As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I still have one of the “cheese grater” Mac Pros around. It’s a 2009 that I upgraded somewhat with SSD, 6 core Xeon and a few other small goodies. As I split my time between Linux, Windows and macOS, I like having it around but can’t really justify getting a newer machine.

Anyway, I’m upgrading my monitor to wide screen monitor and the old graphics card (Apple branded AMD Radeon 7970) was unlikely to be too happy about it. Plus, I had a spare AMD RX470 lying around from upgrading the graphics card in my PC. The Hackintosh community seems to generally recommend AMD cards for newer versions of OS X, so I figured I’d give it a try. The RX470 is listed as a supported card in newer versions of OS X after all.

I’ve been an unashamed fan of the old “cheese grater” Mac Pro due to its sturdiness and expandability. Yes, they’re not the most elegant bit of kit out there but they are well built. And most importantly for me, they are expandable by plugging things inside the case, not by creating a Gordian Knot of hubs, Thunderbolt cables, USB cables and stacks of external disks all evenly scattered around a trash can. Oh, and they’re designed to go under a desk. Where mine happens to live, right next to my dual boot Linux/Windows development box.