Chosen Solution
I’m considering getting a 2006 Mac Pro (1,1) as a secondary desktop computer. Is this a worth the investment in 2018? What programs can be run? Is there anything about this machine I should know about before buying it? Should I max out the specs or should I keep the specs average? specs = Hard drive storage, amount of RAM, GFX card
A much better choice would be a MacPro 2010-2012. This machine is highly upgradeable, will run 64 bit. Will run the latest OS X. You can kick it up with either Apple CPUs or third party to run at levels close to any Mac out there. Four hard drives. Use a PCI USB3 card from Sonnet. It’s a real work horse and will last you a very long time. You can start cheap and upgrade as you can afford it. Mine boots from a 512 SSD. I’d start with this one as you can bump it to 128 GB of RAM Apple Mac Pro “Eight Core” 2.4 (2010/Westmere) SpecsIdentifiers: Mid-2010 - MC561LL/A - MacPro5,1 - A1289 - 2314-2* https://everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_p… Here’s a nice one for $665
Umm… I wouldn’t say so… The least what is ok to invest in 2018 for a secondary PC is something like with Sandy Bridge, 8 GB of RAM and an SSD (at least 128 GB), otherwise it won’t be a pleasant user experience even in browser and office use (if multitasking is a thing for you). The thing with Xeons from ‘06-’08 is that they use DDR2, and DDR2 2 GB sticks are really hard to find so that you could get 8 GB of RAM. And they are pricey, so uhhh… Yeah, not a great idea exactly…
How about a Mac Pro Hackintosh ;-} Basically, strip out the logic board and put in a ATX board in with a better CPU. I would even toy with going with an i9 chip! You’ll need to do some reading before you go down this path TonyMacX86 is a good start and here’s a person who did it The Perfect Hack Pro (Mac Pro) build using an original Mac Pro case & parts Here’s a supplier of the needed conversion parts Mac Pro Conversion Kits
A 32bit CPU means it naturally has RAM constraints, also the GPU probably lacks many modern shader support. You can still probably install modern Windows editions but modern macOS is not possible Which makes this difficult to be relevant in everyday desktop usage beyond being children’s first computer.
