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Building My own Mac Pro

poozer115

poozer115

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 11, 2008
101
0
Well I'm planning on making the leap from laptop to desktop next year, when my macbook turns 3. I don't really have any reason to do it, I just figure I've never owned a desktop, and I should give it a shot. Anyways, I love how Mac Pro's look and run, but find that they run way too pricy for my tastes. Come from the owner of a second gen macbook, with just 2 ghz processor, and 64 mb vram, my standards aren't high. Plus I only use about 70 gb of the 120 gb hard drive.

My point, I would really like to build my own Mac Pro, but don't know how customizable they are. For example, would I be able to buy a current Mac Pro (but in a year, so more like a year old rig), and sell the HD and buy a small one turning a profit? My ideal computer set up would be;

3.0 ghz processor
2-4 gb ram
512 vram
120-140 gb hard drive

Can anybody help me know how possible an aspiration this would be next year. I figure If the current mac Pros will (used of course, and by that point 1 yr outdated), run at like 1400 on ebay, and I would sell the HD and buy a cheaper 3rd party for like 100 dollars, I could maybe get a nice computer about about 1000-1300? Anyways, any comments, recommendations, price quotes, or weblinks to third party "built it yourself" mac gear would be much appreciated. Thanks!
 
Oh, also if anybody with any logic behind their thinking could give me a price quote on the nice matte aluminum 23 inch monitors a year from now, that would be sweet. I like to plan =D.
 
Hello,

To be honnest I think this will not gonna be a good deal. As you probably know IT stuff loose a lot of value as soon as they pass the reseller's door.

So I barely think you can make benefits downgrading the HD for a smaller one. This component is one of those the value is decreasing the much with time...

Cheers,
 
You won't be building a Mac Pro, you'll be building a hackintrash with a fraction of the CPU power, much slower ram, much slower system bus, slower graphics performance, won't look nearly as stylish and won't have even a glimmer of the quality.

That is what defines the hackintrash fad.
 
poozer115 said:
Well I'm planning on making the leap from laptop to desktop next year, when my macbook turns 3. I don't really have any reason to do it, I just figure I've never owned a desktop, and I should give it a shot. Anyways, I love how Mac Pro's look and run, but find that they run way too pricy for my tastes. Come from the owner of a second gen macbook, with just 2 ghz processor, and 64 mb vram, my standards aren't high. Plus I only use about 70 gb of the 120 gb hard drive.

My point, I would really like to build my own Mac Pro, but don't know how customizable they are. For example, would I be able to buy a current Mac Pro (but in a year, so more like a year old rig), and sell the HD and buy a small one turning a profit? My ideal computer set up would be;

3.0 ghz processor
2-4 gb ram
512 vram
120-140 gb hard drive

Can anybody help me know how possible an aspiration this would be next year. I figure If the current mac Pros will (used of course, and by that point 1 yr outdated), run at like 1400 on ebay, and I would sell the HD and buy a cheaper 3rd party for like 100 dollars, I could maybe get a nice computer about about 1000-1300? Anyways, any comments, recommendations, price quotes, or weblinks to third party "built it yourself" mac gear would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Click to expand...

You aren't going to get one that cheap sorry. 1st generation 3GHz Mac Pros go for $2,000+ now. That's 2 and a half years after launch next month. 2GHz 1st gen systems can be found for under $1,200-$1,500 and 2.66GHz for $1,500-$1,800. You may be able to find current quad core 2.8GHz (one processor) systems with 2GB of memory and the 2600XT card for around $1,500 a year from now though.

As for your hard drive idea, well hard drives are dirt cheap now and people aren't going to pay much for small used ones. 160GB, 250Gb and 320GB are the sizes that came with base Mac Pros and can all be found for $45 - $50 new. With 500GB drives at $60-$70 most people aren't going to pay much for smaller sizes. A year from now expect 750GB drives to be around $50 and 1TB not far from them.

poozer115 said:
Oh, also if anybody with any logic behind their thinking could give me a price quote on the nice matte aluminum 23 inch monitors a year from now, that would be sweet. I like to plan =D.
Click to expand...

They probably won't drop that much from today's used price. You'd be better off going for a new or refurb 24" and getting a 3 or 4 year warranty.
 
kenned said:
To be honest i think you'd be better off just buying an iMac
Click to expand...

Yeah, agreed. Your needs are so slim.
If your idea Mac was 12 GB Ram, 4 TB drives, 2 opticals, and dual processors, I would think the tower is awesome...
As it is you only need an iMac.

Why waste all that time and effort just to have a fey desktop??
Use it or save the money and time by getting a smaller computer.
 
If there is a petition for Apple to remove whatever is stopping OS X to boot normally on generic x86 hardware, original poster should sign up. (I would :) )
 
nplima said:
If there is a petition for Apple to remove whatever is stopping OS X to boot normally on generic x86 hardware, original poster should sign up. (I would :) )
Click to expand...

I'm going to ask an honest question: What self-respecting company listens to an online petition? They're meaningless.

Steve Jobs himself said that Apple takes NO outside advice. They don't hire market analysts. They don't care.
 
This sounds like a ridiculously bad idea. Just buy a Mac Mini.

I don't think you can even buy a 140 gigabyte drive anymore. 1000 GB drives are under $100. What's the point in saving like $20?
 
Thanks everybody for your responses ^^. As you can see, and the thing under my username declares, I'm a mac newb so I'm sure I come off a bit stupid with my plan. I'm also embarrassed to admit a good part of my wanting a tower was just how sweet it looks with a cinema =D, but whatever, we're all hopeless suckers for looks anyways if we're mac users right? And the reason for the 23 or 20 inch display would have been the matte for me, now price. I really can't stand glossy.
The mac mini option sounds pretty good, how upgradeable are they though. Would I be able to get a cheap mac mini with 512 vram, an almost 3.0 processor, and 2-4 gb ram next year for a reasonable price? Thanks for any and all help as usual, and for putting up with a newb =D.
 
poozer115, you can already get the iMac, new or refurbished, at a reasonable price, compared to a Mac Pro, that would fullfill your requirements/specs.
 
I also wanted to say i'd rather not get an imac. I know it's practical, but heck, im not a practical person. I've used the cinema display's at the University i go to, and have definitely fallen in love with them. There's no way I could go back to nonwidescreen glossy..
 
In case anybody missed me saying, i think i'll go the mac mini route. Could anybody quote prices and specs for an 09 nehalem mac mini? Thanks.
 
poozer115 said:
In case anybody missed me saying, i think i'll go the mac mini route. Could anybody quote prices and specs for an 09 nehalem mac mini? Thanks.
Click to expand...

We have no idea. I doubt there will be Nehalem in the mini in the next 18 months either. Probably not even quad core going on how Apple have treated that line so far.
 
Oh, that sucks. Do you think they'll at least give them Nvidia chips, seeing as they havent updated the mac mini's in like 3 years?!? =(
 
Oh sweet! Thanks for the advice, that's a good time period too. Do you think it'd be 600-700 dollars still? And in a year and a half would the old matte cinema displays be cheap too? Thanks. That seems to be my ideal set up right now. Does anybody agree?
 
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