Mac Pro custom rig.

**SaiJin** · #1 04-25-2019

Alright, I just got a mac pro early 2009 for $20
2.6 quad core, 3gb of ram, 512mb Geforce GT 120, OSX lion.

I'm going to turn this into the latest 5,1 Mac pro with 3.46mhz 12 core Intel Xeon, 128gb of ram and a good GPU.

Probably add USB 3 slot as well while I'm at it and a new Bluetooth card.

What are your thoughts? Am I missing something?

Sunspot144 · #2 04-26-2019

1TB Samsung SSD

128GB is overkill but if I was going all out why the hell not lol

**SaiJin** · #3 04-26-2019

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunspot144

1TB Samsung SSD

128GB is overkill but if I was going all out why the hell not lol

Yea I figure, go all out since it's the final Modular tower apple made.

What's the best GPU can it take though? And do I need to get a new PSU?

rsot · #4 04-26-2019

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaiJin

Alright, I just got a mac pro early 2009 for $20
2.6 quad core, 3gb of ram, 512mb Geforce GT 120, OSX lion.

$20?!

amazing deal!

Sunspot144 · #5 04-26-2019

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaiJin

Yea I figure, go all out since it's the final Modular tower apple made.

What's the best GPU can it take though? And do I need to get a new PSU?

The 1070 ti's are nice cards - price, speeds and power consumption wise. Got mine used on ebay.

650W+ PSU is what I'd go with. Probably 750W+ for room to expand in the future.

If you want to save yourself $50 or however much 16GB of RAM is a good amount. Ive only hit all 16GB usage when rendering lighting ha.

Sunspot144 · #6 04-26-2019

Actually you can run an operating system on your RAM lol.

Never done it, it's actually volatile cause RAM is volatile, so the OS has to be loaded every boot up.

But it's up to 100000x faster than a Solid State Drive. SSD speeds of 200-500MB. RAM speeds 2GB-20GB. Insane haha.

phaz0rz · #7 04-26-2019

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sunspot144

Actually you can run an operating system on your RAM lol.

You got a how-to?

BTW it looks like RAM vs SSD is 40x faster on the high side using the numbers in your example, lol.

EDIT: started looking into it after reading your post, and found out I can create "RAM disks" out of my spare RAM using software which will show up as normal disk drives in My Computer. Is this along the lines of what you'd need to do to run your OS from RAM?

Source: How To Use RAM as a Hard Drive

Sunspot144 · #8 04-26-2019

Quote:

Originally Posted by phaz0rz

You got a how-to?

BTW it looks like RAM vs SSD is 40x faster on the high side using the numbers in your example, lol.

EDIT: started looking into it after reading your post, and found out I can create "RAM disks" out of my spare RAM using software which will show up as normal disk drives in My Computer. Is this along the lines of what you'd need to do to run your OS from RAM?

Source: How To Use RAM as a Hard Drive

Lol, yea, just googled the numbers. Still, screaming fast. iirc I read somewhere you can boot into an OS run on RAM, and load files from hard drives. RAM as storage would end badly cause it doesnt have storing capabilities like hard disks.

Got me curious if a thumb drive can be made to hijack a computer's RAM and run your OS ha.

Sunspot144 · #9 04-26-2019

LINK

https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...irely-into-ram

Could be loaded onto an ext hd and run on any PC plus super fast bootup / load speeds.

Would probably need to install drivers for each PC it gets plugged into

phaz0rz · #10 04-26-2019

Screw Linux, I want to do it with Win XP! I'll keep browsing around since it's obviously possible. Can't be too much harder than making bootable flash drives with XP or Linux, right?

If I created a 10GB RAM disk, installed XP on it, set BIOS to boot from RAM partition, and never turned off the computer....... I guess I'd have a pretty useless computer lol

WEI · #11 04-26-2019

Quote:

Originally Posted by SaiJin

Alright, I just got a mac pro early 2009 for $20
2.6 quad core, 3gb of ram, 512mb Geforce GT 120, OSX lion.

I'm going to turn this into the latest 5,1 Mac pro with 3.46mhz 12 core Intel Xeon, 128gb of ram and a good GPU.

Probably add USB 3 slot as well while I'm at it and a new Bluetooth card.

What are your thoughts? Am I missing something?

Why do you such a high amount of RAM? 128GB is really overkill. I haven't seen any system with that yet.

Sunspot144 · #12 04-26-2019

Lol, yea, hope for no power outages xD

Getting it to work with XP would be aces.

Could split a 128GB thumb drive into two partitions - one for OS other for permanent storage. Can buy small ssd conversion sticks to make thumbdrives.

Sunspot144 · #13 04-26-2019

True 8k used like 64GB RAM haha. Not there yet but 4k is pretty mainstream now - FINALLY.

65" 4k TV's are $600 now.

$20 for a 2009 mac is crazy. My old 2008 mac pro laptop was $1800 refurbished.

Sunspot144 · #14 04-26-2019

Can boot your VMs super quick using RAM too.

**SaiJin** · #15 04-26-2019

Well the Mac is from 2009 and I figure if I'm going to upgrade it to be super powerful I'd just go all out.

So I need:

1. New tray / MoBo with 12-core 3.46mhz
2. 8 Sticks of 16gb ram
3. Video card I want something with 12+GB

Then secondary stuff would be

1. USB 3 card
2. Bluetooth 5.0

DO I actually need to replace the PSU?