Mac Pro Hardware Questions! (New to Mac)

[Wardrop]

The first thing I've noticed with Macs (mac pro's especially) is that they certainly cost more than you're average pc, especially if you want any additional components such as more ram, hard-drives or a faster processor.

My question is, how many things can be upgraded or replaced in a mac with parts available from normal pc parts retailers. From my understanding, you can put non-ECC DDR RAM in a mac pro (instead of the expensive ECC stuff) and you can also put in any SATA hard-drives you want. First of all, please confirm that's true. Besides that components, what about graphics cards, optical drives and processors. For example, would it be possible to put in two socket 771 quad-core xeon's?

http://pcmaniacs.com.au/product_info.php?cPath=21_30&products_id=3475

..or an SATA DVD burner of any kind?

I'm not confident in the graphics card department as you'd probably need drivers and things which wouldn't exist, so putting an Nvidia 8800 in a Mac wouldn't be possible I'm guessing.

Another question, I've noticed there's only 4 hard-drive bays. Is there anyway I can put my than 4 hard-drives 'inside' the case if I ever needed to?

Any and all help is much appreciated. I'm new to Macs, and I think the cost and upgradibility are the two biggest things to get over at the moment. I'm looking forward to your replies!

 

[Much Ado]

The first thing I've noticed with Macs (mac pro's especially) is that they certainly cost more than you're average pc, especially if you want any additional components such as more ram, hard-drives or a faster processor.

You can find these all over the place:
http://www.systemshootouts.org/shootouts/desktop/2006/0809_dt3200.html

Also, buy additional components from third party vendors such as Crucial for RAM, which is a much more cost effective way of doing things.

The other points i'll leave to the lucky people who actually own mac Pros

 

[DenniZ]

firstly the graphics cards their are the basic ones that can be chosen with it from apple, but if you run boot camp you can have any pcie x16 card u want.

you can stick another hard drive in the place where the dvd drive goes.

not sure about the ram sorry. i have heard that you can swap processors for better intel xeons, also the computer has 2 places for the processors, soa a qua core mac pro actually has 2 duo cores = 4 cores.

 

[irishgrizzly]

As a rule you never want to buy extra HDs or RAM from Apple. Read lots of the older treads – some very good advice to be found.

 

[pprior]

Non-ECC ram - nope, mac pro VERY picky about ram. You can get 3rd party ram, but it's still expensive (though almost 50% of what I paid 8 months ago!)

Graphics cards - nope, must be mac certified.
SATA drives - generally yes, and very easy to install.
Processors - yes you can upgrade, but not sure I'd want to.
Drives - there are some kits to add an extra 2-4 drives if you're willing to give up some of the CDR bays. Personally part of why I went to mac is to get away from that kind of constant fiddling that I found myself doing with my PC systems.

Far better would be an external box, either firewire 800 or eSATA, or NAS.

Cheers - I love my Mac Pro (1st mac after 20 years of owning PCs)

 

[paul619LT]

i heard that if you replace the mobo in a mac pro, that it won't boot into os x anymore. is that true?