Mac Pro upgrading

Actually it is correct. You cannot legally run a variant of macOS that Apple has not specifically said you are licensed to do so, otherwise your are hacking your device which isn't pursuant to the devices EULA.

If you need to find a way around the legal issues this is not the place to do it.

see the terms you agreed to when you signed up to use these forums

https://discussions.apple.com/terms

Keep within the Law

1. 1. 1. No material may be submitted that is intended to promote or commit an illegal act.
      2. Do not submit software or descriptions of processes that break or otherwise work around digital rights management software or hardware. This includes conversations about ripping DVDs or working around FairPlay software used on the iTunes Store.

any mac flashed card is going to be a little pricy, you may need to find something on ebay or some other reseller

https://www.macpartsdepot.com/661-5010-ati-radeon-hd-video-card-4870-512-mb-mac-pro-early-2008-2009.html?utm_campaign=1486655732&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_content=284484671429&utm_term=&adgroupid=56927109505&gclid=CjwKCAjwtuLrBRAlEiwAPVcZBjCMVi-paf-lxdLmpLWY3oelL05XR5v7M6rr_9ExjzqsOB4P5Iqm7xoC4RQQAvD_BwE

a non flashed card will almost certainly not show you the EFI boot screen until log-in.

If there is a problem with booting or if you have multiple boot partitions it can be difficult to work like this.

If your current GPU works you can pair it with just about anything as long as you don't need that card to see a boot screen.

if you plan to use the old GPU and the new one you will likely need a 6 to 8 port adapter for the new card. I don't know exactly what the 2008 provides for PCIe power but 2010 Mac Pro's the Logic Board delivers 75 W to PCIe board and 75 W from the power cable on the logic board.

If the draw from the other card is over 150W you will need to use both plugs on the board to power the one GPU which would be a 6+6 to 8 port Y adapter. If you have a GPU that does not currently need power and can go into one of the x4 slots then you can still run two cards. After that it gets complicated with power.

I'd go with a single 4TB drive for data and an SSD for booting. it will make a huge difference.

For SSD's I have used OWC and Samsung drives, both appear to be good choices

For rotational HDD I prefer Seagate SATA drives, some people swear by Western Digital. if you need a drive for backup than 5000RPM is fine, the price goes up for the same storage as 7200 RPM. You can get these anywhere, Amazon, New Egg, CDW. The Mac Pro's can use standard SATA connectors.

If you put your OS and your main applications on an SSD the speed increase will be noticeable.

El Captian is your max OS even with a new GPU. The 2010's and firmware flashed 2009's can go to Mojave but need a metal compatible GPU, but even with that they can't go to Catalina when that comes out.

You can upgrade your CPU(s) if you can find them. I think the 2008 came with xeons from the Harperstown series which are long out of production, you'd need to investigate but I don't think you'll get much bang out of them from what you have.

Honestly the SSD upgrade is the single best upgrade investment for this machine, and if you are editing in Photoshop (CC 2015 to present) some of the plugins will take advantage of Nvidia GPU's more-so than AMD cards, which is even more confusing because Apple is at odds with Nvidia so the support is sketchy.

If you just plan to use mac OS and apple provided software then an AMD GPU is probably a better investment long term.

The above post isn't entirely correct when it comes to OS stuff.

1) What OS are you running? If you're going DOSdude1 to run Mojave, then get a RX560 or RX580 (as there's a patch for the drivers to work). Otherwise this gets a little more complicated if you want to boot older OSes.

2) Buy whatever you want. Any SATA HDDs are compatible, there's no size limitations. Some people have brand preferences, you can get geeky and read backblaze's reliability report.

3) Good news, Apple arbitrarily limited the Mac Pro 3,1s. You can run Mojave on your 3,1 using DOSDude1 but the wifi chipset isn't support and you'll need a Metal compatible GPU. You can still use ethernet or upgrade the wifi chipset.

http://dosdude1.com/highsierra/

http://dosdude1.com/mojave/

This probably also is worth a gander.

http://blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html

Hi I have a MacPro 3.1 and it is still going strong after all these years.

Definitely get an SSD to run the OS on and some storage. I have a 500GB Crucial MX500

it is in Bay 1 using an SSD to SATA 2.5 to 3.5 adapter that allows the SSD to fit on the drive sled.

Internal drives on tube are Toshiba 2TB drives, quiet and reliable, I find Seagate noisy and unreliable.

Always make sure your HDDs are 7200RPM, all drives up to 4TBS will fit in the sled without adjustment

6TB drives are slightly thicker and need a small adjustment, perhaps you can Google that as I can't remember

exactly what it is. Please ensure that your drive sleds have the little rubber grommets/ cushions so the drives connect

properly in the SATA ports on the logic board, this is especially important for the SSD.

For a cheap graphics card you can still get the Nvidia GeForce GT 120, this was the stock card that came with the MacPro 4.1 and 5.1, it works well with the 3.1, I have used one in the past. It is very cheap second hand about £50.00, (make sure it is the Apple version, has a light grey cover) and in some cases you can find new unused ones, I located one in the UK recently, it fits directly on the logic board with no extra cables. Yes it is a low end card but I used it mainly for Photoshop and it was fine, it is not really suited to high intensity video or 3D work. Currently I am using an Nvidia GeForce GTX 650, it is a Metal compatible card so I was able to install Mojave. Try and get a MacEdition card or one that is flashed for Mac so you get the boot screens and the start up manager, PD graphic cards can be used but you do not get the boot up screens or start up manager.

There is no point in upgrading the motherboard/ logic board it will cost more than what your Mac is worth,

you would be better moving to a MacPro 5.1, that would be cheaper.

Yes you can install newer versions of the OS

Search the net on how to do that.

Midi is Anger was a bit naughty giving you direct links as these are often pulled.

First off, I doubt this is a EULA where this is a violation, feel free to prove me wrong. The EULA years ago was updated to allow for OSX to be installed in a virtual environment, so in theory you could install Catalina on a Mac Pro 5,1 in Parallels/VMware/VirtualBox etc running Mojave with the cavaet that the OS is obtained legally. I'm not advocating any other such vector. macOS isn't locked by any sort of DRM, so that above in the forum rules is non-applicable, just against a whitelist hardware. You don't even need DOSdude1's script to change the installer, it's just in the mpkg file in the macOS installer, it just makes it a double click affair.

Secondly, it's a legal Mac ROM and Apple hardware, and you're downloading the software from Apple. People modify their OSes quite frequently, to enable new features or disable them. There are quite a few popular utilities like Onyx, open-source libraries, and so forth that extend macOS's functionality.

Third, This is pretty sound user advice for anyone who wants to extend the life of your Mac. These are already unsupported Macs seeing as they were sold 7-12 years ago and might as well keep going beyond the warranty. This is analogous to keeping an old car on the road by upgrading it to meet exhaust requirements instead of buying a new car. It's not covered by the manufacturer. It's fine if you think my advice is not ideal but it is answering the question.

[Edited by Moderator]

No worries, I realize I'm being a bit obstinate, so apologies around, even to Jimmy.

You can upgrade to Catalina, but it isn't officially supported and requires meeting a few hardware requirements. It's likely Apple dropped the Catalina support for the 5,1s because of age and the wifi chipset, but there's nothing else preventing it from running Catalina. If you meet Mojave's GPU requirements, you should be in the clear sans the wifi bit. Disregard the EULA debate as Apple hasn't done anything to prohibit users from installing macOS on older Macs and its been going on for a very long time. It's just unsupported but so is the hardware. The upside though is there are vibrant communities that are dedicated to this if you choose to move ahead.

Apple dropped the Catalina support because neither Intel or Apple can protect against Specter on Mac Pro's from 2006-2012. The limitation is with but not limited to F16c, Trusted Execution, TPM, Secure Key, Advanced Vector Extensions, AVX2 can not be patched. The Xeon chipset for the classic Mac Pros lack some of the instructions sets for the SDK on Catalina as well.

You may be able to install it, but it may not have the ability to run stably and you may wind up with an OS that slows performance down.