Mac Pro TRULY upgradeable?

[drewsof07]

Just trying to plan a little ahead for the future. I've seen a couple older powermac g4s in my day and they worked very much like PC towers, but with the new internal design of the g5 PwrMac and mac pro how easy is it to replace parts yourself after warranty expires. I like to do my own upgrades and part replacements whenever possible, because i'm perfectly capable (fans, HDs, memory, Disk drives, etc.). Also, how do those parts stack up cost wise?
I'm starting to save now to buy in a year or two when my powerbook stops working or just displeases me lol. I want to upgrade to a desktop because I find myself doing most of my work at a desk with my mbp, and the base model Mac Pro is the same price as I would spend on an iMac which doesn't seem as easy to open and upgrade/replace out of warranty. If the Mac Pro isn't any more accessible than the iMac I may just save my $$. My current setup is in my sig, and I plan to use the powerbook as my mobile machine while the macbook serves as a desktop, then after the powerbook stops will use the macbook pro as a mobile machine and buy a dedicated desktop. Thanks for the help

 

[Tallest Skil]

You're very limited in terms of GPUs, and we've hit a dead-end processor-wise because Nehalem won't fit in the Penryn socket, but everything else is fair game.

 

[CanadaRAM]

You can change out hard drives, optical drive, memory and PCI-e cards such as the video card. The hard drive(s) are standard issue SATA drives. The video card has to have a Mac-compatible ROM. The memory is FB-DIMMs with a large heatsink, which are not used in any other machines.

The fan housings, heatsinks and other components are largely proprietary.

 

[drewsof07]

You can change out hard drives, optical drive, memory and PCI-e cards such as the video card. The hard drive(s) are standard issue SATA drives. The video card has to have a Mac-compatible ROM. The memory is FB-DIMMs with a large heatsink, which are not used in any other machines.

The fan housings, heatsinks and other components are largely proprietary.

Yuck, thats what I was afraid of. Are the fans high quality and reliable to begin with?

 

[Tallest Skil]

Yuck, thats what I was afraid of. Are the fans high quality and reliable to begin with?

You can't even hear them when they're on. The GPU fan on the other hand...

 

[drewsof07]

You can't even hear them when they're on. The GPU fan on the other hand...

It has to be quieter than a PC tower...
that used to put me to sleep when I was younger haha "RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR"

Maybe that will be fixed by the time i buy?

 

[taylorwilsdon]

Nobody is stopping you from hacking a Zalman onto the GPU. It just doesn't come stock that way.

 

[drewsof07]

Nobody is stopping you from hacking a Zalman onto the GPU. It just doesn't come stock that way.

are those the copper heatsinks i've been seeing around the web?? or do they also use a fan?

 

[drewsof07]

You guys think about $2600 is a fair amount to spend? that's pretty basic, I figure I can get 3rd party sata drives cheaper and add them later, PLUS they'll be available in higher capacity by the time I buy. Also I don't really care for the cinema displays, they have a sparkle to them when viewing light pages, same thing my merom mbp did, It may be good for some things but just put me off the display for good. I was thinking a 24" glossy samsung display would compliment the mac pro nicely.