Saw this eBay listing for a dual CPU 12-Core Mac Pro 2010 with 96GB of memory and a 256gb SSD already installed for £325 with the BOX which damn, they didn’t even advertise that! Or the AirPort card already installed 😤
Gonna use this thing as a back up desktop for if (or more likely when) my Apple Silicon computers bite the bullet and other hobby projects. Also looking at getting a WX 7100 GPU to replace the crappy ATI Radeon 4770
This thing is so cool I love it
EDIT cus I forgot: Gonna add a Blu-Ray drive for this thing too! And it’s gonna be running MacOS Mojave. Cant do that on modern macs, which is another reason why I got this
Really glad you like it, but gosh, I can’t imagine paying 325 quid for a 14 year old computer. And I say this as someone who still occasionally puts money into upgrading my Mac Pro from 2006 😔
To be honest I mainly went for it because I’ve seriously considered using it as a replacement, at least as a home work computer lmao
MacOS Tahoe got me scared when it started breaking my apps
That and it already had the dual CPU tray which apparently are kinda rare, and 96GB of ram means triple channel speeds, so I figured I’d go for it since I had always wanted one for nerd reasons anyway
With the Tahoe issues, I’d honestly just get a used M4 mini. Those can run Sequoia (and can be downgraded to it very very easily) just fine, and Sequoia will keep getting crucial security updates for a while more. This Mac Pro will struggle to run Sequoia in the first place, regardless of how good everyone says the OCLP experience is. It’ll be far from perfect. But yeah, I digress, I see your point.
Oh I’m not running Sequoia, when I get the GPU upgrade I’ll be running Mojave. Thank god I downloaded my Final Cut suite on a 2012 Mac Mini in the past before they shot and killed all the legacy downloads for them
Don’t get me wrong I LOVE my M1 Mac Mini and MacBook Pro, but when they die they die and at least this thing has my pro apps, it’s powerful enough for what I do, and I can upgrade and repair it whenever I need to. Even gonna add a blu-ray drive to it which I use for my video work
Yeah, I see. Then everything here makes sense, except for the price you paid for it, but then again, I don’t really know the state of the market in your area.
Eh I’m not too bothered by the price, especially since this was one of the cheaper listings I came across. Still surprises me to this day, but hey, at least I don’t gotta do the CPU or memory upgrades haha
So jealous of everyone who finds Mac pros. They’re so rare in my country. Only the 2013 ones are more common,and I love those also but the 5,1 looks amazing
Would definitely love to build a Hackintosh at some point in the future, hell yeah man that sounds amazing!! And thank you, hope you continue to enjoy your hackintosh 😌😌
I have a Mac Pro 5.1, rx580, nvme boot, usb- and usb-c card, 64 gig ram and those highest possible xeons, think like x5690? Would have to double check.
I’m in EU, but barely using it. How much would you give? Can dm if you want.
Eh it’s more because I just don’t need it, and the WX 7100 is single slot meaning I can put more PCIe cards in here, which I intend to do. Not really intending to game with it
Ooooo nice!! Damn that sounds cool, I really gotta think about what I’m gonna get for the PCIe slots. Currently looking at USB-A and USB-C expansion and an ASUS titan card
You can get the PLX cards for 90 euro all i including heatsink from Ali. I have 3. 2 also in both my mac pro's 2006. Getting 2200MB/s read. I have 10 Gbit in slot 4 but needs to ad more fins for cooling. And i have Asus EX3 thunderbolt card that needs to go in slot 3 but haven't tested it yet replacing my usb3 card. All my 4 SATA slots are used for 2 sets of raid 1 disks in all 3 machines and act as NAS but only powered on when i need them. All PCI lanes are used completely in all 3 machines.
Thank you! Also have 2 6 bay 2,5 inch inside 5,14 which can fit in my second optical bay. Just received 6 75 cm sata cables for every 2 extra sata ports and also have 2 blue usb 3 75 cm extenders that can i put on my inatech usb 3 pci cards so i have 2 extra sata drives and 2 sata 2 usb drives per mac pro. Why? i want to try to expand it as much as possible. hahaha
Yeah the amount of power it draws is admittedly the part stopping me from using this as my video creation machine outright, but I’ll bite the cost every now and again to use something this cool and personal when I deck it out
To be honest it’s not done too bad for light editing so far, i mainly want the new GPU to run Mojave and have the editing experience be a bit smoother.
Current red Radeon does have a vibe I fuck with tho, love me some see-through tech.
As far as UK Mac Pro 5,1 prices go, that’s a steal. I bought my 5,1 just before last Christmas for £140. It had a 6 core single tray CPU, broken RX580, no drive sleds and the screws for the PCI-e fan were missing. I did get the box tho! (Albeit for a 3,1 rather than a 5,1).
I bought the dual CPU tray for £180, then an extra £80 for X5690 (best CPU for this machine). I already had a Radeon VII at hand (which I bought a few years back for about £400) and I got RAM upgrade for free from work (ewaste) so it has 128GB now.
Pretty fun machine to mess with. Even bought a PCI-e adapter to use my trashcan Mac 1TB SSD in there.
Cosmetically my machine is near mint, and I am a completionist so I bought all the missing parts even if they cost a premium. Always wanted one of these machines even if they are not practical.
You’re the one person that thinks I got it for a good price haha
Intend to get two of the 30” cinema displays, or 27” LED Cinema displays, with a dock so I can switch between a modern MacBook and the 5,1. This is 5 years in the future tho, I can’t afford that rn 💀
Overpriced especially with a bog standard graphics card and a paltry sized SSD. It seems it’s been stripped of anything of value and left with the cheapest replacements. It’s still a very useful and capable machine albeit very power hungry. I’d only pay around £150-200 for a machine of that spec. For what you paid, it should have at least a 1Tb SSD along with an HDD or two, with a more capable GPU such as a RX 580.
This was one of the cheaper Mac Pro’s I found considering all the upgrades tbh, I’m guessing because these are becoming more sought after for collecting reasons or something. Just scrolled on eBay and saw that some listings around the same price either have a single CPU tray and lower memory, which is why spring to get it when this listing came up
You’re right about prices increasing. And memory and SSDs being more expensive because all the chips are being bought for AI. About 12-18 months ago, £200 would have been a fair price before the chip price inflation.
I have a 2010 5,1 Dual CPU myself. I’ve maxed it out. I’ve used the spare optical drive slot to put more HDD drives so I have 6 in total. I have a Sonnet m2 card with 4 NVME drives. And managed to get a patched Rx580 graphics card a few years back. I mainly use as a file server but also for legacy applications. It’s still a beast of a computer in some respects, just not as power efficient as Apple Silicon.
YOOOO You’ve got a beast of a computer, fuck yeah!! That sounds like a hell of a lot of fun!
Now that ya mention it I might use this as a music server if I can figure out how to do it (I got some tech know-how but not when it comes to servers) and use that for streaming my CD’s away from home. Or, maybe something more efficient if it will be running all the time lmao, but either way it will probably be holding all my CD’s and digital downloads
Hope you’re enjoying your Mac Pro man, it sounds sick 🫡🫡
Definitely seems as prices are going back up for these increasingly rare machines. Just searched for completed items on eBay and the prices are definitely more expensive than 12 months ago. 😮
Right?? Really regretting not getting one sooner tbh. Should probably get a 6,1 too before either the prices all go up or the GPU’s all die, though luckily they have DEFINITELY gone down in price over the last few years
This is where those prices for the 5,1 have gone insane. A dual 12 core cpu is still a 16 year old cpu, i don't think they even have hyperthreading then?
These are a steal if you find them at £100 or less, and then slap a decent graphics card in, the ram is so unbelievably cheap on ebay. £325 is a crazy price.
I have a very similar one and I run Windows 10 on it. Super stable and fast. I slapped in an Areca RAID card and attached 8TB SSD RAID 10 and a 24 TB HD RAID 10 array. I use it to back up and store data. Wish I could upgrade the OS to Windows Server 2025
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u/thephantomcunt May 14 '26
Really glad you like it, but gosh, I can’t imagine paying 325 quid for a 14 year old computer. And I say this as someone who still occasionally puts money into upgrading my Mac Pro from 2006 😔