I also have a "trash can" mac, and I'm not sure what to do with it.
It runs linux great, and with 12 cores, 32G of RAM- it could be an extremely capable server. If not for the minuscule SSD.
It also draws a fair amount from the wall (98W~), which is probably the dual GPU's not having power control with Linux.
If only Thunderbolt 2 drive enclosures would come down in price a little.
Eitherway, I share your enthusiasm for the Intel "cheese grater" Mac Pros', those have got to be effectively e-waste to most people soon and I'd love to hoard some for myself.
> it could be an extremely capable server. If not for the minuscule SSD.
You can get adapters from Apple's custom slot to a standard M.2 form factor, allowing you to use a modern M.2 NVMe drive. As long as you have already installed the firmware update that adds support for NVMe in addition to the AHCI protocol originally used by that machine, there shouldn't be any issues putting in one of today's relatively cheap multi-TB drives. The Mac Pro didn't have the physical space limitations that made some SSD adapters problematic for the laptops.
Admittedly my "trash can" Mac sees little use these days. I thought I'd miss macOS a lot when I switched to Windows in 2022, but it turns out that I could live without it, though I do have a work-issued MacBook Pro, and so in a sense I never truly left the Mac ecosystem. It's kind of hard talking about being a user of one particular OS when I work with Windows, macOS, and Linux weekly and with FreeBSD occasionally.
Regarding the 2019 Mac Pro, I just took a cursory look on eBay for 2019 Mac Pro models, and it appears they are still going for over $1,000. macOS still supports the 2019 Mac Pro, though its days are numbered since Apple usually has a 6-7 year window for supporting Macs.
I believe there are two main reasons why the Mac Pro is still so expensive despite the fact that a M4 Mac Mini would outperform it:
1. RAM. Not only does the 2019 Mac Pro support DIMMs, but it also supports a gigantic amount of RAM: 768GB on models with 8-16 cores, and 1.5TB on models with 24 or 28 cores (https://support.apple.com/en-us/102742). No ARM Mac supports this much RAM. This makes the 2019 Mac Pro a nice machine for very RAM-intensive tasks that require Mac software.
2. The 2019 Mac Pro has expansion slots, though the 2023 Mac Pro also has expansion slots.
In my experience the CPU is actually probably a good chunk of that power draw.
I swapped my trash cans CPU for an E5-2560L v2 I had laying around and I pull like 30-40 from the wall of if I remember right. 20 cores at 1.7GHz. Low and wide, which for my purposes (low grunt container workloads, home assistant, and such) is perfect. 70W TDP compared to the 130W standard six-core CPU.
There's mSATA (NVMe?) adapters for the trash can Mac Pros. They used to be pretty cheap ~$20. They're just a small pin adapter for the drives.
Thunderbolt is too new to have decent cheap open source cable/accessories available, but too old (and not popular enough when new) to have many actually useful cheap used accessories.
A lot of those old Macs would make decent little random servers if you could attach faster storage or networking without spending a ton.
> It also draws a fair amount from the wall (98W~)
Is that a typo?
No, seems like I'm not alone in the observation: https://kenrockwell.com/apple/mac-pro-late-2013.htm
(I used a kill-a-watt meter on my homelab at some point).
Yeah, note that’s at idle! Under full CPU load mine (12 core) pulls 230 watts. I’ve never stressed the GPUs at all.
Still doesn’t seem like a crazy amount of power! Neat.