Due to various threads about problems, I haven’t actually updated this thread. Likewise, I responded a lot to @cosmichobo and @jaysee threads, so this is out of date.
As of today, I now have in the system:
The original 2x2.8GHz Xeons
RAID 0 2x250GB Samung 850 Evo SSDs (have PCI cards for them, but my Black Magic tests on speed have been inconclusive)
28GBs RAM (Jaysee sent some to me for postage)
1TB 7200 rpm Seagate HDD
250GB Western Digital Blue Windows Drive
ASUS Nvidia GTX 770 (Kepler, so like the 710 and 680, it should be compatible with Mojave, is compatible with High Sierra)
Original DVD-RAM IDE drive
Pioneer Blu Ray Burner
Externally I have:
LaCie 1TB (2x1TB) RAID 1 FireWire 800 external for backups
Apple Time Capsule 3TB for media I can access via any Mac in the house
I had a 680, tried to flash it, borked it. I may try to fix it, but I’m leaving the 770 alone. If I fix the 680, great, if I don’t… I don’t. Learning experience. I’m hoping to get the latest version of Mojave up an running today. Pictures to follow.
EDIT 1: Mojave 10.14.5 runs on the 3,1, currently doing the backup/clone dance so I can get Mojave on the RAID 0 SSDs while still having a nice solid backup of High Sierra on the 7200 RPM HDD.
EDIT 2: And we are all good!
And, I do hope no more fiddling until we have a reliable patched version of Catalina. I can thus shut the case for the first time in many months.
EDIT 3: This is why I am unclear about the SSDs. Raid 0 SSDs in PCIe cards, and I’m only getting between 350-450 MB/s (depends on the run, and what combination of PCIe card + regular SATA slot I am using), R/W. A far cry from the 900 MB/s R/W I was getting with these in RAID 0 on my 2012 MacBook Pro.
Obviously faster than even a 7200 RPM HDD, let alone a 5400 though:
And to be honest, I can’t really feel I experience a difference between the SSD speeds here and the speeds of my MacBook Pro 2012 (let alone my 2015 MBP with M.2), even though they’re obviously significantly faster. I am so used to 5400 RPM (the 7200RPM drive is a recent addition) drives versus SSDs, I can’t honestly tell the difference between SSD speeds and other SSD speeds.
As for that GTX 770, well, once Unigine Heaven finishes downloading, I’ll run it.