I've done this -> 10 core upgrade. I bought a refurbbed 4 core with 256G SSD, 8 G memory and D300 graphics cards in 2016 for ~$3000. Then I had them send it to Other World Computing for a 10 core upgrade, a 512 G SSD and 32 Gig memory...Back then it was over $2500 more. There are a few things you should know of before you purchase a Trashcan. DON'T buy one with D300 cards! There have been innumerable problems with ALL versions of the video cards in trashcans. So much so that in 2018, Apple quietly instituted a repair program through their stores for original owners of Trashcans to have them 'repaired', usually by swapping out one of the graphics cards, and then if that failed, the other one. Furthermore this program was ONLY for Trashcan's with the D500's or D700's. The ones with the D300's were SOL. I had one with the D300's, and from almost the first day I had it, I had SWOD's daily. I was informed that because even though I had a warranty from the Apple Store, since I had the proc upgraded, they would not honor it, and there was nothing I could get Apple to pay for anyway, because the repair program didn't address my machine. I muddled though this for a while (about 3 years!), and then over on the DUC (Pro Tools forums), I was talking with a few of the guru's about it and one of them informed he had the same machine and never had SWOD's and suggested it might be software. A couple of them suggested I up my system from Yosemite 10.10.4 to at Least Mojave. I looked at all my options and decided all my plug in's and other software would run on the latest Catalina (10.15.7), so I wiped my drive, did a fresh install of Catalina, and downloaded and installed all my plugin's and DAW's (Pro Tools Ultimate 2020.9.1 at the time, and Studio One, and Notion). All seemed to be ok for about a two weeks and I'd run the machine for days at a time with no SWOD's. Then I had one, then a few days later I had another and they started all over again until about a month ago I had one almost every hour I was working...I almost threw the damned thing against the wall, but punched it instead...not recommend for musicians or anybody that uses their hands for a living. I had been waiting for the new Mac Pro's with Apple silicon, but they won't be available until later this year...I also investigated a refurbbed 7.1 Mac Pro and could get one for around $7.5k in a config I could use...but that seemed ludicrous, not only for the money, but because Intel macs will be 'obsolete' in a little while. So, I checked over on Other World Computing and they had a refurbbed 6 core Trashcan with D500's in it for $1699 and an upgrade to the 10 core was only another $299...So I crossed my fingers and bought it. It showed up a few days later, and I swapped my 1 TB NVMe (I bought that after I upped to Catalina and thought my problems were over), and my 64 Gig of memory. I hooked it all up and it's been as solid as Sears since I received it. NO crashes, NO SWOD's, NO glitches. I also found out that Apple had released an upgrade on the video driver for the D500' and D700 machines in Mohave designed to address the SWOD's problem. It turns out that the D500 and D700 cards use one family of AMD chips and the D300' cards use a chip from a different family. Then I reached out to the guy on the PT forum and asked him what cards he had and he told me they were D500's. So, that is my 'saga'. If you're going to go with a Trashcan, make sure you go with one with at least D500 cards. Also, one last thing which may be huge is to make sure you have TRIM enabled for any SSD's you are running on it. I found out that on Mac's you have to explicitly enable TRIM for SSD's that aren't an Apple device originally. Furthermore, even though I ran the TRIM enable function, unknown to me, it didn't enable due to a security issue with Catalina. There was an extra statement I needed to run before enabling the TRIM. I'm in the process of working on the Trashcan with the D300 cards in it and have come to some interesting conclusions and I think I may have come across the problem for that machine, but the jury is still out...I've had it hammering on a fairly taxing Studio One session in a loop for the last 4 days straight and it hasn't hiccuped yet. If you're interested in the outcome, I'll give you some more info, but didn't want to go crazy on here any more than I already have.

My recommendation: If you buy a Trashcan, make sure it has at least D500 cards. And make sure you have TRIM enabled for any non-Apple SSD's you're running.

ArKay99 thank you so much for a very detailed response and yes I am absolutely interested in the outcome, cheers

*edit* curious as to which display/s were you using when you had graphics issues?

nevfox wroteArKay99 thank you so much for a very detailed response and yes I am absolutely interested in the outcome, cheers

*edit* curious as to which display/s were you using when you had graphics issues?

I didn't have graphics issues, I was getting the Spinning Wheel Of Death aka SWOD. The spinning pinwheel cursor that never went away. The displays I was using was a pair of Raven MTi2's. I'm still using them.

right.... now i understand cheers

nevfox wroteright.... now i understand cheers

NP! I see that you've already purchased the 3.7G Mac Pro. IIRC the 4 core shipped with the D300 cards. I see you're using External Thunderbolt SSD's. Have you enabled TRIM? More importantly, have you verified that they are TRIM enabled? In my post above I alluded to my situation where I have external SSD's and thought I had TRIM enabled. Then I started to have SWOD's after a while, and got more and more as time went on. It's my suspicion that the D300 cards have a conflict with external Thunderbolt drives and fail (with the SWOD) if they take too long to read or write to. I thought that I had enabled TRIM on mine and didn't think to check. If you Google it for the Mac Pro TRIM enable you'll see. Enabling TRIM is very important for external SSD's since they aren't enabled by default on Mac systems. What got me messed up was I had used the command 'sudo trimforce enable' and it went through and seemed like it worked and I went on my merry way thinking all was good. However, in Mojave and later in Catalina, the security has been locked down very tightly and I had to issue another command to mount the drives in administrator mode above the sudo command. I believe the whole command is sudio mount -uw / ;trimforce enable. You can check your TRIM status for each drive by going to About This Mac -> System Report -> SATA/SATA Express, and highlighting each drive in the list up top and looking at the info on the bottom. You'll see a line where TRIM is and it should show Enabled: Yes, if it says No, you've got to enable it or the drive will slow down and become less and less responsive as it gets more filled up. TRIM is a way for the system to keep the drive clean instead of just allocating blocks every time it needs to write to the disk. It marks the old blocks as 'ok to overwrite' instead just going to the next available unused block. I believe having TRIM not enabled coupled with slow drives and the issue with my D300 cards being sensitive to slow writes was causing my problem, and very well most other Mac Pro owners as well. If you need further clarification Google the TRIM not enabling on Mac. My machine has been running for 6 days on that loop and no problems.

I went for a Mac Pro trashcan last year and I wouldn't recommend it personally, for longevity's sake. Performance wise it's nice, but the graphics card is getting on in years, you can't upgrade it (well, maybe you can use an eGPU but I haven't looked into it), and it's getting to the point where a lot of software (Studio One included) has issues with it that won't be fixed because it's like 7 years old and not supported anymore.

ArKay99 wroteNP! I see that you've already purchased the 3.7G Mac Pro. IIRC the 4 core shipped with the D300 cards. I see you're using External Thunderbolt SSD's. Have you enabled TRIM?

i have purchased it but havent received it yet (ebay purchase) but should get it in the couple of days. I appreciate the advice regarding enabling trim. i was intending use the onboard apple pcie 512gb ssd for Mojave & applications (via timemachine) with the 2 external ssd's (500gb crucial mx500 & 500GB OWC Mercury Electra 6G) for recording & content.. but now that you mention it, i may test to boot from the thunderbolt as the crucial was my boot drive from the imac that died.

i was more hoping for info on the cpu upgrades, cos in a few weeks i will pull it apart & probably put in a xeon e5 2690 v2 cpu & while its in pieces give the gpu's a clean & some fresh thermal paste.


but still am greatfull for the info so far.

cheers

robertgray3 wrotePerformance wise it's nice, but the graphics card is getting on in years

hey i just noticed in your signature that you use 1066mhz ram, why?

nevfox wrote

robertgray3 wrotePerformance wise it's nice, but the graphics card is getting on in years

hey i just noticed in your signature that you use 1066mhz ram, why?

Because that was what was in the machine when I bought it.

fair enough, if it aint broke then dont fix it

nevfox wrote

ArKay99 wroteNP! I see that you've already purchased the 3.7G Mac Pro. IIRC the 4 core shipped with the D300 cards. I see you're using External Thunderbolt SSD's. Have you enabled TRIM?

i have purchased it but havent received it yet (ebay purchase) but should get it in the couple of days. I appreciate the advice regarding enabling trim. i was intending use the onboard apple pcie 512gb ssd for Mojave & applications (via timemachine) with the 2 external ssd's (500gb crucial mx500 & 500GB OWC Mercury Electra 6G) for recording & content.. but now that you mention it, i may test to boot from the thunderbolt as the crucial was my boot drive from the imac that died.

i was more hoping for info on the cpu upgrades, cos in a few weeks i will pull it apart & probably put in a xeon e5 2690 v2 cpu & while its in pieces give the gpu's a clean & some fresh thermal paste.


but still am greatfull for the info so far.

cheers

If you're doing the upgrade yourself, (hats off!), may I suggest changing the CMOS battery while you're in there....at this age, it probably hasn't been changed, ever, and it's a PITA to get to...might as well while you're there.

may I suggest changing the CMOS battery while you're in there....at this age, it probably hasn't been changed, ever, and it's a PITA to get to...might as well while you're there.

great suggestion, i honestly did not think of that. cheers

It has arrived, it was running Mavericks which was surprisingly zippy, however i have erased that & now installing Mojave/studio one etc from a time machine backup ... will keep ya's updated

i ended up having a few product activation problems with ilok so have have done a fresh install, so far sooooo gooood

well, i havent pushed it hard yet but so far so good, am keen to see how far my project goes before it hits some walls. but right now im impressed