for your work on the online Definitive Guide. Absolute gold resource. The guide steered me away from PCI adapters for my 2008 but it made me realise that PCI area is the best location for added SSD drives. I've found the cheapest, easiest way to go is plastic or metal mounts that physically replicate the shape of a pci card (complete with blanking plate and tang to sit in a pci slot) enabling you to mount an SSD where a pci card would go. Simply run SATA data and power as-per the optical drive bay conversion. The plastic mounts are under $5 shipped from China.
Sounds similar in spirit to what I did for years in my 2008, I bought a bootable sata 3 card and SATA ssd back in 2013 and fed the sata cable to my optical bay and then tapped off the power from the drive bays. I didn’t even bother to properly mount the drive. I could have bought a PCIe card with physical mourns for sata SSDs like the Ramjet Mac Pro Ultra PCI Express Card or OWC Accelsior S or Sonnet Technologies Tempo but I was irked that they were a lot more expensive than the cheap $50 card I bought. They’re more reasonable now. These days there the most painless vector for SATA SSDs in the 3,1.
@@dmug Everyone runs into the same things on the Pros which is why your Guide is Canonical. Funny tho’, there’s definitely a tipping point being reached where NAS and ethernet/wireless speeds are becoming beautifully harmonious with NAS affordability (or rather frugality) levels making extra internal storage somewhat redundant. The other fundamental point to keeping the old gear up to speed for me is running legacy software such as a complete and paid for (!!) Adobe suite and (and this is a huge one) Macromedia Freehand MX. I currently run Parallels to run Snow Leopard to run all this software as seamlessly as possible SO your recent vid about getting OS9 and other OS to run on newer Mac could be THE key to reaching the holy grail of cheap home systems. Re the bracket: Being ABLE to afford things isn’t the point, it’s a win to make-do and solve. I can afford brand new cars but I don’t. It’s fun driving 10+ year olds for 1/10th the price.
Because of your videos, I bought a MacPro5.1 2x2.4 Ghz 2012, 24 Gb ram, 240 Gb SSD, 500 Gb HDD, 640 HDD for DKK 2000 ($284)😀 Also install a USB3.0 card, Asus 4xNvme PCI with a 500 Gb M2.
This was a GREAT video! Just reconstituted an old 2008 octocore with DOSdude1 Catalina and an Other World Computer VME 6 Gbps SSD, and runs great. Will look for further upgrades from your guide!
Another pci switches work, the high point pcie card (switch Plx pex 8747) and the iocrest io-pex40152 (switch pfx l32xg3); both with full bandwidth (x16), the asm2428 it's half bandwidth (x8). Thank you very much indeed for the guide, I'm always reading and learning from it.
@@MePeterNicholls Hmm, might want to pitch that to one of the communities. I never owned the 1,1 beyond the non-working one I got recently so I've never gone through the process of the Pike's script and dual booting on it. I'd assume it'd work by getting a Windows DVD for Windows 10 for legacy mode, then boot of the CD to install Windows 10 on a separate drive. Then I'd use what's know as the brigadier method to install the drivers in Windows 10 for all the hardware.
Greg... Thank you so much for your exhaustive efforts on this. I have a 2008 3,1 that is just about beyond the beyond, and is dying from, not being able to remain on. I think it's a temperature thing. Anyway, I'm looking to find a 5,1 and max it out. This will help out immensely. I thank you again!!!
I have managed to boot Sonoma 14.3.1 & OCLP from NVMe, although my Firmware MP51.0089.B00 on my MacPro 5.1(2012). EFI is on a Sata SSD and OCLP is set for NVMe booting.😀
Running a 2008 8 core mac pro 3,1 with Catalina. I also flashed a GTX 680 for boot screen, I also added a broadcomm wifi/bluetooth card from an imac? I think.. I wish I had this when I was doing the upgrades because it would have helped me a lot haha
nice video,music and details. Thanks for creating this I got 2 mapros 1,1 that a neighbor has just thrown out and Im watching videos learning before I begin to spend money on these parts. Best video yet very descriptive. Subscribed
The 1,1s are kinda dead when it comes to macOS as they're forever locked to OS X 10.11.x and with PCIe 1.0 they're about as old of a computer you'd want to use. They'll run Windows 10 fine though. If you're looking for an ultra cheap project computer, the Mac Pro 3,1s often end up going for $50 and can run the latest macOS with a bit of TLC. I actually was going to do a video on the 1,1s and Windows 10 but the 1,1 I have is toast.
You know what I find is funny is that the SSD is detected actually in Mac. OS on the Mac pro 1,1 and I know this because I was experimenting with snow and leopard for a retro mac pro project after installing the card mac os x snow leopard and lion recognized the pci card and even gave me a warning that the device is detected but running at a slower speed then expected so it does recognize it but its just blocked from using it weird as heck.
Good first video, Greg. I have a 2010 cMP, and am using a few upgrades like SSD storage for all four HD slots, and the Startech PEX8M2E2 adaptor with 2 WB Black 1TB drives. It does run smooth and quick. Maybe you can get into doing OS upgrades using OpenCore? Also, maybe discuss the idea of adding TB3 via the Gigabyte Titan PCIe card. am installing it today with the OpenCore software update to provide 40GB speeds. We are looking forward to your next video!
I'll have a new vid in the next week. As for OpenCore, I'll be eventually getting there but it's going to be a bit. For now check out Joerg Henninges' youtube channel. He (and Martin LO) are the people right now for OpenCore info and anything I do is likely to be based on their work. ua-cam.com/channels/yd3VQTBmzgTgC-73nUkmCA.html
Greg, not sure how much I'll use your youtube videos but your Mac Pro Guide is effing awesome; I had a fully maxed out 2.1, upgraded last summer to a 3.33 5.1, but I just picked up a 4.1 dual 2.6 machine with an updated firmware, bunch of upgrade cards, and 16tb of storage. Pretty geeked. One thing though, I'm not sure if the dual CPUs will help me or not. I mainly use iMovie for most of my editing and I'm not sure it can benefit from dual CPUs. Anyway, subscribed/liked to show my support, your guide has been extremely beneficial to owning these things over the years.
I have some more experimental vids in the works that don't necessarily fit the update guides: a vid almost done about the Oculus Quest 2 and the Mac Pro, long for opinion piece on Snow Leopard, and probably some dumb experiments like putting Windows 10 on an NVMe + Vega 56 on a Mac Pro 3,1 and comparing it against my 5,1 with that same GPU so hopefully they're entertaining as I'm getting better at the ol' youtubes. As far as iMovie and dual CPU, I'd assume at the very least it would be at some level, you can always fire up activity monitor and watch how much activity iMovie uses or use htop from the terminal.
@@dmug One thing I'm interested in; some of the CPU replacement kits come with bolts to replace the plastic standoffs. How likely is the plastic failure to actually occur? First time I heard about it was a few minutes ago. Seems really excessive.
I've so subscribed to your channel! Definitely an amazing resource and wealth of knowledge. Have often consulted your Upgrade Guide... and I'm even more excited to watch your videos. Thanks for all the knowledge sharing and effort going into this. I for one am very grateful...
Thanks, there’ll be some repeat content as I plan to add video to various sections, also plan to do some video only content, and a few experiments just to see if it can be done.
@@dmug I'm very excited to see what you have in store! I have three 5,1 mac pros (two 12 core and one 6 core) so i can't wait to upgrade them more than i have already! Thanks again!
You have saved me the trouble of waiting until the M1 Max 64 gb RAM w/ Minimum 32 gpu becomes attainable, allowing me to sell my Intel Macs and have a powerful editing machine I can build and be proud of.
Awesome tutorial! Thank You for making this video and list of metal supported cards for the Mac Pro! Could you make or include in your videos or comment here, your personal suggestions for best performance/budget working nvme card setup? IE 5,1. Subscribed and liked, keep the videos coming.
That's a very open ended question, what's your budget? What sort of capacity are you hoping to get? Generally, I'd just say buy whatever Samsung 970 series you can afford and start with Kyro M.2 as they have a nice design. You can't go wrong with the 970s. Otherwise, I'd target SSDs using the SM2262EN controller/NANDs like the HP EX950 or ADATA SX8200 Pro as they're a bit cheaper (although the Samsung EVO Plus has dropped in price) and generic 4x PCIe M.2 host. Anandtech has a nice breakdown of the SM2262EN and those two drives. For 1 TB you should be able to walk away for under $150 USD with this. www.anandtech.com/show/13759/comparing-adata-sx8200-pro-vs-hp-ex950 Lastly, if you're on a SATA SSD, don't expect mind bending performance improvements over it. It's noticeable but not nearly as much as going from an HDD to a SATA SSD. If you're on an HDD, even running a SATA SSD will be life-chaning, especially if its a good one like a Samsung 870.
HI Greg, thanks for the great video. A quick question as your video is 2 years old, are there any NEW to market NVME cards which support 2 NVME drives?
Not really that I'm aware of, just look for the ASM2824 or PLX8747 cards. There's a TON of the ASM2824s but often they won't boot unless there are two SSDs present. The PLX8747 is the better chipset, it's the one found in Sonnet cards.
I found out something interesting in my PC build & hope it will duplicate onto my Original Mac Pro 1.1 - I have thankfully a Radeon 5870 that works on the Mac & PC no problem as I was nervous it would not be compatible on the Mac for firmware reasons etc. to my delight no issues. I also have an ATI FirePro V5800 that I Crossfired together in the PC as I discovered found out that they are both on the same chip architectural family. I was sketical at first about this but in fact did confirm it with a geekbench test both cards showed up. I will have to try it out on the Mac Pro & see if there is a noticable improvement. I did not see much improvement in Crossfire in the PC when i ran Google Sketchup it would lag, process, take a minute etc. PC has a AMD FX 4.0 octa-core w./32gigs DDR3. Only when i got the Nvidia GTX 1060 3GB did i really notice improvement on the PC. Not sure that card is compatible on the Mac I have not tried but kinda doubtful I may try it someday.
Thank You So much for all you have done with the excelent guide. Pls don't give up on the CMP's Do some about Hyper-V or VMWare . I been running 3 CMP's w/ Hyper-V 2022 for some time. Great Hyper Visors w/ 8 SSD's & 1 NVMe..only issue is i have to add NIC's as i cant find NIC drivers. Much better looking than the HP & Dell Racks i used to have in my house
I kinda have to some degree as I’m not vigorously updating my guides. We hit a tipping point after Ventura and Sonoma started using AVX2, Apple abandoning newer GPU support in the Mac Pro 2019s, and used Mac Mini M1s are popping up on eBay for all of $300 . I made a series recently on the 2008 Mac Pros on my channel but after almost 6 years and too much money spent, it’s no longer a priority. I tabled videos on things like a WiFi upgrade guide as I sold my Mac Pro5,1 during the pandemic. If/when I make another video about the classic Mac Pros it’ll probably be in the vain of the 2008 series as those did quite well on UA-cam.
Should I replace the two harper town-penryn 2.8 processors in my '08 3,1? Does it matter as much as putting in a SSD? I'd like to put in a Nvme SSD. Can you recommend the best one that doesn't break the bank and for the processors as well? Thanks! I'm so glad you are out there fighting for the people trying to hold there old macs together. You should be known as "MacGyver"!
Got any links handy or model number, I could only find one thread on MacRumors mentioning that the Boot Configuration Data on a SATA device then using the driver, I'm guessing that's what you did? If so this vector seems non-OCZ specific. I might need to do a follow up vid. Problem I'm finding is OCZ is dissolved in 2016 thus there's little info and Toshiba seems to have wiped info about their legacy products. forums.macrumors.com/threads/ocz-revedrive-x2-pci-express-macpro-compatible.1135458/?post=12377417#post-12377417
I have an SSD OWC 6G card that refuses to allow wifi to work. I have 2 machines so I swapped one with the other and the bad one still didn't work in the other machine. So I totally scrapped the OS on the card and did a total reinstall. Nope, same problem.
Hello Dear Friend, I have a Mac Pro 5.1 2010 2 x 2.4ghz. I got Crucial P5 500GB NVMe and Akasa M.2 SSD to PCIe Adaptor and i put it to pcie x16 slot. When i start computer it stucks before log in page and restarts computer continuously. If you have any idea about it i will be very happy man.
I'm unsure of the model but the Akasa card I found is a 2-port card that requires bifurcation. I'd first try a single port m.2 host card as my guess is its the card.
Yes that's what I'm seeing in these videos that 10.11 El Capitan us the end of the road. But I also see some are pushed to Yosemite but you take a chance of bricking the Mac as they would say. Either it's the challenge of it all and learning the ins and out of computers. My intent is to get it working and its use will be for video editing. I've seen a lot of videos just for that reason. I currently got a macpro 17 inch (2011) that's my for everything computer lol and mid 2012 13 inch I use mostly for school stuff for now. Thanks for response all the best.
El Capitan came after Yosemite and from my experience it was a solid improvement and everything seemed to run cleaner and smoother. Did mine maybe 5 years ago and has been rock-solid ever since.
@@DiscoFang finally did the upgrade...I followed Hrutkay Mods videos for instruction and everything is working out great! Already begun to move videos to the hard drives. Do you know any good websites for apps that is compatible for El Capitan ?
@@constructionsafetyusa8108 Good work. Not sure what you mean by Apps. All the applications I run are standard OS. For legacy applications like the Adobe Creative Suite & Freehand MX (graphic design) I run Parallels Desktop to allow the complete Snow Leopard OS to run in a separate window. (I actually run 2 screens so the RH screen always has those Snow Leopard apps running on it.) Adobe’s own website has CS2 available for free download.
Hi Greg, thanks for these great guides! I got the NVME PCIe working (Samsung SSD) on my Mac Pro 3,1 using OpenCore and boot from it. But speeds (on Black Magic) around around 600s write/700s read. I also have a Mac Pro 5,1 and get 1400s write/1500s read from the same model of SSD - same configuration. But the real kicker is that I get those same speeds when I test the MP 3,1's NVME drive on the MP5,1! Any idea why this is the case? I know they are not affected by the SATA limitations. Your expert opinion will be much appreciated. Geoffrey
I have Mac Pro 4,1 2009 flashed to 5,1 with Metal Graphic Card. With these upgrades are you able to update to the latest OS natively or have to patch? Do you know if doing the processor upgrade allow you to run the latest OS without patching. Great video thank you for sharing.
After 10.14, the classic Mac Pros aren't supported. The best route is to use OpenCore as it'll add a boot screen and enable hardware decoding among a few other tweaks and let you install the latest OSes natively. The other path is using a script like DosDude1 but you can't apply updates without basically reinstalling the OS. Check the Definitive Mac Pro Upgrade Guide for more info but you can run Big Sur on the classic Mac Pros just fine.
I can't boot from my M2 NVME SSD. It's a Samsung 970 Evo Plus with a simple Pcie adapter card. The SSD is recognized and working. Black Magic DiskSpeed also displays the correct speed. read and write about 14-1500. but how can i boot from it ? I have Ventura on my Mac Pro 5.1 Cheese . the 970 Evo Plus got the latest aviable Bios / Firmware .
Thanks Greg, Tons of good info, thanks for sharing. I've done a Blu-ray drive upgrade using one of the "extra" sata ports, works great, but looks like I should stick to a sata SSD upgrade rather than the PCIe NVme upgrade in order to boot, it's just not worth making a brick out of my 3,1 if the firmware upgrade fails. Best sata ssd to use?
A user pointed out you can use rEFInd to install to the NVMe drivers on the 3,1, its now linked in the upgrade guide but after that, I'd just got with the high performing SATA drives with a SATA 3 card. NVMe is faster but its not nearly as huge going HDD to SATA SSD. I'd just recommend going for the higher tier drives on SATA as they only cost marginally more like the Samsung 860 or Crucial MX500. Those are the gold standard of prosumer level Sata SSDs.
Thanks for a very helpful video. However, I was a little confused by the reference to "pinouts" at 1:02. It took me a couple of rewinds to realize you are not referring to some problem between the SATA drive edge connectors and main-board slots they plug into (a concept somewhat similar to the traditional use of "pinouts" to refer to electrical/electronic connections)--which would be a pretty serious problem, indeed--but rather merely to a misalignment of the drive mounting screws, or the screw-holes on the drives and sleds.
hi i have a 2012 mac pro 5.1 12 core 64 bit i install new video card radeon rx580 i purshase sonnet fusion dual u.2 pcie card i put 2 nvme intel 2 tb ssd hoe can i intall drivers for this i can't make it worl
Ok So I got a weird one for ya, I have a 1,1 that i put a pair of 5365s and 32gb in. It ran fine and then I got a drive that had El cap preinstalled and it boots fine! Graphics are crap so i know i have to upgrade the GPU however my mac is still showing 1,1 in system report. Will upgrading the firmware improve performance? and/or what’s the best way to do this if I already have El Cap installed? Thanks!! Love your videos and they have helped me immensely to get this far!!!!
I'd first start with the NVRAM reset, as any time you swap the CPUs, it's a good first step. Next, I'd try the 1,1 -> 2,1. To be frank, I've never really used a 1,1 so I haven't done it myself. If you have problems still, I'd pitch this to one of the Mac Pro communities on FaceBook, Reddit or in the MacRumors Mac Pro forum.
Greg your website is incredible, have upgraded two Mac Pro 5.1 already with success. Than you. Question: I already have one Nvme card in the PCIe slot, if I get like a Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card that uses all 16 lanes or Highpoint 7101A (ASM2824) for example, what difference will I see in running different software on the computer, I know it can go up to 6GB a second, basically is it worth it? I am running lot of music and video software. Cheers!
The max transfer speeds aren’t as important as latency for seek times and such, i didn’t notice really a big change going to from 4x card to an ASM 2824 8x card. However, if you went through the headache of soft RAID, you’d see reductions in latency. The biggest value though is just being able to have multiple drives and swap between those drives at faster speeds. I felt like maybe I saw a second or two faster load on a sample library but I never ran any tests to confirm.
@@dmug I am just wondering running huge audio sessions in Cubase and Logic if having that Highpoint 7101A will make things a bit faster, the sound libraries are just getting bigger and bigger with every release.
Googling for days I found you, love this, but im going nuts, I can't restart my mac pro 5,1 when booted from Samsung SSD 870 sata , i can boot and run fine, but restart goes to the circle with line...i can't find anybody to explain what this problem is...or why its happenning..I dont need the excess speed of PCIE as mine are full, I just wanna use SSD on the sata sleds..can it be done and act normal? I can't find a definitive answer on this.
Nice vid! I am doing searches on mac pro and your content is relevant. "SSU pcie card x4 for NVME" is delivered and I will see if it works on my mac pro
It probably will work if its a single drive card. Yeah, my content tends to be everwhere if you're looking at the classic Mac Pros. The blog post I made about the Mac Pro's is pretty much the jump off point for most people looking for things related to the Mac Pros.
That’s basically at the threshold of what’s possible, you’d need any of the 4 drive Hosts, preferably the sonnet technologies or High Point And run at minimum a RAID0 with 2 to 3 SSDS, preferably quality ones with DRAM and not more than TLC. This also will not be a bootable drive without a lot of gymnastics that I really do not recommend.
I'm looking at putting in a new 3g SSD harddrive into my 2009 mac pro. Do you have to put the new harddrive into the far left bay to have it as your boot drive? Or doesn't it matter?
@@zigggyyyc7342 If you’re looking to boot of it, you’ll need an OS install on it, you can clone your existing OS using a tool like CarbonCopyCloner or a fresh install.
Great advice. I appreciate all the work you did on this. Obviously spent 1,000 hours or more to do this. I'd been struggling with some different things on my 2012 Mac Pro that you explained and I was able to then fix.
I appreciate it. There's a helluva lot of ground to cover when it comes to making a go of the classic Mac Pros. Even two years ago from recording this video, the landscape has evolved thanks to OpenCore.
@@dmug I can only imagine. I noticed so much quirky behavior with just doing my 2012 Mac Pro with not only the Open Core patch but even messing with the standard hardware. I had swapped in a Dual CPU Tray a while back and upgraded to 3.33mhz Xeon's and the thing would never recognize all the RAM. Finally saw that someone on MacRumors suggested cleaning the contact points on trays and CPU's with alcohol and I'll be damned if that didn't fix it! I could never figure out why I wouldn't get the boot startup screen till I saw your video and you were the first I heard mention anything about only base drivers & GPU support being supported on that startup screen. I tried to keep my legacy GPU installed along with my newer RX570 and OpenCore would have nothing to do with that setup. Had to keep swapping them back and forth in Slot 1 to make it work. I have 25 years of Tech experience (mostly Intel/Windows) and even I struggled at times. As much as I ran into I can only imagine all of the 1,000s of hardware variations out there!
Not really, I mostly list it as an option as there's people who have some hardware where the drivers never were updated to negotiate with the security restrictions for Kexts, mostly edge case audio gear. Only reason I'm on Mojave myself is old audio gear on my desktop. Mojave is a hair more performant as Catalina. It's all about legacy support for most people. Otherwise, I'd go latest OS with opencore.
Hi Greg. Really well written upgrade guide you have done. i ´ve had the Kinston hyperX Predator PCIe card and a Kingston Hyper NVMe 480GB drive for 2 years now. Funnily I never have got above 700MB/S in benchmarks on my Mac Pro 3.1 running High Sierra and a Nvidia GTX 680 in the 16x slot and the predator in the 4x slot. I have 32GB 667mhz RAM installed in 6 sims How can I get the 1.500MB ?
PS: you may update your guide with the fact that opencore legacy patcher 0.4.10 allows for NVMe booting atm without any other firmware and/or hacks. I have successfully installed and booting Monterey 12.4 on a off the shelf PCIe M2 Host card from icebox.
Basically if you're after a bootscreen there's very few options and all are quite old, I have them listed in the upgrade guide. Apple used EFI before UEFI became ratified as a standard so the cMPs use different drivers for pre-boot than PC GPUs. The only flashed modern GPUs are custom firmware that isn't freely available from MacVidCards, and that's for the RX580, Vega56 and RX 5700. You don't need to flash otherwise, and OpenCore will load the correct drivers for bootscreens. There's far too much to say just in a youtube comment. blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html
Hello, I bought a Red Dragon RX550 and installed on my Mac Pro 2009 (5.1 installed firmware) running high Sierra. But doesn’t show nothing on screen, I saw on your blog saying that card works... I put back the old gt120 together and shows in preferences that kext is not loaded.... any idea?? Thanks
For type of Ram blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html#ram51 You can buy on Newegg or OWC but it’s cheaper to go AliExpress (if you don’t mind waiting) or eBay if you’re looking for quick
You can get NVMe to work with Windows 10 putting a master boot record on a SATA device so it loads the NVMe driver so Windows can boot, but for the 1,1/2,1 there's no method that I've seen to get them to boot NVMe with macOS. The 2006s are a bit of an upgrade dead as they're stuck at 10.11.x. I suggest reading about the upgrade options in the upgrade guide. blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html
@@dmug I read the site, lots of great stuff. Here is the problem I have. I have a Mac pro 1,1. The Original HDD is dead. I own no other mac products. A hackintosh can get OSX downloaded during the install process no external mac needed. I'm hopinh there is something like this for my mac 1,1
Yep, if you're willing to eat two PCIe slots for two NVMe drives, you can. It's the least expensive route to go although less performant than getting a multi-NVMe card. Working on a follow up just about the M.2 Hosts.
Actually I posted about five weeks too early. Even the ebay prices have come down, what with release of M3. Actually I've bookmarked a 27-inch imac; not really something I had considered, but $99 would get me into a bigger monitor. Whether I want a step back to i7 870, I'm not so sure about. At least the hunt is interesting, and I don't need to do anything right away. Those of us running Ubuntu, BSD etc., this vintage of hardware is still snappy.
@@stevejohnson1321 Yeah, I think now that you find used Apple Silicon, the Intel Macs are starting to get really cheap. I've seen a few random late 2010s Mac Minis people have posted they picked up for $99. If I ever see one for that price, I'll probably nab it.
Sorry, late to the party ... Half of the time, I don't know what the hell you are talking about. Nonetheless, I am seriously considering buying a 2012 Mac Pro Tower. I want it as a music server. Anything more is gravy.
@@werehyenataur I also made this video 3+ years ago. I try to keep the Definitive Mac Pro Upgrade guide up to date but it's 60,000+ words at this point. Even I don't remember what's in it entirely. Sucks about the stolen computer. I had a fent head break into my car and steal all my chargers and of all things... my car manual.
idk what this dude said half the time but im glad he made the video im about to upgrade my mac
I’m still confused, but know more than i did before. MANY THANKS. Make a store, even click through, where we can buy stuff through you my good man.
@Gavin I could do amazon affiliates but I doubt I'd amass more than a dollar or two.
Monetizing the Definitive Mac Pro Upgrade Guide is tricky. I can't sell it as I want it to be open and its largely based off of community support. I've certainly dumped more man hours on this project than any other digital project I've done for ages.
I could put adverts all over it but that'd be awful and the traffic levels it gets (while about 20,000 people a month view it) is pretty small potatoes. I'd happily take sponsorship from someone like Sonnet Tech as I'm a fan of them, but my guide is a curiosity. I may end up turning into a dedicated website and revisiting it from there. I lamely tossed up a half hearted Patreon but have nothing to offer and a tip jar.
The Definitive Classic Mac Pro Upgrade Guide is fantastic, thank you!
Hell yeah! Not that I understood all that but I’m learning & I’ll be watching whatever you post!
“SUBSCRIBED”
You’re making me very happy, my friend! 6-7 years ago I did the 4,1-5,1 flash and installed Westmere 3.46 hex. It has been very successful but the lack of TB backed me into a corner with Pro Tools upgrades. Solved!!
There's a bunch of guys with Thunderbolt cards in their classic Mac Pros, mostly for.... audiogear as everyone loves the Apollos. There entire groups on it, the biggest caveat even with a modified Thunderbolt 3 card, you can't do hot swapping but with an interface like those, you won't be doing much of that with a desktop.
Holy crap, it’s 4am and I started reading your definitive bla bla! You worked your rear off with that. Thank you again. Given me a lot to think about. I’ll be back. Thanks again.
Yep, that guide is the result of three years of work.
Hi Greg, love your guide and I am very happy that you have decided to branch out into making videos, Please continue, as the old saying goes a picture is worth a thousand words and a video is worth about 2 1/2 million.
Thanks. The plan is to focus on the Mac Pros to build out the Definitive Mac Pro Upgrade Guide. Already have a second vid on M.2 host cards I'm working on that'll be longer than this one, but have some other stuff that should be of interest to Mac users in general in the pipeline. Stay tuned.
This is your first UA-cam video ever? It’s gotta be the most professional video out there including all your resources . I’m retired and can’t afford a lot , currently I have a mid 2011 iMac. I’m a guitar player that doesn’t gig anymore just want to be able to record in my home studio. I have had sonar in my life as a windows user but in 2010 I got so sick of the Windows constant slow down and crash blue screen, I just totally gave up on Windows. My first Mac was a 2012 Mac mini with a 2.3ghz core I7. I loved it. Sold it and got a 2011 iMac because they were still upgradeable I see there are ways to get the latest upgrade but it’s not supported by Apple which worries me. So I’ve been shopping for an affordable 2012 5.1 but I’m probably better off getting a 2010 and upgrading it myself. Too many questions about Mac pros. Like there’s a million Xeon cpus where to start. I don’t want to get too old for fear of being stuck again in a couple years. I’ve read reviews that the 6,1 aren’t that good. I’ve seen some for 700 bucks, that might be doable but then is it better than the 2012? I know Rush Limbaugh always bought the Mac Pro and when the trash can came out he said finally because his didn’t have thunderbolt . Anyway, thanks so much your video is a huge start. Can’t wait to watch more. I’d love to get the 2019 but then I’d have to sell my truck first lol. Cheers
Yep, first UA-cam video, the 5,1s are pretty versatile machines and with a good GPU able to edit 4K.
They require though a lot of self education to keep going, hence why I wrote my guide and decided during covid to expand into video. I already though had a media background but I hadn’t made any videos of my own since college, back in the DV era.
Thanks so much for your work on the online Definitive Guide. Absolute gold resource. The guide steered me away from PCI adapters for my 2008 but it made me realise that PCI area is the best location for added SSD drives. I've found the cheapest, easiest way to go is plastic or metal mounts that physically replicate the shape of a pci card (complete with blanking plate and tang to sit in a pci slot) enabling you to mount an SSD where a pci card would go. Simply run SATA data and power as-per the optical drive bay conversion. The plastic mounts are under $5 shipped from China.
Sounds similar in spirit to what I did for years in my 2008, I bought a bootable sata 3 card and SATA ssd back in 2013 and fed the sata cable to my optical bay and then tapped off the power from the drive bays. I didn’t even bother to properly mount the drive.
I could have bought a PCIe card with physical mourns for sata SSDs like the Ramjet Mac Pro Ultra PCI Express Card or OWC Accelsior S or Sonnet Technologies Tempo but I was irked that they were a lot more expensive than the cheap $50 card I bought. They’re more reasonable now. These days there the most painless vector for SATA SSDs in the 3,1.
@@dmug Everyone runs into the same things on the Pros which is why your Guide is Canonical. Funny tho’, there’s definitely a tipping point being reached where NAS and ethernet/wireless speeds are becoming beautifully harmonious with NAS affordability (or rather frugality) levels making extra internal storage somewhat redundant.
The other fundamental point to keeping the old gear up to speed for me is running legacy software such as a complete and paid for (!!) Adobe suite and (and this is a huge one) Macromedia Freehand MX. I currently run Parallels to run Snow Leopard to run all this software as seamlessly as possible SO your recent vid about getting OS9 and other OS to run on newer Mac could be THE key to reaching the holy grail of cheap home systems.
Re the bracket: Being ABLE to afford things isn’t the point, it’s a win to make-do and solve. I can afford brand new cars but I don’t. It’s fun driving 10+ year olds for 1/10th the price.
Your web guide has helped me add so much life to my 2009 MP, so glad you have a UA-cam channel now!!!
Excellent guide! Serious work, very rare...
Because of your videos, I bought a MacPro5.1 2x2.4 Ghz 2012, 24 Gb ram, 240 Gb SSD, 500 Gb HDD, 640 HDD for DKK 2000 ($284)😀
Also install a USB3.0 card, Asus 4xNvme PCI with a 500 Gb M2.
Great video. Saw this on MacPro Upgrade group on FB.
Very quality video!
This was a GREAT video! Just reconstituted an old 2008 octocore with DOSdude1 Catalina and an Other World Computer VME 6 Gbps SSD, and runs great. Will look for further upgrades from your guide!
Wow... !
You are really good and clear at explaining this matters.
Great video, thank you...
Greg, you are a legend. Thanks for your guide. :)
Another pci switches work, the high point pcie card (switch Plx pex 8747) and the iocrest io-pex40152 (switch pfx l32xg3); both with full bandwidth (x16), the asm2428 it's half bandwidth (x8).
Thank you very much indeed for the guide, I'm always reading and learning from it.
I’ve had my 1,1 since September 2006. It’s been off for ages but i really want to make use of it
Actually, was planning to possibly do a video about a cursed 1,1 I have. It only can run macOS 10.11.x but you could dual boot to Windows 10.
@@dmug was trying to setup dual boot but can’t seem to do it without having an ATA pre boot 🤷🏽♂️
@@MePeterNicholls Hmm, might want to pitch that to one of the communities. I never owned the 1,1 beyond the non-working one I got recently so I've never gone through the process of the Pike's script and dual booting on it.
I'd assume it'd work by getting a Windows DVD for Windows 10 for legacy mode, then boot of the CD to install Windows 10 on a separate drive. Then I'd use what's know as the brigadier method to install the drivers in Windows 10 for all the hardware.
Great overview of the SSD situation on the cMP!
Brilliant guide website. Helped me update my 5,1. Fab to see this vid.
Greg... Thank you so much for your exhaustive efforts on this. I have a 2008 3,1 that is just about beyond the beyond, and is dying from, not being able to remain on. I think it's a temperature thing. Anyway, I'm looking to find a 5,1 and max it out. This will help out immensely. I thank you again!!!
A lot of Tech information over my head that's why I have to Subscribed. Thank you.
These upgrade videos are great. I have watch them so many times now. Great job...
I have managed to boot Sonoma 14.3.1 & OCLP from NVMe, although my Firmware MP51.0089.B00 on my MacPro 5.1(2012). EFI is on a Sata SSD and OCLP is set for NVMe booting.😀
Does it work well?
Running a 2008 8 core mac pro 3,1 with Catalina. I also flashed a GTX 680 for boot screen, I also added a broadcomm wifi/bluetooth card from an imac? I think.. I wish I had this when I was doing the upgrades because it would have helped me a lot haha
nice video,music and details. Thanks for creating this I got 2 mapros 1,1 that a neighbor has just thrown out and Im watching videos learning before I begin to spend money on these parts. Best video yet very descriptive. Subscribed
The 1,1s are kinda dead when it comes to macOS as they're forever locked to OS X 10.11.x and with PCIe 1.0 they're about as old of a computer you'd want to use. They'll run Windows 10 fine though.
If you're looking for an ultra cheap project computer, the Mac Pro 3,1s often end up going for $50 and can run the latest macOS with a bit of TLC.
I actually was going to do a video on the 1,1s and Windows 10 but the 1,1 I have is toast.
Extremely useful. Will subscribe!
Legend! Thank you for all your work. Need to get the hard drives on my 5.1 faster but Big Sur running great dual screen.
You know what I find is funny is that the SSD is detected actually in Mac. OS on the Mac pro 1,1 and I know this because I was experimenting with snow and leopard for a retro mac pro project after installing the card mac os x snow leopard and lion recognized the pci card and even gave me a warning that the device is detected but running at a slower speed then expected so it does recognize it but its just blocked from using it weird as heck.
Good first video, Greg. I have a 2010 cMP, and am using a few upgrades like SSD storage for all four HD slots, and the Startech PEX8M2E2 adaptor with 2 WB Black 1TB drives. It does run smooth and quick. Maybe you can get into doing OS upgrades using OpenCore? Also, maybe discuss the idea of adding TB3 via the Gigabyte Titan PCIe card. am installing it today with the OpenCore software update to provide 40GB speeds. We are looking forward to your next video!
I'll have a new vid in the next week. As for OpenCore, I'll be eventually getting there but it's going to be a bit.
For now check out Joerg Henninges' youtube channel. He (and Martin LO) are the people right now for OpenCore info and anything I do is likely to be based on their work.
ua-cam.com/channels/yd3VQTBmzgTgC-73nUkmCA.html
Useful video, thankyou.
Added nvme & pcie express card to mac pro 4,1 for Catalina via opencore. All good.
What pci host card did you choose?
@@number1talentable Lycom DT-130 Dual PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD Carrier Adapter
Thanks for the response Christopher. Did you run into any issues getting up and running or was it pretty much plop & play?
@@number1talentable no issues, I already had the latest firmware installed.
installed it, turned on the Mac and it worked.
Thanks for the info. I'll probably go that route.👍
Take a shot every time he says definitive mac pro upgrade guide
You'd probably need a new liver
Greg, not sure how much I'll use your youtube videos but your Mac Pro Guide is effing awesome; I had a fully maxed out 2.1, upgraded last summer to a 3.33 5.1, but I just picked up a 4.1 dual 2.6 machine with an updated firmware, bunch of upgrade cards, and 16tb of storage. Pretty geeked. One thing though, I'm not sure if the dual CPUs will help me or not. I mainly use iMovie for most of my editing and I'm not sure it can benefit from dual CPUs. Anyway, subscribed/liked to show my support, your guide has been extremely beneficial to owning these things over the years.
I have some more experimental vids in the works that don't necessarily fit the update guides: a vid almost done about the Oculus Quest 2 and the Mac Pro, long for opinion piece on Snow Leopard, and probably some dumb experiments like putting Windows 10 on an NVMe + Vega 56 on a Mac Pro 3,1 and comparing it against my 5,1 with that same GPU so hopefully they're entertaining as I'm getting better at the ol' youtubes.
As far as iMovie and dual CPU, I'd assume at the very least it would be at some level, you can always fire up activity monitor and watch how much activity iMovie uses or use htop from the terminal.
@@dmug One thing I'm interested in; some of the CPU replacement kits come with bolts to replace the plastic standoffs. How likely is the plastic failure to actually occur? First time I heard about it was a few minutes ago. Seems really excessive.
Glad I stumbled on this !
I've so subscribed to your channel! Definitely an amazing resource and wealth of knowledge. Have often consulted your Upgrade Guide... and I'm even more excited to watch your videos. Thanks for all the knowledge sharing and effort going into this. I for one am very grateful...
Thanks, there’ll be some repeat content as I plan to add video to various sections, also plan to do some video only content, and a few experiments just to see if it can be done.
@@dmug I'm very excited to see what you have in store! I have three 5,1 mac pros (two 12 core and one 6 core) so i can't wait to upgrade them more than i have already! Thanks again!
En una sola palabra... Extraordinario!.... Muchas gracias !
You have saved me the trouble of waiting until the M1 Max 64 gb RAM w/ Minimum 32 gpu becomes attainable, allowing me to sell my Intel Macs and have a powerful editing machine I can build and be proud of.
Brilliant. Very clear and well thought out.
Cheers.
Great explanations about things. Super helpful and informative!
Awesome tutorial! Thank You for making this video and list of metal supported cards for the Mac Pro! Could you make or include in your videos or comment here, your personal suggestions for best performance/budget working nvme card setup? IE 5,1. Subscribed and liked, keep the videos coming.
That's a very open ended question, what's your budget? What sort of capacity are you hoping to get?
Generally, I'd just say buy whatever Samsung 970 series you can afford and start with Kyro M.2 as they have a nice design. You can't go wrong with the 970s.
Otherwise, I'd target SSDs using the SM2262EN controller/NANDs like the HP EX950 or ADATA SX8200 Pro as they're a bit cheaper (although the Samsung EVO Plus has dropped in price) and generic 4x PCIe M.2 host. Anandtech has a nice breakdown of the SM2262EN and those two drives. For 1 TB you should be able to walk away for under $150 USD with this.
www.anandtech.com/show/13759/comparing-adata-sx8200-pro-vs-hp-ex950
Lastly, if you're on a SATA SSD, don't expect mind bending performance improvements over it. It's noticeable but not nearly as much as going from an HDD to a SATA SSD. If you're on an HDD, even running a SATA SSD will be life-chaning, especially if its a good one like a Samsung 870.
hey there greg, nice first one...sub'ed you mate.
I'll be touching on OpenCore at some point, but mostly it'll be "Go to Joerg's OpenCore videos" as I'm not much of an OpenCore expert.
always a pleasure to help you out if you need background informations.
Greg your my hero!!!!!..
would love to run Big Sur on my 2.1 Mac Pro
Unfortunately, the lack of the SSE 4.x instruction sets on the 2,1s are the limitation. They are forever stuck at 10.11.
HI Greg, thanks for the great video.
A quick question as your video is 2 years old, are there any NEW to market NVME cards which support 2 NVME drives?
Not really that I'm aware of, just look for the ASM2824 or PLX8747 cards. There's a TON of the ASM2824s but often they won't boot unless there are two SSDs present. The PLX8747 is the better chipset, it's the one found in Sonnet cards.
Great Content.
I found out something interesting in my PC build & hope it will duplicate onto my Original Mac Pro 1.1 - I have thankfully a Radeon 5870 that works on the Mac & PC no problem as I was nervous it would not be compatible on the Mac for firmware reasons etc. to my delight no issues. I also have an ATI FirePro V5800 that I Crossfired together in the PC as I discovered found out that they are both on the same chip architectural family. I was sketical at first about this but in fact did confirm it with a geekbench test both cards showed up. I will have to try it out on the Mac Pro & see if there is a noticable improvement. I did not see much improvement in Crossfire in the PC when i ran Google Sketchup it would lag, process, take a minute etc. PC has a AMD FX 4.0 octa-core w./32gigs DDR3. Only when i got the Nvidia GTX 1060 3GB did i really notice improvement on the PC. Not sure that card is compatible on the Mac I have not tried but kinda doubtful I may try it someday.
You helped me.
Thank You So much for all you have done with the excelent guide. Pls don't give up on the CMP's Do some about Hyper-V or VMWare . I been running 3 CMP's w/ Hyper-V 2022 for some time. Great Hyper Visors w/ 8 SSD's & 1 NVMe..only issue is i have to add NIC's as i cant find NIC drivers. Much better looking than the HP & Dell Racks i used to have in my house
I kinda have to some degree as I’m not vigorously updating my guides. We hit a tipping point after Ventura and Sonoma started using AVX2, Apple abandoning newer GPU support in the Mac Pro 2019s, and used Mac Mini M1s are popping up on eBay for all of $300 .
I made a series recently on the 2008 Mac Pros on my channel but after almost 6 years and too much money spent, it’s no longer a priority. I tabled videos on things like a WiFi upgrade guide as I sold my Mac Pro5,1 during the pandemic. If/when I make another video about the classic Mac Pros it’ll probably be in the vain of the 2008 series as those did quite well on UA-cam.
Should I replace the two harper town-penryn 2.8 processors in my '08 3,1? Does it matter as much as putting in a SSD? I'd like to put in a Nvme SSD. Can you recommend the best one that doesn't break the bank and for the processors as well? Thanks! I'm so glad you are out there fighting for the people trying to hold there old macs together. You should be known as "MacGyver"!
OCZ makes Mac Pro 1,1 NVME m.2 raid controllers for osx 10.6-10.11 that also lets me bootcamp Windows 10 x64
Got any links handy or model number, I could only find one thread on MacRumors mentioning that the Boot Configuration Data on a SATA device then using the driver, I'm guessing that's what you did? If so this vector seems non-OCZ specific. I might need to do a follow up vid.
Problem I'm finding is OCZ is dissolved in 2016 thus there's little info and Toshiba seems to have wiped info about their legacy products.
forums.macrumors.com/threads/ocz-revedrive-x2-pci-express-macpro-compatible.1135458/?post=12377417#post-12377417
@@dmugI had the card but it was stolen I’ll keep looking at my local shop
Love to see the same kind with a MBP 2012 mid model
Thx
Well done.
I have an SSD OWC 6G card that refuses to allow wifi to work. I have 2 machines so I swapped one with the other and the bad one still didn't work in the other machine. So I totally scrapped the OS on the card and did a total reinstall. Nope, same problem.
Hello Dear Friend, I have a Mac Pro 5.1 2010 2 x 2.4ghz. I got Crucial P5 500GB NVMe and Akasa M.2 SSD to PCIe Adaptor and i put it to pcie x16 slot. When i start computer it stucks before log in page and restarts computer continuously. If you have any idea about it i will be very happy man.
I'm unsure of the model but the Akasa card I found is a 2-port card that requires bifurcation. I'd first try a single port m.2 host card as my guess is its the card.
Damn useful, thanks!
Yes that's what I'm seeing in these videos that 10.11 El Capitan us the end of the road. But I also see some are pushed to Yosemite but you take a chance of bricking the Mac as they would say.
Either it's the challenge of it all and learning the ins and out of computers.
My intent is to get it working and its use will be for video editing. I've seen a lot of videos just for that reason.
I currently got a macpro 17 inch (2011) that's my for everything computer lol and mid 2012 13 inch I use mostly for school stuff for now.
Thanks for response all the best.
El Capitan came after Yosemite and from my experience it was a solid improvement and everything seemed to run cleaner and smoother. Did mine maybe 5 years ago and has been rock-solid ever since.
@@DiscoFang finally did the upgrade...I followed Hrutkay Mods videos for instruction and everything is working out great! Already begun to move videos to the hard drives. Do you know any good websites for apps that is compatible for El Capitan ?
@@constructionsafetyusa8108 Good work. Not sure what you mean by Apps. All the applications I run are standard OS. For legacy applications like the Adobe Creative Suite & Freehand MX (graphic design) I run Parallels Desktop to allow the complete Snow Leopard OS to run in a separate window. (I actually run 2 screens so the RH screen always has those Snow Leopard apps running on it.) Adobe’s own website has CS2 available for free download.
Btw, the version I run is Parallels Desktop 13.
Hi Greg, thanks for these great guides! I got the NVME PCIe working (Samsung SSD) on my Mac Pro 3,1 using OpenCore and boot from it. But speeds (on Black Magic) around around 600s write/700s read. I also have a Mac Pro 5,1 and get 1400s write/1500s read from the same model of SSD - same configuration. But the real kicker is that I get those same speeds when I test the MP 3,1's NVME drive on the MP5,1! Any idea why this is the case? I know they are not affected by the SATA limitations. Your expert opinion will be much appreciated. Geoffrey
What about the pcie m.2 with asmedia number 2812 does it work on my 5.1 Mac Pro mid 2012
Boa tarde amigo.
Tenho um Mac 2008 gostaria de saber se tem atualização .
I have Mac Pro 4,1 2009 flashed to 5,1 with Metal Graphic Card. With these upgrades are you able to update to the latest OS natively or have to patch? Do you know if doing the processor upgrade allow you to run the latest OS without patching. Great video thank you for sharing.
After 10.14, the classic Mac Pros aren't supported. The best route is to use OpenCore as it'll add a boot screen and enable hardware decoding among a few other tweaks and let you install the latest OSes natively. The other path is using a script like DosDude1 but you can't apply updates without basically reinstalling the OS. Check the Definitive Mac Pro Upgrade Guide for more info but you can run Big Sur on the classic Mac Pros just fine.
I can't boot from my M2 NVME SSD. It's a Samsung 970 Evo Plus with a simple Pcie adapter card. The SSD is recognized and working. Black Magic DiskSpeed also displays the correct speed. read and write about 14-1500. but how can i boot from it ? I have Ventura on my Mac Pro 5.1 Cheese . the 970 Evo Plus got the latest aviable Bios / Firmware .
Thanks Greg, Tons of good info, thanks for sharing. I've done a Blu-ray drive upgrade using one of the "extra" sata ports, works great, but looks like I should stick to a sata SSD upgrade rather than the PCIe NVme upgrade in order to boot, it's just not worth making a brick out of my 3,1 if the firmware upgrade fails. Best sata ssd to use?
A user pointed out you can use rEFInd to install to the NVMe drivers on the 3,1, its now linked in the upgrade guide but after that, I'd just got with the high performing SATA drives with a SATA 3 card.
NVMe is faster but its not nearly as huge going HDD to SATA SSD. I'd just recommend going for the higher tier drives on SATA as they only cost marginally more like the Samsung 860 or Crucial MX500. Those are the gold standard of prosumer level Sata SSDs.
Thanks for a very helpful video. However, I was a little confused by the reference to "pinouts" at 1:02. It took me a couple of rewinds to realize you are not referring to some problem between the SATA drive edge connectors and main-board slots they plug into (a concept somewhat similar to the traditional use of "pinouts" to refer to electrical/electronic connections)--which would be a pretty serious problem, indeed--but rather merely to a misalignment of the drive mounting screws, or the screw-holes on the drives and sleds.
hi i have a 2012 mac pro 5.1 12 core 64 bit i install new video card radeon rx580 i purshase sonnet fusion dual u.2 pcie card i put 2 nvme intel 2 tb ssd hoe can i intall drivers for this i can't make it worl
Ok So I got a weird one for ya, I have a 1,1 that i put a pair of 5365s and 32gb in. It ran fine and then I got a drive that had El cap preinstalled and it boots fine! Graphics are crap so i know i have to upgrade the GPU however my mac is still showing 1,1 in system report. Will upgrading the firmware improve performance? and/or what’s the best way to do this if I already have El Cap installed?
Thanks!! Love your videos and they have helped me immensely to get this far!!!!
I'd first start with the NVRAM reset, as any time you swap the CPUs, it's a good first step. Next, I'd try the 1,1 -> 2,1. To be frank, I've never really used a 1,1 so I haven't done it myself. If you have problems still, I'd pitch this to one of the Mac Pro communities on FaceBook, Reddit or in the MacRumors Mac Pro forum.
Greg your website is incredible, have upgraded two Mac Pro 5.1 already with success. Than you. Question: I already have one Nvme card in the PCIe slot, if I get like a Sonnet M.2 4x4 PCIe Card that uses all 16 lanes or Highpoint 7101A (ASM2824) for example, what difference will I see in running different software on the computer, I know it can go up to 6GB a second, basically is it worth it? I am running lot of music and video software. Cheers!
The max transfer speeds aren’t as important as latency for seek times and such, i didn’t notice really a big change going to from 4x card to an ASM 2824 8x card. However, if you went through the headache of soft RAID, you’d see reductions in latency. The biggest value though is just being able to have multiple drives and swap between those drives at faster speeds.
I felt like maybe I saw a second or two faster load on a sample library but I never ran any tests to confirm.
@@dmug I am just wondering running huge audio sessions in Cubase and Logic if having that Highpoint 7101A will make things a bit faster, the sound libraries are just getting bigger and bigger with every release.
Googling for days I found you, love this, but im going nuts, I can't restart my mac pro 5,1 when booted from Samsung SSD 870 sata , i can boot and run fine, but restart goes to the circle with line...i can't find anybody to explain what this problem is...or why its happenning..I dont need the excess speed of PCIE as mine are full, I just wanna use SSD on the sata sleds..can it be done and act normal? I can't find a definitive answer on this.
Nice vid! I am doing searches on mac pro and your content is relevant.
"SSU pcie card x4 for NVME" is delivered and I will see if it works on my mac pro
It probably will work if its a single drive card. Yeah, my content tends to be everwhere if you're looking at the classic Mac Pros.
The blog post I made about the Mac Pro's is pretty much the jump off point for most people looking for things related to the Mac Pros.
I had no idea that the host card is fussy and might not work with my Mac. Hope the one I ordered on eBay is 😬
Which PCIE Adapter can you recommend for NVME's to get a speed up to 6000m/s?
That’s basically at the threshold of what’s possible, you’d need any of the 4 drive Hosts, preferably the sonnet technologies or High Point And run at minimum a RAID0 with 2 to 3 SSDS, preferably quality ones with DRAM and not more than TLC. This also will not be a bootable drive without a lot of gymnastics that I really do not recommend.
I'm looking at putting in a new 3g SSD harddrive into my 2009 mac pro. Do you have to put the new harddrive into the far left bay to have it as your boot drive? Or doesn't it matter?
Doesn't matter where the drive lives, it could even be in the optical bays or connected to a SATA controller (if it supports bootable drives).
@@dmug thanks for the info. Do you have to reinstall the OS on the new SSD or can you just choose it as your new start up disk?
@@zigggyyyc7342 If you’re looking to boot of it, you’ll need an OS install on it, you can clone your existing OS using a tool like CarbonCopyCloner or a fresh install.
@@dmug thanks. The only tricky thing is I need to install El Capitan OS on that. Any tips for doing that?
Thanks!
Great advice. I appreciate all the work you did on this. Obviously spent 1,000 hours or more to do this. I'd been struggling with some different things on my 2012 Mac Pro that you explained and I was able to then fix.
I appreciate it. There's a helluva lot of ground to cover when it comes to making a go of the classic Mac Pros. Even two years ago from recording this video, the landscape has evolved thanks to OpenCore.
@@dmug I can only imagine. I noticed so much quirky behavior with just doing my 2012 Mac Pro with not only the Open Core patch but even messing with the standard hardware. I had swapped in a Dual CPU Tray a while back and upgraded to 3.33mhz Xeon's and the thing would never recognize all the RAM. Finally saw that someone on MacRumors suggested cleaning the contact points on trays and CPU's with alcohol and I'll be damned if that didn't fix it!
I could never figure out why I wouldn't get the boot startup screen till I saw your video and you were the first I heard mention anything about only base drivers & GPU support being supported on that startup screen.
I tried to keep my legacy GPU installed along with my newer RX570 and OpenCore would have nothing to do with that setup. Had to keep swapping them back and forth in Slot 1 to make it work.
I have 25 years of Tech experience (mostly Intel/Windows) and even I struggled at times. As much as I ran into I can only imagine all of the 1,000s of hardware variations out there!
Hey dude!
Oh you know I'm gonna be linking your vid Pixlas mod vid in future right? :)
I'm left with one question - why not just upgrade to Mojave to get the updated firmware? Any advantage to staying with High Sierra? Thank you again!
Not really, I mostly list it as an option as there's people who have some hardware where the drivers never were updated to negotiate with the security restrictions for Kexts, mostly edge case audio gear. Only reason I'm on Mojave myself is old audio gear on my desktop. Mojave is a hair more performant as Catalina. It's all about legacy support for most people. Otherwise, I'd go latest OS with opencore.
@@dmug Awesome, thanks! And I see there is a new Samsung SSD out too, so many cool options.
Hi Greg. Really well written upgrade guide you have done.
i ´ve had the Kinston hyperX Predator PCIe card and a Kingston Hyper NVMe 480GB drive for 2 years now.
Funnily I never have got above 700MB/S in benchmarks on my Mac Pro 3.1 running High Sierra and a Nvidia GTX 680 in the 16x slot and the predator in the 4x slot. I have 32GB 667mhz RAM installed in 6 sims
How can I get the 1.500MB ?
PS: you may update your guide with the fact that opencore legacy patcher 0.4.10 allows for NVMe booting atm without any other firmware and/or hacks. I have successfully installed and booting Monterey 12.4 on a off the shelf PCIe M2 Host card from icebox.
my 5.1 has been crashing after the NVMe upgrade any tips? I reinstalled the OS Mojave and OS doesn't feel stable.
I’d need more info, best places to ask though is on macrumors forums or Mac pro upgrade on Facebook or r/macpro on Reddit
Question, any help on flashing Graphics cards?
Basically if you're after a bootscreen there's very few options and all are quite old, I have them listed in the upgrade guide. Apple used EFI before UEFI became ratified as a standard so the cMPs use different drivers for pre-boot than PC GPUs. The only flashed modern GPUs are custom firmware that isn't freely available from MacVidCards, and that's for the RX580, Vega56 and RX 5700.
You don't need to flash otherwise, and OpenCore will load the correct drivers for bootscreens. There's far too much to say just in a youtube comment.
blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html
Where did you say I can find more information?
On?
Can you give me the name of sata III I
internal card bootable? Thank you
Pretty sure I covered this in:
blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html
I upgraded my mac with an nvme and the computer reads it in the system but for some reason i cant switch to that disk. Did i miss something?
Know what firmware you’re running? Check under system report.
@@dmug yea i flashed it to 5,1
Hello, I bought a Red Dragon RX550 and installed on my Mac Pro 2009 (5.1 installed firmware) running high Sierra. But doesn’t show nothing on screen, I saw on your blog saying that card works... I put back the old gt120 together and shows in preferences that kext is not loaded.... any idea?? Thanks
Hmm, try an NVRAM reset? I'd try checking the MacRumors forums
I already returned to store, I’m thinking to buy a Rx-560 because is more certain that work, thanks my friend
@@rafaelduarte5620 I updated the guide as it seems that some of them work and some do not based on reports such as reddit and macrumors
Cool, I’m going to check it in the blog, thanks again
What ram for Mac Pro Mid 2012? And where can I buy?
For type of Ram
blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html#ram51
You can buy on Newegg or OWC but it’s cheaper to go AliExpress (if you don’t mind waiting) or eBay if you’re looking for quick
@@dmug - Thank you.
I have a 2006 Mac Pro 1,0. I wanna update it, is there a vanilla method like the vanilla hackintosh?
You can get NVMe to work with Windows 10 putting a master boot record on a SATA device so it loads the NVMe driver so Windows can boot, but for the 1,1/2,1 there's no method that I've seen to get them to boot NVMe with macOS.
The 2006s are a bit of an upgrade dead as they're stuck at 10.11.x. I suggest reading about the upgrade options in the upgrade guide.
blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html
@@dmug I read the site, lots of great stuff. Here is the problem I have. I have a Mac pro 1,1. The Original HDD is dead. I own no other mac products. A hackintosh can get OSX downloaded during the install process no external mac needed. I'm hopinh there is something like this for my mac 1,1
is there not an option to simply retrofit the standard HDD drives to SSD?
You can jam SATA SSDs into the internal SATA bays, but at the performance cap of 300 MB/s because the internal bays are SATA2, not SATA3.
Can you use two nvme each with its respective pci adapter?
Yep, if you're willing to eat two PCIe slots for two NVMe drives, you can. It's the least expensive route to go although less performant than getting a multi-NVMe card. Working on a follow up just about the M.2 Hosts.
@@dmug When I put the two nvme slots the mac does not start, it restarts in each attempt
Strangely, i could boot nvme ssd while having a non-metal gpu installed - nvidia geforce gtx 680 2gb
Will this natively run as a boot drive in Mojave? Or will it just be for storage?
Depends on the classic Mac Pro, but with the 4,1/5,1s when updated to the latest firmware: yes. The 3,1s, it takes work arounds. 1,1, not really.
@@dmug I got the 5,1 on OS 10.14.6, so sounds like I'm good. Thank you!
hi , i have a 3,1 mac pro, can i boot with the sata 3 card?
Depends on the card
@@dmug wich one are? i saw a list that said (booteable) on the right, is that it?
I wish I could afford a system like this, but my i7 dell gets enough done.
You can sometimes find these guys for sale locally depending on where you live for next to nothing.
Actually I posted about five weeks too early. Even the ebay prices have come down, what with release of M3. Actually I've bookmarked a 27-inch imac; not really something I had considered, but $99 would get me into a bigger monitor. Whether I want a step back to i7 870, I'm not so sure about. At least the hunt is interesting, and I don't need to do anything right away. Those of us running Ubuntu, BSD etc., this vintage of hardware is still snappy.
@@stevejohnson1321 Yeah, I think now that you find used Apple Silicon, the Intel Macs are starting to get really cheap.
I've seen a few random late 2010s Mac Minis people have posted they picked up for $99. If I ever see one for that price, I'll probably nab it.
Sorry, late to the party ... Half of the time, I don't know what the hell you are talking about. Nonetheless, I am seriously considering buying a 2012 Mac Pro Tower. I want it as a music server. Anything more is gravy.
TMI
Wrong. I run nvme on my 1,1.
Bootable though?
@@dmug we talked about this 3 years ago. Sadly the component was stolen by a meth addict
@@werehyenataur I also made this video 3+ years ago. I try to keep the Definitive Mac Pro Upgrade guide up to date but it's 60,000+ words at this point. Even I don't remember what's in it entirely.
Sucks about the stolen computer. I had a fent head break into my car and steal all my chargers and of all things... my car manual.