Updating a 2008 Mac Pro

Jason,

In short, there are only two upgrades left seeing as you already have a GTX 970 and 32gb of RAM. I believe you could put better processors in, but not that much newer as you're limited by the motherboard, which unfortunately cannot be swiped whatsoever. See this guide for which CPUs will work in your 2008.

However, I would strongly recommend and SSD- they make an absolute world of difference and would be a much better upgrade than new CPUs.

Hope it helps!

-Geotrax

If you’re so inclined, the the dosdude1 Catalina patcher, although Do be warned you’ll need a newer AMD GPU, the GTX 970 wont work. If you do get a different card though, the 3,1 would do just fine in Catalina with an SSD.

Hope it helps!

-Geotrax

Hello I am a MacPro 3.1 2008, I am running macOS Sierra, macOS Mojave and macOS Catalina. I have SSDs and lots of RAM, a 'metal' capable graphics card Nvidia GTX 650 so that Mojave and Catalina work properly.

So it can be done, search for unsupported macs.

If you are really thinking of swapping out CPUs, motherboards etc you are probably financially better off getting a MacPro 5.1 2010-2012, with a 'metal' graphics card you can upgrade to Mojave without any patchers.

The Definitive Classic Mac Pro (2006-2012) Upgrade Guide [by Greg Gant]

http://blog.greggant.com/posts/2018/05/07/definitive-mac-pro-upgrade-guide.html

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Thanks Grant!

Go to the Mac Pro Upgrade page on F***b***. Everything you need to know is there. Also look for the Classic MacPro upgrade guide/ There is a link for it on there.