2010 Mac Pro for FCPX in 2020?

[Joe Marler]

[Jay Soriano] “Was offered a 2010 Mac Pro for $500…is it still a viable option in 2020 editing on FCPX with a Sapphire Pulse RX 580 8GB GPU?…Mostly HD footage with some 4K here and there.”

The crucial item is codec. If you will now or ever in the future be editing or transcoding from a H264 or HEVC codec or exporting to those codecs, the 2010 MP (like the 2013 trash can) does not have hardware acceleration for this. I’ve heard of some people using the 3rd party OpenCore bootloader, but I don’t know how reliable that is.

When I tested my top-spec 12-core D700 Mac Pro vs a 2015 iMac 27, the iMac was 2x faster at transcoding 4k H264 to ProRes.

If your cameras use ProRes acquisition and your deliverable is ProRes, it’s not so bad. But in general I’d suggest getting a used iMac 27. Maybe the best bang for the buck would be a 2017 iMac 27 with SSD and the RP580 GPU. You might find one on eBay for under $1k. Depending on what condition you’re willing to accept you might find some scratched or dented base-model iMac Pro for under $3k. The iMac Pro is really good because it’s quiet and has lots of ports.

[Warren Eig]

I just cut two projects on a cMP 2012 12 core with RX580. One 4K all the way through and one 1080. Not one hiccup. Everything was realtime. Never slowed or made work impossible. Smooth and responsive with no lags.

Warren Eig
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[Greg Ball]

I Have a MacPro (Mid 2010) 2 x 2.4 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon.

It works great with FCP. I have FCPX 10.4.5. I edit on High Sierra.

Greg Ball, President
Ball Media Innovations, Inc.
https://www.ballmediainnovations.com

[Jay Soriano]

Thanks for the info all. I mostly acquire ProRes content with some HEVC content. My biggest concern is no Thunderbolt ports and researching on PCIe available and its reliability/stability. Also looking if NVMe is an options.

What are you all using as your FCPX media drives and what connection? Thank you.

[Eric Santiago]

[Jay Soriano] “What are you all using as your FCPX media drives and what connection? Thank you.”

On my 2010 Mac Pro, I had SAS PCI to accommodate my GTECH eSPro RAIDs.
I stopped at High Sierra and FCPX 10.3.x on that workstation.
Moved the PCI cards into an Echo Express III to work on my 2013 Mac Pro.
If I didn’t have the option now, I could have hung on to that older set up for at least another year.