Can I / is it worth it to upgrade

I have an early 2009 Mac Pro running twin 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeons and 8gb ram. OS is el Capitan. This machine runs great and does everything that I need, but I really would like to upgrade to a newer OS.
I had heard that it requires new processors to enable that. Is this something that could be done? Would it be worth the trouble / expense?

El Cap is the newest version of macOS you can run on your 2009 Mac Pro. Sierra and High Sierra require a 2010 Mac Pro and Mojave requires 2013 Mac Pro. Upgrading the CPU isn't enough, you'll have to upgrade the logicboard to a newer version to get it to work.

Since you are already on El Cap, you should stick with the machine (especially if it does everything you want it to do) and save up to get a newer machine once your software start demanding a version of macOS beyond El Cap or if the machine no longer sufficiently serves your purpose.

I guess I'll just run what I have. There was no real reason for the upgrade except me wanting the latest OS. It really does run great. I take it apart and clean it out on a regular basis and I would imagine that it has many more years of use still in it.

The Mac Pro is quite a powerful machine and does serve it's purpose well. At some point in time, you will find the applications will start complaining about updates not supporting El Cap and it will likely be that which will be the impetus to upgrade. The hardware will be fine for a very long time, it's the software march that goes along and forces your hand.

I guess I'll just run what I have. There was no real reason for the upgrade except me wanting the latest OS.

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And maybe be thankful that you're staying where you are that actually has some "features" that were removed with later macOS versions and you avoided the often unneeded upgrade trap:

IE: macOS Sierra Has Removed Features That I Liked
https://www.reddit.com/r/mac/comments/56ar1g/macos_sierra_has_removed_features_that_i_liked/




- Patrick
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It is possible to do, and it doesn't look like you would even need to upgrade the processors. Here is a link explaining the process: http://dosdude1.com/highsierra/ I however doubt that it would run that well and since you say that it currently runs great and does everything you need i wouldn't bother with the upgrade, but I thought you might like to know it is possible.

mrkramer said:

It is possible to do, and it doesn't look like you would even need to upgrade the processors. Here is a link explaining the process: http://dosdude1.com/highsierra/ I however doubt that it would run that well and since you say that it currently runs great and does everything you need i wouldn't bother with the upgrade, but I thought you might like to know it is possible.

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I decided to give it a try with the info you supplied and it worked great. Just to be safe, I took out all of my drives and installed a spare with a fresh install of El Capitan.
It's seems to run great with no issues at all so far. The only thing that I wonder about is that SIP MUST be disabled for it to work. Is that something that I should be worried about? I don't download and run apps from just anywhere.

The only thing that I wonder about is that SIP MUST be disabled for it to work.

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You might want to explain that for me and some others and why specifically in your situation, other than to possibly allow you to do things with your Mac as you might want and as if you actually owned it.




- Patrick
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To install High Sierra on my machine it was necessary to use the High Sierra patcher and to use that, SIP needs to be disabled. According to the instructions, SIP must remain disabled.

Happy4 said:

To install High Sierra on my machine it was necessary to use the High Sierra patcher and to use that, SIP needs to be disabled. According to the instructions, SIP must remain disabled.

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That would be your answer then.

I'm not even sure what pm-r was asking. Didn't make much sense to me. " do things with your Mac as you might want and as if you actually owned it"? I'm pretty sure I do own it.

Happy4 said:

I'm not even sure what pm-r was asking. Didn't make much sense to me. " do things with your Mac as you might want and as if you actually owned it"? I'm pretty sure I do own it.

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Thanks for your info that a normal installer wouldn't normally have to do, but as you noticed with the High Sierra patcher you had to use, you had to disable SIP, which is also sometimes required and Apple doesn't want you to do. And Apple also prevents the user from doing other stuff the user may want to do. Aka, almost as if you don't own your own Mac to do what you might want to do.

But maybe just a poor explanation on my part.




- Patrick
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That is true. I'm not going to worry too much about disabling SIP as my machine was maxed out at El Cap and I believe that was the first OS that used it.
Thanks for your input. And thanks for the reply from mrkramer with that link. I really am surprised at how easy the install went and how great it runs. I put my other drives back in and have been switching back and forth between El Capitan and High Sierra and the latter seems to run faster, but it's probably just because El Cap has had years of use.
Thanks again to all

That is true. I'm not going to worry too much about disabling SIP as my machine was maxed out at El Cap and I believe that was the first OS that used it.

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Not to niggle here but could you clarify as you said in post # 8:

To install High Sierra on my machine it was necessary to use the High Sierra patcher and to use that, SIP needs to be disabled. According to the instructions, SIP must remain disabled. [/QUOTE]

Gee, that reminds me that I think my old 2007 15" MBPro running El Capitain still has SIP disabled. No big worry here.




- Patrick
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To install High Sierra, I followed the instructions here, http://dosdude1.com/highsierra/ , and to do that I had to disable SIP. "Note: Make sure SIP is disabled on the system you intend to install High Sierra on. If it's not or you're unsure, just boot into your Recovery partition of your currently installed copy of OS X, open Terminal, and run "csrutil disable".
I also followed the link to the YouTube video and in the comments, it said that it had to remain off.

Happy4 said:

That is true. I'm not going to worry too much about disabling SIP as my machine was maxed out at El Cap and I believe that was the first OS that used it.
Thanks for your input. And thanks for the reply from mrkramer with that link. I really am surprised at how easy the install went and how great it runs. I put my other drives back in and have been switching back and forth between El Capitan and High Sierra and the latter seems to run faster, but it's probably just because El Cap has had years of use.
Thanks again to all

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Glad it's working for you. I hadn't ever had the need to actually try those instructions, but I had heard from people who had done it so I thought it might benefit you.

Just a small caution on SIP. In past updates, Apple has turned SIP back on if it was found to be off in the update process. In your case, if SIP must be off for the OS to even run (I don't know that, just taking your statement at face value.) then if there is an update to HS and you install it, you might end up with a system that won't run. I would recommend making a bootable clone of what you have now, just in case. That way, if the update does kill the system you can restore the clone by booting from it and cloning back.

I hadn't done any reading of SIP, but having found this article about it, you should be really careful with that layer of protection.

Just a small caution on SIP. In past updates, Apple has turned SIP back on if it was found to be off in the update process.

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Just to reinforce Jake's cautionary comment, but I don't know if Apple changed anything with its latest versions. But I suspect they may have done even more to re-enable SIP and keep it enabled. Apple really like their security stuff working.




- Patrick
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I'm not going to worry too much about it since you turn off SIP before the os starts. If for some reason it enables itself, I should be able to boot into recovery and shut it back off.