Budget (including currency): <1500
Country: Canada
Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Entry level Video editing, house audio server
Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): I have a 2011 Mac Mini Server 5.3 which has 8Ram and 500 HDD, and two Mac Pro Cases: One is a Power Mac G5 the 2.1 and the other is a 4.1 both of them are missing HDD but otherwise appear to be perfect. I have always liked the mac pro case and when i saw them I grabbed them both for $65. I got the Mac Mini 2011 Server last year for $260 which was the lowest price i could get here on the east coast. So what had i planned to do:
Mac MIni 2011 Server. I was going to replace the HDD with a SDD and then i was looking to see if I could grab a Egpu (I have two old video cards) figured that they would give it a boast and I would be begin to learn to video edit on it. So I have a SDD and somewhere around here is a USB over 8GB that I could flash and put a OSX on it. The problem that I am having that I had not foreseen the M1 mac mini and am now wondering if I am just going down rabbit hole on this project. I was about to start the SDD replacement but I cannot find the USB, so then I got looking at the OSX and realised that I do not know which one to put on it. Does one just put the best one that Apple supports on it, which at this point is High Sierra but it also seems that some people are getting Big Sur to work through patches. Does anyone have any experience with this on such an old Mac? Should I just look at junking this project and look at getting a M1/ or cheaper 2nd hand Intel Mac Mini. Are Intel mac minis even worth it? Idk what do you think?
The Two Mac Pro: I wanted to create a home server of some sought. The house is not wired and we are have been (along with a lot of other people apparently) been spending a huge amount of time at home on line. I was looking at getting one of those upgrades for the case https://www.thelaserhive.com/ so they are in the UK and it says their kit is about 75 pounds each which would be $260, but you can get kits and have them cut for you, idk I know some engineer types that might like doing that. Any rate so I think that the Mac Pros can be converted into PC's, I generally like the idea of running those APU's that they have. I do not really have any firm plan in my head about hardware.