55" Hisense 4K TV connected with HDMI, Kickr Bike. Lenovo Yoga mini-laptop. MacOS 12.6.2 and because someone will ask, the wallpaper is a Peugeot 905 Evo1B powered by Peugeot SA35-A1 3.0L V10. It is chassis EV13 which was restored and reactivated.
My former work Mac Pro now doing Zwift and FulGaz duties.
So that’s my trainer cave. Kickr Bike running through bluetooth or ANT+ depending on what is needed and industrial fan on the floor. Sound is via Bose Soundbar 700 (optical connection to Mac Pro) and Bose Bass Module 700. I’m using the current Apple wireless keyboard and a Logitech wireless mouse.
I’ve got two computers - the Lenovo laptop that goes overseas when I’m riding abroad for logging my rides and other general stuff. It also does the old fashioned PerfPro Studio which I use for intervals - that’s on Windows 10.
The “big mac” is the Mac Pro I got brand new in 2010 for AUD$5900 with a 27" LED Cinema Display. It was a single 3.2ghz quad-core Xeon and had a pitiful 8GB RAM, a Radeon 5870 GPU with 1GB RAM and very classic 1TB spinning HDD. I can’t even remember what MacOS it came with, but it was a very old one but it was a super reliable computer for my work use.
I ended up giving this unit an upgrade. I obtained an eight core (2x quad core) second hand Mac Pro from an ad-agency and swapped the CPU tray out, then this old thing got:
2x Intel Xeon X5690 Westmere 3.46ghz (each 6 core, 130w)
Radeon RX580 8GB
1TB Samsung SSD
Opencore 0.8.0
MacOS Monterey 12.6.2
128GB DDR3 1366mhz RAM (8x16GB ECC)
upgraded WIFI and bluetooth chip (for document hand-off, apple watch unlock, airdrop etc)
It started giving kernel panics mid way through last year so I replaced it with a modern 2019 Mac Pro for work, then I put the old thing away until I was physically able to get it out and try to solve the problem. The kernel panics related to one of the CPUs (CPU A, the one at the back) failing. I got a couple of X5690s from Amazon cheaply and replaced the dead CPU. And it’s back working.
So the old machine lives again and it runs Zwift. This one was never moved about so it has no scratches, dings or other marks on it and looks brand new.
The other donor Mac Pro has my old single CPU tray in it and has the same RX580 graphics card, a 2TB SSD and a Xeon X5690 and other similar upgrades. It was running Zwift before.
I’m quite lucky that they run Zwift very reliably. I’ve also got FulGaz running - I swap between FulGaz and Zwift.