Apple Mac Pro 5,1 - 12-core 3.46Ghz, 96GB RAM, 5700XT 8GB

[Mark Kenfield]

Selling my maxed-out and much loved Apple Mac Pro 5,1. This big old beast of a workhorse has been heavily customised to squeeze out every last ounce of performance for video post-production work. With the most powerful processors available for it, the largest and fastest RAM configuration (six 16GB DIMMs to take advantage of the computer’s three-channel memory), and AMD’s latest and greatest 5700XT GPU (which puts up impressive Metal-compute numbers, and features AMD’s 7nm NAVI architecture), there’s also a 4-port USB 3.1 card from Sonnet which provides 10Gbps transfer speeds (approximately 900MB/s) for fast SSDs or external RAID enclosures:

 

- 12-core 3.46Ghz CPU

- 96GB DDR3 ECC RAM

- Radeon 5700XT 8GB GPU

- 2x Samsung 1TB 860 Evo SSDs

- Sonnet Allegro Pro 4-port USB3.1 Card

- Upgraded WIFI and Bluetooth 4.0 Card (with Airdrop!) 

 

The machine’s been upgraded to the latest version of Mac OSX Catalina (which sits on one of the SSDs), and also dual-boots to a fresh Windows 10 Pro installation as well (which sits on the second SSD). So you can easily flip between either operating system depending on your needs. The internal WIFI and Bluetooth card has also been updated to Bluetooth 4.0, which makes Airdrop possible (which is a massive blessing for easily transferring files between your iPhone/iPad and the 5,1).
 

Using the OpenCore boot loader, a series of software modifications to the machine have opened up a whole host of features that weren’t even possible until just earlier this year. And they keep the 5,1 (almost shockingly) relevant for video work in 2020, by providing:

 

- A boot selector on startup (so you can easily choose between OSX or Windows, or access your Recovery Partition)

- Hardware Acceleration of h264 and h265 video encoding/decoding (this is HUGE, and makes working with h264 and h265 a breeze)

- Unlocking the full performance of the 5700XT GPU (which was previously limited by firmware)

- Native installation of OSX Catalina

 

With the recent Metal-accelerated software upgrades to Davinci Resolve and FCPX, what’s even crazier about this machine is that (thanks to the power of the 5700XT GPU) you can now actually work in a 4k timeline with 6k or 8k Redcode Raw footage (decoded at maximum-quality) and get perfect 24/25fps playback in the timeline with a basic grade applied… that is NUTS!

I’ve attached some screengrabs of a few standard performance benchmarks below (so you can compare it to some known references), and I’m happy to do some screen-recordings that showcase the playback smoothness in high-res raw workflows (if anyone needs to see that).

 

So there’s a lot going on with this old beast. But the biggest deal is it’s rock-solid reliability (those server-grade Xeon CPUs just churn through whatever you throw at them), it’s upgradability (with AMD’s “Big Navi” GPUs soon to be announced), and the fact that it’s the most horsepower you can get for video work on Mac OS at this price-point.

 

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. And if there are any particular additional hardware needs you have (but aren’t comfortable doing yourself) I’m happy to do them for you (at cost).
 

$2,300 USD / $3,200 AUD + shipping
 

 

Located in Melbourne, Australia, but happy to ship worldwide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mark Kenfield]

**SOLD**