Mac Pro 3.1 Early 2008 upgrade question.

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ysaglik Author

Level 1

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Mac Pro 3.1 Early 2008 upgrade question.

Hello,

I have this system and wanted to upgrade it.

Spec

3.1

CPUs 2 x 2.8Ghz Quad Core Intel Xeon (8 Cores Total)

RAM 20Gb Fitted (64Gb Max)

Graphics NVidia GT8800 512Mb Graphics Card (2xDVI)

Hard Drive : Bay 1 500Gb HDD. (OSX Yosemite)

Bay 2 500Gb HDD. (Windows 10 Preview)

Bay 3 Empty

Bay 4 Empty

Superdrive Fitted in Optical Bay 1

Also has 2x SATA Cables & Power fitted in Spare optical bay for SSDs

Bluetooth, Dual Gigabit Networking Optical Sound in/out.

I found these items and wanted to check if they would be suitable for my system.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B004RORMF6/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc= 1&smid=A1XNRJ8S62JZA9

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0090IA3GY/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc= 1&smid=AMT99H7YGZQXX

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00P73B1E4/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc= 1&smid=A3154UZMAM8KTS

I want to use the SSD disk with the PCIe to speed up the system and add couple of WD hard disks for extra storage as well.

Would these items work with my system?

I don't want to go ahead with the purchase and find out later that they would not work.

I am new to the Mac Pro and I would appreciate the help.

Many thanks,

Saglik

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.7.5), null

Posted on May 20, 2015 5:43 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

lllaass

Level 10

210,411 points

May 21, 2015 2:21 AM in response to ysaglik

- I would not get the WD green drive since the link includes:

ITEM UNDER REVIEW

While this item is available from other Marketplace Sellers on this page, it's not currently offered by Amazon.co.uk because customers have told us there may be something wrong with our inventory of the item, the way we are dispatching it, or the way it's described here. (Thanks for the tip!)

We are working to resolve this as quickly as possible. In the meantime, you may still find this product available from other sellers on this page.

Otherwise it should be OK except some users have reported that WD green drives sleeping and not awaking

- The PCle SSD should be fine. The reviews on the links says it work unless you get a defective one shipped to you

-- The 850 EVO is a goo drive but the 850 EVO Pro is even better.

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Answer 2

May 21, 2015 2:44 AM in response to ysaglik

All those items would work but it depends on what your trying to achieve. If your looking for maximum performance there are alternatives which would be much faster.

Firstly regarding the WD 3.5" drive. I have not used this particular model but in the past I have used other WD Caviar drives and been disappointed by their reliability. I far prefer HGST drives (formerly Hitachi) as I have found them much more reliable. The other issue is that while the WD and equivalent HGST drives are SATAIII drives the drive bays in the Mac Pro are only SATAII. However this is probably not too much of an issue as ordinary hard disks cannot realistically exceed SATAII speeds anyway. For what its worth I have on my own Mac Pro 5,1 fitted upgrades to convert my drive bays to SATAIII but I am not suggesting this is worth the effort or cost for you.

With regards to SSD drives for your Mac Pro. There are two main SSD technologies, standard SATAIII drives like the one you listed, and PCIe ones like those fitted inside the current MacBook models. The PCIe ones are much faster - up to twice as fast. Of course there are likely to be cost implications by going for the latest and greatest technology. If you stick with the Apricorn Velocity card then this supports SATAIII and by being a PCIe card bypasses the slow built-in SATAIII drive bays.

If you are interested in the very latest and fastest SSDs then read this article http://barefeats.com/hard200.html and then look at the following links.

https://www.ramcity.com.au/buy/lycom-m.2-pcie-ssd-to-pcie-3.0-x4-adapter/DT-120? addcpn=barefeats

https://www.ramcity.com.au/buy/samsung-sm951-512gb-ahci-m.2-pcie-3.0-x4-80mm-ssd /MZHPV512HDGL-00000?addcpn=barefeats

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