In today’s video I’ll be looking at one of the strangest Macs ever made: the Xserve. I’ll be examining this old machine not as a dedicated server, but as a workstation, because it shares most of its specs with the 4,1 Mac Pro from this era with a much lower cost. Should you buy one? Special thanks to Blitzwolf for sponsoring today’s video! Check out some links:
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The Apple Xserve is a rack-mountable server that was sold starting in 2002 and discontinued in January 2011. The machine struggled to find its niche in the server market, where Macs were generally not used very often. If you’re confused about the graphics in this machine, here’s some clarification: my unit has a GT120 from a Mac Pro (PCIe card) whereas if your Xserve was ordered with a GT120 it would be in MXM form, leaving the two PCIE slots unpopulated. This means you could theoretically run 3 graphics cards in this machine! I’m considering trying to get a more modern and more powerful MXM graphics card running on this machine, such as a GTX 980M, but there are no fans to cool an MXM graphics slot so it might be tricky. There are a lot of options in this regard because MXM graphics can be found on iMacs up to 2011, and support exists for putting non-stock cards in iMacs and Xserves. Nvidia web drivers for mac could allow you to run a 980M in the Xserve provided you could cool it properly…
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We used these as file servers back in the day. They were great!
I just wanted to know is this xserve good for runing music programs such as Logic x, garageband, and reason ?
It seems to a lot of people that using an Xserve as a workstation is such a bad thing and they get all butthurt over it. The fact that people are bothered by something this stupid just frustrates me.
Why are you all getting so worked up about this? It’s not your computer, and Luke can use it anyway he seems fit. He knows the downsides of using it as a workstation (the fan noise, no audio in/out ports). You guys are even getting worked up for no reason because of his his incorrect terminology for the Ethernet network interface and his pronunciation of “Xserve”.
I’ve also had the same thoughts of buying one of these for use as a workstation because of the price/performance ratio. It’s not a stupid idea at all. Despite the graphics card capabilities, it was very similar to the Mac Pro at the time in terms of power. If you’re willing to put up with loud fan noise levels and having to buy an audio interface, it’s totally worth buying and using as a workstation.
I think people are mostly giving you a hard time because you don’t seem to understand the differences and similarities between “desktops”, “workstations” and “servers”. For the last decade or so, “Workstation” has pretty much meant Xeon, ECC, SAS and server grade Ethernet in a desktop form factor. Workstation class machines include the MacPro, Dell Precision and HP Z series machines. The fact that the Pro and the Xserve had similar guts should be expected, not surprising.
And, no, enterprise customers were not buying Pros so they could put them on shelves in their server rooms instead of more manageable Xserve rack units. They simply weren’t buying Xserves. OSX Server was awful.
its forgotten because its fucking trash server equipment. apple will always be consumer trash and never enter the enterprise community.
Good Vid 🙂
I love BIG Machines >)
I love how he has fortnite battle royale on the tags nice…
Xserve GV
It sounds like a normal fat ps4
6:51 what do you expect xD Its a server not a computer
But can it run Fortnite?
my PlayStation 4 is still louder :p
ug
Xserve uses in 2018?
Very Expensive Minecraft Server
there was so much hair in this video (in the carpet, on the bed, on the server) Anyone else notice this? Luke, my brother. You need to vacuum.
The perspective of this video is almost as annoying as his pronunciation of “Xserve”
why even bother mention gaming as a negative point? it’s a server.
The power consumption makes this totally impractical for home users.
Yo I thought it was small until you carried it lmaooo it’s gigantic.
LOL, Nice job, including the nascar footage and jet footage lol, lot of techs would gloss that over and not even mention it, and try to make it sound all glamorous, and yep, a server room full of those would be extremely noisy. And WOW, massive air movement! Not a bad idea though for a closet, tied into WIFI, using a remote desktop connection, using it like a music server, video server, file storage, even IP cameras. And for the price, yep, not bad. But what Mac OSX is it stuck at? El Capitan or older?
Its loud because its a server
7:06 thats music to my ears! I love the sound of server cooling fans! It would fit in really nicely for me! At least it will drown out the sound of the annoying motorcycles that often driving past my house, as well as make nice white noise
intro music?
Thanks for sharing! (I need a pill after seeing the GPU on the carpet.)
I would not reccomend placing a GPU PCB side down on a carpet… even the smallest amount of static electricity could make it completely unusable.
1) unhackable & only one known virus for the G4 chip running (osx10.1?)
2) handles 100,000 web hit requests per second (per server)
3) scalable
4) auto redundant in multiple (units) for 100% uptime serving
For$1,000 you can handle 500,000+ hits per second… Old 40 GB SSD’s in mirrored raid will fully saturate a fat uplink, with no perception of disk lag (aged hardware), for users.
Recently got a Dual-Core Late 2012 Mac Mini… I guess I’m selling it and getting this for a profit
Do you want a copy of OSX 10.5 server. I can let you borrow my install disc
if u dont mind me asking roughly how much did you pay
I would like to know the energy consumption. And how much heat its producing. Because, maybe you could use it as a workstaion and a heater at the same time.
I always needed a new heater.
Dude you are way too close to camera
Max out the ram