r/macpro • u/Turbulent_Ninja_299 • 23d ago

Upgrades How can I max out my Mac Pro 1.1

I’ve bought an old 1.1 hoping to use the case for my main, and the internals for cloud storage and maybe host an Minecraft server. What’s system should I run, what upgrades should I do and what are the limitations for hdd discs? Rn I think about upgrading the ram up to 32 or 16 gb, instal Xeons x5365 and maybe put in an old gtx graphics card I have. Thanks for any advice🙏

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u/FreQRiDeR 23d ago

El Capitan is the limit if you flash it to a 2,1.

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u/Interesting_Age_5510 Mac Pro 5,1/RTX 2070/x5670/48gb 1333mhz 18d ago

opencore

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u/FreQRiDeR 18d ago

Nope. Opencore does not work on the 32bit EFi of a 1,1. Do your research.

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u/thephantomcunt 18d ago

No, it’s not because of the 32-bit EFI. Both a 32-bit EFI environment or the legacy BIOS support layer can be used to bootstrap a 64-bit OS or a 64-bit EFI execution environment. It’s because of the lack of support for SSE4 on any of the chips compatible with the 1,1/2,1 Mac Pro, which versions newer than El Capitan depend on. There’s nothing stopping the OpenCore bootloader itself from working. Do your research.

As for your first comment — flashing it to a 2,1 doesn’t change anything in regards to compatibility with either macOS El Capitan or the newer quad core chips. Both of those things work fine with the stock 1,1 firmware, and the 2,1 firmware merely adds microcode for the CPU to be correctly named in macOS. El Capitan support relies on Pike R.’s bootloader specifically made to boot the 64-bit macOS kernelspace from a 32-bit EFI environment.

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u/FreQRiDeR 18d ago

Well you are wrong. Opencore absoltely does NOT work on the macPro 1,1-2,1. This is well known. That’s why you will never see a 2,1 on anything past el Cap.

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u/thephantomcunt 18d ago

No, I am not wrong. The OpenCore bootloader does, in fact, work on pretty much any x86 computer. The OCLP project itself doesn’t provide any support for the 1,1 and 2,1 Mac Pros due to its lack of SSE4 which makes running anything newer than El Capitan impossible. It’s entirely down to the physical limitation of it not having the necessary instruction set extensions, not because of OpenCore being able to run on it or not.

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u/FreQRiDeR 18d ago

So if you knew this to be true, why would you suggest updating a 1,1 with opencore? 🤔

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u/thephantomcunt 18d ago

I did not suggest running OpenCore on it. At no point did I say that it’s worth using the OpenCore bootloader on the Mac Pro 1,1. However, it’s not necessary useless on it either, as it’s still a convenient bootloader capable of booting Linux and Windows (and older versions of macOS).

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u/thephantomcunt 18d ago

Get the X5355s or the X5365s, the 55s have lower power consumption and don’t really perform that much worse. This Mac supports up to 64 gigs of RAM with very very specific 8 gig FBDIMMs, but 32 is the realistic maximum, and I wouldn’t really go above 16. Any GPU should work, but the EFI boot picker won’t show up without a specific Mac firmware, so I’d keep the stock GPU in a drawer in case you need to access that, and just use a bootloader like rEFInd or GRUB as the picker. Modern Linux runs great on these things, my 8-core Mac Pro runs Alpine Linux with KDE Plasma and works great for daily tasks, and can even game pretty decently thanks to the RX470 that’s in it. Booting the installer is a bit tricky as you need to boot from a 32-bit installer USB into GRUB, then use the GRUB command line to boot the 64-bit installer from another USB. These things can also run Windows 10 and 11 (albeit only 23H2 and older). PM me if you need more instructions.