Home > Consumer Reviews > Apple Mac Pro MB871LL/A Desktop

I bought this Mac Pro to replace a PowerMac that was over seven years old, and which had fallen inadequate to handle my increasingly demanding digital image processing, and which was all but worthless at running Microsoft Windows.

This Mac Pro is probably 8x faster than the PowerMac at most tasks, and its case design is lovely. The way PCI cards snap into and out of place without screws, the easy accessibility of the DIMM slots on a pull-out card, and the ability to add and remove drives without cables, all reflect Apple's obsession with details.

Despite having at least one massive fan in the case, it is much quieter than the PowerMac. In another advantage over the older machine, it has ports on both the front and back. As with previous Mac Pros and PowerMacs, RAM, disk, connectivity, and optical drives are all very expandable.

The Mac Pro runs Windows Vista faster than any dedicated Windows box I've ever used, and with VMware Fusion, I can even run Windows applications within the Mac environment. The Mac Pro comes with all sorts of Apple software, though I use mostly third party alternatives (my first three installations were Microsoft Office, Adobe CS4, and Mathematica). The latter two run much better on this than they, or their predecessors, had ever run on the PowerMac. I'm keeping the old box around only to run some much older software, which by virtue of needing Mac OS9 or some other quirk, won't run on the new box. In general, software compatibility is excellent. I had no trouble with drivers for my tablet or printer or any of my scanners (Nikon, Canon, and Fujitsu).

What's not to love? Some will complain about the price, but I'm not going to bother; if you want a cheaper machine, iMacs and Mac Minis are available. The absence of Firewire 400 was a disappointment for me, though adapter cables and PCI cards are readily available. I bought a Sonnet card that adds two firewire 400 ports for about $50. This box is PCI-Express only, so you won't be able to use standard PCI or PCI-x cards. Some may grouse about Apple's standard keyboard and/or mouse, but I use third party solutions there too.

I got 7+ years out of my last computer, and I would not be surprised to get the same out of this one.

I bought this to replace a 4-year-old G5 (dual 2.7 Ghz).I push my Macs to the limit - the new one now has three video cards to support 5 monitors (way cheaper than even just 1 30 inch monitor), 16 Gb of memory, and 3 hard drives for a total of 2+ TB of space. I typically run 15 or more programs simultaneously (Word, Excel, Safari, Mail, Quicken, iTunes, a calendar program, a database, Crossover (to run a Windows based legal research engine), and more).

The new MacPro has been running for a week now, without a single freeze or unexpected quit, or even a spinning beachball. It is the quietest Mac I have owned since my original 128k Mac. It is so quiet I often am surprised to see it is still running. It is much faster in every respect.

I was hoping for improved stability and speed, but I never expected it to be this stable right out of the box - I thought it would take a few updates to the system software to get rid of new strangeness in a new architecture, but this is already as close to flawless as I ever expected to see in a Mac that is pushed beyond normal usage. Also, the migration assistant easily moved everything I needed from my old Mac to my new one.

Be alert - there is no wireless card in the standard configuration. To my knowledge, the only way to get one is at an Apple store for $49. But installation is free and wireless internet is a breeze once the card is installed.

I owned a PowerMac G5 Dual 2.0 Ghz before the video card died. I use two cinema HD monitors and the AGP cards are hard to find for that older model. I am not a super power user so I seldom encode heavy duty video. I am a light user of Aperture and Photoshop. Trying to do light video and photo editing on my G5 was not painfully slow but the computer was showing its age. Typical tasks took a while; I would walk away and sometimes come back an hour later. The G5 was loud and hot. The ATI x800 XT was a noisy and a buggy video card. When I opened my new Mac Pro I was wondering if I should have bought last year's dual quad processor (2.8 Ghz) instead of the new Nehalem single processor (2.6 Ghz). The prices were pretty close. The 2009 model has more RAM and a bigger hard drive. Rest assured this new machine is no slouch. I am not sure how many professional Mac users use Mac Pros and how many get by with the Macbook Pro; but, I think that if high end professionals can use a laptop with a dual core processor then I certainly should be OK with a single Quad core processor. I ordered mine with a second NVIDIA GT 120 video card. This way I have two Dual Link DVI ports and two Mini DisplayPorts. Remember, the standard computer ships with a single video card that offers only one Dual Link DVI port. The other port is Apple's Mini DisplayPort which works only with Apple's new 24 inch glossy display. The adapter needed to plug in any other monitor (think 30 inch Cinema HD) into the Mini DisplayPort is a ridiculous $100. After buying this adapter, there is no guarantee it will work!!! Hence, I just bought an extra video card. The case is a breeze to work with. I slipped in the video card without any screwdriver or tools. My old hard drive went into the second slot tray (I did need a screwdriver to fasten the hard drive to the tray). The hard drive trays are side by side and pull out like a drawer. No wires, no broken fingernails, no bloody knuckles. RAM can be added and swapped out easily too. After connecting each monitor to a separate video card, I booted it up and imported all my old settings. The machine was done setting up and ready to roll in 25 minutes. The fan noise from the video cards is barely noticeable. My Macbook is three times louder. I don't know what people are talking about when they say that the video card fan is noisy? I suppose if you put it on top of your desk next to your monitor it might be noticeable, but it is not any louder than any laptop. I have yet to see the dreaded beach ball spinning. This is the quietest and fastest machine I have ever used. I tried a 17 inch (2.6 Ghz) Macbook Pro at the Apple store and it was much noisier and much slower. It is possible that the laptop was running SMC fan control so I won't complain about the laptop fan. If you are one of those people that puts their laptop on top of those cooling devices/fans then you can appreciate just how noisy things can get. For me, the reliability and easy access to Mac Pro case make this a long term investment. I think it should easily last 5 years. There are only 4 RAM slots and I can upgrade from the standard 3GB to 8GB for $150. If you need more than 8GB RAM then opt for the dual quad core model and double the available slots. If you need that much RAM you probably are not going to be happy with this single processor machine anyway. I think that some of the hype about Ghz and number of processors has made people speed crazy. There are some who would disagree with me and argue that you can never have too many processors and too much RAM. I would look at the bottom line and budget accordingly. Remember that the next new model will be out next year! Be honest with yourself and remember to factor in the costs of upgrades like HDs, RAM, Applecare, Video cards, Ports etc. One final note; I do miss the Firewire 400 ports. OWC sells Firewire 400 to Firewire 800 adapters that fit over the plugs. It is a $5 fix. I think that you will be happy with this machine if you don't need multiple processors and aren't going to add over 16 GB of RAM. It is plenty fast and very quiet. If you are a home user and don't need to open the case to upgrade parts, consider the iMac as an alternative. It comes with a bright 24 inch screen and is almost as fast.

I've been a Mac user for many years and recently began doing a lot of 3D rendering and heavy duty graphics work. My current Macbook Pro has been great in every respect, but it falls short when doing any sort of heavy graphics work and I was using a quad-core windows (yes, I know) system to take on that job.

I finally decided to make a clean break from windows and purchased the dual quad core 2.26 Ghz Mac Pro. Since the stock 6 GB of RAM wasn't enough, I dropped in 12 GB of aftermarket RAM and Apples 4870 card plus 3 1 TB drives. FINALLY!! A system that I could get stuff done with!

The Nehalam processors are a gigantic leap forward over the older architecture. AMD has been putting the memory controller on the CPU die for a few years and Intel finally followed suit with incredible results. Memory bandwidth is substantially increased and if you add RAM in "threes", you'll be able to use all three memory channels for each core. If you need more RAM, you can always add a fourth module, but you'll fall back to dual-channel operation. This won't be an issue usually unless you run applications that saturate the memory bus.

The Mac Pro has three available drive bays that are extremely easy to add drives into. It's a matter of just positioning the drive sled on the bottom of the SATA drive and attaching the four captive screws. There's a nice rubber washer there to help reduce vibration and transmitted noise. A very nice touch. There are no cables between the drive and motherboard. They simply slide into a socket on the motherboard and the inside of the system remains very clean looking.

Upgrading memory was simple. After powering down the system and opening the case, there are two clips to flip and the CPU and memory tray at the bottom of the system slides out for simple replacement. No more busted knuckles!

The video card that came with the system was fine for nearly any use, but I needed to have something faster for the 3D work I do, so I found out that replacing the stock card was also very easy. There is a retention bar that slides out of the way by pushing a button on the card guide and a couple of thumb screws to remove, but it's far easier to replace the card on this system than any PC I've ever worked on before.

After all of my upgrades, I was astonished to find how quiet the Mac Pro is. I'd gotten used to the loud whine of my Windows systems and for a few days, I'd have to look down at the Mac to see if it was running. It's pleasant to be able to listen to music again and not fans and hard drives.

Apple's included sufficient ports for USB and Firewire, but you'll have to use have to use FW800-400 adapters if you want to attach FW 400 devices to the Mac.

This was a substantial investment, but the rewards are also substantial. My render times are greatly reduced and when Snow Leopard is released, I expect to see even bigger improvements in system performance.

I have been a heavy user of personal computers since the original IBM PC came out in 1982. My needs gradually increased as the technology advanced and the capabilities of PCs improved. Lately, I've needed to switch from standard definition video editing to high definition. The dual Xeon processor HP workstation (X4000) that I had used for years was getting long in the tooth and couldn't handle the demands of high definition. So I purchased a new Dell XPS 435T with the newest quad core i7 processor and 6gb of DDR3 memory. Even though the machine specs far exceeded the published minimums for high definition editing, I suffered through about two months of agony. The Dell would crash about every five minutes of editing, and countless hours on the phone with Dell technical service and replacing the machine with another of the same model, could not solve the problem. Dell graciously refunded my purchase price. But now I was two months behind on a very critical project.

Two of my friends who are also professional editors pleaded with me to try a Mac Pro. I was reluctant, partially because I wasn't at all familiar with Macs, and partially because I wasn't sure I wanted to learn a new operating system. But, I did decide to take a risk and bought a quad-core Mac Pro with 8gb of memory and an additional WD Veciloraptor 10,000 rpm hard drive. It was the best decision I ever made. The operating system was incredibly easy to learn. And the stability of the machine even under great stress is unbelievable. I never knew anything this good was available. And even with the learning curve, I'm well on my way to finishing my project.

Are Macs more expensive? Yes and no. If you compare them to consumer-grade PCs, they are. (I spent more than $1,000 more on my Mac Pro than I had on the DEel 435T.) But they aren't consumer-grade. The construction of my Mac Pro is unlike any consumer product you're likely to have seen. The case is beautifully machined, with no internal wires. It takes about a minute to swap hard drives. Overall, it exudes quality and actually exceeds the quality of Dell or HP pro workstations, and it's priced about the same. Additional software costs about the same, but the programs that are included with the Mac are mostly better than included with Windows. Conclusion: if you use your computer for serious work and can't afford to fight your computer, the additional cost, if any, is certainly worth it.

Is it perfect? No. I wish it came with more USB ports and a multi-card reader and an illuminated keyboard. (All are available as accessories.) I also wish it had six memory slots (it has four.)

Bottom line: I love this computer and I can't imagine ever buying another Windows machine.