I ended up getting the (Mid-2012) Mac Pro from my local surplus store for $135 recently. A surprisingly good machine! I look forward to upgrading it as the months go by.

That late 2000's Mac Pro is my childhood. You have a subscriber.

I’ve been using my 2010 cheese greater for 7 years. Logic X, Final Cut Pro, Motion, Compressor, Photoshop, I have 8 tb hard drive and 2 tb sod’s, 3 gb sapphire made for Mac Pro video card. I won’t be replacing it soon.

2:08 "the grate, the glorious"

You YT channel is very underrated. Your videos are very interesting and well done. Keep on doing them. Thank you!

I love the layout of this machine. Great video!

Looking forward to the rest of your upgrade videos in this series. I love my 2012 mac pro.

Yup, I've got two of the old (5.1) 2013 cheesegrater. Love it (them). And I'm still upgrading ! 64 gig RAM, 4 x 1tb SSD's. Great products.

That's great !! Can't wait to see the final results !! Looking forward that :D

I do think this is a fine idea for some users. Ironically though, when you're finished you won't have an upgradable mac.

I love watching your videos. So thorough and so informative.

This sounds great. Thank you for linking your resources, that'll definitely make things easier for us haha

When I went to an iMac from my cheese grater Mac Pro my power bill went down $30 a month. Not kidding. $30*12 months = $360 $360* 4 year useful life= $1,440. Worth considering if you are super value-conscious.

Thank you for doing these Mac Pro videos.

I just subbed! Can't wait for this series. Spare no expense and make it future proof!

If you can, I'd love to see a head to head test between your 2009 Pro and a 2018 Mac Mini crunching video.

Great idea for a little video series. I have a 5,1 which I’ve upgraded to the best I can. X5690’s 128GB of ram (only 6 modules installed for better performance @96GB) installed a 970 evo along with a Vega 64 card. All in all this Mac Pro still packs a punch. Look forward to seeing what you do.

Can’t wait to see the end product this is going to be awesome

Great video Luke. Will be following your progress.

Now that's what I call a subscription worth video... Intrigued. Waiting for the next videos in the series.

Luke Miani: too bad that don’t exist 2nd Luke: It totally does exist 2013 Mac Pro 2nd Luke: no not that one Me: lmfao I love the commentary

Can’t wait to see the finished results, I’ve been thinking about buying one in upgrading it

I run a 2010 Mac Pro with: * X5690 Xeon * MacVidCards Nvidia GTX 980 - runs with the power from the standard system. * Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 480GB SSDs.

i love your videos, they helped a great deal on upgrading my 2012 mac pro

I remember as a teen going to my step dads newspaper and they had 2-3 of these towers for the designers, it was amazing how good it look then and still like the look now

Really love the detailed videos... One of the top reviews on mac for sure ♥️♥️

I was expecting satisfying “click” sound when you put each modules back to the case

Hi Luke nice to see more people jumping into the old cheese grader Macs. They are fun to tinker with. I personally went with a 2009 4,1 model and took on the challenge of doing the firmware hack to force the system to a 5,1. it isn't easy but worth it as you gain quite a bit of knowledge as far as the system OS functionality. I replaced the stock 4 core with a 6 core xeon 3.46 ghz processor. I didn't delid it so I cant say what difference I'm getting as a result. I purchased cable end adapters to plug in a radeon rx 580. so far nothing has overheated or exploded so don't be nervous about upgrading to a beefier GPU. also I purchased a second daughterboard with twin cpu's as you've shown here and I want to change out both processors just to see what the system will give me. I'm currently booting off a 500 gb SSD so you can imagine how fast it is. look into that as well. I'll fill in the other drive slots with enterprise rated helium filled HDD's and be done with that aspect. it should net me 26-30+ terabytes of storage. I think that will be plenty. I stream from my iTunes movie collection through a Sony 4k television or the LG 32" Ultra Fine HDR IPS LED 4kUHD monitor. either display is a treat. it lets the rx 580 flex its muscles a bit. my point is these things are built like tanks and will let you have fun while you learn. I'll keep my eyes on your build as who knows you may fine a processor combo I don't know about and I can begin the upgrade process.........Again. Anyway sorry for the novel and thanks for post😎

Your videos are really good. I enjoy the content and the quality-

Great video. I’ve been upgrading my mid-2012 Mac Pro over the years and it still runs great.

Cant wait for more videos on this!!!

Great creative presentation Luke - will be a keen follower interested to witness the end results too what is the best Mac Pro ever built - 5,1. Keep up the great work!

This will be a great series

Awesome. Can’t wait to watch the following videos

I never been so excited for something on KZfaq in my whole life! Awesome vid.

Excelente... acá en chile tienes un suscriptor contento y esperando los siguientes capítulos de este nuevo renacer del MacPro 5.1... Saludos desde Chile!!!!

Still on a 2010 8core x 2.4ghz with 26 gigs of ram . You think updating the graphic card will allow me to edit 4K60p at 100mbs with no hiccups in premiere pro ? Or what you guys think ?

Sold mine early 2008 8-Core Mac Pro a few years ago since Apple stop macOS update for it and it was getting slow even with SSD/RAMS/Graphics Card update.

Great project! Along the way it would be great if you compared each configuration to other Macs like iMacs, iMac Pros, and minis.

You are the best. I want to see the final result :D

Luke, I love your videos. As a serious nightlife and entertainment photographer as well as someone who often records/edits multitrack audio I was really frustrated by the various windows laptops I was trying to get by with, and started my trek into the darkside (macOS) with an older macbook that pleasantly integrated perfectly out of the box with my iphone and ipad. I needed more horsepower, on a budget, with simple redundancy and backup solutions. Hence, the Cheesegrater. I was able to score a 4,1 2009 cMP with 16GB ram and a 5770 for under $300 including tax and shipping on eBay. I flashed it to 5,1 and scored a great deal on a pair of 6 core 3.46ghz westmeres for $225 upgraded to 96GB RAM, 802.11n/BT 4.0 , USB 3.0 , 1TB SSD, and a Sapphire Radeon Pulse 8GB along with 4x 4TB WD red drives in Raid 10, a USB 3.0 SD card reader, and a USB 3.0 8TB external HD for onsite backup (backblaze for off-site backup). I've also got a 240GB SSD installed for a scratch drive that also contains the macOS Catalina install app patched in case I ever need it for recovery. I's using dosdude1's Catalina patcher to run macOS Catalina unsupported, but it worked fine in Mojave anyway. Total cost was less than $1500, and this system actually is quite fast. No boot screen, but it definitely meets my post production needs for Lightroom Classic and PhotoshopClassic, it runs multitrack audio I/O with Reaper very well - as many as 24 tracks with no latency or hiccups so far, and I've started messing around with Premier for video. It's heavy, but in a special case it's portable enough to move to 3 different locations I work from. In one of these locations it runs 2x 55" screens in extended desktop feeding one screen into my entertainment complex while the other runs the virtual mixing board for reaper - simultaneously! I liked it so well I built another cMP for backup/redundancy/plex server. I scored a 8 core 2.8ghz 2008 cMP 3,1 for $28 on eBay ($70 with tax & ship), upgraded to 64 GB RAM, USB 3.0, 802.11n USB dongle and BT 4.0 USB dongle, installed the 5770 video card from my other cMP (kept the GT 8800 in case I ever need a boot screen for recovery on my other cMP), 2x HGST He8 4TB drives in Raid 0, and an 8TB WD external hard drive for on site backup. (no offsite backup for this one) This one is running macOS Sierra with the server.app (with dosdude1's Sierra patcher), as Sierra was the last macOS version where server.app ran full featured. It hosts a mirror of my professional photo archive - both raw and processed photos, syncronized mirrors of my icloud, google drive, and microsoft onedrive contents for local network access, sonar, radar, and my local/external network available plex server that has run as many as 9 streams transcoding simultaneously without hiccups nor buffering. This backup cMP, even though older, still runs current versions of Lightroom classic and Photoshop classic - so I can edit on it if the other cMP ever fails, and the freefilesync software keeps the phot archive directories updated across both machines. I've got both cMPs up on a gigabit local network attached to gigabit Fios internet, and the whole ecosystem works together seemlessly - 2 cMPs, macbook, 3 iphones, ipad, and even various windows laptops and smart tvs. It was through your videos I first got interested macOS and in in buying and upgrading an old Mac Pro to solve my post production problems in the first place. Next step I'm stalking ebay for a 2012 27" imac for a dedicated, compact editing and post production station. Likely it will just screenshare the pair of cMPs running headless, but I'd probably still upgrade it according to the recommendations in your imac videos in case it needed to do anything more intensive. Thanks for your great videos and for your enthusiasm for finding value in upgrades to older hardware. Kelli

Because of your video, I bought a MacPro 5.1 2012 2x2.4 Ghz, 24 Gb ram, 240 Gb SSD, 500 HDD, 640 Gb HDD, ATI Radeon HD 5770 1Gb, for 2000 DDK(about $183). I have installed a USB3 PCI . On another 256 Gb SSD with Win 10 Pro. Bought and install a RX 590 8Gb GPU and install Mojave.

Awesome... already wanna watch the other videos!!!!

Yeah, this is going to be interesting. I'm excited.

Great Video man, huge respect !!!

Best Project ever , subscribed!

Great idea Luke. I always wondered how far this thing can be pushed, even if I'm somewhat skeptical about it

Can’t wait for these videos

I love going to socialblade and seeing the rise in views and subs! Great work!

"I have this Mac Pro but I'm not going to do anything in this video but tell you that I'm going to do stuff with it later" You go man. You go do that. Let me know when it's already done.

Well done! Credible, authentic, informative... Thanks

great video! those macs were the best and they still are great

Thanks for your fantastic videos!

I just bought a 2008 Mac Pro Quad Core 3.0Ghz earlier this week for $125. I’m going to throw a good $500 into upgrades. I always wanted another cheese grater since my PowerPC G5!

It's surprising how much processors have stopped evolving since everyone started focusing on peripheral speed instead, these machines are still running great to this day and are neck and neck with similar options, I desperately needed a new intel Mac and it was either a 4.1 dual cpu or a newer Mac mini (2018 i3, couldn't find any i5s for a price less than the new m1) got the 4.1 and I couldn't be happier with Logic Pro X and pro tools running great, and with a flash that took 7 minutes and a some upgrades it can stay way above any 1000+ euro imac sold here used where I live (from my experience anything with a passmark score of 4000-4500 is way more than enough for my work) and I love the I/o expansion.

Good video, thank you ! Which is the latest OS that can we install to this machine ?

Right 👍 It is the best. Figured out just today to install catalina on the Mac Pro5,1 running very smooth for a beta. Continue the great work. Waiting for the next videos

Still using my maxed-out 2012 MacPro. 12 cores at 3.46 GHz.... Well, not totally maxed out, since I only have 64 GB RAM, not 128. All SSD... I love it -- my favorite computer ever. Latest upgrade was a Radeon RX-580 card

Love the star wipe!!

at least he protected it, I'm sure we've all had things come from eBay broken rattling around unprotected in a box.

Most favorite KZfaqr of Macs info

I’m excited to see what you do Luke. I hope you post a video comparing what you find when going from those 2.4 Dual Xeon chips to the 3.0+ Xeon chips. I would like to see this especially in a 4K editing set up. Oh and will you be trying dual GPUs or a single very powerful GPU?

Looking forward to see how this turn out

Guys please like and subscribe so I can buy the Apple stand thank you

So beautiful. So timeless. Given the necessary upgrades over the years, they could've been selling this thing ever since it's inception and continue doing so for a good while. Everybody would've been happy and Apple wouldn't have lost countless major studios to the PC. Oh my.

Was thinking about getting 5,1 Mac Pro, but the used market in Australia is nuts and it looks like Apple will not give it Native support in MacOS 10.15. hopefully dosdude1 also creates a patcher for 10.15 as well.

Huh what a coincidence, i was just talking about going all out on upgrading my dad's 5,1 mac pro. This is going to prove very useful indeed.

Could you install Catalina beta in your MP 5.1? I heard that could be tricky

My problem is 4 K/ 43 inch monitor connected to MacPro and screen is displaying the tiny letters/symbols/windows. (Icons are no problem.) Just words like menu options in any app, file names,password entry window, etc. The browser content also does not display properly : the text is in the middle like in a column and then there are two huge empty white areas to the left of it and to the right of it. The content has to naturally spread over in a landscape layout, but instead I am only getting the "portrait" look. How do you enlarge the fonts on tabs, menus etc? How do you enlarge the password window? How do you enlarge the System Preference window and the like? Some ppl say you have to deal with system fonts. I am not familiar with that at all. I have used all features in System Preferences windows, even lowered the resolution.I do wish to work in high resolution. And I absolutely hate the zoom-in. It is so bothersome, especially for the program I am using which is Finale, the music notation software. How do I figure this out? I believe it could be done. Again, don't want to opt to low rez, don't want to zoom in/out, maxed out all the features in System Preferences( going from value 12 to value 16 doesn't do anything for a 43 inch screen) This is MacPro 5.1, 2012 built, highly customized running OS 10.14.6, Nvidia Quadro 5000. The screen is connected via DP port, display is beautiful otherwise.Lower resolutions do enlarge everything mentioned above, but the browser window still looks awful. Apple no longer supports this unit. I am very frustrated and upset.Please, help. Thank you

Is it a problem that the newest macOS is not officially supported any more in this Mac Pro?

Great Videos!!!

I have one of those but when I turn it on the cou fans spin to max and the graphics card spins to max but there’s a red light on the cpu section but I don’t know why plz help me

7:55 hehe ‘to the macs’

At least you qualified your title with 'for a lot of people'. Fact is....The 12 Core Trashcan is the best machine for my needs. Small, silent, no thermal throttling and second hand prices make it a good deal...regardless of your last 'Review'. It's a keeper. I suspect they will become more sort after now (since 2019 prices have been indicated). Just as the 5,1 will get a boost in popularity.

great video! :D

Will you put in M.2 SSDs with a PCIe Adapter? Throw alle the Hardrives out and use 4 Sata SSDS in Raid4 with softraid? Really curious what you gonna do... Should have kept mine... BTW this video got me to subscribe :)

The absolute best Mac Pro ever made!

Thank you. I am "in" and just subscribed. I have a 2009 Mac Pro still working perfectly but struggling with 4K video editing and Premier Pro. I was about to buy a PC Tower but your video intrigues me. Please let us know what your timeline is to complete the project and the nature of complexity for those who are inexperienced with this kind of work. I would pay more to buy new but I hear you saying it's better to be in a position to upgrade over time. Thanks for the terrific work!!!

I recently bought an almost new 7,1 , but I am keeping my best 5,1 and its similar to where luke went with this one.... and I can tell youthat running catalina its no slouch either. Its still a very good machine in 2023 as long as you are happy with dosdude catalina. My experiences with opencore persuaded me to get a newer machine to run ventura !

I was watching the livestream this mac was bought in , perfect timing now for a video since the new Mac Pro is out

Great project!!

”How i’m gonna build the best Mac Pro in the world” Then uses an old amd 290X card...

Interesting project.... looking forward to see more videos; May the force be with you Luke... subscribed just now!

Excited, keep up

very nice machine i would love this for Linux once Apple drops support - great video

Hi.. I have a 2006 Mac Pro that will not upgrade beyond 10.7.5 - is there anything I can do with this machine to upgrade to a more recent OS ? Currently using it as a file server - which seems a waste.

I actually feel silly having this issue but I am drawing a blank on it I just got a mac pro 2010. After taking one of the hard drives and copying over my os files I was installing back in to the mac pro. I slid the drive in and seem to go all the way in flush with the top bar. I tried pushing more and it just wont go any more in and there is a large gap between the hard drive and the port on the motherboard. any help? This seems like a ridiculous situation but here I am in it. I looked at some videos about installing the hard drive and it looks correct its just a gap between the hard drive and the sb port. I have the 4 screws installed in the hard drive correctly. Looking at the video it seems like there is more room on his hard drive caddy in the front. Are There different size caddies for different years or something?

Can I use my old Mac pro tower with an external camera and microphone for meetings on Zoom? Please advise. It's running El Capitan with final cut pro X for video editing. Now I need to use it for Zoom or Skype. Thank you for any help.

Im excited for this, wow!

Hi Luke. Congratulations on your videos. I have two Mac Pro (one early 2008 and the other early 2009). I upgraded with SSD for the operating system. Can you suggest which video cards I can use in the two computers to enhance them for video processing? Thank you

Luke, you are so lucky you cannot even imagine. I cannot have the same cMP in France at the same price and despite all my searches I cannot find one at 500 boxes. This is so frustrating because I agree with you, the 5.1 is still a solid option and will help people like me to work for years. So frustrating, really but please, keep doing what you do and I will continue to,watch your videos and ... dream 🥴

It’s kinda sad that on my 3,1 I get 1851 single and 9762 on multi, with two 4 cores no hyper threading, I thought the threads would do better, and then in Cinebench it gets creamed by about 400 or 500 points

How many desktops can boot directly into 4 different operating systems? My 3.1 runs Sierra, XP64, Linux and WIN11 - selectable at boot. All 4 are fast and stable. It even boots directly from the USB slots, which allows for easy wipes. cloning, etc. It's a wonderfully versatile machine and amazingly reliable.

My Macpro 3.1 2008 still rocking.

I bought a 4,1 mac pro that'd been 2010 firmware flashed and had its CPU tray also replaced with the single 6-core one from a 2010 or 2012 and had had an x5690 installed on it, along with 32gB of memory. Pop in an rx570 I already had, a second SSD, 120gB and a random 500gB hard drive I had lying around, to compliment the 240gB SSD and 640gB HD that was already in it and this is now my main machine. I love it to pieces (best computer I've ever owned). Every Mac claims that this model won't support Catalina, but I have faith that Dosdude1 or perhaps someone else will easily get around that problem and we can enjoy these iconic, legendary machines for even more years to come. I know I have many years of upgrades left for mine.

I have a 1212 or so G5 Tower . All I need it to do is run 1 application and read some drives that have a music library . It has worked fine and at times I have to let it restart a number of times and as of late I get a black screen although the drives sound like they're perculating. Any suggestions ? Thanks tried booting it with DVD OS

It was already twice as fast as my 2007 Mac Pro out of the (packing peanuts) box 🤣

Hopefully grabbing one in the next few days so this is pretty sweet....

Hi Luke, many thanks for your fabulous videos, with the assistance of them I successfully upgraded my 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 and its been working like a dream for several weeks, sadly a couple days it will not power on anymore, not even light above the power switch, followed many articles and no luck, i've had 2 Mac Pro the past 10+ years and have replaced motherboards every 5 years (not happy) do you have any suggestions to breath life back into my much loved 5,1? cheers

Couple of things to note - you don't need delidded CPUS for a 4,1 you just need spacers or to not clamp the heat sink down as hard - mini 6 pins are not the same as 6 pins and can put out a total of 150w each totally 375watt. This is well documented and I'm not sure why this keeps going around