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JoeStrummer

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 27, 2019
43
6
South Africa
Hello All!
I have just spent an hour reading various threads on this forum and my brain is spinning. More confused then when I started! I am sure all of this has been asked before, but I was wondering if there aren't some helpful kind souls out there who would take pity on me and reply directly to my (no doubt stupid) questions?

I am wanting to upgrade my 2012 Mac Pro 5.1 - (see current set up details in signature)

There are 2x steps. Firstly I want to upgrade hardware (cpu and ram). Secondly I want to move to OpenCore (Catalina)

To upgrade hardware...
I recently picked up a dual tray. So now I need to buy 2x cpu for the dual tray and replace the current single tray in my machine. I was thinking of 2x X5680? They are cheaper then the X5690 and pretty much same performance? But I read somewhere that the X5675 are really good value and draw less power? And I can still move to OpenCore with any of these cpu? Any suggestions welcome!

RAM....i currently have 4x 8GB OWC modules in my machine. Is there any reason why I can't just buy 2x new 8GB OWC modules and then mix the 'old' sticks with the 'new' in the dual tray? (I plan to populate slots 1-3 and 5-7 only. Is this a good idea still?)

Then, when I have the hardware installed and running I can then tackle the OpenCore installation?

Thanks so much all advice and comments gratefully received!!
 
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