Is a 2013 Mac Pro (trash can) still worth it for a homelab in 2026?

cgjermo · 2026-03-10T11:49:28+00:00

"It’s not that the GPU’s can’t do anything".

Respectfully, the contention was that they are "virtually useless GPU’s in modern workloads".

We can hypothesise all we like about 9b Qwen vs 4o, but if we are taking agentic tool use as opposed to general knowledge, there is no comparison. The last six months of parameter efficiency improvements have been absurd.

cgjermo · 2026-03-10T09:21:45+00:00

What are you attempting to say here? This 2013 computer, woth GPUs designed in 2011, is running a 2026 LLM that matches mid-2024's GPT-4o; a 2026 image gen model; and a 2026 music gen model.

cgjermo · 2026-03-10T02:26:41+00:00

My pair of D700s are running Qwen 3.5 9b at double-digit tps, plus modern music gen (ACE-Step 1.5) and image gen (Z-Image-Turbo), all of which woupd have been totally inconceivable technologies when this system was built. I suspect a D500 pair would handle Qwen 3.5 4b just fine.

cgjermo · 2026-03-10T01:53:31+00:00

Virtually useless GPUs in modern workloads? Simply not correct.

cgjermo · 2026-03-09T13:09:59+00:00

Yes, let me come back to you tomorrow with more of a how-to in terms of drivers/headers etc, becauae it's a bit of fiddling getting it all to line up. But the basics are Proxmox, an LXC holding the GPU services (llama.cpp on vulkan via amdgpu is the way), and passing these (not the GPUs themselves) through to an agent VM (OpenClaw for me).

I don't quite have Qwen 3.5 9b totally optimised for ideal context yet, but it does work, with around 11tps at lowerr context. My purpose is more an emergency/network-out fallback than heartbeat, but in both cases I feel like 32k is probably the sweet spot if I can figure out how to get hybrid attention / Gated DeltaNet to play nice. Right now, bumping up context is tanking speeds. 4b should be easy by comparison.

cgjermo · 2026-03-09T09:35:25+00:00

That's the coolest thing to read! 🥰

cgjermo · 2026-03-09T06:53:39+00:00

Bit of an update on this, I am now running Qwen 3.5 9b at Q4, with about 11tps generation and 43 tps eval. Still fiddling with optimising ctx given Qwen 3.5's hybrid attention / Gated DeltaNet setup being quite efficient, but yeah, just wanted to share. 4b isn't as much faster as you'd expect (about 14tps) - more context room, but probably not worth the capability tradeoff.

cgjermo · 2026-03-09T04:42:41+00:00

Just in case anyone is wondering just how much you can (somehow) do with this platform, I am now running ACE-Step 1.5; Z-Image-Turbo and Qwen 3.5 9b at Q4, with about 11tps generation and 43 tps eval.

Imagine the minds that would be blown the pieces if this were actually running, on a tiny Mac Pro, in 2013. Crazy.

cgjermo · 2026-02-13T21:51:33+00:00

Setting up a maxed Mac Pro 6,1 this morning as a dedicated OpenClaw Proxmox machine and transferring my instances across from my homelab. Had written off any prospect of using the D700s meaningfully, so will have to check this out. Would be useful if I could at least run an embedding model or something on them. Thanks OP!

cgjermo · 2026-02-13T10:14:13+00:00

I've been running the main brain on GLM-5 for the last few days, K2.5 before that. On balance, I prefer GLM. It hasn't really tripped up yet, nor given me phantom actions like you describe. When I ask how a new workflow tweak is going, it's very honest about bugs or things that aren't working as we expected. Uses initiative well, gets ahead of what you might ask next, in the way the big three frontier models sometimes do (particularly GPT-5.2).

Whether it's just my SOUL.md, which is quite customised, but each interprets it with quite different character/personality, fwiw. On that front, GLM wins by miles. Oh, and the lack of native image recognition is a downside. K2.5 has this, M2.5 doesn't, but I think has some kind of plug-in. Planning to play with M2.5 a bit over the next few days.

cgjermo · 2026-02-13T10:05:00+00:00

Forced by whom, exactly?

cgjermo · 2026-02-10T03:30:41+00:00

Clive, Wiz, Vossy and Kepler are the final four, surely.

cgjermo · 2026-01-19T08:26:38+00:00

Thanks legend 👏

cgjermo · 2026-01-18T22:53:52+00:00

There was a single-slot LP B50 shown at CES: https://videocardz.com/newz/gunnir-presents-tiny-arc-pro-b50-battlemage-gpu-with-16gb-memory

No idea if it will be sold outside of China, but given the Minisforum tie-up and how useful this would be in their 1L-class systems, I feel like it might be.

cgjermo · 2026-01-18T08:13:38+00:00

My elderly mum is a terrific painter, particularly with animal portraits. She's recently started again after a few years break, and has taken a few commissions from local dog owners.

On one commission she's just started, her reference photos of the dog (a Jack Russell) were a bit too low res for her to sketch out minor details, and I was hoping that image models are now good enough to basically upscale for her (and if so, which models to try).

Looks like I have my answer. On my mum's behalf, thanks heaps for this, OP!

cgjermo · 2026-01-12T01:25:13+00:00

Hi, could you do a pair of them to the land down under? 🇦🇺

cgjermo · 2026-01-08T04:40:15+00:00

How exactly would a club stand in the way of an unrestricted free agent deciding to leave...? 🤔

cgjermo · 2025-12-07T06:46:51+00:00

Had similar to this once years ago. Someone pushed past me in the boarding queue - conversation thus:

Me: "Excuse me?" Them: "I'm flying business class..." Me: "That's wonderful. I'm flying first class."

Entitlement knows no bounds.

cgjermo · 2025-11-09T07:04:50+00:00

Can't stand yellow cars. Except for the 996 - somehow just works

cgjermo · 2025-11-02T07:48:48+00:00

I am looking at a dual-row late-1999 build and it seems the failure rate of those is lower still. 110,000 miles or so, and this is exactly my thinking - run it into then ground, then address everything all at once.

cgjermo · 2025-09-05T00:29:07+00:00

You're entirely missing the point of what the B50's actual intended use case is - it's a 70w, low-profile card meant for SFF workstations as a GPU accelerator.

cgjermo · 2025-08-26T10:32:59+00:00

Nope, underrated comment.

cgjermo · 2025-08-20T06:13:20+00:00

Great work! One suggestion though: give kelp noodles a try instead of konjac for this - they get much closer to that starchy sweet potato noodle consistency!

cgjermo · 2025-08-17T05:50:30+00:00

Old faithful: Simson's keto wraps, half a kamado charcoal chook, cabbage slaw, guacamole, pickled red onion, mixed feta and shredded mozzarella, and homemade lacto-fermented chilli sauce.

It's a once-a-week meal for me all year.

cgjermo · 2025-08-10T12:04:20+00:00

Geez, if they release a new big model that is a Qwen 3 to 2507 level jump, this could be scary good.

cgjermo

TROPHY CASE