Welcome to the guide on buying Early Intel Macs!
I've noticed a lot of people ask questions about which Early Intel Mac they should get. Hopefully this helps clear up some confusion.
Why should I consider an Early Intel Mac?
Early Intel Macs can be a way to get a good Apple computer on a tight budget, if you want to use older software or if you like tinkering with older Macs but you don't want to go into the PPC and 68K era yet.
What qualifies as an Early Intel Mac?
The first Intel Macs went on sale with Core Duo and Core Solo CPUs starting in January 2006 (as well as Xeon X-series for Mac Pros).
For this guide, Early Intels covers any Mac equipped with a Core Solo, Core Duo, or Core 2 Duo CPU. For the latter, a couple of models were sold by Apple as late as early 2012.
In addition, early Mac Pros (2006-12) and the original Core-i-series iMacs from Late 2009 may also be considered as Early Intel Macs.
MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro
The original MacBooks and MacBook Pros can be a cheap way to start off in Early Intel Macs. We generally recommend a late 2006 or later MacBook(Pro) as the original "1,1" or early 2006 version uses the older 32-bit Core Duo and Core Solo CPUs (which are incompatible with versions of OS X newer than 10.6 Snow Leopard, released on August 28, 2009.
The MacBook came in white or black variants (up to the 4,1 model), however black 'collectors edition' units can be more expensive. Some people have taken a later-model white MacBook and a dead black MacBook to make a black-MacBook that can run El Capitan and later; however this process is difficult. There are also pre-unibody and unibody versions of the MacBook. The pre-unibody's are cheaper but older. The MacBook5,2 is a bit of a secret tip - it shares the pre-unibody design of its predecessors but has NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics which are significantly more powerful than the earlier Intel graphics and also allow the installation of versions of OS X newer than 10.7 Lion.
The Late 2008 unibody MacBook (5,1 model) has a much nicer case than its predecessors and a LED-backlit screen, however it drops the FireWire port, which can be a glaring omission if you're used to having FireWire on Macs.
In a similar fashion, the MacBook Pro came in 15-inch and 17-inch versions, there is not much of a price difference however the 17-inch is obviously slightly bigger and heavier. I would recommend a 15-inch Late 2006 MacBook Pro if you're on a tiny budget or a 2007/2008 model if you can spend more.
Note that the 2007 and 2008 models have defective/failing graphics chips but some will have working graphics. It will usually be said by the seller. A reliably way of determining whether a MacBook Pro has had its logic board replaced by Apple is a "green dot" sticker on the RAM slots. This means the machine in question has a later revision of the graphics chip which is known to be reliable.
17" Late 2008 models built after October 2008 have the later revision GPU's out of the box; these work fine.
The 2009 and 2010 13" MacBook Pro also shipped with Core 2 Duo CPUs, these are very solid machines and have significantly better screens than the plastic MacBook and the "unibody" Late 2008 MacBook. The 2010 model in particular can hold 16 GB RAM and features Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics which were very fast for an integrated solution in their day.
The MacBook Air came out in 2008 and had two "Early Intel" revisions in late 2008 and 2009. These are expensive as they are collectors items and have painfully slow processors and 1.8" hard drives so I would not recommend these.
The Late 2010 MacBook Air introduced an 11" model and decent SSDs throughout the line-up, however the 11" model also suffers from painfully slow 1.4 or 1.6 GHz processors. The 13" model has faster processors (1.86 or 2.13 GHz) than the 11" and upgrades the screen resolution to 1440×900 (all 13" MacBooks and even the 13" MacBook Pro are stuck with 1280×800).
Mac mini and the iMac
The Mac mini and iMac are good budget options if you are looking for a desktop computer.
The Mac mini is a small desktop and had versions in 2006, 2007 and 2009. The 2006 have again the older 32-bit "Core Duo" processors. These can be upgraded however you will have to upgrade the 'firmware' to the 2007 model to support newer chips. Chips supported are the ones used in the 2007 model however it is a hard procedure for the end user. I would find a 2009 Mac Mini as these can support the latest versions of macOS and are fast enough to use a daily machine. They also add support for using two monitors at once, which is a big boost to productivity.
The iMac came in 17-inch, 20-inch and 24-inch versions in 2006, 2007 and 2008. The early 2006 has the Core Duo so these don't run newer versions of OS X. Plastic versions are from 2006 and the metal versions in 2007 and 2008. 2007 and 2008's support newer versions of OS X and can be patched to run newer versions but I will cover OS's soon. I recommend a 24-inch 2008 model as a good option as they are good machines for the price and have better screens than the white 17" or aluminum 20" models. Note that the 17" white and 20" aluminium have inferior TN screens with bad viewing angles, meaning worse image quality. You can also get the original Core-i (i5, i7) iMac's which were faster and had better screens (21.5" 1080p and 27" 1440p). These were made in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Note that the 2011 iMac's used Radeon HD 6000 series video cards that fail often.
Mac Pro
The Mac Pro is Apple's high-end Xeon based tower workstation. These are larger than iMac's but more powerful. They come with Intel Xeon processors, ECC memory and high performance graphics card upgrades. Some models can be flashed (1,1 and 4,1) to be later models (2,1 and 5,1) which support newer and faster CPU's and later OS's. The 3,1 cannot be flashed.
The 1,1 or 2,1 can use Xeon 51x0 CPUs or Xeon X53x5 CPUs, the former being dual cores, the latter being quad cores. Note that you need a 2,1 or flashed 1,1 to use the X53x5s. The 5,1 uses Gulftown and Westmere series chips which are much faster than previous-gen chips in certain tasks. They can also use more and faster RAM (128 GB DDR3 vs. 32 or 64 GB DDR2 FB).
These are covered much more in the Mac Pro forum and on "The Definitive Upgrade Guide to the Classic Mac Pro".
Xserve
The Xserve was Apple's 1U rack mount system. They use similar if not the same hardware as the classic Mac Pro.
It is not clear on whether the Xserve3,1 supports running MacPro5,1 firmware, which would let it run Westmere chips and support presumably more than 128GB of RAM. The Xserve3,1 uses a GPU with an MXM slot by default, meaning that you will either need to use a MXM GPU like those used in 2009-2011 iMacs or use a PCIe riser cable and run a normal GPU outside of the chassis.
EFI32 systems
In September 2006, Apple started shipping Macs with the fancy new Core 2 Duo "Merom" chip, which were a 64-bit CPU. However, these systems while having a fully 64-bit compatible CPU, had 32-bit firmware "EFI32". This meant that were not actually "full 64-bit" systems. EFI32 systems support up to 4GB of DDR2 667MHz, however only ~3-3.5GB can be used. 64-bit Windows and Linux can be installed with some tweaking, Lion is the official max supported OS X version, but with the excellent NexPostFacto, Mountain Lion can be installed if you only have the Intel GMA 950 or X3100 chip, and if you have a Radeon X1600 you can run Mavericks.
The Mid 2007 iMac, Mid/Late 2007 MacBook Pro and the Late 2007 MacBook all had Merom chips, but they were fully 64-bit, known as they support up to 6GB of RAM, which is past the physical 3.84GB limit for 32-bit systems. The '07 iMac and MacBook Pro can run up to El Capitan (10.11.6) but the Late 2007 MacBook can only run up to Mountain Lion since it has the GMA X3100, which is not supported past Mountain Lion. The Early '08 MacBook Air is the same.
RAM upgrades and Operating Systems for other models:
To sum up operating systems, Mac OS X versions are on a table below (excluding Mac Pro; compatibility given above).
Windows 7 is the best Windows version to use and Linux support varies depending on the model in question.
System discs can be found on sites like eBay and OS X installers for Lion and later versions can be acquired from Apple.
Upgrades:
Mac minis, MacBooks and MacBook Pros can have RAM (see table above) and hard drives upgraded through SODIMMs and 2.5" SATA discs respectively. The iMac's RAM can be upgraded easily but drives are much harder. Mac Mini's CPU (2006/2007), RAM (all) and discs (all) can be upgraded.
1: Late 2006 Mac's support 4GB of RAM and will show up in About this Mac, however only ~3.5GB will be detected and be used by the computer due to 32-bit EFI limitations.
2: 56GB is the maximum supported RAM if you have a single CPU Mac Pro with a W3xx0 CPU, if you have a X5xx0 CPU the limit is 64GB. The limit for any Dual CPU model is 160GB, using 5x 32GB DIMM, however that is not 100%. There are also posts where people have used OpenCore to get 256GB working (8x32GB).
Since all 4,1/5,1 CPUs are triple-channel capable, I'd suggest that for optimal performance you only use a total RAM amount that divides by 6 eg: 24GB, 48GB and 96GB.
3: The original GPU's that shipped with or could be bought alongside the Mac Pro 2009/2010/2012 are not Metal-capable, these include;
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285
- NVIDIA Quadro 4000
- NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800
- ATI Radeon HD 4870
- ATI Radeon HD 5770
- ATI Radeon HD 5870
Metal is supported on:
- NVIDIA GeForce 600 series "Kepler" or later
- AMD Radeon 7000 series "GCN 1" or later
4: Ventura support is still new and may contain random bugs and/or glitches. See the OCLP releases page on GitHub for details around Ventura patches for old Macs. Note that with OCLP a Metal-capable video card is not a necessity, however is highly recommended.
I've noticed a lot of people ask questions about which Early Intel Mac they should get. Hopefully this helps clear up some confusion.
Why should I consider an Early Intel Mac?
Early Intel Macs can be a way to get a good Apple computer on a tight budget, if you want to use older software or if you like tinkering with older Macs but you don't want to go into the PPC and 68K era yet.
What qualifies as an Early Intel Mac?
The first Intel Macs went on sale with Core Duo and Core Solo CPUs starting in January 2006 (as well as Xeon X-series for Mac Pros).
For this guide, Early Intels covers any Mac equipped with a Core Solo, Core Duo, or Core 2 Duo CPU. For the latter, a couple of models were sold by Apple as late as early 2012.
In addition, early Mac Pros (2006-12) and the original Core-i-series iMacs from Late 2009 may also be considered as Early Intel Macs.
MacBook, MacBook Air and MacBook Pro
The original MacBooks and MacBook Pros can be a cheap way to start off in Early Intel Macs. We generally recommend a late 2006 or later MacBook(Pro) as the original "1,1" or early 2006 version uses the older 32-bit Core Duo and Core Solo CPUs (which are incompatible with versions of OS X newer than 10.6 Snow Leopard, released on August 28, 2009.
The MacBook came in white or black variants (up to the 4,1 model), however black 'collectors edition' units can be more expensive. Some people have taken a later-model white MacBook and a dead black MacBook to make a black-MacBook that can run El Capitan and later; however this process is difficult. There are also pre-unibody and unibody versions of the MacBook. The pre-unibody's are cheaper but older. The MacBook5,2 is a bit of a secret tip - it shares the pre-unibody design of its predecessors but has NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics which are significantly more powerful than the earlier Intel graphics and also allow the installation of versions of OS X newer than 10.7 Lion.
The Late 2008 unibody MacBook (5,1 model) has a much nicer case than its predecessors and a LED-backlit screen, however it drops the FireWire port, which can be a glaring omission if you're used to having FireWire on Macs.
In a similar fashion, the MacBook Pro came in 15-inch and 17-inch versions, there is not much of a price difference however the 17-inch is obviously slightly bigger and heavier. I would recommend a 15-inch Late 2006 MacBook Pro if you're on a tiny budget or a 2007/2008 model if you can spend more.
Note that the 2007 and 2008 models have defective/failing graphics chips but some will have working graphics. It will usually be said by the seller. A reliably way of determining whether a MacBook Pro has had its logic board replaced by Apple is a "green dot" sticker on the RAM slots. This means the machine in question has a later revision of the graphics chip which is known to be reliable.
17" Late 2008 models built after October 2008 have the later revision GPU's out of the box; these work fine.
The 2009 and 2010 13" MacBook Pro also shipped with Core 2 Duo CPUs, these are very solid machines and have significantly better screens than the plastic MacBook and the "unibody" Late 2008 MacBook. The 2010 model in particular can hold 16 GB RAM and features Nvidia GeForce 320M graphics which were very fast for an integrated solution in their day.
The MacBook Air came out in 2008 and had two "Early Intel" revisions in late 2008 and 2009. These are expensive as they are collectors items and have painfully slow processors and 1.8" hard drives so I would not recommend these.
The Late 2010 MacBook Air introduced an 11" model and decent SSDs throughout the line-up, however the 11" model also suffers from painfully slow 1.4 or 1.6 GHz processors. The 13" model has faster processors (1.86 or 2.13 GHz) than the 11" and upgrades the screen resolution to 1440×900 (all 13" MacBooks and even the 13" MacBook Pro are stuck with 1280×800).
Mac mini and the iMac
The Mac mini and iMac are good budget options if you are looking for a desktop computer.
The Mac mini is a small desktop and had versions in 2006, 2007 and 2009. The 2006 have again the older 32-bit "Core Duo" processors. These can be upgraded however you will have to upgrade the 'firmware' to the 2007 model to support newer chips. Chips supported are the ones used in the 2007 model however it is a hard procedure for the end user. I would find a 2009 Mac Mini as these can support the latest versions of macOS and are fast enough to use a daily machine. They also add support for using two monitors at once, which is a big boost to productivity.
The iMac came in 17-inch, 20-inch and 24-inch versions in 2006, 2007 and 2008. The early 2006 has the Core Duo so these don't run newer versions of OS X. Plastic versions are from 2006 and the metal versions in 2007 and 2008. 2007 and 2008's support newer versions of OS X and can be patched to run newer versions but I will cover OS's soon. I recommend a 24-inch 2008 model as a good option as they are good machines for the price and have better screens than the white 17" or aluminum 20" models. Note that the 17" white and 20" aluminium have inferior TN screens with bad viewing angles, meaning worse image quality. You can also get the original Core-i (i5, i7) iMac's which were faster and had better screens (21.5" 1080p and 27" 1440p). These were made in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Note that the 2011 iMac's used Radeon HD 6000 series video cards that fail often.
Mac Pro
The Mac Pro is Apple's high-end Xeon based tower workstation. These are larger than iMac's but more powerful. They come with Intel Xeon processors, ECC memory and high performance graphics card upgrades. Some models can be flashed (1,1 and 4,1) to be later models (2,1 and 5,1) which support newer and faster CPU's and later OS's. The 3,1 cannot be flashed.
| Model | Year | CPUs | Maximum RAM | Latest official macOS Version | Latest macOS Version |
| 1,1 | 2006 | 2× Dual Core Xeon (Woodcrest) | 64 GB (FB-DDR2) | OS X Lion (10.7.5) | OS X El Capitan (10.11.6) - 2,1 Firmware Patch & Pikify script |
| 2,1 | 2007 | 2× Quad Core Xeon (Clovertown) | 64 GB (FB-DDR2) | OS X Lion (10.7.5) | OS X El Capitan (10.11.6) - Pikify script |
| 3,1 | 2008 | 1x or 2× Quad Core Xeon (Harpertown) | 64 GB (FB-DDR2) | OS X El Capitan (10.11.6) | macOS Catalina (10.15.7) - dosdude1 Patcher or macOS Ventura (13.4.1)4 - OpenCore |
| 4,1 | 2009 | 1× or 2× Quad Core Xeon (Bloomfield & Gainestown) | 64 GB or 160 GB2 (DDR3 ECC) | OS X El Capitan (10.11.6) | macOS Catalina (10.15.7) - dosdude1 Patcher or macOS Ventura (13.4.1)4 - OpenCore |
| 5,1 | 2010~2012 | 1× or 2× Six Core Xeon (Gulftown & Westmere) | 64 or 160 GB2 (DDR3 ECC) | macOS Mojave (10.14.6) with a Metal-capable graphics card3 | macOS Catalina (10.15.7) - dosdude1 Patcher or macOS Ventura (13.4.1)4 - OpenCore |
The 1,1 or 2,1 can use Xeon 51x0 CPUs or Xeon X53x5 CPUs, the former being dual cores, the latter being quad cores. Note that you need a 2,1 or flashed 1,1 to use the X53x5s. The 5,1 uses Gulftown and Westmere series chips which are much faster than previous-gen chips in certain tasks. They can also use more and faster RAM (128 GB DDR3 vs. 32 or 64 GB DDR2 FB).
These are covered much more in the Mac Pro forum and on "The Definitive Upgrade Guide to the Classic Mac Pro".
Xserve
The Xserve was Apple's 1U rack mount system. They use similar if not the same hardware as the classic Mac Pro.
| Model | Year | CPUs | Maximum RAM | Latest official macOS Version | Latest macOS Version |
| 1,1 | 2006 | 2× Dual Core Xeon (Woodcrest) | 64 GB (FB-DDR2) | OS X Lion (10.7.5) | OS X El Capitan (10.11.6) - 2,1 Firmware Patch & Pikify script |
| 2,1 | 2008 | 1x or 2× Quad Core Xeon (Harpertown) | 64 GB (FB-DDR2) | OS X El Capitan (10.11.6) | macOS Catalina (10.15.7) - dosdude1 Patcher or macOS Ventura (13.4.1)4 - OpenCore |
| 3,1 | 2009 | 1x or 2× Quad Core Xeon (Gainestown) | 96 GB (FB-DDR2) | OS X El Capitan (10.11.6) | macOS Catalina (10.15.7) - dosdude1 Patcher or macOS Ventura (13.4.1)4 - OpenCore |
It is not clear on whether the Xserve3,1 supports running MacPro5,1 firmware, which would let it run Westmere chips and support presumably more than 128GB of RAM. The Xserve3,1 uses a GPU with an MXM slot by default, meaning that you will either need to use a MXM GPU like those used in 2009-2011 iMacs or use a PCIe riser cable and run a normal GPU outside of the chassis.
EFI32 systems
In September 2006, Apple started shipping Macs with the fancy new Core 2 Duo "Merom" chip, which were a 64-bit CPU. However, these systems while having a fully 64-bit compatible CPU, had 32-bit firmware "EFI32". This meant that were not actually "full 64-bit" systems. EFI32 systems support up to 4GB of DDR2 667MHz, however only ~3-3.5GB can be used. 64-bit Windows and Linux can be installed with some tweaking, Lion is the official max supported OS X version, but with the excellent NexPostFacto, Mountain Lion can be installed if you only have the Intel GMA 950 or X3100 chip, and if you have a Radeon X1600 you can run Mavericks.
| Model | Revision/Year | Maximum OS X version (patched) |
| MacBook | Late 2006; Mid 2007 | 10.8.5 |
| MacBook Pro | Late 2006 | 10.9.5 |
| iMac | Late 2006 | 10.9.5 (X1600) 10.8.5 (7300/7600 GT) |
| Mac mini | Mid 2007 | 10.8.5 |
| Mac Pro | Late 2006; Early 2007 | 10.11.6 (If using a compatible GPU) |
The Mid 2007 iMac, Mid/Late 2007 MacBook Pro and the Late 2007 MacBook all had Merom chips, but they were fully 64-bit, known as they support up to 6GB of RAM, which is past the physical 3.84GB limit for 32-bit systems. The '07 iMac and MacBook Pro can run up to El Capitan (10.11.6) but the Late 2007 MacBook can only run up to Mountain Lion since it has the GMA X3100, which is not supported past Mountain Lion. The Early '08 MacBook Air is the same.
RAM upgrades and Operating Systems for other models:
To sum up operating systems, Mac OS X versions are on a table below (excluding Mac Pro; compatibility given above).
Windows 7 is the best Windows version to use and Linux support varies depending on the model in question.
| Model | Maximum RAM | Original OS X | Newest Official OS X | Newest Patched OS X |
| Early 2006 Core Duo (all models) | 2 GB (DDR2) | 10.4.4 or later | 10.6.8 | (10.7.x) |
| Late 2006 iMac or MacBook Pro; Mid-2007 MacBook or Mac mini; Late 2007/Early 2008 MacBook | 4 GB1 (DDR2); 6 GB (DDR2) - Late 2007/2008 MB | 10.4.7 or later; 10.5.2 for Early 2008 MB | 10.7.5 | 10.9.5 |
| Mid-2007 iMac, MacBook Pro | 6 GB (DDR2) | 10.4.9 or later | 10.11.6 | -- |
| Early 2008 iMac, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro | 6 GB (DDR2) - iMac; MBP | 10.5.2 | 10.11.6 | current |
| Late 2008 unibody; Early 2009 MacBook; Early 2009 Mac mini | 6 GB (DDR2) - 2009 MB; 8 GB (DDR3) - others | 10.5.4 or later | 10.11.6 | current |
| 2010 MacBook, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, Mac mini | 16 GB (DDR3) - MB; MBP; MM | 10.6.3 or later | 10.13.6 | current |
System discs can be found on sites like eBay and OS X installers for Lion and later versions can be acquired from Apple.
Upgrades:
Mac minis, MacBooks and MacBook Pros can have RAM (see table above) and hard drives upgraded through SODIMMs and 2.5" SATA discs respectively. The iMac's RAM can be upgraded easily but drives are much harder. Mac Mini's CPU (2006/2007), RAM (all) and discs (all) can be upgraded.
1: Late 2006 Mac's support 4GB of RAM and will show up in About this Mac, however only ~3.5GB will be detected and be used by the computer due to 32-bit EFI limitations.
2: 56GB is the maximum supported RAM if you have a single CPU Mac Pro with a W3xx0 CPU, if you have a X5xx0 CPU the limit is 64GB. The limit for any Dual CPU model is 160GB, using 5x 32GB DIMM, however that is not 100%. There are also posts where people have used OpenCore to get 256GB working (8x32GB).
Since all 4,1/5,1 CPUs are triple-channel capable, I'd suggest that for optimal performance you only use a total RAM amount that divides by 6 eg: 24GB, 48GB and 96GB.
3: The original GPU's that shipped with or could be bought alongside the Mac Pro 2009/2010/2012 are not Metal-capable, these include;
- NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX 285
- NVIDIA Quadro 4000
- NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800
- ATI Radeon HD 4870
- ATI Radeon HD 5770
- ATI Radeon HD 5870
Metal is supported on:
- NVIDIA GeForce 600 series "Kepler" or later
- AMD Radeon 7000 series "GCN 1" or later
4: Ventura support is still new and may contain random bugs and/or glitches. See the OCLP releases page on GitHub for details around Ventura patches for old Macs. Note that with OCLP a Metal-capable video card is not a necessity, however is highly recommended.
Last edited:
