Just picked up two 2013 Mac Pro (Trashcan) any thoughts on what to do with them?

Picked up a 12 core and an 8 core with 64gb ram, both with d700 GPUs for a steal (150 each). Was thinking of running the 12 core as a server and maybe another as a dedicated router running pfsense and connecting a thunderbolt raid array for local media and jellyfin? Havent done any home server/homelab stuff before so was wondering if there were any Mac server things worth running or if I should just format them to run Ubuntu or something.

23 points · 4 comments · view on lemmy.world

4 Comments

weedwhacking@lemmy.world · 20 pts · 3y (3 replies)
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lettruthout@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 3y (1 reply)

Echoing that power concern... if it's just for home lab file server use there are more efficient choices. I've been running a Samba file server (Ubuntu 22.04) on an old Lenovo M93p machine with good results - at somewhere around a 10th of the power consumed by that Mac Pro. Seems like a those machines would be good for animation work.

weedwhacking@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 3y
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winebaths@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 3y

Good point, it was too tempting to consider. Running a m1 or m2 mini seems like a better idea, but the allure of that much hardware for the price was too much to pass up

20gramsWrench@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 3y

finding a server usecase that would justify the consumption is going to be a challenge, when most home server task can run on a pi

signofzeta@lemmygrad.ml · 3 pts · 3y

Plex server. Can it decode HEVC in real-time? I don’t know. But if so, congrats, this obsolete computer just got another decade off the scrap heap.