MP 1,1-5,1 Thinking about getting a Mac Pro 5,1, yay or nay?

[mzs.112000]

So, I'm looking in to getting a Mac Pro 5,1.
I'm looking to dual-boot macOS and Linux, but I don't want to run a hackintosh, it needs to be a legit Apple-sanctioned system(apart from OpenCore and dual-boot).

Right now, I'm doing really well with my Dell M6800 laptop, however, it cannot run macOS in any legal/Apple-supported fashion.
My laptop right now is running a Core i7-4800MQ CPU(4 cores, 8 thread, 2.7GHz Haswell), 24GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM, a nVidia GTX 970M, and a 1TB Samsung QVO SSD.

The Mac Pro in question would probably end up running a single X5690 CPU, 48GB of 1333MHz DDR3 RAM, an RX 580 8GB(supported fully in both macOS and Linux), and 2x 1TB SSD's(one with Linux, one with macOS). In addition to 2 mechanical drives of 4TB each. Possibly I might add a USB 3.1 expansion card in as well.

Last but not least, I do game on my laptop, I play GTA V, ARK Survival Evolved, No Mans Sky, Minecraft, Forza Horizon 4(on WIndows 10), and Kerbal Space Program. These games are largely GPU-bound anyways, so I don't think there would be much of an issue on the Mac. Even accounting for CPU, a desktop should be able to keep running at turbo boost frequency for far longer, laptop has to throttle down due to temps.

Is it a good idea? Or should I just wait.

Note that I do not plan on buying any M1 Mac just yet. Not until there is working Linux available for it....

 

[Mike Richardson]

If you understand the limitations and have the cash: Sure, yeah. In my opinion the MacPro5,1 is the last true Mac Pro and the end of an era. The MacPro7,1 can be called "Income Inequality Mac Pro" as far as I am concerned. Tim Cook was the wrong choice to run Apple.

I have a MacPro5,1 running Mojave with a "MacVidCards" RX 580 and just installed OpenCore. Now I've got full hardware accelerated Encoding and Decoding for both H.264 and H.265. This is better than my 2015 MacBook Pro with ATI, err, AMD graphics.

Big Sur looks like it might be messed up though, but I personally think Big Sur is a massive dumpster fire from hell, so that doesn't bother me much.

If you are just running a single CPU tray then you can also use the W3690 which is the same as the X5690 but is cheaper (at least it was at the time I bought it). You can NOT run 2xW3690 in a dual CPU tray, for some reason.

You will want to make sure all your memory can run at 1333 MHz, otherwise the entire bus will be downgraded to 1066 MHz. I run with 3 x 4 GB sticks (since it's most efficient to run with 3 identical sticks with a single CPU setup), and I had to replace one of my sticks because it was too slow. Now they are all 1333 MHz so it has better performance.

By far and large the best upgrade you can do to ANY older Mac is upgrade to an SSD. Even on the stock bus, an SSD will cut your boot times in half and improve app launch times. This is because the seek time on an SSD is almost zero compared to an HDD. If your SSDs are on a PCIe card with NMVe then you will really fly.

Personally I might buy a cheap M1 Mac out of curiosity when I have some spare funds available, but I don't think I could ever use Big Sur or later as a main OS.

 

[davidosomething]

I have that setup to about 99% match, and it's more than enough for me - can't think of anything I want to do on this system and can't (and there's still a pixlas mod + better gpu)
i run in linux most of the time now... no mac specific software I really miss.

 

[Stex]

+1 for cMP 5,1 over MacMini M1.

Also, consider a NMVe blade for faster read/write drive speeds, especially for boot drives and important project scratch drives.

I personally like Big Sur and it runs very well with OC on a cMP up to 11.2.3. The latest 11.3 has some issues that are being ironed out for cMP. But I personally love Mojave and still have it on a sled SSD as my main Apple supported OS.

 

[MisterAndrew]

I think the 5,1 is just too old to purchase now. If you can't budget a 6,1 or 7,1 Mac Pro I suggest looking at an Intel Mac mini or an iMac.

 

[macguru9999]

I have a similar system to some of the other posters. I work with lots of different macs, and I would rather have an upgraded mac pro 5,1 than just about any other mac. (see specs below) Sure, if money was no object a 7,1 would be nice, and some of the imac 27s made in the last couple of years are nice even though they lack internal expandability. But a mac pro running catalina (or mojave) gives you alot of options.

 

[retlif]

Just wait. A month for Linux, maybe six months for M2/M1X. I never had a better mac than the Mac Pro 5,1 but buying one today is a conscious step into a tech museum. If there was only Intel to choose from it would be different but the M1 has changed the situation dramatically.

 

[zedex]

Too few people consider the cost of being forced to use a bad OS (see 'dumpster fire' comments above). Conversely - the 5,1 lets you choose from 10.6 - 10.14.
I like Mavericks and High Sierra because they are desktop Operating Systems. I'd love a new Mac Pro (7,1) but with a choice of Catalina or Big Sur - I'd never do it

 

[vel0city]

Running Forza 4 on that system might be over ambitious depending on how it scales - I'm playing it at 4K/60 on the Xbox Series X and am having a hard time imagining a Mac Pro running it.

 

[macguru9999]

I dont really like Big Sur very much, but Catalina seems OK. I had to update some software, and even let go of a few utilities but thats ok. The biggest worry for me is the fact that the OS and data are kept on 2 partitions although thats hidden when inside Catalina. But overall, my 5,1 seems even more capable when running catalina than mojave. (I have the dosdude patch)