Mac Pro 2009 Upgrade or X99 Hack Pro ?

[pigsyn]

Hello,

I just bought a cMP 2009 with 2 Xeon E5520 (@2.26) for 290 €.
Do you think it's still worth to full upgrade this machine ?
USB3 card = 25 €
Sata adapter PCie card = 165 € (velocity x2 duo)
24 GB RAM = ~ 120 €
Xeon X5690 cpu *2 = 550 €
Total= 860 €

The reason I'm asking this is that I have spare parts (Samsung 840 Evo's, 600 W PSU, PC Case, high end Cpu cooler and a GTX 970) and I could upgrade my current rig in sig to a X99 hack pro.
GA-X99M-Gaming 5 = 250€
Core i7 5820K = 415€
16GB DDR4 RAM = ~ 120€
Total = ~ 800€

What do you think ?
The cMP is a nice machine but it's noisy, produces a lot of heat because of Apple ****ty PowerManagement under OS X, and upgrades are painfull with a non efi GPU.

Regards.

 

[Stork]

It depends upon what you want to do with your Mac Pro, application-wise. I've done most of the upgrades to my 2010 Mac Pro except for upgrading the processors and graphics card (HD 5770). SSD on an Acorn PCIe card and the HighPoint Rocket 1144C USB 3 card and more memory have made it a very viable system. I don't have the noise you're referring to, though. I think your question is best asked at MacRumors forum in the Mac Pro section > http://forums.macrumors.com/forums/mac-pro.1/. You'll find a lot of similar threads asking the same question.

As for an X99 based hackintosh...well, Apple has yet to use that chipset and processor, so you'll be forever in an experiment (or hobby). There are several build descriptions and guides for the X99 series of motherboards, and I recommend you do some reading. Again, it's what are you going to do with your system and what is going to "tax" it that causes you to make a choice.

http://www.tonymacx86.com/user-builds/

http://www.tonymacx86.com/yosemite-desktop-guides/

 

[pigsyn]

It depends upon what you want to do with your Mac Pro, application-wise. I've done most of the upgrades to my 2010 Mac Pro except for upgrading the processors and graphics card (HD 5770). SSD on an Acorn PCIe card and the HighPoint Rocket 1144C USB 3 card and more memory have made it a very viable system. I don't have the noise you're referring to, though.[/url]

Hello again,

I mostly do home studio recordings and photo edition. This is not extreme 4K video editing but you need a fast machine. (low latency wise in Audio Recording)

For me a silent computer is when you can't tell if a computer is powered on by just "listening" @ 1 meter with eye's closed.
The MacPro does not fit in that category.

My mac mini 2012 is a silent computer, but it's laggy with Logic X and Lightroom, even with 16GB Ram and a SSD.
By laggy I mean desktop effects and rendering are limited by the cheap HD4000.

My hack & mac pro are nice but noisy machines, I use condenser Microphones and I need very silent rigs.

As I work in HPC industry, I know there's a huge-huge-huge performance gap between Westmere and Ivy Bridge / Broadwell. So I have a problem spending 800€ into dead technology.

On the other side, Intel is changing sockets every 6 months. If I buy a 2011-v3 machine, it's obsolete when Intel releases Skylake, and I don't get the benefits if Apple release skylake based macs...

So there's a lot a factors and I don't know what you guys would do.


Regards.

P.S: sry admin for strong words

 

[trs96]

In your situation I would build with a I7-4790K 32 GB of DDR3 1866 MHz ram and a Gigabyte
Z97X motherboard. You can add in the other components you have like the case, SSD and
PSU if it is Haswell compatible. That wouldn't be too large of an investment. With the right
video card you'll be able to work in 4K as well. If you can wait for Skylake that would be
the next best choice. We have not ETA for when Customacs will be an option on that hardware
so you'll have to determine how long you could wait and then decide. Take look at this video
posted by Todd Munro. http://www.tonymacx86.com/videos.php?show=single&vid=124

He's using a 4790K with a Sapphire R9 270X 4GB card and can easily edit in 4K on dual
monitors. Would work fine for audio production as well. It's also way less expensive than
a new or used Mac Pro. You can make it quiet with a Noctua CPU cooler and Noctua case
fans. The reason your mini Mac performs so poorly is mainly due to the laptop CPU that
all Mac Minis use. The 4790K is worlds better than the Mini's I5 or I7 cpu, even in the
newer 2014 models. You can find many builds in User Builds and here:
http://www.tonymacx86.com/music/ that use a 4790K system for pro audio production.