Only down side is the the cpu tray is only a single. Ok, I was able to get my hands on a 2009 Mac, for a fairly good price. RAM won't hurt but 32 is more than enough. Then open it up, clean, dust and all connectors and check for battery and I believe you're set for a long time. I am pretty sure, actually confident, that you will not regret it! Ever! Get one, dual cpus preferrable, machine with as fast cpu as you can find and you will upgrade your drives to SSDs afterwards.

Like those did, these silver MacPros and their architecture will also rule for a long time. PowerMacs 9500 or 9600 ruled for a loooong time. Before those there were those beige machines called Power PC Macintosh machines. Those MacPro big towers are the last of their kind. The more computing speed (clock) you have, happier and smoother your life will be! It is a project but the end result is fabulous. Read a bit about that too what are the options for that and prices. MacOS 10.10 YosemiteHell yes! If you find older machine with dual cpu even better! Those machines, if single cpu, can be easily transformed to duals. I’m actually watching one on eBay now that looks to have the upgrades done like you said. It would seem these souped up Mac Pros don't like 8GB RAM sticks very much. Mine also came with 64GB RAM but I've decided to lower it to 32GB on account of heat/fan noise issues. It should be able to handle what you're intending to do. It’s fairly cheap, and I know it’s going to be better than what I have, just not sure if it’s worth 500 bucksI recently replaced my Powermac G5 with one of these and the difference is HUGE! For me, a MAJOR upgrade. Network 2x Ethernet port ,WIFI (built-in), Bluetooth Processor (2X) Intel Xeon Quad Core 2.83 Ghz Again, mostly sampled drums, and wall of sound guitar plugins being used

I found a listing for a refurbished Mac Pro and curious if this model would be a good low budget upgrade. I typlically run ez drummer, kontakt player with room sounds Kurt Ballou pack, reapear and basic plugins (eq, comp, saturation, wos cab sims. I’ve read through the threads but still at a loss.

New to Mac, and needing to do an upgrade on from an old hp laptop that just can’t handle kontakt and plug ins.

Upgrade 8 core mac pro to 12 core