A trash can.... Mac :)

[Byrd]

Well done! My 12 core is to arrive soon and will be all set to use it as a daily. Yes, it’s not bad at all to take apart with the right hex keys on hand. All up < 20 screws for complete disassembly and obvious on placement.

 

[treellama]

I borrowed a torque wrench from work to tighten the CPU bracket screws back to Apple’s spec. Dunno how necessary that is but it was probably the trickiest part. It’s an easy upgrade.

 

[quinterro]

I borrowed a torque wrench from work to tighten the CPU bracket screws back to Apple’s spec. Dunno how necessary that is but it was probably the trickiest part. It’s an easy upgrade.

I have no clue what the specs were. I just tightened them all together until they felt like they did when trying to take them off.

If the torque is that important, I do have an itty-bitty torque socket driver for 1/4” sockets. I think I have only used it when tightening the transmission pan bolts on my 2005 Toyota Corolla.

 

[Byrd]

I'm 95% there with mine - 12 core CPU now installed - screw the cover/bracket down to the end thread of the screws. Just setting up some software now to be able to make it into my main Mac.

- Loving the strong wifi and bluetooth, near silent operation under load, disk performance and overall snappiness - this isn't a lowly Mac!
- eGPUs do not work under Mac OS Sequoia - the kryptonite patch happily installs but junks the DSDT files and it hangs early into startup. Needed to boot off an external drive to repair OpenCore. Might be better under Windows 11, but I'm guessing some dramas.
- Some very feint squealing at times, presume fan will need to check.
- Spotify application crashes with a red screen, this is a known Sequoia/OpenCore bug - just using the web version for now.

 

[quinterro]

Over the last few days I have applied fresh thermal paste to the GPUs. I was able to do the first one without the T8 security bit because the center post was a little worn. It was challenging to tighten the two screws for power delivery. Fortunately I was able to find a security bit in another screwdriver set and did the second GPU.

One odd behavior I have seen is when I turn on the Mac Pro the first time it can't see WiFi. A reboot fixes the issue.

 

[Mikeosoft]

I just wanted to chime in here as someone who works in reality TV my daily 3 computers in my edit bay are all trashcan macs. Maxed out ram, and boy when I'm transcoding footage the room gets hot quick. These bad boys go bad like every 5 months the tech support company is swapping machines, usually it's the USB bus that shorts out I think it's a fault with the thunderbolt ports wattage pulling too much when we need our avid dongles plugged in to run as well. It's a mess. These comps are needed because, unfortunately. AVID will not make a professional version of media composer that has functionality that matches what they offered in avid 2018. So we're stuck on these old machines, many of the reality shows I work on are using outdated systems like these and they depend on them.

I hope this helps clear up some of the questions about demand for these future classics.

On a side note, about 8 years ago i went into a gig to help a buddy of mine, and his office was setup with one trashcan. We walk in and I see him take his baseball cap off and put it on the trash can. He puts his jacket on the back of the chair, sets up his ipad, and begins to chill and watch some stuff while I'm standing in amazement. I ask him if he does this alot, he says "what?" i point to the hat, he goes "so?..." I explained to him how the cooling of these trashcans work, and he begins to explain that the last few months he's been have GPU issues and has had them swap out his system like 5x. lol.

 

[Byrd]

@Mikeosoft welcome, these Macs certainly live up to their name being overpriced, challenging and hard to work with, kind of like reality TV contestants (which shows out of interest?)

The baseball cap : I could quite easily see someone leaving a book on top of their 2013 MP and burning it out without much effort. Have also encountered the "no USB" fault which appeared to be related to a dodgy nVME adapter in my case, ended up replacing the entire back ports panel in the end.

All good with mine as daily. Still haven't tried Windows as it certainly does OS X much better than my OMP 12-core 2009 Mac Pro. It was OK but sluggish even with a decent GPU under Sequoia. A GPU bug of a bright red window of death comes up on certain cold starts (Spotify app worst offender), but reboot and it's fine, then put it to sleep never happens again. Sometimes you get a quick flash of red using Safari, but infrequent. It's been logged as a bug in OpenCore for some years doubt it'll be fixed any time soon. Macs Fan Control has the fan going at ~ 1000 RPM lowest speed, can't hear but 1050RPM its audible and can sometimes whine a little.

 

[quinterro]

I just wanted to chime in here as someone who works in reality TV my daily 3 computers in my edit bay are all trashcan macs. Maxed out ram, and boy when I'm transcoding footage the room gets hot quick. These bad boys go bad like every 5 months the tech support company is swapping machines, usually it's the USB bus that shorts out I think it's a fault with the thunderbolt ports wattage pulling too much when we need our avid dongles plugged in to run as well. It's a mess. These comps are needed because, unfortunately. AVID will not make a professional version of media composer that has functionality that matches what they offered in avid 2018. So we're stuck on these old machines, many of the reality shows I work on are using outdated systems like these and they depend on them.

Are you using MacOS 12 or is it using OCLP with something more recent?

 

[quinterro]

Upgraded to MacOS Sequoia 15.3 along with whatever Open Core Legacy Patcher downloaded and installed and the wireless now works when powering on for the first time. No more needing to reboot to get wireless working. Woohoo!

Tomorrow I'm taking another online class from home, and will attempt to record it like the last one I took. Hopefully this time I can get all 5 days to record properly from the Mac Pro via OBS.

 

[Byrd]

Whoo! The wifi patch of OpenCore does seem pretty rough glad it's finally working for you.

I'm using Macs Fan Control at all times on mine, it pretty much sticks at 750rpm for desktop use (this was using it in a garage @ 35 deg C) admittedly I've not tried any gaming on it yet or Windows. Everything is snappy using 15.2.

 

[quinterro]

I'm using Macs Fan Control at all times on mine, it pretty much sticks at 750rpm for desktop use (this was using it in a garage @ 35 deg C) admittedly I've not tried any gaming on it yet or Windows. Everything is snappy using 15.2.

I’m using Macs Fan Control on this one too, but with the RPMs getting higher as it heats up. Depending on what it is doing, it will go up to about 1400rpm.

 

[Byrd]

How are others travelling with their 2013 Mac Pros?

Mine has been fine with Mac OS X Sequoia and OpenCore, and I thought I'd treat it to a matching Apple 27" Thunderbolt Display which was sold as untested, but the seller let me take my Mac Pro (and just in case took my 11" MBA along too) for testing.

While testing, the Thunderbolt Display would not work on the Mac Pro - no power or display. It did however work perfectly off the MBA so took it away thinking it was just the weather.

Got home, same thing - it's all down to Sequoia which detects the display in System Information but refuses to give life. Did the usual reset PRAM, SMC, plugged things in and out, nothing. Plugged my OEM SSD back in running a stock install of Monterey, and the display works perfectly. A firmware update exists for the Apple display (V1.2), however the utility says it does not need to install so assume has already been applied. I did try to get an eGPU running on an earlier version of Sequoia which could be an issue, however all files are removed including kexts.

Nothing to lose, I'm going to freshly install Sequoia, OpenCore and cross fingers.

 

[ArbysTPossum]

If you have a spare thunderbolt cable, plug the cable into the back of the display and then into your computer instead of using the Thunderbolt/Magsafe combo cable. For science.

 

[Byrd]

If you have a spare thunderbolt cable, plug the cable into the back of the display and then into your computer instead of using the Thunderbolt/Magsafe combo cable. For science.

Thanks for tip. Tried and got nothing (using an Apple branded cable), even on the other Macs. I think the monitor has an issue, it's detected at all times in all OSes but takes an age to initialise (I can't get it to turn on to see the startup options usually comes up at the login screen). So it's "perfect" on the MBA as a second display but you can't get it as the primary because it takes too long to initialise at boot.

The OEM lightning + MagSafe cable gets hot at the connector to the computer - more than I've ever thought a cable can get hot. So next plan is to crack open the display and replace with the cable I have, and if nothing much happens consider replacing the 27" motherboard and inspect PSU.

 

[Byrd]

Got the matchy matchy Apple 27" ThunderBolt display working on my 2013 Mac Pro. Wasn't a software (Sequoia vs Monterey issue) or cabling issue at all. Was a hardware fault and someone had been in before and probably made it worse.

Pulled it apart cleaned out dust, re-seated all cables including deep clean of connectors (especially the long flat thin ribbon going from the controller board --> LCD with Deoxit) and it's working without a hitch.

 

[Byrd]

Mac Pro is doing well as my daily machine. Got over the final hurdle of partitioning the internal 2TB SSD and installing Windows 11 which it probably runs better than OS X. But - that's not going to happen often, I tend to switch to Windows to run some specific PC only apps needing direct hardware access. Installed all the extra Boot Camp drivers as recommended by the Windows utility with nil concerns with wifi and bluetooth connectivity - it all just works. The Windows version of Macs Fan Control also lets you set the fan at a minimum RPM (1000 for me), and at that speed set in both OS X and Windows, I rarely if at all hear it ramp up under heavy use.

With Windows 11 the dual D500 GPUs, with the Crossfire enabled ATI "Radeon Pro" final Windows 10 drivers are not setting the world on fire - at least in some benchmarks but I'll try some older games and see. My retired 2010 Mac Pro with RX590 would punch through a lot of games and benchmarks admirably under Windows, probably at four times the power usage though. I'm still eyeing off the external GPU I've got here (with RX580), with thunderbolt adapter for Windows which will either work ... or cause many issues under Windows.

The setup basically feels like the evolution of a G4 Cube setup I had running as my daily for years. After this shows age it'll probably be a Mac Studio or something with an ultra wide display to replace it.

 

[Torbar]

OWC had some trashcan Macs for sale for a IMO decent price recently.

3.5GHz 6-core Xeon E5-1650v2 "Late 2013 - 2019" with 32GB DDR3, 256GB SSD, D500

For about 200 shipped, so picked one up


Installed 64gb RAM into it and am going to be upgrading the CPU to a Xeon E5-2697 V2

Seems to run decent using OCLP to run Sequoia. Won't be my daily driver, but I've been setting up my basement as an another area to mess with computers and it will be the machine I use down there(and maybe help heat up the basement in the winter )

 

[Byrd]

Nice pickup, Torbay! I'm amazed at how many were sold and available for sale now, cheaply. Never saw one in use when they were new even in Apple stores.

Sequoia 15.4.1 is great apart from the "red screen" bug for Spotify and Chrome (ATI D300/D500/D700 affected), overcome by a Terminal command. With each OS X update I find there is a shuffle of updating OpenCore, installing drivers and a couple of reboots to get it running smoothly.