MP 7,1 Sanity check on Mac Pro 2019 7,1 build in 2025

[Flint Ironstag]

OK folks, please tell me where I'm going wrong:

1. Mac Pro 2019
2. 24 core
3. 1TB RAM
4. whatever size built in SSD
5. Sonnet or OWC quad NVME card with say 4x 2TB drives (please recommend) in RAID 5
6. dual Vega II Pro duos or W6800x duos
7. PCIe expansion chassis to hold 4 x 16GB+ AMD GPUs that have infinity link & blower fans (please recommend)
8. Afterburner card for super light video editing

Gonna have Morgonaut proxmox this all - Big Sur as it's the last MacOS with a sane system preferences, and a Windows 11 for general computing - mainly hash cracking but some AI stuff too, hence the desire for infinity fabric capable GPUs with high VRAM.

Will this Mac Pro even recognize 4 extra GPUs? I've had an HP Z840 and Z820 Hackintosh hooked up to the same PCIe expansion chassis and they recognized up to 4x Vega 64 and / or Vega Frontier Edition 16GB, so I'd think the 2019 would also, but who knows. Won't kill me if it doesn't work and I need to hook up the PCIe chassis to a Z840 via 10Gb ethernet.

Interested in component recommendations and if my intended configuration will work or not, not if it's a good idea - this is a fun battlestation for me. Backups, media libraries, home automation and other stuff are handled by Mac Minis and Mac Pro 2013 with Thunderbolt 2 storage. Still pretty quick and CHEAP! 😂. Assume power and cooling are free.

Thanks in advance - looking forward to y'all picking this apart.

 

[mattspace]

OK folks, please tell me where I'm going wrong:

1. Mac Pro 2019
2. 24 core
3. 1TB RAM
4. whatever size built in SSD
5. Sonnet or OWC quad NVME card with say 4x 2TB drives (please recommend) in RAID 5
6. dual Vega II Pro duos or W6800x duos
7. PCIe expansion chassis to hold 4 x 16GB+ AMD GPUs that have infinity link & blower fans (please recommend)
8. Afterburner card for super light video editing

Gonna have Morgonaut proxmox this all - Big Sur as it's the last MacOS with a sane system preferences, and a Windows 11 for general computing - mainly hash cracking but some AI stuff too, hence the desire for infinity fabric capable GPUs with high VRAM.

Will this Mac Pro even recognize 4 extra GPUs? I've had an HP Z840 and Z820 Hackintosh hooked up to the same PCIe expansion chassis and they recognized up to 4x Vega 64 and / or Vega Frontier Edition 16GB, so I'd think the 2019 would also, but who knows. Won't kill me if it doesn't work and I need to hook up the PCIe chassis to a Z840 via 10Gb ethernet.

Interested in component recommendations and if my intended configuration will work or not, not if it's a good idea - this is a fun battlestation for me. Backups, media libraries, home automation and other stuff are handled by Mac Minis and Mac Pro 2013 with Thunderbolt 2 storage. Still pretty quick and CHEAP! 😂. Assume power and cooling are free.

Thanks in advance - looking forward to y'all picking this apart.

Very curious to hear how things go with Morgonaut - I'd certainly be happy to pay someone for expertise an consulting to set up a ProxMox system IF the thing I want to do is doable on a fundamental level (even just getting a consult to find out the answer to that question would be a step). BUT I'm not really keen to have someone remoting in to my machines.

The only place I can see as going "wrong" with this is how long your lowest level ProxMox setup supports the hardware, and is secure. Even with my VMWare setup for running Snow Leopard-bound older processes, Broadcom has already deprecated macOS guests, so that whole thing has to remain frozen in time, which is annoying, and VirtualBox is largely an unhelpful community for macOS guest on Mac hardware.

*edit* one issue you are definitely going to have with 2x MPX GPUs, is you're only going to have an x8 slot available for your NVMEs, unless you starve the Afterburner by putting it on the x8 slot. That's perfectly doable, since its JUST a decoder for making your playback in the editing software realtime, and reducing its available lanes will only reduce the number of simultaneous streams you can play in realtime.

 

[Regulus67]

OK folks, please tell me where I'm going wrong:

1. Mac Pro 2019
2. 24 core
3. 1TB RAM
4. whatever size built in SSD
5. ...

Gonna have Morgonaut proxmox this all - Big Sur as it's the last MacOS with a sane system preferences, and a Windows 11 for general computing - mainly hash cracking but some AI stuff too, hence the desire for infinity fabric capable GPUs with high VRAM.

Memory should be either 768GB or 1.5TB, to fit the 6 memory lanes. And probably same size LRDIMMs, can't mix with RDIMMs.

Mac Pro (2019) memory specifications – Apple Support (UK)

Learn about the types of memory (RAM) used in Mac Pro (2019).

support.apple.com

 

[avro707]

dual Vega II Pro duos or W6800x duos

The W6800X Duos may be very, very expensive - just beware. Also watch out for dodgy cards being sold off, if you get a bad one then you don't have a lot of options.

Will the normal Radeon RX6900XT 16GB cards (two of them) work for your needs, provided you get ones that are short enough to fit (and get the power cable kit for them).

Do you have this machine yet? If not, maybe think of the 28 core processor if you can find one - it is good.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

Morning Folks, thanks for your insight. I have engaged Teresa (Morgonaut) services a couple of times since ~2021 on HP Z820 and Z840 proxmox. The boxes have performed flawlessly - well worth the money.

Noted on the RAM configurations to maximize the 6 channels - may have to save $$ and go for a 16 core CPU and 768GB LOL. 1.5TB is pricey!!

I'm planning to tinker with local LLMs, so would prefer the duo GPUs to pack as much power as possible. At least on ebay, there doesn't seem to be much price difference between boxes with W6800x duo and Radeon Pro Vega II duo.

Is anyone out there using a PCIe expansion chassis, and if so, how many GPUs does your Mac support? I'm using a One Stop Systems Cube 3.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

16 core / 192GB / 1TB / dual W6800x duo rig incoming. Upgrades:

- 24 or 28 core CPU
- 1.5TB RAM
- OWC 8x NVME PCIe card
- Afterburner
- PCIe host adapter to OSS Cube3 expansion chassis with 4 TBD Radeon GPUs
- 3D print a bracket to hold internal 2.5" SSDs

 

[mattspace]

16 core / 192GB / 1TB / dual W6800x duo rig incoming. Upgrades:

- 24 or 28 core CPU
- 1.5TB RAM
- OWC 8x NVME PCIe card
- Afterburner
- PCIe host adapter to OSS Cube3 expansion chassis with 4 TBD Radeon GPUs
- 3D print a bracket to hold internal 2.5" SSDs

to reiterate what I mentioned earlier about PCI bandwidth; with dual MPX GPUs, an afterburner in slot 5, and an NVME card in slot 6, I'm at 100% on pool A and pool B. Plugging a USB drive in to one of the thunderbolt ports sends pool B to 125%.

I'd be tempted to pull the afterburner to install the cube 3, unless you strictly need it.

Really looking forward to hearing about how the ProxMox setup goes, if you're still planning that.

 

[avro707]

Noted on the RAM configurations to maximize the 6 channels - may have to save $$ and go for a 16 core CPU and 768GB LOL. 1.5TB is pricey!!

May I ask where you were going for RAM?

Anywhere better than memory . net?

 

[profdraper]

May I ask where you were going for RAM?

Anywhere better than memory . net?

I went with 192GB Nemix ram a few years ago when I bought the 7,1 new. Has been flawless. https://nemixram.com/collections/mac-pro-2019-macpro7-1

 

[Flint Ironstag]

May I ask where you were going for RAM?

Anywhere better than memory . net?

Have only saved a few sellers on ebay. Will check out memory.net.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

to reiterate what I mentioned earlier about PCI bandwidth; with dual MPX GPUs, an afterburner in slot 5, and an NVME card in slot 6, I'm at 100% on pool A and pool B. Plugging a USB drive in to one of the thunderbolt ports sends pool B to 125%.

I'd be tempted to pull the afterburner to install the cube 3, unless you strictly need it.

Really looking forward to hearing about how the ProxMox setup goes, if you're still planning that.

I can definitely get an AS mini or studio for editing light 4k ASMR car / motorcycle ride videos. Thinking I will run one 7,1 on standard Big Sur, and get a rackmount for proxmox and backups.

 

[Flint Ironstag]

As this gets closer to reality, I could use some further sanity checks:

- Sonnet M.2 8x4 silent (2) 2TB NVMEs for Mac & Win 11 respectively, (6) 4TB drives in RAID 0 (SOFTRAID) for data
- Pegasus J3i or 3D print a drive bracket for (2) 20TB SATA HDDs (1 time machine, 1 carbon copy cloner, 1 misc. SSD)
- PCIe expansion chassis looking like (4) Radeon Pro VII with (2) Infinity Fabric link.

I have several TB2 OWC & Pegasus devices to handle redundant backups. The native SSD situation on these 7,1 is truly dismal.

 

[mattspace]

As this gets closer to reality, I could use some further sanity checks:

- Sonnet M.2 8x4 silent (2) 2TB NVMEs for Mac & Win 11 respectively, (6) 4TB drives in RAID 0 (SOFTRAID) for data

I've always been somewhat iffy about how the system's big cooling fans work with regards to NVME PCI cards - does the system natively read temps from the SSDs themselves and crank the cooling fans?

That was my primary motivation behind getting the 1104f version of my highpoint PCI card - it has a little cooling fan for the main chip on the card. But it makes a racket during boot / wake, spins up to full revs for a couple of seconds. It makes upgrading macOS a teeth-grinding experience, when you have ~5 reboots for a security patch. Though, along with my mouse lighting up, it does provide a clear indiction of the system waking if it's not supposed to, or if the go-to-sleep process has been interrupted .

- Pegasus J3i or 3D print a drive bracket for (2) 20TB SATA HDDs (1 time machine, 1 carbon copy cloner, 1 misc. SSD)

Transintel do a similar bracket, for a lot less, without requiring you buy a drive. Probably cheap enough that it's not worth the effort of printing one, if you ask me.

The native SSD situation on these 7,1 is truly dismal.

I use Tinkertool System to keep the built in SSD unmounted by default.