Mac Pro 2010, upgrade or replace?

ali_83 · 24 Aug 2017 at 18:06

Hi guys

I've got a Mac Pro 2010 quad core, the entry level one with a 2.8Ghz Xeon chip and a Radeon 5870 1GB.

I've upgraded the ram to 24GB and added an SSD as the boot drive. The system is starting to show its age and has become quite slow, especially since I updated to Sierra. I do a lot of photo editing work and a bit of video and its become really slow at time especially when working with software such as Capture One Pro which has become pretty much unusable now.

I've been looking at replacing it with something else or indeed upgrading my existing system.

Options so far seem to be:

1) Refurbished 2015 iMac 5K (Core i5, 512 SSD, 8GB Ram, M395) for somewhere around £1700

2) New 2017 iMac 5K (Core i5, 1TB Fusion, 8GB Ram, RX 575) for £1900 give or take

3) Upgrade my existing system with a new motherboard tray capable of dual CPU (mine is currently only capable of one CPU), PCIe SSD drives, new GPU and a new monitor for probably £1200 give or take.

4) *** you need to make sure you read this before posting in this forum ***

Has anyone here made any upgrades to a 2010 Mac Pro? Did it make a big difference to the system? Would it be actually worth doing or just sell it on and replace it?

lumencreative · 25 Aug 2017 at 11:39

Sorry I can't help but I'd like to know the answer to this as well. My wife's got a 2010 Mac Pro (or might even be a 2009) with a 2.66GHz Quad Core. We too upgraded the ram when she first bought it to 24GB and added an SSD drive and while it does certain things a lot quicker than my i7 Quad Core MBP did when I had it, it's beginning to get a bit sluggish.

I did contemplate just doing a clean install for her but would be interested to hear if there are any decent upgrade paths for the machine before we flog it.

Hater · 25 Aug 2017 at 12:14

*** No, no you can't. Look here ***

iMac Pro means there'll hopefully be a Mac Pro refresh soon, probably worth holding on until then...

ali_83 · 25 Aug 2017 at 16:46

Went to the apple store today and had a play with the new iMac, very nice. Also went to John Lewis and had a look at the new surface studio.

Sufficed to say after today I'm no further on! :rolleyes:

Caged · 25 Aug 2017 at 21:47

Sell it to someone who did a phenomenally poor job of seeing the writing on the wall for the professional Mac range and has their entire business dependent on putting PCI-Express cards into Apple towers. There's no point spending any money on it if all you want to do is a bit of photo editing.

wildman_33 · 15 Sep 2017 at 15:22

Slightly late reply to this, I have a 2009 (Dual CPU) Mac Pro that I upgraded to two 2.93GHz 6 Core Xeon X5670s, its a lot faster than any iMac and only owes me about £700 so far. Buying a CPU tray alone is a pretty expensive way to upgrade, I'd be looking for a Dual Processor system that you can swap your current upgrades across to. I have a GTX970 in mine as it was cheap but I would probably recommend an AMD GPU for your tasks as the driver support is a bit better. For the money you cant really beat the Mac Pro.

bloodiedathame · 15 Sep 2017 at 15:28

What are you using it for? A lot of software applications are moving away from Multithreading and towards GPU acceleration. Personally I think the Mac Pros pre 2012 have met the end of their useful life, certainly in the video production environment.

metachi · 18 Sep 2017 at 22:08

anything mac from 2010 is vintage. i would upgrade. the old Mac Pro consume too much wattage. another reason to upgrade.