Essence_of_War

Platinum Member
Feb 21, 2013
2,650
4
81
Hi,

My wife's Octocore Early 2008 Mac Pro is finally on its last legs. I've lovingly replaced: the RAM sliders, added RAM, replaced the GPU with a 7950 Mac Edition, added an SSD, and swapped out the PSU, but its starting to have trouble turning itself on, going to sleep, and when it is on it stutters and jitters throughout the video editing process for both HD and 4k video.

I'm trying to figure out what to replace it with.

I'm pretty disappointed in how long its been since the Mac Pro and Mac Mini were updated. It looks like both the iMac and iMac Pro might be good options for her? It looks like once you trick out the 27'' iMac with more RAM (from OWC), an SSD, faster CPU it is awfully close in price to the baseline iMac Pro.

Any recommendations on what is the most cost-effective way to meet her needs? At work, she uses a 6-core 2013 Mac Pro with pcie SSD and she says all of her editing work is smooth as butter.

If it matters, she already has two nice monitors at home, a 2x 24'' DELL IPS panels, one is 1920x1200, one is 1920x1080 wide gamut and she has color calibrator for it.
 

Commodus

Diamond Member
Oct 9, 2004
9,215
6,820
136
Hi,

My wife's Octocore Early 2008 Mac Pro is finally on its last legs. I've lovingly replaced: the RAM sliders, added RAM, replaced the GPU with a 7950 Mac Edition, added an SSD, and swapped out the PSU, but its starting to have trouble turning itself on, going to sleep, and when it is on it stutters and jitters throughout the video editing process for both HD and 4k video.

I'm trying to figure out what to replace it with.

I'm pretty disappointed in how long its been since the Mac Pro and Mac Mini were updated. It looks like both the iMac and iMac Pro might be good options for her? It looks like once you trick out the 27'' iMac with more RAM (from OWC), an SSD, faster CPU it is awfully close in price to the baseline iMac Pro.

Any recommendations on what is the most cost-effective way to meet her needs? At work, she uses a 6-core 2013 Mac Pro with pcie SSD and she says all of her editing work is smooth as butter.

If it matters, she already has two nice monitors at home, a 2x 24'' DELL IPS panels, one is 1920x1200, one is 1920x1080 wide gamut and she has color calibrator for it.

A heads-up: the Mac mini could be updated this fall (the common bet is on October), so if your wife can hold out until then, that might be wise. I wouldn't be surprised if there were new iMacs then as well.

If she needs something right now, I'd go with a 4K or 5K iMac. They're still pretty fast, have great colour-accurate displays and would be a good companion to that wide-gamut Dell display.
 

Eug

Lifer
Mar 11, 2000
24,046
1,675
126
Wait on the 5K iMac too. They're also due for an update. My 5K 27" 2017 iMac is from June 2017. The rumoured 2018 27" iMacs will get 6-core.

iMac Pro is available now, but new Mac Pro won't be out until 2019.