VOGONS


First post, by oldhighgerman

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

The early aluminum Apple MacPros are pretty cheap nowadays. Afaik they all have dual mobos installed, socket 771. Seems like a lot of fun to be had. Name brand server rigs are always fun as they use colored plastic clips, clamps and whatever (amongst other reasons). But there is also a certain mystique apparent when viewing an equivalent dual CPU Intel server board. It also may offer benefits for compatibility. But I'm guessing the Pro can also have Windoze installed on it. So where do we stand on this?

Reply 1 of 3, by digger

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Maybe it would be a fun (although not exactly cheap) idea to retrofit an Ampere Altra motherboard from ASRock Rack into such an aluminum Mac Pro case?

After all, Apple already transitioned to the ARM architecture, so having such a case house a powerful ARM-based server would be kind of fitting.

How ATX-compatible are these cases? Knowing Apple, probably not very.

Reply 2 of 3, by OVERK|LL

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

They definitely do not all have dual motherboards. I'm DD'ing an old 2010 5,1 and it's tray is single CPU. The "cheese grater" Mac Pro's were the 1,1, 2,1, 3,1, 4,1 and 5,1, they all came in the same case, the 2,1/3,1 and 4,1/5,1 were incredibly similar (respectively) internally with only tiny differences.

I think the earlier models like the 3,1 may have had only dual socket boards, but the 4,1 and the 5,1 both use a tray/riser card that holds the CPU/CPU's and RAM and they came in both single and dual CPU configurations.

3,1 motherboard:

The attachment apple-mac-pro-31-logic-board-materinskaya-plata_id36_1-2968541692.jpg is no longer available

4,1 and 5,1 style motherboard:

The attachment Mac Pro 41 motherboard.JPG is no longer available

Trays:

The attachment s-l500.webp is no longer available

DD: Mac Pro 5,1 - X5690, 64GB, RX 580 - OCLP w/Sequoia
Projects:
- Hewitt-Rand 8088 - 640KB, 20MB, Hercules mono
- IBM PS/1 2133 w/Thermalwrong solder mod - ODP 486DX4-100, 32MB
- PCPartner VIB806DS w/233MMX, 128MB, G450
- Jetway J-TX98B w/P75, 256MB

Reply 3 of 3, by oldhighgerman

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Wow that sucks. Could always utilize the case as digger said. Those inner dimensions are critical though. Something tells me a 12" x 13" ssi-eeb serverboard may not fit. But then again maybe it will. Then it's another matter of getting it to coexist with a 5 1/4" device. Really probably not happening. I have a case like that. Has 1 maybe 2 5 1/4" bays, takes an SSI eeb sure enough. But not both. Or at least not sometimes . Intel with their damned heatsinks (long narrow ones). That's with the s5000 series anyway.