Seeking for professional/expert/experience advice on Mac Pro 2008 3.1

After a few years with Hackintosh scenes, I've decided to plunge and get a dinosaur Mac Pro 2008 3.1. I got a really good deal but I think it will still have a few more good years in the bag, especially with a few upgrades.

Running Yosemite at the moment. Wondering if anyone can help me with a few things:

1) replaced the stock ATA DVD Rom with a SATA DVD Rom. Noticed that whenever the MP boots up, the dvd rom door pops open. The ATA ROM never did.

2) right now have 14GB of DDR2-5300 667Mhz. Planning to max out to 32GB. Should I add on another 18GB @ 667Mhz or would 32GB @ 800Mhz will make a noticeable difference that it's worth shelling $$$ to upgrade?

3) put in a SATA PCIe 2.0 controller card (in the x16 slot) to drive a 512GB SSD. Unfortunately, the power to drive the SSD is in the DVD rom area so I'd have to run an extension power cable to where the pcie slot. Planning to get an Apricorn Velocity Solo x2 Extreme (Amazon.com) to eliminate sata and power cables. Anyone have any experiences with this? or any suggestions to improve my current setup?

Thanx.

LaFemme69 said:

After a few years with Hackintosh scenes, I've decided to plunge and get a dinosaur Mac Pro 2008 3.1...

2) right now have 14GB of DDR2-5300 667Mhz. Planning to max out to 32GB. Should I add on another 18GB @ 667Mhz or would 32GB @ 800Mhz will make a noticeable difference that it's worth shelling $$$ to upgrade?

3) put in a SATA PCIe 2.0 controller card (in the x16 slot) to drive a 512GB SSD. Unfortunately, the power to drive the SSD is in the DVD rom area so I'd have to run an extension power cable to where the pcie slot. Planning to get an Apricorn Velocity Solo x2 Extreme (Amazon.com) to eliminate sata and power cables. Anyone have any experiences with this? or any suggestions to improve my current setup?

Thanx.

Click to expand...

More memory is always good if the apps you're using benefit from it. I have only 10GB of memory in my 2008 Mac Pro but don't plan to increase it as I don't run video or Adobe programs. Other World Computing (macsales.com) is a good 3rd party Mac retail on-line store where you can find the answer to your question about memory speed and max amount.

I have the Apricorn Velocity Solo x2 Extreme in both my 2008 & 2010 Mac Pros with Samsung 840 & 850 EVO SSDs, respectively. They work great. Boot times are slightly shorter, but programs load almost instantly.

I highly recommend the MacRumors forum's Mac Pro section for learning more about your Mac Pro.
http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1

Stork said:

More memory is always good if the apps you're using benefit from it. I have only 10GB of memory in my 2008 Mac Pro but don't plan to increase it as I don't run video or Adobe programs. Other World Computing (macsales.com) is a good 3rd party Mac retail on-line store where you can find the answer to your question about memory speed and max amount.

I have the Apricorn Velocity Solo x2 Extreme in both my 2008 & 2010 Mac Pros with Samsung 840 & 850 EVO SSDs, respectively. They work great. Boot times are slightly shorter, but programs load almost instantly.

I highly recommend the MacRumors forum's Mac Pro section for learning more about your Mac Pro.
http://forums.macrumors.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1

Click to expand...

Thank you for your response.

when you said 'boot times are slightly shorter', do you mean it is 'longer' or 'shorter' to load up? I remembered reading somewhere that OS boot time is slightly delayed because the MP read pcie cards last in the booting sequence.

LaFemme69 said:

Thank you for your response.

when you said 'boot times are slightly shorter', do you mean it is 'longer' or 'shorter' to load up? I remembered reading somewhere that OS boot time is slightly delayed because the MP read pcie cards last in the booting sequence.

Click to expand...

It may take a couple more moments for the apple logo to be displayed, once it is up booting is almost instant from SSD compared to HDD. I think its less than 10 seconds for mine to get from apple logo to desktop. But i'm not using that card. i've got a bit of a different setup in my 08 mac pro.

You will need the card in slot 1 or slot 2 to use the fastest PCIe slots in the mac pro. I have a GTX 650 in slot 1 and the OEM 8800GT in slot 4 (mainly as a boot display device) with 2 PCIe SATA 3 controllers in the other 2 slots. Slot 2 has a 4 'bay' mSATA card with a 240GB SSD for booting and 3 open slots, slot 3 is a SATA 3 controller that runs the stock 4 bays via the stock backplane and a SAS extension cable. The OEM SATA 2 controller has been re-routed into the optical bay (4 SATA cables are routed there).

Ludacrisvp said:

It may take a couple more moments for the apple logo to be displayed, once it is up booting is almost instant from SSD compared to HDD. I think its less than 10 seconds for mine to get from apple logo to desktop. But i'm not using that card. i've got a bit of a different setup in my 08 mac pro.

You will need the card in slot 1 or slot 2 to use the fastest PCIe slots in the mac pro. I have a GTX 650 in slot 1 and the OEM 8800GT in slot 4 (mainly as a boot display device) with 2 PCIe SATA 3 controllers in the other 2 slots. Slot 2 has a 4 'bay' mSATA card with a 240GB SSD for booting and 3 open slots, slot 3 is a SATA 3 controller that runs the stock 4 bays via the stock backplane and a SAS extension cable. The OEM SATA 2 controller has been re-routed into the optical bay (4 SATA cables are routed there).

Click to expand...

I responded to this but it was deleted......I guess i must have violated a rule. Sorry! I will try again.

I haven't checked my post regarding my MP.....'til now. I see you have quite a set up with your MP. wondering if you can help me, perhaps i may have it set up as yours' if not too hard.

do you have the brand/model and where you buy your mSATA card (slot 2), the SATA III controller (slot 3) and your 240gb ssd?

how do you run the sata 3 controller card to the 4 stock bays and how do you reroute the 4 stock SATA II into the optical bay, with all four of them in there. did you end up using any of those ports? I never knew you can replace the stock sata II to III. Also how do you hook up your ssd?

another interesting observation is that you are running dual GPU. although one is strictly for native booting (slot 4), how does your system know which is the 'main' GPU? for eg, if i were to use dual GPU like you but i use graphic intense apps like adobe premier, final cut pro......will my system use the 2GB gtx 750 ti or my original 256MB GPU (assume the empty slot 4)? do you have it hooked up to 2 different monitors?

my current setup right now:

slot 1 - GTX750 ti
slot 2 - SATA III controller card to drive a 512GB boot up ssd
slot 3 - USB 3 controller card
slot 4 - empty

If possible, please upload some photos of your setup. is there a site that I can follow?

thank you so much.

katie d

LaFemme69 said:

my current setup right now:

slot 1 - GTX750 ti
slot 2 - SATA III controller card to drive a 512GB boot up ssd
slot 3 - USB 3 controller card
slot 4 - empty

katie d

Click to expand...

I just acquired a used MP 3,1 (2008) in nearly mint condition for a very low price, so I'm stoked! I quickly made a few mods that are similar to yours and I have a few more charted out.

slot 1 - graphics (8800 GT now, but a freebie HD 5770 1GB is coming)
slot 2 - OWC Accelsior S attached to a 500GB 850 EVO SSD
slot 3 - empty
slot 4 - Sonnet Allegro USB 3.0 PCIe, 4 ports (planned)

The system didn't have wifi, so I took out the bluetooth card and installed a new Apple iMac 802.11ac BCM94360CD BT4.0 Wifi Card + Mini PCI-E Express Adapter. This provides 802.11ac capability AND supports Continuity/Handoff in OS X Yosemite. It was a painful install because the damn wifi antenna connectors are SO SMALL and my vision isn't so great. The attachment shows how I did it (this is just a PDF I made from a web page - credit does not belong to me). If you follow those instructions, keep in mind that the antenna wires may not be hidden where the graphic shows (mine were wrapped in black tape by HDD port #1).

The system came with 4 GB RAM. My father's day gift is a 16GB (4x4) memory kit that I will install. I would have left it alone at 8GB, but 4 was just too low for my tastes.

So far I am very pleased with the responsiveness of this computer and I'm trying to resist the graphics card upgrade urge. A used GTX 680 or a new GTX 970 are awefully tempting. Must resist...

LaFemme69 said:

Running Yosemite at the moment.

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Are you thinking of upgrading to El Cap or Sierra?