Quote:
Originally Posted by jyl
What model/year of used Mac Pro would you recommend, if one
were looking for a desktop?
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Tough one.
The dual quad core CPU boxes, 08' 3,1 are really good boxes and are the best value. I would only get the dual CPU 3,1, not the single or anything older.
If budget is less of a concern then a 10' or newer 5,1. They are not cheap but you'll get your money out of them in the long run.
You have
08's are the 3,1's
09's are the 4,1's
10'-13' are the 5,1'
The secondary market price point basically increases $500 per model.
Also depends where you buy, fleabay will be cheaper than a trusted reseller.
Good place to start, these are 8 core boxes.
Buy Refurbished Used Apple Mac Pros | mac of all trades
All boxes / configs,
Buy Refurbished Used Apple Mac Pros | mac of all trades
I would pick up the newest one that fits your budget.
Don't worry so much about graphics cards, they are easily upgraded.
They will all run pretty much every off the shelf PCI card available today.
If there is a Mac version of a particular card, like the GTX 680's get the Mac version.
It will have EFI on the rom which is the only difference.
EFI does two things, gets you the boot screen and registers the card correctly in system profiler.
Non EFI cards work just fine, you just get a blank screen until it boots to desktop.
Lack of boot screen is really only an annoyance if you have bootcamp or want to access startup disc options without a restart.
Leaving in the stock card or one with EFI (how mine are set up) on it as a "helper" card solves that issue.
RAM is similar, one of my 3,1's runs 667 mhz ram when it calls for 800 mhz. Works just fine as long as all slots are populated with the same spec chips.
667 is half the price of 800, the trade off in amount of ram you can install outweighs the slight performance hit of the slower chip.