Re-purposing 3,1 Mac Pro

[supercooled]

Hi,

Recently bought an iMac 5K and would like to know how to best repurpose my old Mac Pro.

How can I best connect my Mac Pro to the iMac for storage and may be use as a rendering machine? It only has USB2/FW800; should I add a eSATA card or USB3 to transfer files between the two machines? Mostly video files.

Thanks

 

[LorenK]

I don't know about a rendering machine, but adding a PCIe USB3 card is relatively easy and inexpensive. I have both USB and eSATA cards, but USB3 is much more common for external drives than eSATA. I have eSATA because it was out there before USB3 and I have lots of external storage (2 4-drive external cases, with over ten gbs of storage for music and movies).

 

[robgendreau]

What about gigabit ethernet? I would guess that the hard drives may be the limiting factor, and using a network connection would be easier. You could run it headless, and use existing network management tools.

 

[mjmatsen]

Media Encoder

If you do anything with video, you could also have that mac run Adobe Media Encoder and use watch folders. That way you don't load your new iMac. But I would agree with the previous statement about using the GbE connection and have your storeage done that way.

 

[supercooled]

If you do anything with video, you could also have that mac run Adobe Media Encoder and use watch folders. That way you don't load your new iMac. But I would agree with the previous statement about using the GbE connection and have your storeage done that way.

Thanks guys, I never thought about that. I also ordered an Airport router which should have GigaE.

I heard the new iMac has very low thermal threshold and any CPU/GPU intensive task will set it to throttle down and all that nonsense. I'll mostly be editing photos and videos and occasionally gaming on modest settings so hopefully the R295 won't be too hot. This also opens up the possibility of running 2 extra external monitors with it via Thunderbolt.

Do you guys know if there is an adapter converting TB to HDMI? One of my display is the Seiki 39" 4K which only has HDMI 1.2 and I would like to use that as an extra display.

 

[Velin]

Another good use for older Mac Pros = servers. We have two as servers in our office. We load up the sleds with fast reliable drives, fresh OSX Server install, and attach NAS (and of course Cat6 cable throughout our space, for both terminals and phones). Pros with OSX Server work great, very reliable, and you save a ton of money over much more expensive "dedicated" servers and racks.

I know another popular solution is using MacMini as server, good idea as well. But really like having four drive bays per machine, that is a ton of cheap, hot-swapabble storage.