I'm trying to decide between a new mini or a used trashcan. So all you trashcan users, answer my poll on what you think of your machine. And in the thread tell me what you use it for, and how long you plan to keep it.
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MP 6,1 Those still using the trashcan: Love it, Like it or Hate it.
- Thread starter sigmadog
- Start date
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Ideal for what I want - just too old now. Nice size. in hindsight, nice price.If mine died now I'd get Macbook pro & sell my existing macbook pro 2016. Imacpro & mac pro prices are simply horrible for my workload.
I have one that I'm planning on selling in the next week. Still has AppleCare on it too! Just ordered the new Mac Pro.
What I liked about the trashcan is that its portable and fits on my desk and it looks really really cool. I don't do any video rendering or anything and never had issues with it whatsoever, does all my home tasks quite nicely.
What I liked about the trashcan is that its portable and fits on my desk and it looks really really cool. I don't do any video rendering or anything and never had issues with it whatsoever, does all my home tasks quite nicely.
I know this is a very unpopular opinion, but I very much love my 6,1. Last summer OWC was offering a flash sale around the time 7,1 was announced so I managed to pick up a Apple certified refurbished unit at a very reasonable price, with 3 years of AppleCare. I've used every incarnation of Mac Pro. I manage a video team at a corporate level so I've got my hands on the 5,1 6,1, 7,1 and 1,1 iMac Pro frequently in my office.
Back in 2016/2017 I decided to sell my 5,1 at home and try a mobile setup with a fully spec'd MacBook Pro, eGPU and a 5k Ultrafine as my daily driver. After 2 keyboard failures I decided to pick up the trashcan last summer for freelance and work from home heavy lifting. It's become my daily driver.
My 12 core, D700, 64GB, 2TB Aura Pro X2 runs butter smooth and is very snappy for what I need. 4k/1080 video editing, graphic/web design, light 3d animation, occasional bootcamp gaming, web surfing and playing YouTube. I have mine hooked up to a Blackmagic Vega 56 eGPU to drive my Ultrafine at full resolution and one of my two 27" LED Cinema Displays. Honestly, I'm very happy with the performance and have never experienced any issues. It feels as snappy real world as my iMac Pro's at work. So far so good with the D700, but I figured the eGPU was taking a lot of the pressure off.
That said, the prices really need to drop unless you can find a killer deal.
Back in 2016/2017 I decided to sell my 5,1 at home and try a mobile setup with a fully spec'd MacBook Pro, eGPU and a 5k Ultrafine as my daily driver. After 2 keyboard failures I decided to pick up the trashcan last summer for freelance and work from home heavy lifting. It's become my daily driver.
My 12 core, D700, 64GB, 2TB Aura Pro X2 runs butter smooth and is very snappy for what I need. 4k/1080 video editing, graphic/web design, light 3d animation, occasional bootcamp gaming, web surfing and playing YouTube. I have mine hooked up to a Blackmagic Vega 56 eGPU to drive my Ultrafine at full resolution and one of my two 27" LED Cinema Displays. Honestly, I'm very happy with the performance and have never experienced any issues. It feels as snappy real world as my iMac Pro's at work. So far so good with the D700, but I figured the eGPU was taking a lot of the pressure off.
That said, the prices really need to drop unless you can find a killer deal.
MP6,1 can run Catalina (officially supported)
Some MP6,1s still have AppleCare on them for some more years to go
In all likelihood the MP6,1 will still get OS updates for the next 5+ years.
Every single MP6,1 came without spinning disks and with PCIe speeds on its SSD (no SATA)
And the 2nd hand market for a MP6,1 looks rather healthy at the moment, despite the MP7,1 shipping.
I've sold my MP6,1s 2nd hand, took mere days to find highly interested buyers that were upgrading from a MP5,1 and one of them even asked me if I had any more after a few days: he had changed his mind on phasing out all his MP5,1s after having used a MP6,1 for a day!
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Your question is irrelevant. I'm asking those who use the 6,1 if they like it and why.
A real shame they did not do an interim update to Thunderbolt 3 with the 6,1. When you hang drives from a TB3 imac , if they are ssds with usb gen2 housings, you get about 500mb/sec so the lack of internal storage options seems a bit less important..... In most respects the 6,1 is a lot more upgradeable than the mac mini.
Had one for a few years until one of the D500 GPU's failed multiple times, even the replacements. It was a big issue back then, I think there's like a 100+ page thread on MR about it too.
The AMD GPU's run too hot for the chassis, and during extended rendering sessions or periods of heavy use, they will overheat, reset/hang and cause kernel panics. The worst batch of cards that exhibited this problem were in 2015, it was a combination of poor thermal design + macOS having ****** GPU drivers as usual
Sold it and put the money towards a maxed out 27" iMac which was just as fast, came with a 5K monitor, and was half the MSRP
The AMD GPU's run too hot for the chassis, and during extended rendering sessions or periods of heavy use, they will overheat, reset/hang and cause kernel panics. The worst batch of cards that exhibited this problem were in 2015, it was a combination of poor thermal design + macOS having ****** GPU drivers as usual
Sold it and put the money towards a maxed out 27" iMac which was just as fast, came with a 5K monitor, and was half the MSRP
Objectively speaking here (i'm not an owner) if the choice is between a new mini and a trash can the mini has a lot going for it:
- Thunderbolt 3/USB-C for official external GPU support, which opens up a lot of high power GPU compute options that just won't be usable with the trash can.
- Faster IPC on the CPU side on the more modern architecture 6 core CPUs available in the current mini
- Far lower cost
- It's brand new and will be supported with applecare for 3 years and get macOS support for longer. The Trashcan hardware is from 7 years ago! Support will not be as long.
I'd suggest that unless you need the portability with the discrete GPUs in the thing at the same time, its a no brainer from an objective viewpoint.
They are cool though. I'd own one if their pricing was sane.
There needs to be a mac "mini pro" that sits between the current mini and the new mac pro. It's the mythical xMac.
Something like 2-3 mini's stacked on top of each other in height/footprint, has a single full length PCI-E or MPX slot for GPUs or devices, user accessible RAM and CPU socket, and the same IO as the current Mini. Have it start at $1799.
And for the love of god apple, make Afterburner compatible with other macs via TB3/eGPU chassis. It's such an easy move (just flip a software switch) that will sell a LOT of those things
Something like 2-3 mini's stacked on top of each other in height/footprint, has a single full length PCI-E or MPX slot for GPUs or devices, user accessible RAM and CPU socket, and the same IO as the current Mini. Have it start at $1799.
And for the love of god apple, make Afterburner compatible with other macs via TB3/eGPU chassis. It's such an easy move (just flip a software switch) that will sell a LOT of those things
I have used the Mac Pro 2013 since 2016 (bought right before the price reduction...bummer) and have had no issues with it (bought it refurbished). It was made after the first set of reported issues (made in 2016).
I love it and recently bought a used 12-Core chip for $350 and will hopefully upgrade the CPU from a 6-Core without issues. macOS Catalina seems to run well on it (a little cooler and faster). Have the D500 graphic card with 64 GB of RAM and recently upgraded to the 1TB Aura Pro X2 from OWC. Would love to get my hands on D700 cards, but that is a rarity to find and the costs if found are way too much for worth. It runs cooler after the SSD upgrade...
I do video work and it does the job for what I do and mostly use it for FCPX. I like the small form factor and it compliments my 27" Apple Thunderbolt Monitor (looks great, even without a 4k monitor).
All of that said, I do not need all of the expansion of the new (or previous 2013 models) though it is a nice option. The new (and prior 2013) Mac pro's are kind of a big ugly box, but I like the idea of the ability to upgrade the graphics cards (of course) and have limited ability to upgrade the CPU years down the road...but...the small Mac Pro 2013 is powerful for what it does.
Most likely it has another 4-5 years run on OS upgrades (as it standard for a lifecycle after discontinuation), so regardless of it coming out in 2013-2014, it should last a few more good years, especially after the upgrade I hope..
I love it and recently bought a used 12-Core chip for $350 and will hopefully upgrade the CPU from a 6-Core without issues. macOS Catalina seems to run well on it (a little cooler and faster). Have the D500 graphic card with 64 GB of RAM and recently upgraded to the 1TB Aura Pro X2 from OWC. Would love to get my hands on D700 cards, but that is a rarity to find and the costs if found are way too much for worth. It runs cooler after the SSD upgrade...
I do video work and it does the job for what I do and mostly use it for FCPX. I like the small form factor and it compliments my 27" Apple Thunderbolt Monitor (looks great, even without a 4k monitor).
All of that said, I do not need all of the expansion of the new (or previous 2013 models) though it is a nice option. The new (and prior 2013) Mac pro's are kind of a big ugly box, but I like the idea of the ability to upgrade the graphics cards (of course) and have limited ability to upgrade the CPU years down the road...but...the small Mac Pro 2013 is powerful for what it does.
Most likely it has another 4-5 years run on OS upgrades (as it standard for a lifecycle after discontinuation), so regardless of it coming out in 2013-2014, it should last a few more good years, especially after the upgrade I hope..
C'mon, sigmadog. Get back to the "mac mini" forums!
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Unfortunately, Mac mini eGPU support is still very sketchy - hoping it will be fixed with the next Catalina update.
C'mon, sigmadog. Get back to the "mac mini" forums!
Ha! I gotta consider all the options.
The problem with buying a MP6,1 today is future macOS support. People have the wishful thinking that Apple will support macOS for a long time with their Macs just to wake up to the cut-out lists of every macOS release.
Apple has a good track record of support previous Macs with new macOS releases, but the support is usually hardware dependent and not based when Apple ends the sale of a product. Macs released in a year usually follow the same hardware platform support, this platform support is usually what defines the drop-outs. Apple is not supporting anything earlier than 2012 Macs with Catalina, mid-2012 Mac Pro was from a hardware platform older than 2012 and was dropped from Catalina.
10.16 will probably cut out some/all of the 2012/2013 Macs. I won't be surprised at all if 10.17 will support just 2014 Macs that don't have NVIDIA GPUs, since NVIDIA already terminated support for Kepler GPUs at the end of last year.
I bet that when the 2013 hardware platform will be dropped, late-2013 Mac Pro will be dropped too or in the next year.
Apple has a good track record of support previous Macs with new macOS releases, but the support is usually hardware dependent and not based when Apple ends the sale of a product. Macs released in a year usually follow the same hardware platform support, this platform support is usually what defines the drop-outs. Apple is not supporting anything earlier than 2012 Macs with Catalina, mid-2012 Mac Pro was from a hardware platform older than 2012 and was dropped from Catalina.
10.16 will probably cut out some/all of the 2012/2013 Macs. I won't be surprised at all if 10.17 will support just 2014 Macs that don't have NVIDIA GPUs, since NVIDIA already terminated support for Kepler GPUs at the end of last year.
I bet that when the 2013 hardware platform will be dropped, late-2013 Mac Pro will be dropped too or in the next year.
According to a post on the main page there’s a rumor from a reliable source that Apple will be updating the Mac mini soon. So you might want to hold off purchasing for now. If someone already has a 6,1 and it works great for them that’s awesome, but I don’t think a 2013 hardware Mac is a smart purchase in 2020. Edit: Thought more about it and decided it is a smart purchase!
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I completely agree with this. Before I got my 2018 mini in November 2018 I thought about a trash can MP, but I didn't need the CPU power of the mini and MP doesn't have thunderbolt 3. My i5 mini with 32GB of RAM and a RX580 eGPU has been my main desktop for over a year now and has been working flawlessly. I'm glad I chose it instead of the nMP.
Never understood the hoopla about thunderbolt. For most of the last decade I did not even know which port on my machines was supposed to be the TB one even though I had been using it.
Granted, I mainly work with PCs and not in video and this stuff isn't even on the radar from what I've seen.
Edit: for eGPU the comparisons I have seen also indicate minor performance differences between the various TB generations. Not enough of a difference to strongly prefer TB3, at least going by the numbers on egpu.io
I voted 'like it'. GPU long term lifespan is perhaps a bit of a worry and lack of a second SSD slot internally I find regrettable. Still, it's quiet and power efficient and (still) packs a punch.
Would have been quite the beast to own in 2014 when the graphics weren't all that much behind the then-current 7xx series from Nvidia.
I ran my MBP on Lion for most of the decade and only upgraded the OS to run something as silly as Skype and Slack so I'm not concerned about OS support either. A 32-bit app locks me into Mojave for the forseeable time anyway.
Granted, I mainly work with PCs and not in video and this stuff isn't even on the radar from what I've seen.
Edit: for eGPU the comparisons I have seen also indicate minor performance differences between the various TB generations. Not enough of a difference to strongly prefer TB3, at least going by the numbers on egpu.io
I voted 'like it'. GPU long term lifespan is perhaps a bit of a worry and lack of a second SSD slot internally I find regrettable. Still, it's quiet and power efficient and (still) packs a punch.
Would have been quite the beast to own in 2014 when the graphics weren't all that much behind the then-current 7xx series from Nvidia.
I ran my MBP on Lion for most of the decade and only upgraded the OS to run something as silly as Skype and Slack so I'm not concerned about OS support either. A 32-bit app locks me into Mojave for the forseeable time anyway.
I can't imagine why anyone would want a trashcan Mac pro these days. The 5,1 is still useful once you upgrade it with faster processors, RAM, many spinning disks, PCIe solid state storage arrays, and a supped up graphics card but the trashcan is a door stop. Get a Mac Mini and it will run faster for almost any task, it has better I/O, will be supported by Apple longer, and it comes in svelte space grey.
Have you tried CrossOver? Apparently it can run 32-bit Windows apps in Catalina.
Sounds interesting, the app has a Windows binary that tends to run marginally better than the Mac equivalent so it might be interesting to try this out. I suppose though that a successful test on Mojave does not mean that this is a future proof solution?
Not going to install Catalina just for fun.