2010 Mac Pro FrankenBeast: 12-core 3.33, 64 RAM, Radeon Vega Frontier, 3TB SSD, 60TB RAID, 12TB Backup, full audio

**** See images on eBay listing. All reasonable offers considered.

Tired of waiting for Apple to make a new Mac Pro and need some POWER? I'm retiring from post production and I'm putting my 2010 Mac Pro FrankenBeast™ bundle up for sale. It began life as an 8-core 2010 Mac Pro, but this Beast has MAJOR UPGRADES and ADD-ONS to all components. Take a look, shall we?

The Good:

• New processor riser with 12-core 3.33 MHz Xeon Westmere X5680 and 64GB EEC RAM (OWC branded). Purchased 7/2/16
• AMD Radeon Vega Frontier Edition with 16GB VRAM. The fastest, biggest, baddest Radeon available, and $1100 retail. Purchased 2/5/18. Includes external power supply (the Mac PSU is not enough) and necessary cables.
• 2x Benq SW2700 IPS 99% Adobe RGB 100% SRGB 27" displays. To replace my old Apple Cinema Displays, I couldn't find 4k monitors with as good color reproduction, so I went with these 2560 x 1440 displays. Includes light shades. Great for photo and video color correction. Retail $1200. Purchased 1/23/17.
• Areca ARC-1882IX-24-4GB, 24 ports dual core PCIe 3.0 6Gb/s SAS/SATA 4GB cache memory. In my opinion the best RAID card available for the Mac Pro. $1300 retail. Purchased 8/23/16.
• 4x 960GB Sandisk Extreme SSDs hooked up to the Areca card (SATA 3) in RAID5 for 3TB startup/application/media cache drive. 1 GB/sec read/write and a 10-year data loss probability of 0.0004%. Includes internal Mac Pro drive tray solution for 2.5" SSD mounting and connection to the Areca card. $1600 retail. Purchased 8/23/16.
• 24x 3TB HGST UltraStar server drives in a RAID6 with 2 hot spares for 60TB media RAID. 1.2 GB/sec read/write and 10-year data loss probability of 0.0000006%. $3900 retail. Purchased 8/23/16
• Rack-mountable RAID case for the UltraStars. Connects to ARC-1882 via 6x miniSAS. Retail $700. Purchased 8/23/16.
• 5x 3TB HGST UltraStar server drives in RAID5 USB 3 case for 12TB Time Machine array. Retail $950. Purchased 8/23/16
• If you prefer alternate configs for the RAIDs, let me know.
• Sonnet Allegro USB 3.0 PCIe host adapter plus 2x Newertech eSATA to USB adapters. For connecting high-speed USB or eSATA external drives from your clients. Retail $100. Purchased 7/13/2016.
• Original Superdrive plus Blu-Ray burner (you will need Toast, not included, to use the BDR burner)
• Iogear Bluetooth 4.0 low power USB dongle
• Logitech C815 1080p webcam

Audio

• Tascam TM-D1000 digital mixing board with additional digital I/O board for a total of 3 digital coax stereo I/Os and 16+ mono analog I/O. A Swiss army knife for audio. Will allow you to send just about any sort of audio signal to your amp and your Mac. Includes 2x Tascam IF-AE8 TDIF interfaces for an additional 16 digital I/Os to allow for connection with just about any pro audio equipment over a total of 32 channels. All rack-mountable. Also includes optical-coax converters for using the Mac's digital audio I/O. Total retail $1500. Purchased 1/30/05
• Yamaha RX-V471 Receiver/Amp. Great sounding amp with tons of power for any near-field application. Retail $300. Purchased 5/12/14
• Alesis Monitor One MKII reference monitor speakers and stands. In my opinion, the best near-field reference monitors available. Retail $350. Purchased 2/2/05

Extras:

• USB drive with recovery partition containing the Areca EFI drivers you need. See note below.
• Original Radeon 5870 video card. Apple requires this for firmware upgrades like with High Sierra, and it's good to have for emergencies.
• All the cabling you will need, and some extras too.
• Latest operating system. No other software is included.
• Instructions for all cabling. If you live in LA, I will deliver and set up.
• The many years of love and attention I put into FrankenBeast™

In addition, I have several large, heavy items which will require separate arrangements:

• Sony FD Trinitron WEGA KD-34XBR970 34" 1080i CRT. The last great Sony CRT.
• Panasonic TH-42PHD8UK pro plasma display. I still use this and the Sony for broadcast color correction. The picture on both is awesome, still.
• Rackman 4' high rack. All the audio and the RAID case listed above will fit in this. Screws included
• Custom designed oak desk to put it all on.

The Bad:

• While I replaced the fans with the quietest ones I could find, cooling 24 Ultrastar drives for demanding applications is noisy. I have it on the rack in a closet.
• The Vega Frontier is the retail PC edition and has not been flashed, so you will not get a boot screen. Verbose, Safe, Single User, and most importantly, Recovery all work as usual, but you will not see the Apple logo or progress bar in normal boot mode.
• Additionally, booting takes a while, as the Areca card checks all 28 attached devices before the OS loads. This is an exercise in patience and faith, since you will also not have a boot screen. It ain't pretty, but it works.
• In the HIGHLY unlikely event of a RAID failure with the boot array (0.0004% over 10 years), you will need the USB recovery drive. Make a backup and a backup to the backup.
• You should own DiskWarrior (not included), but if you made it this far, you already knew that.

The Ugly:

• The outside case has some cosmetic damage. See photos
• In order to make the FrankenBeast™ come to life, there are cables that run out the back -- 5x SAS cables and 2x PCIe power for the Vega. I've chosen to run it out through an empty PCIe slot, but you can cut a hole in the back if you want to use that slot. It ain't pretty, but it works.
• There is a PSU that has to sit outside the Mac Pro to power the Radeon Vega. I sit it on top of FrankenBeast's case.
• My 2 cats share my studio. I vacuumed out everything as well as I could, but if you are allergic to cats, probably not the best idea.

I will miss her, but FrankenBeast™ can be yours. Questions welcome