Mac Pro 3,1

[Lufbrarunner]

I spotted a 2008 Mac Pro 3,1 on Facebook marketplace for £20 ($26) and thought, why not?
Collected it yesterday. The installed OS was Ubuntu desktop on an SSD. I swapped that out with an SSD with Mavericks installed and it all worked OK.
I have now updated it to Yosemite on a 1tb SSD and filled up the remaining 3 drive bays with 3 1tb HDDs. There is room to add an IDE drive under the Superdrive, I have a few in the garage so I may fit one later.
The GPU is an NVIDIA GeoForce 8800 GT.
2 x 2.8ghz Quad-Core intel Xeon processors
2 X 4gb sticks of RAM with 6 RAM slots currently empty.

The total weight of this computer is now 21.2kg (46.8lbs)

Comparison with M Mac Pro 6,1

 

[TonyAguila]

I still have my diskless MacPro5.1 with two SSD cards, upgraded with the Metal-capable graphics card which allowed it to run macOS 10.14.6 (Mojave?) and a new bluetooth/WiFi card. I never used the WiFi in it because of the poor reception of the heavy metal casing. Instead, I connected it to my AirPort Pro serving as network extender.

Anyway, it worked well until I decided to change over to a Mac mini (2012, I think), installed the four hard drives in a 4-drive Thunderbolt external case to the Mac mini. I also have the 30" Cinema Display with it. This was my last MacPro ever since getting the very first and upgrading to the newest model until Apple introduced the “trash can” model (ugh!).

I was just waiting for the opportunity to bring all of it to an Apple Store for recycling. If anyone is interested, you are welcome to it, including the AirPort Pro. Let me know. I’m located in Mountain View (Silicon Valley). I forget how much memory I had in it, but all of the modules are still in it. You just need to add the hard drives and SSDs. It was still in tip-top working order when I took it down and had always been stored in my closet, safe and sound.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

This was my last MacPro ever since getting the very first and upgrading to the newest model until Apple introduced the “trash can” model (ugh!).

I have a "Trash Can" and I do like it but it's more difficult to upgrade than the other Mac Pros. The 3,1 is so accessible, just take off the side panel, slide drives in or out, access memory bays etc. I can certainly see why people thought the 6,1 was out of step with the previous and following Mac Pro models.

Just looking at installing OCLP and a more modern OS to see where I can take it.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

I used Dosdude1's patcher to upgrade the OS beyond El Capitan. Initially I installed Catalina but it was very sluggish, probably from the lack of a 'Metal' GPU. I dropped down to High Sierra and that works very well. I may try to install Mojave to see how that goes.

 

[Lufbrarunner]

OK, got Mojave installed, a bit trickier than High Sierra, but all good.
I decided to renew the thermal paste on the CPUs, , got everything stripped down and then found my 4mm Allen key was a fraction short, so I was unable to release the heat sinks. Put everything back together OK just waiting for my new Allen key to arrive before tackling it again. At least I am now familiar with the strip down process.