Selling a 2008 Mac Pro
Apr 16, 2018
I am selling an 2008 Mac Pro in these very days for a friend of mine who owns a graphic studio and needs to change Macs ever so often, since he prefers to buy new ones and get fresh warranty instead of upgrading old ones. In this scheme, my role is to take unused Macs, get them back in shape and sell them. I have already sold about 7 old Macs on his behalf and every time I do it with some pride and nostalgia.
Pride comes from seeing how beautiful these machines are. I'm in awe when I open them, see how nicely laid down everything is and see how - generation after generation - the layout had improved even further. I'm even more in awe when I need to update them and see how easy it still is, almost a decade after they were conceived.
Nostalgia comes from the fact that, back in the days, these were Macs I saw announced but never could have afforded to buy them. Not that I needed that power either, but objects of desire aren't all rational, aren't they?
The Mac I have in my hands now is a glorious 2008, 2.8GHz Quad Core Mac Pro.
Here are the steps I usually take to ensure the Macs are still well and able to run for the time to come.
1. Checking the hardware
First thing I do is check everything works as intended since those Macs might have been sitting in a corner for a while. Default choice goes to Apple Hardware test for older models, Apple Diagnostic for newer ones. Unfortunately, many Macs I receive don't have installing disks anymore and don't support downloading Diagnostics from the web.
Next in line is trustworthy TechTool Pro. TechTool is an old friend of mine and I have bought every release from version 4 to the current one. TechTool checks RAM, Graphic Memory, SMART status, internal sensors, HDs' bad sectors, corrupted files and more. It even has some handy tools for fixing logical volumes.
Last in line is Rember. Rember is a quite old app that provides an user interface for memtest Unix routine. I don't use it often, but always when I buy and install new RAM. Rember can run continuously even for days and this makes it handy to check RAM for long periods of time, stressing it and heating it up to see how it behaves.
2. Pondering internal upgrades
The Mac Pro I have in my hands now only had 4GB of RAM. With a quick trip to EveryMac.com first, and eBay then, I was able to see what the supported RAM is and buy it at very reasonable price, bumping the total to a nice and safe 20GB. For this type of machines, I find upgrading RAM beyond 4GB essential since they will mostly be used as a professional tool. Besides, added RAM increases the Mac's value.
On storage's side, the Mac Pro came with a single 1TB spinning hard drive and even if new HDs are cheap (and used ones even cheaper), I preferred not to do anything on that side, leaving to the future owner the choice of what to install, even a SSD. Two are the reasons behind this:
- SSD choice is trickier than one may think. Market is in full fervor and new models come out almost every week. When I need to choose, I head over to Anandtech and read their semestral SSD roundup;
- good SSD aren't that cheap, and because of reason 1, I cannot be sure the buyer likes my SSD choice, or even needs it.
3. Fancinesses
I usually stop at #2, this time around though, I thought about one more update: USB 3. The Mac Pro already comes with few nice ports: optical audio in and out, USB 2, Firewire 400 and 800 built in. But there's one more card up its sleeve, and it's PCIe. The Pro comes with four PCIe 2.0 slots: two x4 and two x16 PCIe. What that means in terms of upgradability, is that you can harvest the power and speed of the Mac's internals with almost no bottleneck. Those slots are used mainly for graphic cards, but can also be used for other nice things and USB3 is one of them. Two compatible expansion cards I found are Sonnet's and Inateck's, both with good reviews you can find online and both easy to find at online resellers.
Final step
All this done, nothing is left besides posting it on a website and wait.
I tend to post it both on specific used-Macs websites and general-selling websites: posting is free and the more people see your auction, the greater chance someone turns out to be interested.
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