Mac Pro Server Mid-2010

The Mac Pro "Quad Core" 3.2 Server (Mid-2010/Nehalem), was offered as a "custom-order" configuration of the Mac Pro "Quad Core" 2.8 Server (2010/Nehalem). Apart from the speed of the processors, both models share identical specifications.

The Mac Pro "Quad Core" 3.2 Server (Mid-2010/Nehalem) features a single 3.2 GHz Quad Core 45-nm Xeon W3565 (Nehalem) processor with a dedicated 256k of L2 cache for each core and 8MB of "fully shared" L3 cache.

By default, this Mac Pro Server is configured with 8GB of 1066 MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM, two 1TB (7200 RPM, 32 MB cache) 3Gb/s Serial ATA hard drives, an 18X dual-layer "SuperDrive" and an ATI Radeon HD 5770 graphics card with 1GB of GDDR5 memory.

Expansion includes two external 5.25" "optical" bays (one available by default), four internal 3.5" "cable-free, direct attach" hard drive bays (three available by default), and four PCIe 2.0 slots (one free PCIe 2.0 x16 slot and two free PCIe 2.0 x4 slots with the default single graphics card installed).

Port selection includes five USB 2.0 ports, four Firewire "800" ports, dual Gigabit Ethernet, two Mini DisplayPorts and a dual-link DVI port, and more. AirPort Extreme (802.11a/b/g/n) and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR comes standard.

As a custom upgrade from the standard server model, this 3.2 GHz configuration was offered to server administrators seeking higher processing power. The faster Nehalem processor delivered a noticeable performance improvement when running multiple services simultaneously or handling a larger number of clients. As a 2010 server model, it came pre-installed with Mac OS X Server, which, combined with its reliable hardware, promised stable operation. The high expandability of the Mac Pro was praised as a key factor in maintaining its role as a server over the long term, allowing for future storage expansion and the addition of network cards.