How to breathe new life into a dying Mac Pro

I'm targeting this at a very select group of readers: those of you, like me, who have Apple's most neglected Mac model. The red-headed stepchild of the Mac family. The Mac Pro. If you're limping along with an ever-aging Mac Pro, what's the best way to get some more life out of the old beast? Let's take a look.

The poor Mac Pro. It looks almost the same as it did when it first was first introduced in 2006, to replace the nearly-identical Power Mac G5. It's languished while other Macs have been refreshed and redesigned, updated with speedier processors, more efficient motherboard designs, and new features like Thunderbolt and USB 3.0.

It's a shame, too, because under the (enormous) hood, the Mac Pro is an impressive beast: workstation-class processors, industrial-strength RAM, four internal hard drive bays and gobs of expansion ports.

Despite all the advances in other Mac models, including the superlative iMac, when it comes to raw CPU benchmarks the Mac Pro remains Apple's highest-performance system. But if you've had yours for more than a couple of years, chances are you're starting to feel the machine's age. Maybe you're seeing a spinning beachball cursor pop up more frequently. Or maybe you're becoming keenly aware of all the hard drive chatter every time you open an application or access your files. Or maybe you've discovered that the graphics card the Mac Pro came with no longer meets minimum system requirements of games or other apps you want to use.

Whatever the case, there are things you can do to get more like out of your Mac Pro. It's limited mostly by your budget, though there are some hard technical limits you'll run into as well.

First off, if you have a first or second generation Mac Pro (identified as "MacPro1,1" and "MacPro2,1" in the System Information app), you're a bit stuck in the past. Neither of those machines has 64-bit EFI firmware, necessary to install Mountain Lion. That means the newest operating system software you'll ever be able to run is Lion, and the newest app software you can run will need to be Lion-compatible.

That's not a show-stopping problem for most people today, but more and more apps are optimized for Mountain Lion and the capabilities introduced therein. What comes after Mountain Lion will get into developers' hands next month at WWDC, and that's going to create further difficulty down the line. So if you haven't already started saving up for a new machine, get cracking, because the time is coming soon to put out old Bessie to pasture.

RAM

All Mac Pros from the 3,1 system onward (introduced in early 2008) don't suffer from this limitation, so they should have some life left in them for a bit longer. But to get them truly optimized for today's environment, you may need to do some tweaking.

One of the first things to consider is RAM. Those 2008 systems shipped stock with 2GB of RAM. By comparison, today's lowest-end Mac model, the $599 Mac mini, ships with 4GB RAM standard. So if you haven't upgraded the RAM, that's the first place to start.

Upgrading RAM on the Mac Pro is easy, but which RAM you need and how it should be installed varies from model to model. Fortunately, Apple has a support page (opens in new tab) with all the details you'll need. Bottom line is that 4GB should be your bare minimum, but if you can move it up to 8GB or more (depending on what you're doing) that might be wise.

The upper limit on installing RAM on a Mac Pro can be a bit ridiculous - even 2008 models can handle up to 32GB - so the limit on RAM should be governed by your wallet and your needs. Working on huge media files? It may be worth it to make out the Pro with as much memory as you an afford.

Storage

The Mac Pro has four internal SATA hard drive expansion bays. Over time some of us have filled those bays with second, third and fourth drives for increased storage or to build out a speedy internal RAID system. But if one of the drive bays is available, there's another great opportunity to improve performance by installing a Solid State Drive (SSD).

SSDs remain very expensive per gigabyte compared to a conventional hard drive, but the performance difference is stunning. If you have the spare room, you'd be nuts not to consider adding an SSD to your Mac Pro.

SSDs are available from a number of vendors. Speed and size is up to you and your wallet. You'll find that most of them are in 2.5-inch drive form, making them drop-in replacements for laptop hard drives. That means you'll need an adapter to get one to work in the Pro, whose SATA drive bays are designed for 3.5-inch drives instead. (NewerTech sells the AdaptaDrive for $19.99, which enables a 2.5-inch drive to fit in a 3.5-inch drive bay.)

Chances are that unless you're independently wealthy or have a corporate benefactor that can write off the cost, you're going to end up with an SSD that's a lot smaller than the hard disk it's replacing. So it's a smart idea to use that SSD only for specific purposes, like making it the boot volume and keeping only frequently used apps and files on it.

Infrequently used software or files that are mainly used for archival storage should remain on the regular hard drive. But by making the SSD the boot volume, the operating system will load lickety-split, and the OS will also use the SSD for memory swap files, which can be written and read much faster on SSD than a hard disk.

Latter day Mac minis and iMacs sport an option called Fusion Drive, which combines an SSD drive with a conventional hard drive to give you the best of both worlds. You can mimic that capability yourself if you install an SSD in your Mac Pro and use it alongside an existing hard drive. It requires a little work to get there, but the results are great. Step by step instructions for doing so are available from Other World Computing (opens in new tab).

Expansion

Don't forget that the Mac Pro has expansion ports. If you haven't touched these yet, now might be a good time to upgrade and add some new functionality.

Your Mac Pro doesn't (and can't) accomodate Thunderbolt at this point, but you can get closer by adding an external Serial ATA (eSATA) expansion card. eSATA is a specialty interface that you find on some hard drives and external RAID arrays built for high performance. You can also bump up the Mac Pro to USB 3.0 by adding an expansion card.

To that end, HighPoint Technologies does a great job of qualifying their products for the Mac Pro. They sell all sorts of specialty expansion cards including SATA, eSATA, mini-SAS (Serial-Attached SCSI), dedicated RAID and RAID caching cards; and two and four-port USB 3.0 cards.

Graphics

If there's one sore point for most of us Mac Pro owners, it's that the device has an industry standard double-height 16x PCIe expansion slot for a graphics card, but Mac-specific graphics cards have remained damnably proprietary, damnably expensive and damnably slow.

Over the years various corners of the Internet have published guides to flashing the ROMs on PC graphics cards to get them to work or applying various other trickery to enable a bone-stock PC card to work on the Mac. All of them are hacks that can easily make the average user very uneasy. I never bothered. But my Mac Pro ran out of graphics gas a while ago; games started coming out that my machine was well within spec to play except for graphics.

The good news is that if you're willing to accept some compromise, you don't need to hack anything to get a PC graphics card to work in a Mac Pro. Since OS X 10.7.5, Mac Pros will work with plain vanilla PC cards that have Nvidia graphics processors on them. Apple's standard graphics drivers now support them.

There are a few limitations. Most notably, your Mac's display will stay black until the desktop or a login window appears. There's no "boot screen" showing an Apple logo. This is because most PC graphics cards lack support for the Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) needed to be recognized at startup.

This can make booting into a Windows partition using Boot Camp, using NetBoot or booting off another volume besides the startup volume a little tricky, but if you're on a tight budget and you want to give a big graphics boost to your Mac Pro without paying through the nose, it's probably your best bet. "Asgorath" in the forums at MacRumors has posted a very informative FAQ discussing what works and what doesn't. Definitely check it out before ordering a new graphics card for your Mac Pro.

If you want a fully featured Mac Pro-compatible graphics card and using AMD graphics sounds appealing, it's worth noting that Sapphire Technology has recently introduced the HD 7950 Mac Edition, which uses AMD's GCN architecture. It comes equipped with an HDMI port, two mini DisplayPorts and one Dual-Link DVI port, but be prepared to fork over $434.99 for the privilege.

Keep on Truckin'

As you can see, there's a lot you can do with an aging Mac Pro to get it back on track and humming while Apple replaces it with whatever it's going to be replaced with. With the exception of a few hardware shortcomings, you're limited by your wallet, your definition of practicality and and your imagination.

Peter Cohen
27 Comments
  • I have the first gen Nehalem Mac Pro 2.22. I think my 2012 rMBA renders Final Cut video faster. I love the idea of the MP, but it's a dinosaur. If Apple isn't abandoning the machine, I hope it gets a fitting update and soon. iMac is fantastic, but not for everything.
  • One word - hackintosh :) Ok, I jest, but its an awful lot cheaper with comparatively the same hardware, or splash the same money as a MP for a beast of a machine. I guess its a good fallback at least if Apple do kill off the MP.
  • True .. i made my first Hackintosh the day i found out my MacPro 1,1 would not be able to update to Mountain Lion. Never been happier :)
  • Had to reply to this. In my search to figure out just exactly what I've got myself in to, through buying a mac pro 2.1 on ebay, I'm slightly disturbed to find I'm stuck with snow leopard. Anyway, I've been running a hackintosh for a couple of years, after selling my macbook pro (long money related story) - and I have to say, it's just NOT the same. First off, the hardware - there's something really special, hell, damn sexy about Apple hardware. No, it doesn't make your computer run any faster, but it makes you *feel* better. Secondly, you *know* your mac is legit. With a hackintosh, your never quite sure if Apple will 'pull the plug' at any given moment and render your hackintosh unbootable with a simple update. Sure, there'll be a fix out there, but in the interim, you'll be locked out. Thirdly, hell, even if you follow tonymacosx guides to the letter, there's *still* some caveats with the hardware. That makes me feel uneasy. I've never been quite sure if my hackintosh is giving me the proper 'experience' - yep, you can mess around with kext files and drivers, but really, all you want to do is get work done. I guess the best thing about the Hackintosh, is that most serious enthusiasts will eventually buy an Apple computer. Perhaps that's why Apple just leaves the whole scene alone - at least for now.
  • Check out netkas at the beginning there was talk of making it a Hack some fellow named Tiamo built a Boot_EFI that thunk calls from 64 bit to 32 bit. My 2006/2007 Mac Pro is running 10.9.1 and I replaced the stock video 7300 with an Nvidia GT630 2GB DDR dual DVI. You have no boot screen till your log on screen Apple has the drivers but since its a peecee card you will not see the boot screen. I did not put 10.7 on another part ion or drive so in my case when 10.9.2 comes out I will have to remove the drive and have my iMac re-install Tiamo boot, use chown, set boot flags and bless.
    I am really please that it works. I can still use it and am adding a SSD drive to the last bay.
  • I am die hard MacPro fan. I would be very sad and conflicted if they don't revive it in years to come.
  • I am too. I love my rMBP and my MBA, but if the Mac Pro is ultimately discontinued, I will be very displeased.
  • That's how I felt when they discontinued the 17" MBP. Pro users have gone from Apple's bread and butter to second class citizens in the last few years. Great article, btw.
  • Thank you kindly! Having been a 17-inch PowerBook G4 and 17-inch MacBook Pro owner for many years, I thought so too, when I found out that they discontinued the 17-inch with the introduction of the rMBP last year. Then I got an rMBP and changed my mind. The rMBP may not have the actual dimensions of the 17-inch model, but it's every bit the pro machine the 17-inch was. Just not quite as enormous.
  • Disagree. I'm writing this on a maxed out rMBP15 - it's not the same.
    I'm thinking about abandoning Apple laptops after 2 17" MBPs and 1 15" rMBP, I'm tempted by the Razer Blade Pro which is pretty much what I think a 17" rMBP should be: Slim unibody, 3.4kg, 17.3" 4K IGZO-screen, mechanical keyboard. 32GB DDR4 RAM, 2 x 1TB SSD in RAID 0 and GTX 1080 graphics. I'll have to run it in linux with OSX in a virtual environment - Maybe Promox-KVM/QEMU. KVM/QEMU can run Win10 with GPU passthrough and I think the OSX-stuff I use will be fast enough without hardware graphics.
  • Man that is rough. I am so at home on my Mac Pro at work. I couldn't imagine working on anything else 8 hours a day. Obviously the most recent model will stay up to date for a while but there will come a day bit just will no longer be supported, then what?
  • Twit did a great video on this http://twit.tv/show/know-how/37
  • I have a 2009 MP... I upgraded the RAM to 16GB, 4x2TB drives, 3.2GHz CPU and a GeForce 660Ti (hoping to go SLI in the future)... Love this machine and would also be sad if Apple did away with the Mac Pro...
  • For real diehards with 1,1 and 2,1 Mac Pros.
    First, use the hack sites to update the 1,1 firmware to 2,1.
    Next, buy a CF card of 4 GB and a CF to IDE adapter card.
    Then, connect this to the IDE bus (at CDROM/DVD drive port) and format in FAT32.
    Install Chameleon or Clover bootloaders on CF card (see the hack sites for the how to).
    Last, enjoy booting old Mac Pro in efi64 with all the goodies that brings. And a link for the google-challenged: http://www.jabbawok.net/?p=47
  • I don't consider myself a power user, but I'm fairly proud of the fact that my 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 *and* the since-donated G5 it replaced both benefited greatly from added RAM and an inexpensive eSATA card. I got longer useful lives out of them than all-in-ones would likely have provided. I was fairly close to deciding upon an iMac in 2010 until I finally realized that my preference for a tower—and the potential years of life-extension that add-ons provide it—were worth the $1000 more. It also doesn't hurt that the extra drive bays provide space for two of my three backup schemes.
  • Using extra drive bays as backup is an excellent point. In fact, one of my drive bays is home to a 3TB drive I use exclusively as a local Time Machine backup.
  • Thanks!
    Bay #2 is for Time Machine. Bay #3 is for Carbon Copy Cloner. I'm still trying to figure out Chronosync for the external drive that backs up my wife and I.
  • One way you can definitely improve on this amazing tower of a computer is simple...reduce the price by at least 25%. Then you will see many folks rushing to buy them. Probably will sell a lot and make some money back, instead of letting them lay there in storage.
  • I have a MacPro 2,1 2x3GHz with 10GB of RAM that had the nvidia 8800GT that had been in it for half a decade finally go tits up so I've learned a lot about what has changed since I last opted to boost performance pushing the RAM up to 10 GB. I'm currently sitting at 10.7.5 and a test card EVGA GTX 560 arrived yesterday and booted right up without issue. I intend to jump through the appropriate hoops to get it running Mavericks an and will also be upgrading to one or two SSDs. I am looking at an "OWC multi-mount" to replace one of my optical drives and avoid losing any of the 4 SATA bays. Do the SSDs require any special setup or maintenance? Thanks, -Curtis
  • Great article, unfortunately I am stuck to 10.6.7 because of the audio card I use. Where I live I can't find any apple 5770 graphics cards online for sale atm unfortunately. However I see many PC versions of the 5770, 8800, x1900. Do you know if any of these, or other PC video cards would work plug and play with a MAC Pro 1.1 running 10.6.7 without the need to patch/trickery. Tks!
  • Hello, I know this column is old but found it when searching for info. If anyone has a response much appreciated. I want to upgrade 2008 Early Macpro to at least OS 10.7 so I can update some software I use regularly (Lightroom and Final Cut Pro in particular - both work okay now - kind of slow..LR and occasional APP crashes with FCP) I have a 1TB boot drive (HDD) , 18GB of memory and an updated Video card "ati radeon hd 5770" already installed and working. All works fine with 10.6.8 ..
    Lightroom and FCP heavy data is on external 800 Firewire disks - just the apps themselves on the internal HD I have read about some problems updating the 2008 Early Macpro if it doesn't have the original video card. Does anyone know about this? I was going to get a spare internal disk to try and install a test on, but don't want to fool around with it if its likely to cause problems. PS not crazy for the new round Macpro or Imac (I use a DVI Eizo monitor)
  • Edophotojp, Hey! In response to your concern, I just purchased a used, 2008 Mac Pro tower which I upgraded to Lion OS 10.7.5, because most of my video and graphics apps are dated. It was one of the smartest things I've ever done. I've had no problems at all with the video card. In fact, after installing Lion OS updates (from 10.7.1 to 10.7.5) everything about the machine runs better than before. Seriously, the MP tower blazes! So you should be fine upgrading to Lion 10.7. Just make sure to back up Snow Leopard, before doing the upgrade. Note that you'll probably need to re-install all your apps onto the upgraded Lion HD. And, yes, the new Mac Pro trash can looks crappy. As a person that has been buying Mac computers since 1994, I can honestly say that I will never buy a Mac Pro trash can. Steve Jobs R.I.P.
  • Kerry, Just recently I have been gradually updating my machines. 2008 Early Mac Pro is at 10.8.5 (after stepping up to 10.7) and nearly all my important 10.6.8 software works.(CS3, CS5, Word 2008) Will make the plunge to 10.10 soon. 10.10 seems to be working okay on my 2009 old white macbook, which I have been testing to see that my same apps work. Most of them do work, especially the ones above do work. The machine itself is slow but that is because of its specs and limited 4gb memory I suppose. The Mac Pro with updated video card and 18gb memory is of course better. It seems most new softwares/upgrades require at least 10.8, some only work with 10.10. I figure I better upgrade now before I get too far behind :) PS I just installed over my current system, not a clean install. This way all the apps, mail folders etc came along for the ride and the OS will tell you after installation what doesn't work.
    And of course make a backup before trying a upgrade.
  • Sorry wrong topic.
  • Hello I just setup a MacPro 2,1 I want to know are there any hacks for firmware for 2,1 to 3,1? thanks for any support on MacPro 2,1 hacks. Here are my specs System Information: Model: Mac Pro • CPU: Intel Xeon 5160 (4 Threads, 4 Cores) @ 3.00 GHz • Memory: 16.00 GB • Uptime: 26 minutes • Disk Space: 479.69 GB • Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 620, ATY,RadeonX1900 • Screen Resolution: 1440 x 900 • OS: OS X El Capitan (Version 10.11.3, Build 15D9c)
  • No, the hardware is different, there is no firmware hack. But, you can use 8Gb Dimms and go up to 64Gb of Ram. I have 64Gb and El Capitan as well. I put a cheap 8800GT so I have the bios screen at bootup. SSD makes it so much faster!
  • Need some guidance. I am rebuilding a circa 2008 Mac Pro Desktop, but the power supply was bad. In order to be able to pull it out I had to pull the fan next to it out, but the rubber mounts had rotted. I need a source for those rubber mounts and a step by step for remounting the fan on to the rubber grommet mounts.