Robyee
Level 1 (5 points)
Mac OS X

Q: Upgrade limits for OSX Mac Pro 3.1 Early 2008

I wonder until I can upgrade the OS of my Mac Pro 3.1

I currently El Capitan

I would like to spend some money, make some hardware upgrades (SSD, RAM)

and I would not, being an Early 2008 to discover the next year that the overall hardware of the machine is too outdated

and does not allow to receive further updates or any new OS

I do not pretend to have upgrades the system for another 10 years but I would not find me 'old' next year

Mac Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.1), 2 x 2,8 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon /

Posted on Jun 9, 2016 2:32 AM

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Robyee

Q: Upgrade limits for OSX Mac Pro 3.1 Early 2008

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  • by dialabrain,

    dialabrain dialabrain Jun 9, 2016 2:41 AM in response to Robyee
    Level 5 (5,947 points)
    Mac App Store
    Jun 9, 2016 2:41 AM in response to Robyee

    Unfortunately there is no way to know what will be outdated next year or the year after, etc.

  • by John Lockwood,Helpful

    John Lockwood John Lockwood Jun 22, 2016 2:37 AM in response to Robyee
    Level 6 (9,260 points)
    Servers Enterprise
    Jun 22, 2016 2:37 AM in response to Robyee

    Your Mac is already eight years old, next year it will be nine years old. In both dog and computer years this is ancient. Despite this it can still run the current most up-to-date version of OS X and hence run nearly all current applications.

     

    As dialabrain says there is no way to predict whether Apple will allow your model Mac to run the next version of OS X - presumably 10.12. Even if it cannot it will still run current applications. With it being currently eight years old you have already got your moneys worth out of it. As it happens the annual World Wide Developer Conference takes place next week and this might reveal which older model Macs will be able to run the next version of OS X.

     

    You do not detail your Macs current specs. e.g. how much RAM you currently have so we cannot judge what area is best to upgrade but it is possible to add more RAM, and it is possible to fit an SSD drive which it can boot from. In fact most Mac Pro models are fantastically flexible in terms of upgrades. I have upgraded the video card, CPU chips, WiFi, Bluetooth, and fitted an SSD to mine, and more recently just added USB3 as well.

     

    Note: Your model being a 3,1 uses the older 'Fully Buffered' type of memory which is more expensive and I suspect harder to find. You could consider selling your Mac and getting a newer even if still second hand model.

     

    This may be helpful in deciding how upgradeable your current Mac is - http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_pro/specs/mac-pro-eight-core-2.8-2008- specs.html

  • by JimmyCMPIT,

    JimmyCMPIT JimmyCMPIT Jun 9, 2016 5:46 AM in response to Robyee
    Level 5 (7,132 points)
    Mac OS X
    Jun 9, 2016 5:46 AM in response to Robyee

    despite the fact that system may no longer be included in Apples future plans that model it will still allow you to upgrade the PCI video card, SSD and run Windows making it a viable art production or video editing system with the 8/16 cores on the 2.8GHz. Xeon CPUs

     

    If you do decide to upgrade your mac I would not recommend a Mac Pro to anyone, brand new out of the box the technology inside is 3 years behind the curve. It's already 5 iterations behind current Intel architecture and it's supposed to be a flagship system.