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Is it dumb to buy a used 2013 Mac Pro in 2019?

For what it's worth, I bought the 2018 Mac Mini 6 core around 6 months ago and upgraded the ram to 64gb. I use a wired apple keyboard and kensington mouse as I heard people had problems with bluetooth. The best compliment I can give the mini is that I forget it's there just doing its thing. Fan noise is far quiter than the Macbook pro also.
 
I ended up hiring someone to build me a hackintosh (i9-9900X 10-core, 64 gigs ram, NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD). He’s been building them for composers and video pros for over 10 years and knows what he’s doing. It has been extremely stable, fast and powerful. The best part is I saved over $3000 compared to an iMac Pro with similar specs. It has only two thunderbolt three ports though. I’m only using one of them so I can live with that. Logic X performed over five times higher than my 2013 27” iMac 3.5 Ghz on the New Logic Pro benchmark test. I know a lot of people like to build them themselves but I didn’t have the time. I was able to continue working on music until it arrived at my door. The process of transferring everything over took several hours but I was up and running pretty quick and the difference was stunning.
 
I ended up hiring someone to build me a hackintosh (i9-9900X 10-core, 64 gigs ram, NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD). He’s been building them for composers and video pros for over 10 years and knows what he’s doing. It has been extremely stable, fast and powerful. The best part is I saved over $3000 compared to an iMac Pro with similar specs. It has only two thunderbolt three ports though. I’m only using one of them so I can live with that. Logic X performed over five times higher than my 2013 27” iMac 3.5 Ghz on the New Logic Pro benchmark test. I know a lot of people like to build them themselves but I didn’t have the time. I was able to continue working on music until it arrived at my door. The process of transferring everything over took several hours but I was up and running pretty quick and the difference was stunning.

Cool! Nice choice

Could you post your exact configuration? Would be really cool, thanks!
 
I got a top-of-the-line consumer iMac in early 2016, upgraded it to 64GB and it's worked like a charm. (At the time I was deciding between the late 2015 iMac and the trashcan.) My main complaint with the iMac has been port management with needing to run multiple external monitors, numerous SSDs, and so forth that it's been a challenge getting all of that configured and working. I do run with a relatively high buffer on the interface (512) and DFD in Kontakt is set in the 20s, as I recall. No signs of throttling under even high loads in the DAW, and the fan only kicks on when bouncing audio, rendering video, or ripping DVDs. Surprisingly, I don't especially like the screen, since the standard resolution options don't work well for where it needs to be placed on my desk. That would be an issue for the iMac Pro too, if I understand the implications on the thread about screen resolutions and distance.


Interestingly, I've had more (minor) issues with dropouts since upgrading to 64GB, I presume because I can load much larger templates and so either the CPU or the SSDs will sometimes not be up to the task. Shifting to 1024 on the audio interface will usually remedy the situation.
 
Cool! Nice choice

Could you post your exact configuration? Would be really cool, thanks!
Sure:
i9-9900X
ASUS X299 PRIME ATX Motherboard
Fractal Design 360mm Liquid Cooling AIO
64GB (4x16GB) DDR4-2666Mhz RAM
AMD RX 560 2GB HBM2 Video Card
512GB NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD (OS & Applications)
1TB NVMe M.2 PCIe SSD (Logic Projects and a few libraries like Omnisphere. The rest are on my PC server)
2-port TB3 PCI-e Card
SeaSonic 1000W Modular Power Supply
Wireless AC & Bluetooth 4.0EDR
6x PCI-e Slots
6x USB 3.0, 4x USB 3.1, 4x USB 2.0, 2x 1GbE LAN
NZXT H700 ATX Tower

I'm running Mojave and will not be upgrading to Catalina anytime soon. The parts are under warranty and the guy I used offers free support for a year. If you don't want to build one yourself, I highly recommend him. He has built hundreds of these and has great yelp reviews.
 
I've considered those but not anymore. They are 6 years old and it won't be long before you can't upgrade the OS. I would go for a 2019 iMac. The top tier is 8 core i9 3.6 GHz, up to 5.0 turbo boost. If you get it with the stock 8 gigs of ram it's like $2700. You'd have to add the price of 3rd party ram to that as well.

That's the computer I'm considering right now. It's new, it's way powerful and while not cheap, it's not out of control expensive either.
I agree, the 2019s Imacs are actually awesome for the price (considering you also get 5k display with it and it looks beautiful - all the PC displays are plastic cheap looking boxes and old Thunderbolt displays are.... old)
 
Also running a hackintosh here... 9900k, and gets about 25-30 tracks more in the new Logic benchmark than the 9900k imac. Very stable, leave it running for days at a time, no issues... Handles huge projects without breaking a sweat...

Running 10.13 on it currently, but have a Mojave drive working in it as well with a slightly modified EFI folder. It took a few days to get Mojave working fully, however with the few days of tweaking behind me I now have it ready for my next OS jump without any downtime...

Personally think it's no less of a gamble than Catalina has proven to be so far. Definitely not for everyone but works very well for me.. YMMV of course.
 
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