I had recalled reading in the past that the Mac Pro CPU might also be upgradeable, but I had never looked into it before. There is nothing that can be done about Thunderbolt, however.

I don’t have a big need for USB3 just yet since I can keep so many drives inside the Mac Pro, but it’s nice to know this low-cost option is available. USB 3 can easily be solved with a $60 PCI card to add four superspeed ports. It also doesn’t have Thunderbolt or even USB 3. Add the 2nd optical drive slot, plus 3 empty PCI card slots and this Mac Pro can hold a total of 8 drives, all of which are inside the case!Īs awesome as the storage management is, this thing is not nearly as fast as the latest Mac Pro or even the latest iMacs. Overall, there is space for four 3.5' (or 2.5' drives with adapters) in the drive bays. Plus I have other large spinning hard drives for archival purposes in the standard drive bays. I have one SSD in the 2nd optical drive slot and another mounted on a PCI card (the OWC Mercury Accelsior S). Adding drives to this Mac Pro is super easy. Over the years I’ve upgraded it with several SSDs and to 16GB RAM. My Mac Pro is a single-CPU, quad-core 2.93Ghz model (Intel Xeon W3540) with the ATI Radeon HD 4870 video card. So I’m sticking with my classic Mac Pro (or Mac Pro tower) for the time being.

As a software developer, I prefer to have lots of storage and do not need dual video cards. I’ve owned this Mac longer than any other prior Mac which might explain why Apple does not make Macs that are easily upgradable any longer they get fewer sales of new hardware.Īs cool as the (not-so-new) 2013 Mac Pro is, it is still too expensive and not upgradable enough for my purposes. I’m the proud owner of a 2009 Mac Pro, which I’ve owned since 2010.

Can you upgrade macbook pro 2010 cpu