Stay with my mid 2010 mac pro or sell and get Mac pro 2013 from ebay to run Catalina

[Sossity]

I have read a little bit about Catalina OS, and it seems like it has what I have been wishing macOS could do for a long time; be able to read and write directly to apple devices through finder without iTunes.

I would love this functionality on my desktop, however, I have read that pre 2013 mac pros will not be able to run Catalina. This is disappointing because I have the old cheese-grater mid 2010 mac pro.

So I looked at other mac pros like the 2013 trash can one, since 2013 and newer are Catalina supported, they were interesting when they first came out, and were way too much then, but now I see some on eBay and they have come down in price.

My question is, would it be worth it for me to get a 2013 on eBay, to get the newer hardware that can run and support Catalina, and sell or do something else with my mid 2010 mac pro?

or should I hang with my current mac pro and see if I would be able to get Catalina on it in the future?

Would the 2013 then be too old to run MacOS after Catalina? I would get this with the idea that it would be able to get at least maybe 2 more macOS upgrades after Catalina.

I have seen a thread where there are some already working hard trying to find a workaround to get Catalina to run on pre 2013 mac pros. It looks like it would be some hoops to jump through to run Catalina on a pre 2010 mac pro, like hacking, and I am questioning whether it would be worth it to get all the hardware and software updates and upgrades for my mid 2010 mac pro up to Mojave and then hope to be able to run Catalina, or just move on to a newer mac pro.

The new current mac pro is just way out of my budget, hence why I went to ebay to check out the 2013 ones.

I know there are iMacs and the iMac pro, but I want something that is somewhat modular so I can swap out something if need be.

 

[MisterAndrew]

Nobody knows if the workaround will work on the cMP by the final release version of Catalina. I think buying a 2013 model or a new Mac mini would be a good stop-gap solution until your budget allows for purchase of the 7,1.

 

[Sossity]

Ok, thanks, yeah, if I buy another mac desktop of any kind, I plan on it being my desktop for at least a couple of years and probably more, I would want to go as long as I can with it. I had a mac mini once, and it seemed to overheat, so I ended up selling it, and got my current big cMP 2010.

Can anybody comment who might have the 2013 mac pro, how does it run? does it overheat?

 

[AidenShaw]

My question is, would it be worth it for me to get a 2013 on eBay, to get the newer hardware that can run and support Catalina, and sell or do something else with my mid 2010 mac pro?

SELL! SELL! SELL!

Now, before the next Catalina drop is compiled to use instructions that none of the cMP systems support - demolishing their resale value.

 

[Sossity]

If I sell my current mac pro, should I upgrade it to Mojave? or sell it as is, with Mavericks which is what I am running on it now? would it be worth it to do all the upgrades needed to get Mojave or High Sierra running on it?

 

[MisterAndrew]

When I sold my cMP I didn't include any hard drives. Just let the new owner put whatever they want on it.

 

[tpivette89]

If I sell my current mac pro, should I upgrade it to Mojave? or sell it as is, with Mavericks which is what I am running on it now? would it be worth it to do all the upgrades needed to get Mojave or High Sierra running on it?

Sell it as is. Or return to stock. Definitely don't spend money on the thing to try and sell it.

If it were me, and I was buying another cMP, I know I would just wipe all old drives and use them for whatever I needed. Also, I would take any hardware included and repurpose it for any use case I needed it for or sell it off if I didn't need it.

I would just sell it as a base system. One HDD, the stock GPU/RAM/CPU and sell off the remaining parts. This kind of config would move quickly. Mostly because of price and simplicity.

There are a few upgraded cMPs on craigslist locally to me that the owners have set a ridiculous price for because of a few upgrades. They've been available for months and haven't moved...

 

[MisterAndrew]

I agree. The people interested in them now expect them to be very cheap. I sold mine without a GPU.

 

[iluvmacs99]

As a person who had just recently gotten a used Mac Pro 5,1 (4,1 flashed to 5,1) to solve the overheating issues of my Mac Mini and Macbook Air running video and audio editing, the cheese grater is still a viable platform for certain people. The machine I bought already had High Sierra installed with 2 relatively new server class HDs. The store had to dump this last one to me at 1/2 price of what usually goes for as he sees prices for most cMP, except late 2012, to drop a lot soon after when the 7,1 starts selling in the fall. So there's really no point for you to upgrade your machine further as you won't get as much money out of it with the upgrades. The buyer will sort him or herself out.

Having said that, I had looked at the trash can Mac Pro, but decided against it as it too has some overheating issues when pushed hard. Also the trash can supports only TB2, not TB3 so if you want to run your GPU externally, it might not achieve max throughput compared to a TB3 equipped mac. So it really depends upon what your needs will be. I also looked at the latest Mac Mini 2018 and it too has thermal management issues as well when pushed hard and you would need to rely on an eGPU as the iGPU is pretty weak. So really, your best bet would be to just wait a few months after the 7,1 release and then hope for refurbs to be available at a cheaper price.

I also like Catalina and will make my only Mac be able to run it, which is the Air, run Catalina as I need the OS direct read / write to apple devices.

 

[MarkC426]

Seems a bit extreme to spend out just for a new MacOS.
There’s no guarantee a 2013 pro will support anything after Catalina, plus you are buying a 6 year old machine.
Personally I wouldn’t go with any hacks just to get an OS to work, chances are any software will eventually have issues.

 

[Sossity]

So should I sell off my current mac pro, skip the trash can mac, and then just wait for refurb 7,1 mac pros? I read that they are starting at about $6,000, which is way out of my league, even at half that price is a bit much for me, hence why I looked at the trash can mac pros on eBay.

To even be able to afford the newest mac pro at that starting price, I might end up waiting another couple of years, or more until that one is old and apple is coming out with yet another one.

But, I don't want to get another desktop mac with heating issues like I had with my mac mini.

Not sure what to do now if anything.

I do have younger newer Macbook Pro, late 2014, and I will probably update that to Catalina, and use that when I want Catalina, and use my current mac pro for other stuff.
[doublepost=1560078287][/doublepost]I thought of that too, that the trash can mac is already 6 years old as well, and will probably soon be dropped from newer OS support as well.

 

[mode11]

I thought of that too, that the trash can mac is already 6 years old as well, and will probably soon be dropped from newer OS support as well.

The 2013 Mac Pro is still on sale today. There is no way it will get dropped from 10.16, or any upcoming OS - that would be outrageous for a machine they are still selling in 2019 for £4000. I would expect it to be supported through at least 5 more OS releases.

There's a reasonable chance the cMP will be supported in Catalina though, with a simple installer hack. There will only be an issue if Catalina explicitly depends on instructions such as AVX that the cMP's CPUs don't have. It's likely Apple have officially discontinued support to save themselves ongoing testing etc., but won't make an effort to block these machines if users want to take responsibility themselves.

 

[MarkC426]

The 2013 Mac Pro is still on sale today. There is no way it will get dropped from 10.16, or any upcoming OS

Do you work for Apple?
There is no guarantee of this at all (which is what I was inferring).
Even though the nMp is still on sale, it really shouldn’t be, at the age of it (with no updates).

 

[mode11]

No, I don't work for Apple. But how would you feel if you bought a Mac Pro yesterday for £4000 and OS support were dropped for it next year?

It's not the customer's fault that Apple has been selling the same machine for 6 years without modification. Apple could have withdrawn it from the market - but they didn't, so they need to support it. Given Apple's generally strong support of old hardware (though obviously not as strong as Microsoft's), I would be very surprised if Apple left nMP customers in the cold like that.

Heck, a new purchaser (potentially in November!) would still be under AppleCare in three year's time...

 

[MarkC426]

No, I don't work for Apple. But how would you feel if you bought a Mac Pro yesterday for £4000 and OS support were dropped for it next year?

That’s a fair point......

 

[iluvmacs99]

So should I sell off my current mac pro, skip the trash can mac, and then just wait for refurb 7,1 mac pros? I read that they are starting at about $6,000, which is way out of my league, even at half that price is a bit much for me, hence why I looked at the trash can mac pros on eBay.

To even be able to afford the newest mac pro at that starting price, I might end up waiting another couple of years, or more until that one is old and apple is coming out with yet another one.

But, I don't want to get another desktop mac with heating issues like I had with my mac mini.

Not sure what to do now if anything.

I do have younger newer Macbook Pro, late 2014, and I will probably update that to Catalina, and use that when I want Catalina, and use my current mac pro for other stuff.
[doublepost=1560078287][/doublepost]I thought of that too, that the trash can mac is already 6 years old as well, and will probably soon be dropped from newer OS support as well.

The current Mac Mini runs cooler than the older Mini for sure, and the CPU is more modern so it doesn't need to be stressed as much especially running something like Chrome which is a demanding web browser for memory and for GPU. It's when you start browsing demanding sites or doing video editing that it starts to get a little warm and then eventually it will thermal throttle if you have many pages/effects opened. So you may not always get the full performance out of it. You can mitigate these issues by adding an eGPU and using external TB3 or USB3 drives and have a lot of ram, so the internal system drive doesn't get used. But this adds to the cost, but can be reduced with you just buying the case for the GPU and the case for USB/TB drives and just bringing over your MacPro parts, except ECC ram, to use with the mini and then sell the Mac Pro as is. That's how some cMP users are doing if you find 7,1 prices to be unpalatable. The Mac Mini 2018 with externals route is a safer bet for many years of support and since it is somewhat modular, you can migrate your GPU to Thunderbolt 4 if that ever happens and your drives as you upgrade to the next Mini.

Anyhow, it's up to you to decide what you will find best for your own particular workflow. In my personal opinion, your Mac Pro 5,1 is still a viable computer. You're still running an older OS, which can be upgraded to High Sierra without much effort. If you want Mojave, you just need to buy an AMD card like the Radeon RX series. You can buy a used RX 570,560,580 from ex-bit coin mining rigs for sometimes less than half price retail used to get metal support and you can have Mojave in your Mac Pro and use that for heavy duty processing and perhaps relegate your Macbook Pro for something less intense with Catalina. Overheating is simply something happens to a computer when it gets pushed really hard. It's normal and that's why you have these Mac Pros. The trash can was an anomaly and Apple admitted it was a design mis-step which they rightfully corrected in 7,1.

You also need to be aware that Catalina does not support 32bit older apps, so if you have them since you're still on Mavericks, you can't run them on a Catalina machine if you haven't updated them to 64bit.

 

[flygbuss]

As I wrote yesterday in an other Thread:

I personally own both machines, the cMP 5,1 and the nMP 6,1.
As long as you don't need TB2 support for peripherals the 8C nMP 6,1 won't be noticeably faster.
Single core perfomance is a little better and you might see faster results in rendering.
But real time performance is usually better on my cMP 5,1 (2 x 3,46 GHz 6C).
And my 6,1 has a 10C 3 GHz E5.
I like the 6,1 a lot and I can't complain about it at all, it's much better then its reputation but just macOS upgrade-ability and Thunderbolt 2 support might not be worth a 2400$ investment.

It really depends on your current configuration. What are the specs of your cMP?

My nMP is pretty quiet and almost inaudible during normal office work and browsing.
When I work it really depends on the project. Working on very CPU intensive projects will increase the fan's RPM from 790 (idle) to 850-1000. It still is not loud at all. I work with audio so I'm quite sensitive when it comes to that.
(The 5,1s in the studio are all in a separate room because they are to noisy.)
Transcoding with compressor (e.g. H264 to DNxHD36) sometimes makes the fan run at a noisy level. But that also depends on the room or outside temperature. I have the 6,1 in a smaller studio room without AC and last summer was unusual hot here. During the days the fan was more acvtive then usual but still not on a disturbing level.

The nMP 6,1 is not really modular but it offers 6 TB2 ports for expansion.
The CPU, Memory and Storage is upgradeable. You can use a NVME drive with adapter or the apple SSUBX drive.
Speed is limited due to PCIe bandwidth though.

See the two screenshots to get an idea of the performance. It's not impressive at all but it works pretty well.

 

[H2SO4]

SELL! SELL! SELL!

Now, before the next Catalina drop is compiled to use instructions that none of the cMP systems support - demolishing their resale value.

I was half thinking this myself. But........ research, research, research.
Need to find out which model were affected by the crappy GPUs. I gather it wasn't all.

 

[tpivette89]

The 2013 Mac Pro is still on sale today. There is no way it will get dropped from 10.16, or any upcoming OS - that would be outrageous for a machine they are still selling in 2019 for £4000. I would expect it to be supported through at least 5 more OS releases.

Tell that to all the people who bought Powermac G5s in late 2005/early 2006 who then only had one more OS of support after their purchase. Snow Leopard came out in fall of 09’ and suddenly all those only 3 year old PPC machines were dropped by Apple.

They've done it before and they can do it again.

 

[lukethemore]

my personal thought ...

I think that the 5,1 Mac Pro (or the 4,1 upgraded to 5,1) it's nowadays a great solution to enter in the "Mac world".

It's a perfect workstation: I bought my last one (a 4,1 with 2 CPU) with € 600. I upgraded the CPUs, RAM, VGA, SDD ... with € 1.000 you can have a powerful machine.

It's too old ? Maybe ...

It's out of warranty ? Yes ... but you can find every spare part you need.

I think that with Mojave is running GREAT for everything (I use mine with Logic, Final Cut, HTML / MySQL).

Do I need a faster / bigger workstation ? No ... actually not ...

Do I need a new OS ? No ... actually not ...

 

[MisterAndrew]

In another thread some users discovered that the 5,1 was included in a supported list in a file in the Catalina recovery partition. So it appears Apple was intending to support the 5,1 for Catalina, but then Intel decided to drop support for the CPUs (no microcode updates to patch the MDS vulnerabilities). That’s probably the reason Apple decided to drop the 5,1, especially since a lot of the new features of the OS center around increased security. The CPUs in the 6,1 are also pretty old so it’s hard to say how long Intel will support them. I agree buying a 6,1 for longer use than a couple years probably isn’t the best plan.
[doublepost=1560108382][/doublepost]Anyone who thinks they won’t have the budget for a 7,1 might want to consider applying for the new Apple credit card. If you pay it off within 18 months there are no interest charges.

 

[deconstruct60]

I have read a little bit about Catalina OS, and it seems like it has what I have been wishing macOS could do for a long time; be able to read and write directly to apple devices through finder without iTunes.

The Finder being the place that the old iTunes functionality got folded into doesn't mean it is all completely new, revolutionary code. Pretty good chance it is basically the same code put in a new 'container" with a few things wrapped around it to adapt to the new context and perhaps some bug fixes.

Conceptually it is nicer but "peek and poke" anywhere on the iOS device file system... I haven't seen that. if talking about what showed up in the high level keynote and state of the platform that isn't what the demos showed.

 

[bookemdano]

My 2c:

MacPro6,1 would not be a good investment at this point in time--perhaps it never will be. I bought my 2009 in early 2016 for $400. Granted I sunk about $300 into upgrading it but I got 3 more versions of macOS out of it and will possibly get one or two more (unofficially). Spending $2000+ on a 2013 model in 2019 seems foolish when you consider it's out of warranty and not easily upgradeable or even repairable (for instance, what happens when your GPU fails? It's not like you can buy anything at Newegg that will work). I very much doubt it gets macOS 10.18--and maybe not even 16 or 17... you just never know. Maybe Intel will announce yet another CPU vulnerability next year and decide not to issue microcode for sandy bridge processors. Apple would drop it just like they did for the 5,1.

I would consider a 2013 for the novelty of it, but only for $500-600, and I highly doubt they will be available at that price point anytime soon.

Like the other poster said, the new Mac Mini is going to be a hell of a lot more capable than any old Mini you had in the past, so throttling isn't likely to be a problem unless you have super-demanding workflows.

So that's what I suggest you buy, unless you want to try to stick with your cMP. You can always get one, test it thoroughly and if it throttles on you then bring it back during the return window and go hackintosh until the 7,1s are affordable.

 

[Sossity]

Ok, I think I will pass on the 2013 mac pro, I dont want to risk it getting dropped.

For those who suggest a mac mini, what model would be best? and the external parts to run it with? I was a little unclear on that, it sounds like it can be run with external video card etc?

I had a 2011 mac mini with an integrated video card, and it would throttle and run hot, it would sound like a plane taking off.

Heat and noise are some issues that I would like to reduce or eliminate with my desktop mac, and my room does get hot in the summer, and it is in a home with no AC, just floor and ceiling fans.

I will be using chrome browser, with multiple windows, I switch from my different google accounts, and I use Photoshop CS 6, and other photo management tools. I also run parallels desktop with windows xp and 7.

I may also be using auto cad or some drawing program for a landscape design class.

It is either this, or I just hang with my current mac pro, and try out Catalina on my Macbook Pro.
[doublepost=1560122939][/doublepost]

The Finder being the place that the old iTunes functionality got folded into doesn't mean it is all completely new, revolutionary code. Pretty good chance it is basically the same code put in a new 'container" with a few things wrapped around it to adapt to the new context and perhaps some bug fixes.

Conceptually it is nicer but "peek and poke" anywhere on the iOS device file system... I haven't seen that. if talking about what showed up in the high level keynote and state of the platform that isn't what the demos showed.

So maybe it is not a real way to browse the device files and file system, it would be nice if macOS could view Apple devices the way it does for external hard drives, memory cards etc, and be able to drag and drop files to and from the device like an external hard drive.

 

[bookemdano]

Don't buy an eGPU right out of the gate unless you're sure you need one. That's something you can always buy later when/if you've determined you would benefit from it.

No other external parts are needed other than a mouse/trackpad and keyboard, unless you need some Thunderbolt 3 adapters for something esoteric like firewire.

I guess you would want to consider buying soome external storage, unless you really feel like paying Apple's $800 markup for a 1 TB SSD.

Hard to know what to recommend since I don't know your budget, but honestly unless you need 6 cores I'd stay with the quad and then pay Apple their $200 ransom to get a 256GB SSD. Upgrade the RAM yourself.

Edit: Depending on your monitor(s) you may want a TB3->DisplayPort dongle.