15 ms·

Mac Pro 2 Concept Design

381 points by milen 10y ago

eva1984 10y ago
2 GTX 1080 in this small box? Nahh, this is going to be smoking hot.
skiril 10y ago
I like it.
bparsons 10y ago
You could build the PC version of this for about a 1000 bucks.
ldev 10y ago
Is HDMI 2.1 now superior to DisplayPort?
B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
Not bad. Reminded me of the internal arrangements in the MSI Nightblade MI2, a pleasant small desktop gaming machine. You can buy some of them for under 1k USD. ( https://www.msi.com/Desktop/Nightblade-MI2.html https://www.msi.com/Desktop/Nightblade-MI2.html )
sengork 10y ago
No RAM/Memory specifications? Surely it ought to showcase at least 64GB DDR4 RAM.
mluu510 10y ago
cool but if you can upgrade the gpu and storage, than you should also be able upgrade the cpu, ram and psu? at that point, it's just the old ATX mac pro design
andkon 10y ago
For a while, most non-Macbook Air 'ultrabooks' were hampered by the fact that they had to have an ethernet port, or I guess enterprises wouldn't buy them? It was weird. The whole entire computer ended up being designed around its biggest single constraint. This is exactly what's going on here. "Bigger is better" is an attempted rationalization for the fact that graphics cards are determining the design of this computer. But then look at the Mac Pro: they solved a core problem of performance machines (cooling) with its weird looking design. There was a functional reason for its' looking like a turbine. Here, the rounded ends are pointless (haha design joke). Edit: there's an interesting problem at the intersection of industrial design manufacturing process that this does solve for. The Mac Pro design process was obviously very involved, and it required lots of folks' attention. They obviously aren't paying attention in the same way, so the care that is needed to make something performant and beautifully designed isn't happening, and the releases aren't happening. This guy's design does an end-run around Apple-like industrial design, and in choosing compatibility with off-the-shelf stuff, probably makes the product more likely to be relevant to folks in the future than Apple's Mac Pro, which is just languishing in long product update cycles.
- white-flame 10y ago
  That's a strange definition of "hamper" you have there. What's being optimized for a "pro" computer or "ultrabook"? It's computing power, and expandability. Looks & portability play second fiddle there, although it certainly helps to have something as sleek as can be managed. But not at the expense of technical features.
late2part 10y ago
Come on man. 10gig ethernet please.
ohples 10y ago
Why woukd you have HDD?
k1lly 10y ago
That's why this is a work of an aspiring designer, not an (apple) product designer: can someone point to a motherboard with 16 dedicated thunderbolts, such many lanes of PCIE, and answer why should 850 evos be used instead modern M.2 SSDs? The coolers/fans are OFF - they're not positioned above the GPUs, but above SSDs (which produce almost no heat at all), and the SSDs themselves are located around the thermal core triangles, why? And GPUs are facing opposite directions, therefore, air streams are broken. I know I've shouldn't be pissed that much by a stupid render, but this person could dedicate his time to make something meaningful and smart. Instead, he's just pushing the dribbblisation of the design forward. My call: this is stupid, meaningless work
pacomerh 10y ago
Great design work, as for the idea, I don't think Apple would roll with the alien/spaceship/ninja vibe http://d.pr/i/jzcl http://d.pr/i/jzcl
oliv__ 10y ago
This looks cool...but the inside of the machine is so unlike Apple. It is scary and futuristic in an Alienware way. Apple's design (even inside) is always more human and approachable.
jimjag 10y ago
I don't want a system that "anticipates" what I may need. I want a system that allows me to update and upgrade easily based on what my needs are, and how they may change. In that way, the cheese-grater Mac Pro was ideal. Apple needs to get back to that mode for the desktop Power user.
colemannerd 10y ago
Just use the design of the old G5 Tower, but a bit smaller! And in Silver, Space Grey, and Jet Black.
ksec 10y ago
I think the next Mac Pro will need to fit within the Rack. Basically merging the Xserve and Mac Pro together. It will need Dual CPU and Dual GPU space. But May be the consumer Mac and iPhone is simply too large of a market, where even small minor profitable business like Server and Pro market are being ignored. But sometimes it isn't about profits, but ecosystem.
phaed 10y ago
"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."
youdontknowtho 10y ago
503? Looks like its down.
- rubyn00bie 10y ago
  Just refresh. It's loading most of the time.
  - Aaargh20318 10y ago
    It loads for me. but there is no content. There is a header/menu at the top and a long, black page I can scroll through, at the bottom there are links to other concepts but the main content of the page is just missing.
- petercooper 10y ago
  I think the entire product design team at Apple are scraping it for ideas.
  - dpark 10y ago
    Yeah, because Apple designers are too daft to come up with something this derivative on their own.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  It's up over here. But it's just a concept, and not a great one at that. They want dual PCIe-x16 graphics cards, which requires 32 lanes, and also SIXTEEN Thunderbolt 3 ports? For full speed, those require 4 lanes each. Not to mention multiple other PCIe lanes allocated to USB3, SATAIII, M.2, TB2, network, and so on? By my count, the specs are pushing 100 lanes of PCIe. Even a big Extreme edition processor only has 40 lanes of PCIe, and a PLX PEX multiplexing chip only goes so far. This is basically calling for dual-socket 135W $4,000 each Xeon Broadwell E5's PLUS a PCIe mux. And thermally, even doubling the current Mac Pro, you're not going to fit 500W of graphics and 300W of processors in a 30-liter case. It's a pretty graphic, and I like the concept of lots of ports and expandability, but it's not based on anything realistic.
- 10y ago
matthewhall 10y ago
i like it
rubyn00bie 10y ago
While I really like the aesthetics of this, I think it still suffers the same problems as the current Mac Pro. It needs more PCI card slots. It needs to support more than two GPUs. To suppprt that it's also going to need one helluva power supply... it needs its workstation credibility back more than it needs a beautiful design. I still think the previous generation of Mac Pro look great. They'd look even better in Space Gray.
gallerytungsten 10y ago
Only 24GB of RAM? The current Mac Pro officially supports 64GB and 3rd parties offer upgrades to 128GB. Even the 2006 models can be upgraded to 32GB.
- jamesfmilne 10y ago
  He means 24GB of video memory.
jamesfmilne 10y ago
I appreciate it's just an industrial design concept, but the problem with off-the-shelf GPUs is that you need to route the DisplayPort connectors back to the motherboard in order to mux them with the Thunderbolt ports. The Thunderbolt add-in cards have DisplayPort inputs for this purpose. The GPU & motherboard vendors should agree on some extra headers to allow you to route these DP signals without ugly jumper cables on the outside of the case.
- kogepathic 10y ago
  > but the problem with off-the-shelf GPUs is that you need to route the DisplayPort connectors back to the motherboard in order to mux them with the Thunderbolt ports If the Intel CPU supports integrated graphics (which I realize a Xeon may not) there is actually support for sending display streams over PCIe, so it wouldn't be necessary to route DisplayPort cables from the card output to the motherboard. The eGPU guys are doing this to display the output of an external GPU on the internal LCD of the laptop. [0] It does slightly reduce the PCIe bandwidth available as you need to transfer the rendered data back via the PCIe, which is then output from the IGP to the display. [1] However this is still limiting because it means you're stuck with the display outputs supported by the IGP, so if you want to upgrade the video card to support a newer standard (e.g. HDMI 2.0) you'd be stuck. [0] https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/9658-egpu-experiences-version-20/ https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/9658-egp... [1] https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1006857 https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1006857 [2] https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/forum/83-diy-e-gpu-projects/ https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/forum/83-diy-e...
  - xenadu02 10y ago
    Have you tried this? The amount of bandwidth consumed is non-trivial and especially impacts compute workloads or anything that does read-back from the GPU.
    - kogepathic 10y ago
      > Have you tried this? I have not used this feature myself because I'm not aware that it's supported in Linux, and I don't use Windows. > The amount of bandwidth consumed is non-trivial and especially impacts compute workloads or anything that does read-back from the GPU. Given that the most typical use case of this technique is for people gaming, I'd say that the amount of data being read back from the GPU in a gaming situation is quite small, so this doesn't have a significant performance impact for its intended audience. Since I don't use my dGPU for anything but gaming, do you have any more information on the performance impact on compute workloads?
dom0 10y ago
So basically a bigger trash can without a proper cooling system. Yikes.
- yoz-y 10y ago
  From what I gather the ONE great thing about the trashcan design is its cooling system.
  - dom0 10y ago
    Reading comprehension: "bigger trashcan without a proper..." means that this is a bigger trash can that does not have a proper cooling system. The regular trash can thus has.
    - yoz-y 10y ago
      Aha! It looks like there is no space for huge fans from one of the angles, but then, this is a magic concept for already impossible tech.
wildchild 10y ago
More top overpriced GPUs, computer must cost more than automobile.
- sp332 10y ago
  That's nothing, the server I'm dialed in to right now cost 30x as much as my car. And we have racks and racks of these...
  - mikeash 10y ago
    "Dialed in to"? Are you from the past?
    - sp332 10y ago
      Yes, aren't you?
      - mikeash 10y ago
        Well, now that you mention it.... But really, was that a cute way to describe ssh, or are you actually dialing into stuff in 2017? Because that would be weird, but kind of cool.
        sp332 10y ago
        It's just ssh. My local library did have a dial-up line for the longest time but I think they finally retired it, that's the last one I might have actually used.
        mikeash 10y ago
        I think the last one I used was in 2003. My university offered it for internet access. It was actually just dial-in shell access, but you could tunnel an internet connection using Slirp. Nice and slow.
  - 10y ago
fuzzy2 10y ago
Looks nice. But where is all the bandwidth for 16 TB 3 ports supposed to come from? That’s 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes, mind you. Adding to that, 32 PCIe 3.0 lanes for the graphics cards, 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes for the TB 2 ports, 2 PCIe lanes for the Ethernet ports, 2 PCIe lanes for the USB ports. That’s 64 + 32 + 16 + 2 + 2 = 116 PCIe lanes Guess not?
- throwawayish 10y ago
  Of course not; this isn't even possible with a dual socket system, which would also lack the memory bandwidth to do anything except idling with that many PCIe lanes. (Plus, if your IO bandwidth is pretty much the same as your memory bandwidth ... what exactly are you gonna do in terms of data processing? 1+2?) But this is just one of many things that just don't make any sense at all about this design. It might look nice, to some, though.
  - frozenport 10y ago
    Maybe feed the GPU?
    - throwawayish 10y ago
      If you want to feed dozens of GPUs with compute tasks then there is more specialized hardware for that with way better density. (That goes into a rack of course).
- kraftman 10y ago
  What's the use case for all the connectivity too?
  - dublinben 10y ago
    Attaching all the external storage you can't fit inside your compact desktop case, I presume.
- matheweis 10y ago
iplaw 10y ago
Just pointing out that it says 4x HDMI ports, but the rendered model only has 2x.
- satysin 10y ago
  Yeah I noticed that also. Seems strange to make such a mistake with so much attention to detail. Pretty design but by my count that machine would need to be a quad CPU (not core) system to support all that I/O. Where are those 4 CPUs gonna fit and how are you gonna keep them cool?!
mrweasel 10y ago
Where would the CPU go? I do understand the reluctance from Apple to built upgradable computers. They make their money on hardware sales, and an upgradable system would hurt those sales. At the same time their "Pro" gear simply isn't iterating fast enough, perhaps because not using standard components slows them down. It's not Apples style, but it wouldn't hurt if they gave their professional customers a three year roadmap, just so people would know that they plan to move forward, and in which direction.
- rtkwe 10y ago
  > Where would the CPU go? Under the memory probably. It looks like the basic idea is saw the current Mac Pro down the middle and shove some graphics card slots there.
ryantownsend 10y ago
Are 16x TB3, 4x TB2 AND 4x USB3 actually achievable with current/near-future hardware? If Apple were to implement this, I'd imagine it would be N x TB3/USB3 USB-C format ports, an ethernet port and maybe HDMI (though a dongle would possibly negate that – if 2.1 can be achieved that way) Otherwise, looks good to me.
- Keyframe 10y ago
  I'm not sure Alpine Ridge, or whatever the name is, even supports that many TBs at the same time.
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  Not feasibly. If you really wanted to do it, the biggest processors have 40 lanes of PCIe. Intel's Xeon E5's can be dual-socket mounted, for a total of 80 PCIe lanes. Adding PCIe switching, like two Avago/PLX PEX9797s (see http://www.anandtech.com/show/9245/avago-announces-plx-pex9700-series-pcie-switches http://www.anandtech.com/show/9245/avago-announces-plx-pex97..., particularly the diagram at http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9245/Slide14.JPG http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9245/Slide14.JPG) can get you there in the end. But the sacrifice is that you actually only have 80 lines of PCIe, and it all has to be coordinated. Dual-socket computing does not quite double your processing power, and a switch adds latency. Your overall bandwidth will still be limited to what you have coming from the processor.
gbrown_ 10y ago
Looks like this is getting the HN hug of death, anyone have a link to a cached copy?
- SlySherZ 10y ago
  There you go: https://web.archive.org/web/20170112152448/http://pascaleggert.de/macpro.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170112152448/http://pascalegge... Edit: fixed wrong link
c3833174 10y ago
I don't undestand, the CPU would rely on convection+fans while the more powerful GPUs just push air to the bottom.
youdontknowtho 10y ago
This kind of design is WAY more likely to come from a PC vendor than Apple. The 16 TB ports was definitely kind of a LOL moment. I dig it. They are useful, but that can't be done with "standard components". The whole idea of a flexible and upgradeable PC is kind of against the Apple "tightly coupled" software and hardware story. The reason that their user experience has historically (I haven't used a mac in about a decade) been so good was because they limit the available hardware for their testing purposes. They don't have a lot of choice in hardware, but what they do support works every time. I don't know...I got off the Apple train a long time ago. I loved my Mac Pro, but it just wasn't for me.
- MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
  I agree its very un-Apple-esque in concept. Its also got too much of an Alienware vibe, design wise.
  - ChrisLTD 10y ago
    How so? It's an elongated version the trash can Mac Pro design.
    - remarkEon 10y ago
      The 3rd and 4th pictures, with the center panel removed...the angles are reminiscent of Alienware with the prominent angles.
      - ChrisLTD 10y ago
        Have a look at the 8th slide "Thermal Core" on the official Mac Pro page: http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- imtringued 10y ago
  16 TB ports is probably because they are also USB C ports and figuring out which ports support TB and which don't may become a hassle.
asd 10y ago
> 50% of the site was black background + scrolling for me, but I think I can get the gist of it. Nice design + expansion capabilities, right? Apple's Industrial Design group needs to get it through their skulls that folks doing REAL pro work still need traditional expansion capabilities. At the very least, pro users need to: 1) Have the ability to expand RAM 2) Have space for two video cards (ThunderBolt 3 + video card enclosures is not a desirable solution) 3) Have space for at least a couple internal hard drives For some reason, I don't think this will ever happen because the end result would probably be bigger, noisier, and uglier than what the ID group would allow. But, man.. wouldn't it be nice to be able to purchase a base config Mac Pro 2 with one stick of RAM, shipped with integrated graphics and the user could drop in any graphics card(s) they wish? Hackintoshes can work fine for some, but oftentimes we just want to be able to run software update without the fear that a patch will break our bread-and-butter making machines.
- nine_k 10y ago
  I wonder what OSX-specific software keeps professionals on machines that they feel are underpowered, even if it's a rather mighty Mac Pro? All the graphics and video editing suites, AFAICT, are now also available for Windows, too. For audio editing one probably does not need two video cards. So, what's your use case? Just curious.
  - cschep 10y ago
    I write software for iOS / Mac as my day job and it's really gotten to a point where it feels like writing C# on Windows used to feel (which is not a bad thing). The big difference is that back then I could build a powerhouse PC for $1500 and have a handful of big monitors and really feel ahead of the power curve. I don't feel like I have the option to do that these days, and I'm pretty disappointed by it. $4,000 on a laptop is my best attempt and it's still not.. quite. there.
    - beefsack 10y ago
      Apple's vendor lock-in strategy geared towards developers appear to really be bearing fruit at the moment. They've shifted most of their hardware lineup towards consumers and is the weakest it's been for developers in a long time, but developers are still hanging around because they have to if they want to target the Apple ecosystem. People who've been in the industry for longer than 15 years would remember the last time this happened.
sonalkeshav 10y ago
Looks nice but I don't think that's practical (or realistic). That's way too many USB ports, SSDs on one machine. BTW for devs out there that need that much horsepower, what do you do? (I understand needed 32 GB of ram which was not available in the latest MacBook pros, but when do you need that much storage?)
- nickcano 10y ago
  At my last job, we had servers with 64 cores, 1TB ram, and 100+ TB of storage that were taxed to their full extent by one or two people at a time. The job was essentially taking multi terabyte datasets and matching, filtering, and mutating them based on some customer requirements. Those servers cost a ton of cash, and we had a handful of them. I could easily see my workflow being improved and maybe even money being saved if that much horsepower was given locally to the few who used it most. But the server model also worked fine. Personally, I have a monstrous box at home in terms of GPU, ram, and processing power, and it's mostly useful for running automated tests in multiple VMs at a time, kicking ass with ocl-hashcat, and doing hardware accelerated ML training. I don't do those things often, but I'm glad to have a beast when I do. Also, it's fun to eyefinity dual 4k on full settings ;)
- nine_k 10y ago
  Re storage: video editing readily comes to mind.
  - Miredly 10y ago
    And multitrack audio recording.
    - nine_k 10y ago
      ...which can also be taxing on CPU / GPU if you apply effects to a lot of tracks, and can't render them (yet) because you're tweaking the whole.
j-pb 10y ago
Why for the love of god would a beast like that still have two shitty gigabit ports.
- BillyParadise 10y ago
  First thing I noticed, too. You beat me to it! A PC can't possibly be considered pro without a couple of CXP connectors. ;)
intoverflow2 10y ago
Just spent £2000 on a PC after 17 years of purely Apple because I wanted CUDA cores for my creative work. If Apple had something like this as an option I'd have easily gone upwards of £4000 to foolishly stay within their ecosystem. Guess my wallet is better off in the universe where Apple doesn't want my custom.
- danieldk 10y ago
  Yep, when we needed to buy a beefy GPU machine we did consider Apple. But no nVidia (so no CUDA) and no update in years makes it a bad value proposition. So we dropped the money on a Dell (which besides the Tesla processor has far more modern cores and allows more memory).
  - adamnemecek 10y ago
    Are the external GPUs viable over Thunderbolt 3 at all http://macdailynews.com/2016/12/01/apples-thunderbolt-3-equipped-macbook-pro-can-use-external-gpus/ http://macdailynews.com/2016/12/01/apples-thunderbolt-3-equi...
    - Lio 10y ago
      They might be. Unfortunately only the new MacBook Pros have TB3 and not the desktops (Mac Mini/iMac/Mac Pro). Performance is said to be OK with TB2 and AKiTiO Thunder2 enclosures but it's still a bit hacky and unsupported in macOS.
    - jamesfmilne 10y ago
      You are constrained by poor Nvidia driver support for new cards on macOS.
- Lio 10y ago
  I feel very much like doing something similar but I'm reticent to move away from macOS because of privacy concerns. If I moved to Linux I would still need some commercial software available on macOS but not on Linux. The obvious thing to do would be to supplement Linux with Windows 10 but I worry about privacy in Windows 10. This maybe obvious to long term Windows users but I can only find examples from Microsoft about what they collect/track, not a definitive list[1]. Also if anyone knows, I'd also like to find out if it's possible to stop Microsoft Support from remotely accessing files on a Windows 10 machine and if you need a particular version of Windows 10 to do that. e.g. Is Windows 10 Home more or less secure than Windows 10 Enterprise. So for the moment baring in mind I don't do CUDA I'm sticking with my slow old Mac. I should probably should build a dual booting hackintosh but I think if would be a lot of trouble to keep going (and also breaks the licensing terms). [1] https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/ https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/
pil4rin 10y ago
No USB-C? also, what's the point of including the Thunderbolt 2 ports, I thought Thunderbolt 3 was backwards compatible. Sweet design other than that.
- simonhamp 10y ago
  Thunderbolt 3 is USB-C
  - ff10 10y ago
    Thunderbolt 3 can facilitate the USB-C connector.
    - artimaeis 10y ago
      This seems like a fun ladder of pedantry, count me in! Thunderbolt 3 is an extension to the USB 3.1 standard which utilizes the USB-C connector and implements USB Power delivery.
agumonkey 10y ago
Almost hug to death, enjoy the http://archive.is/XkCPO http://archive.is/XkCPO
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
roryisok 10y ago
I smiled at "Standard components ... exceptionally futureproof". The way Apple are going the next mac pro will probably run an ARM CPU and have the RAM soldered on Assuming they ever make another mac pro of course
simonhamp 10y ago
It irritates me that this page was clearly designed on/for a super wide high-res display
- Raphmedia 10y ago
  It's heavily inspired by Apple's own page for the Mac Pro.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
super_mario 10y ago
Real Mac Pro would be an aluminum "cheese grater" large quiet box that sits under the desk that I never see or hear unless I want to upgrade something. The trashcan is at most Mac Mini Pro. Having thousand cables and external boxes sitting on your desk to expand it is not practical nor elegant, and gets out of date pretty fast. And quite frankly it's ugly as well.
- terinjokes 10y ago
  I have a G5 from the last generation of the cheese graters under my desk right now. The case has seen better days, so I might have to source a better preserved one soon, but I can say it runs Linux just fine.
  - throwawayish 10y ago
    The power-to-POWER ratio of these G5s was a joke. The mechanical design is quite sound (forgetting about the HDD cage for a second), though, and they look fetching, even today. (imho much better than the trash cans)
    - rhinoceraptor 10y ago
      There are some really nice PC/Hackintosh builds with hacked up G5 cases. You can even get custom-built motherboard trays that are meant to go in those cases: http://www.mountainmods.com/mountain-mods-modular-removable-motherboard-tray-p-56.html http://www.mountainmods.com/mountain-mods-modular-removable-...
  - beachstartup 10y ago
    i still use my 2009 8x xeon mac pro as my primary workstation. upgraded ram, gpu, ssd, video, 4k monitor, and a couple of other things. i'm trying to get 10 years out of it, which looks do-able, maybe. it refuses to install the latest OS X's though, so it may finish its life as a linux box. will 2019 finally be the year of linux on the desktop???
    - 10y ago
acomjean 10y ago
I like the size of this. The expandability of the machine is nice considering the current lack of refresh on current apple desktop hardware. I'm not holding my breath though. I have the old mac-pro (cheese grater), and it was remarkably expandable (and easy to do so). Its remarkably heavy (theft deterrent). You can go see what the hackintosh people are building with commodity hardware: User Builds: https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/user-builds.28/ https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/user-builds.28/
SippinLean 10y ago
Top 80% of the page is just black for me. I hit the spacebar 7 times until I saw "Built-in handle" ?
- SlySherZ 10y ago
  It happened to me too, I just hit reload until it worked.
- starquake 10y ago
  I also had one big black page. I thought it was a joke and it meant the author thought there was no Mac Pro 2 coming. Then I remembered this is not Reddit and there are no funny links on HN.
chlordane 10y ago
I can dig this, but the next Mac Pro needs to compete with the current line of HP Z840: http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04400043.pdf http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04400043.pdf
- cschneid 10y ago
  God, I always lol at HP URLs. What a mess.
  - prodigal_erik 10y ago
    It's a good thing GetPDF.aspx is there. Otherwise their web server would have no idea how to handle a GET request for a PDF file.
  - throwawayish 10y ago
    At least they're stable. I have bookmarks on HP datasheet pages from the early 2000s that still work.
- watmough 10y ago
  Gosh, that reminds me I really need to make my software more parallel.
- xanderstrike 10y ago
  I think you're confused. That's a workstation for professionals. That's not the demographic apple is interested in any more.
- snuxoll 10y ago
  I can get behind the interior of that case, but man is that thing ugly.
  - chlordane 10y ago
    I've always liked the way the HP Z series looked.
shanusmagnus 10y ago
I get that this is a concept not to be nitpicked to death for feasibility, and I love it. I'm also struck by the fact that a fucking computer has produced such heartache in people that somebody spent an ungodly amount of time on this labor of love. I don't care how little of their revenue comes directly from selling Mac Pros, it's the feeling that could produce this response that they should be optimizing for, not small-ness, thin-ness, or port-deletion.
- Captain_Usher 10y ago
  >it's the feeling that could produce this response that they should be optimizing for As near as I can tell, this is exactly how Apple got to be Apple and they already know how it's done. When people I know who have owned non-recent macs describe them, it's like they're having some kind of profound emotional experience. They don't even talk about it like it's a computer. I've never heard them say things like "having all the applications go to the blue 'Applications' icon on the dock is great," even though that's a useful feature they seem to understand and enjoy using, they say "it's so easy to find things" or "it just works". I know a longtime OSX user who is particularly detail-oriented and I asked him why he liked working with Sprinter vans[1] as opposed to trucks. He explained that they handled more like big cars than trucks, which is handy for maneuvering in cities and backing into cramped loading docks. He had no problem discussing his preference in detail without any prompting, the same way I'll tell anyone who asks that I like headset microphones to desktop ones because it's one fewer peripheral to manage and I have my desk laid out just right. When he talks about his Apple products being good, he just says they "work." So clearly they've succeeded in the past at giving people things that they really really like. They like them so much that they don't even dwell on the specific things that make them so likeable. I've never made anyone like anything that much in my life, and if I had a process for it I can't imagine why I'd stop. [1]: A variety of tall cargo van, which may or not be an actual Mercedes Sprinter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter
  - shanusmagnus 10y ago
    I'm a pretty die hard Apple guy starting from the mid 80s, and I find a lot resonates with your friend's "they work" example. Me, I love the fact that the machines are beautiful, but also functional in these subtle ways. Like the fact that you can open the laptops with a finger -- they're balanced correctly, the hinges are and the closing mechanism are calibrated s.t. you can lift the lid without the base coming up. Such a pointless bit of design, really, but it's so satisfying that somebody spent a bunch of time working on that. To say nothing of the trackpads, which were just an order of magnitude better than any trackpad on any other brand of laptop I've ever used. Maybe high end PCs have caught up by now, I don't know. Yet. There's something about things made with such passion, such attention. They stir up the religious impulse. I really feel that, for the first time since the Jobs comeback, I'm on the verge of losing that religion, at least wrt the Mac line. (The iPhones still seem obsessed over in all the right ways, as far as I can see.)
iddqd 10y ago
> Sometimes bigger is actually better Well that's definitely something we'll never hear Apple say.
- stcredzero 10y ago
  They used to say it about their 17" laptop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvbuwfawqcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvbuwfawqcc
exabrial 10y ago
The next Mac Pro will just be really really thin, have no ports, and gets it's power wirelessly from a mat underneath it, but no batteries. It'll have 8 cores and max out at 13g of ram
- exabrial 10y ago
  I forgot to mention it will include nerfed NFC, so you'll be able to Tap and Pay with with Apple Pay.
gallerdude 10y ago
Funny enough, the thing that had me thinking the most was the double ethernet ports. What would that be for? Two different networks? When one cuts out you just switch to the other one?
- whywhywhywhy 10y ago
  The current Mac Pro is mostly designed to work in studios where everything is on network storage. If you're working on video over the network you can use two ethernet cables for faster network access
- kennell 10y ago
  The current real Mac Pro actually has two ethernet ports too. There are a number of ways this could be useful. Number one would obviously be to connect to two different networks. It could also be useful in a scenario where the machine is used as a server and you want a semi-redundant backup network line. It could also be used to directly connect to a NAS box via Ethernet.
  - skiril 10y ago
    you can bridge network cards to double your connection speed. You can connect to 2 different networks (load balancing or 2 different Internet Server Providers). You can run multiple virtual machines on your mac and separate traffic instead of putting all into one adapter. Multiple LAN is a norm now, especially if you in IT.
  - corn13read 10y ago
    Bridged gigabit for twice the bandwidth
- satysin 10y ago
  The dual ethernet in the current Mac Pro are only 1 GigE and gets around 100MB/s (real world)[0]. I aggregate the two cards to get better speed. Even a 10 GigE couldn't max out the SSDs in these machines which are 2GB+/s r/w. [0] by real world I mean on a properly configured network. Many companies don't have that though so you often see "gigabit" speeds in the 30-50MB/s range.
robotjosh 10y ago
This type of design isn't useful. Round things don't fit neatly anywhere on a desk. Air cooling makes no sense when your design goal is high performance in a small space. What would really be useful is something 2.5" thick and as long and wide as necessary. Think about it you could lay it flat on your desk and put your screen on top of it, stand it up behind your screen, hang it on the wall behind your screen, bolt it to the under side of your desk, bolt it to the back of your desk, or bolt it to the side of your desk.
- cr0sh 10y ago
  So something like a 1U server?
  - RandomOpinion 10y ago
    More like the early Sun "pizzabox" SPARCstation workstations, I would think. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation_5
  - robotjosh 10y ago
    Yeah!
- xanderstrike 10y ago
  It doesn't need to be that thick or that wide even. Consider the Magnus EN1080 [1]. It's a bit taller than a mac mini, has an i7 and a GTX 1080. It's got the liquid cooling you seem keen on too. I believe this is the future of pre-built PCs. It's so much more convenient than a big beige box or the monitor stand you're talking about. 1. https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_pcs/magnus-en1080-10-year-anniversary-edition https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_pcs/magnus-en1080-10-y...
  - robotjosh 10y ago
    That is a cool product. I'm thinking of a form factor like that but longer or wider so the components are not all on top of each other.
irascible 10y ago
Wankintosh
RichardHeart 10y ago
Looks great, it will take one hell of a custom riser to orient those video cards like that. https://hardforum.com/forums/small-form-factor-systems.102/ https://hardforum.com/forums/small-form-factor-systems.102/ has the best collection of Super small custom form factors in the world.
kyled 10y ago
I thought that was a camera lens.
greenspot 10y ago
If you are a designer, this is absolutely the best thing you can do to sky-rocket your market value over night: Create a concept design from a popular product and put it on a slick landing page. It shows that you, as a designer, are proactive and think beyond designing standard stuff (like webpages or mobile apps). Moreover, you are not limited by any client restrictions[1] which hurt your work (and portfolio), you learn 3D modelling if you haven't yet (it's not hard just time consuming), if you are lucky with social news sites you get so much free promo and finally, it's the eye-catcher on any CV. [1] A classic and recommended post if we talk about clients restricting designers: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell
- xmmx 10y ago
  What do you think the equivalent move is for front end developers?
- lanewinfield 10y ago
  I might argue that you're right on most counts, but there's one project type that'd be a step above that: creating a side project that stands entirely on its own. It has the effect, like you had said, of being not limited by clients and learning new skills. But on top of that, you'd show yourself as an independent thinker and started closer to zero than standing on the shoulders of other companies (in this case, Apple) and making spec work. Again, not to say it's wrong, because I think you're very correct in thinking this is great for designers, but I do think this could be one step higher. (And, for the sake of argument, I'm completely ignoring what neither of us stated: that probably more than half the battle as a professional in this industry is navigating politics, which the skills for obviously cannot be conveyed through a spec or side project.)
- sulam 10y ago
  Just make sure to count your ports properly. :)
- Apocryphon 10y ago
  Reminds me of the designer who redesigned Microsoft's branding [0], and got a job there [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4195208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4195208 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5085915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5085915
corn13read 10y ago
In reality it will only have a power adapter "port" and they will call it portless and amazing
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
GTX 1080? That seems like an unlikely choice to me. Apple prefer AMD GPUs, not NVidia's. The GTX 1080 is also part of NVidia's consumer line, whereas the current Mac Pro has FirePro chips, which are from AMD's workstation graphics line.
- mwfunk 10y ago
  I don't know where you get this impression from unless you're only looking at what's currently (or recently) shipping. They've always used both and played them off against each other. Which vendor is used for a given model changes from one year to the next, although sometimes there will be long stretches of seemingly only using one or the other. There've been plenty of times over the last 15 years where one or the other has been predominant in shipping products, but it never lasts more than a couple years. There've also been plenty of times when the currently shipping product line featured both vendors.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
    Oh, right. I didn't realise they'd switched more than once.
jpalomaki 10y ago
Instead of fancy design, I would rather see some fairly boring box that would enable Apple to use almost off-the-shelf hardware. Kind of hackintosh, but made by Apple. This way it would be much easier for them to bring regular (yearly) hardware refreshes.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
vlunkr 10y ago
I think at least one USB C port would be appropriate. Very nice though!
- alfredxing 10y ago
  Thunderbolt 3 uses the same connector as USB C, and it supports the same USB functionality. (https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-does-it-all https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-d...)
anonymoushn 10y ago
http://i.imgur.com/tkwUICK.png http://i.imgur.com/tkwUICK.png I am glad to learn the dard Components are Exceptionally Futur.
- freehunter 10y ago
  Ha I thought it was a Safari problem on my machine and I was going to say "I'm pretty sure Apple would make the website render properly in Safari".
spaetzel 10y ago
Problem being that the current Mac Pro is already the 2nd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro
stevefeinstein 10y ago
Oooh, an artist spend 20 minutes with PhotoShop and now Apple can just take his pretty pictures and start pumping out new computers. It's not like anyone needs to actually create an actual prototype, source components, set up manufacturing, market and deliver anything.
- kermire 10y ago
  20 minutes? What are you even talking about?! This would take days if not weeks.
2ion 10y ago
Somehow the grey metal Mac Pro case shown beside the current Mac Pro and this Mac Pro concept design looks to me much better and functional than any of the other two. It makes a much more professional, high-quality, clean impression and has definitely the potential to house at least the same if not more hardware than the cyclindric ones.
gigatexal 10y ago
looks great but will never happen -- the mac pro is not a priority for Apple -- sometimes I wonder, what, if anything outside of the iPhone, really is a priority for them.
sailfast 10y ago
The Mac Pro design was fun to look at, but the concept firearms on this site were the most impressive to me. Well thought out and engineered from a concept perspective, addressing pain points for the customer that requires some pretty serious knowledge. I'm surprised somebody hasn't tried to manufacture the Thor A1 at this point, as they seem to fit a pretty sizable PPW market.
whatnotests 10y ago
Looks like what Darth Vader would have on his Destroyer.
haylem 10y ago
I have to say, it's the first time I see a Peter Dinklage used as a unit of measure: http://pascaleggert.de/EPIC_specifications.html http://pascaleggert.de/EPIC_specifications.html
sparky_ 10y ago
Here's my concept design for what I want in a new Mac Pro: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/reviews/hardware/mac-pro-2g-review.media/macpro.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/reviews/hardware/mac-pro-2g-revi...
- markcerqueira 10y ago
  Got one of these in my closet that I use as my home server. Made in 2008 and the thing is still a beast!
  - macjohnmcc 10y ago
    I have the early 2009 model but I primarily run Windows 10 on it as a file server/plex server. I was having some file system corruptions on Mac OSX and decided to go the NTFS route on Windows.
  - justinclift 10y ago
    It's amazing how little the cpu's for those things cost these days on ebay. eg: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/192074836061 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/192074836061 (that's the 2010 model though)
bitmapbrother 10y ago
Nice work, but it looks like it's transitioning from a small circular garbage can to a rectangular garbage can. The original aluminum Mac Pro shrunken down would have been the ideal design IMO.
al_biglan 10y ago
Looks great... just needs 10GbE instead of 1Gb. Add an SFP port and a RJ45 if all you got is a 1Gb or want to try your hand at getting 10GBASE-T working.
mavis 10y ago
Gigabyte announced a similarly shaped product last week at CES. http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=6151#kf http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=6151#...

381 points by milen 10y ago

eva1984 10y ago

2 GTX 1080 in this small box? Nahh, this is going to be smoking hot.

skiril 10y ago

I like it.

bparsons 10y ago

You could build the PC version of this for about a 1000 bucks.

ldev 10y ago

Is HDMI 2.1 now superior to DisplayPort?

B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago

Not bad. Reminded me of the internal arrangements in the MSI Nightblade MI2, a pleasant small desktop gaming machine. You can buy some of them for under 1k USD. ( https://www.msi.com/Desktop/Nightblade-MI2.html https://www.msi.com/Desktop/Nightblade-MI2.html )

sengork 10y ago

No RAM/Memory specifications? Surely it ought to showcase at least 64GB DDR4 RAM.

mluu510 10y ago

cool but if you can upgrade the gpu and storage, than you should also be able upgrade the cpu, ram and psu? at that point, it's just the old ATX mac pro design

andkon 10y ago

For a while, most non-Macbook Air 'ultrabooks' were hampered by the fact that they had to have an ethernet port, or I guess enterprises wouldn't buy them? It was weird. The whole entire computer ended up being designed around its biggest single constraint. This is exactly what's going on here. "Bigger is better" is an attempted rationalization for the fact that graphics cards are determining the design of this computer. But then look at the Mac Pro: they solved a core problem of performance machines (cooling) with its weird looking design. There was a functional reason for its' looking like a turbine. Here, the rounded ends are pointless (haha design joke). Edit: there's an interesting problem at the intersection of industrial design manufacturing process that this does solve for. The Mac Pro design process was obviously very involved, and it required lots of folks' attention. They obviously aren't paying attention in the same way, so the care that is needed to make something performant and beautifully designed isn't happening, and the releases aren't happening. This guy's design does an end-run around Apple-like industrial design, and in choosing compatibility with off-the-shelf stuff, probably makes the product more likely to be relevant to folks in the future than Apple's Mac Pro, which is just languishing in long product update cycles.

white-flame 10y ago
That's a strange definition of "hamper" you have there. What's being optimized for a "pro" computer or "ultrabook"? It's computing power, and expandability. Looks & portability play second fiddle there, although it certainly helps to have something as sleek as can be managed. But not at the expense of technical features.

late2part 10y ago

Come on man. 10gig ethernet please.

ohples 10y ago

Why woukd you have HDD?

k1lly 10y ago

That's why this is a work of an aspiring designer, not an (apple) product designer: can someone point to a motherboard with 16 dedicated thunderbolts, such many lanes of PCIE, and answer why should 850 evos be used instead modern M.2 SSDs? The coolers/fans are OFF - they're not positioned above the GPUs, but above SSDs (which produce almost no heat at all), and the SSDs themselves are located around the thermal core triangles, why? And GPUs are facing opposite directions, therefore, air streams are broken. I know I've shouldn't be pissed that much by a stupid render, but this person could dedicate his time to make something meaningful and smart. Instead, he's just pushing the dribbblisation of the design forward. My call: this is stupid, meaningless work

pacomerh 10y ago

Great design work, as for the idea, I don't think Apple would roll with the alien/spaceship/ninja vibe http://d.pr/i/jzcl http://d.pr/i/jzcl

oliv__ 10y ago

This looks cool...but the inside of the machine is so unlike Apple. It is scary and futuristic in an Alienware way. Apple's design (even inside) is always more human and approachable.

jimjag 10y ago

I don't want a system that "anticipates" what I may need. I want a system that allows me to update and upgrade easily based on what my needs are, and how they may change. In that way, the cheese-grater Mac Pro was ideal. Apple needs to get back to that mode for the desktop Power user.

colemannerd 10y ago

Just use the design of the old G5 Tower, but a bit smaller! And in Silver, Space Grey, and Jet Black.

ksec 10y ago

I think the next Mac Pro will need to fit within the Rack. Basically merging the Xserve and Mac Pro together. It will need Dual CPU and Dual GPU space. But May be the consumer Mac and iPhone is simply too large of a market, where even small minor profitable business like Server and Pro market are being ignored. But sometimes it isn't about profits, but ecosystem.

phaed 10y ago

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."

youdontknowtho 10y ago

503? Looks like its down.

rubyn00bie 10y ago
Just refresh. It's loading most of the time.
- Aaargh20318 10y ago
  It loads for me. but there is no content. There is a header/menu at the top and a long, black page I can scroll through, at the bottom there are links to other concepts but the main content of the page is just missing.
petercooper 10y ago
I think the entire product design team at Apple are scraping it for ideas.
- dpark 10y ago
  Yeah, because Apple designers are too daft to come up with something this derivative on their own.
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
It's up over here. But it's just a concept, and not a great one at that. They want dual PCIe-x16 graphics cards, which requires 32 lanes, and also SIXTEEN Thunderbolt 3 ports? For full speed, those require 4 lanes each. Not to mention multiple other PCIe lanes allocated to USB3, SATAIII, M.2, TB2, network, and so on? By my count, the specs are pushing 100 lanes of PCIe. Even a big Extreme edition processor only has 40 lanes of PCIe, and a PLX PEX multiplexing chip only goes so far. This is basically calling for dual-socket 135W $4,000 each Xeon Broadwell E5's PLUS a PCIe mux. And thermally, even doubling the current Mac Pro, you're not going to fit 500W of graphics and 300W of processors in a 30-liter case. It's a pretty graphic, and I like the concept of lots of ports and expandability, but it's not based on anything realistic.
10y ago

matthewhall 10y ago

i like it

rubyn00bie 10y ago

While I really like the aesthetics of this, I think it still suffers the same problems as the current Mac Pro. It needs more PCI card slots. It needs to support more than two GPUs. To suppprt that it's also going to need one helluva power supply... it needs its workstation credibility back more than it needs a beautiful design. I still think the previous generation of Mac Pro look great. They'd look even better in Space Gray.

gallerytungsten 10y ago

Only 24GB of RAM? The current Mac Pro officially supports 64GB and 3rd parties offer upgrades to 128GB. Even the 2006 models can be upgraded to 32GB.

jamesfmilne 10y ago
He means 24GB of video memory.

jamesfmilne 10y ago

I appreciate it's just an industrial design concept, but the problem with off-the-shelf GPUs is that you need to route the DisplayPort connectors back to the motherboard in order to mux them with the Thunderbolt ports. The Thunderbolt add-in cards have DisplayPort inputs for this purpose. The GPU & motherboard vendors should agree on some extra headers to allow you to route these DP signals without ugly jumper cables on the outside of the case.

kogepathic 10y ago
> but the problem with off-the-shelf GPUs is that you need to route the DisplayPort connectors back to the motherboard in order to mux them with the Thunderbolt ports If the Intel CPU supports integrated graphics (which I realize a Xeon may not) there is actually support for sending display streams over PCIe, so it wouldn't be necessary to route DisplayPort cables from the card output to the motherboard. The eGPU guys are doing this to display the output of an external GPU on the internal LCD of the laptop. [0] It does slightly reduce the PCIe bandwidth available as you need to transfer the rendered data back via the PCIe, which is then output from the IGP to the display. [1] However this is still limiting because it means you're stuck with the display outputs supported by the IGP, so if you want to upgrade the video card to support a newer standard (e.g. HDMI 2.0) you'd be stuck. [0] https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/9658-egpu-experiences-version-20/ https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/topic/9658-egp... [1] https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1006857 https://www.asus.com/support/faq/1006857 [2] https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/forum/83-diy-e-gpu-projects/ https://www.techinferno.com/index.php?/forums/forum/83-diy-e...
- xenadu02 10y ago
  Have you tried this? The amount of bandwidth consumed is non-trivial and especially impacts compute workloads or anything that does read-back from the GPU.
  - kogepathic 10y ago
    > Have you tried this? I have not used this feature myself because I'm not aware that it's supported in Linux, and I don't use Windows. > The amount of bandwidth consumed is non-trivial and especially impacts compute workloads or anything that does read-back from the GPU. Given that the most typical use case of this technique is for people gaming, I'd say that the amount of data being read back from the GPU in a gaming situation is quite small, so this doesn't have a significant performance impact for its intended audience. Since I don't use my dGPU for anything but gaming, do you have any more information on the performance impact on compute workloads?

dom0 10y ago

So basically a bigger trash can without a proper cooling system. Yikes.

yoz-y 10y ago
From what I gather the ONE great thing about the trashcan design is its cooling system.
- dom0 10y ago
  Reading comprehension: "bigger trashcan without a proper..." means that this is a bigger trash can that does not have a proper cooling system. The regular trash can thus has.
  - yoz-y 10y ago
    Aha! It looks like there is no space for huge fans from one of the angles, but then, this is a magic concept for already impossible tech.

wildchild 10y ago

More top overpriced GPUs, computer must cost more than automobile.

sp332 10y ago
That's nothing, the server I'm dialed in to right now cost 30x as much as my car. And we have racks and racks of these...
- mikeash 10y ago
  "Dialed in to"? Are you from the past?
  - sp332 10y ago
    Yes, aren't you?
    - mikeash 10y ago
      Well, now that you mention it.... But really, was that a cute way to describe ssh, or are you actually dialing into stuff in 2017? Because that would be weird, but kind of cool.
      - sp332 10y ago
        It's just ssh. My local library did have a dial-up line for the longest time but I think they finally retired it, that's the last one I might have actually used.
        mikeash 10y ago
        I think the last one I used was in 2003. My university offered it for internet access. It was actually just dial-in shell access, but you could tunnel an internet connection using Slirp. Nice and slow.
- 10y ago

fuzzy2 10y ago

Looks nice. But where is all the bandwidth for 16 TB 3 ports supposed to come from? That’s 64 PCIe 3.0 lanes, mind you. Adding to that, 32 PCIe 3.0 lanes for the graphics cards, 16 PCIe 2.0 lanes for the TB 2 ports, 2 PCIe lanes for the Ethernet ports, 2 PCIe lanes for the USB ports. That’s 64 + 32 + 16 + 2 + 2 = 116 PCIe lanes Guess not?

throwawayish 10y ago
Of course not; this isn't even possible with a dual socket system, which would also lack the memory bandwidth to do anything except idling with that many PCIe lanes. (Plus, if your IO bandwidth is pretty much the same as your memory bandwidth ... what exactly are you gonna do in terms of data processing? 1+2?) But this is just one of many things that just don't make any sense at all about this design. It might look nice, to some, though.
- frozenport 10y ago
  Maybe feed the GPU?
  - throwawayish 10y ago
    If you want to feed dozens of GPUs with compute tasks then there is more specialized hardware for that with way better density. (That goes into a rack of course).
kraftman 10y ago
What's the use case for all the connectivity too?
- dublinben 10y ago
  Attaching all the external storage you can't fit inside your compact desktop case, I presume.
matheweis 10y ago

iplaw 10y ago

Just pointing out that it says 4x HDMI ports, but the rendered model only has 2x.

satysin 10y ago
Yeah I noticed that also. Seems strange to make such a mistake with so much attention to detail. Pretty design but by my count that machine would need to be a quad CPU (not core) system to support all that I/O. Where are those 4 CPUs gonna fit and how are you gonna keep them cool?!

mrweasel 10y ago

Where would the CPU go? I do understand the reluctance from Apple to built upgradable computers. They make their money on hardware sales, and an upgradable system would hurt those sales. At the same time their "Pro" gear simply isn't iterating fast enough, perhaps because not using standard components slows them down. It's not Apples style, but it wouldn't hurt if they gave their professional customers a three year roadmap, just so people would know that they plan to move forward, and in which direction.

rtkwe 10y ago
> Where would the CPU go? Under the memory probably. It looks like the basic idea is saw the current Mac Pro down the middle and shove some graphics card slots there.

ryantownsend 10y ago

Are 16x TB3, 4x TB2 AND 4x USB3 actually achievable with current/near-future hardware? If Apple were to implement this, I'd imagine it would be N x TB3/USB3 USB-C format ports, an ethernet port and maybe HDMI (though a dongle would possibly negate that – if 2.1 can be achieved that way) Otherwise, looks good to me.

Keyframe 10y ago
I'm not sure Alpine Ridge, or whatever the name is, even supports that many TBs at the same time.
LeifCarrotson 10y ago
Not feasibly. If you really wanted to do it, the biggest processors have 40 lanes of PCIe. Intel's Xeon E5's can be dual-socket mounted, for a total of 80 PCIe lanes. Adding PCIe switching, like two Avago/PLX PEX9797s (see http://www.anandtech.com/show/9245/avago-announces-plx-pex9700-series-pcie-switches http://www.anandtech.com/show/9245/avago-announces-plx-pex97..., particularly the diagram at http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9245/Slide14.JPG http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9245/Slide14.JPG) can get you there in the end. But the sacrifice is that you actually only have 80 lines of PCIe, and it all has to be coordinated. Dual-socket computing does not quite double your processing power, and a switch adds latency. Your overall bandwidth will still be limited to what you have coming from the processor.

gbrown_ 10y ago

Looks like this is getting the HN hug of death, anyone have a link to a cached copy?

SlySherZ 10y ago
There you go: https://web.archive.org/web/20170112152448/http://pascaleggert.de/macpro.html https://web.archive.org/web/20170112152448/http://pascalegge... Edit: fixed wrong link

c3833174 10y ago

I don't undestand, the CPU would rely on convection+fans while the more powerful GPUs just push air to the bottom.

youdontknowtho 10y ago

This kind of design is WAY more likely to come from a PC vendor than Apple. The 16 TB ports was definitely kind of a LOL moment. I dig it. They are useful, but that can't be done with "standard components". The whole idea of a flexible and upgradeable PC is kind of against the Apple "tightly coupled" software and hardware story. The reason that their user experience has historically (I haven't used a mac in about a decade) been so good was because they limit the available hardware for their testing purposes. They don't have a lot of choice in hardware, but what they do support works every time. I don't know...I got off the Apple train a long time ago. I loved my Mac Pro, but it just wasn't for me.

MrBuddyCasino 10y ago
I agree its very un-Apple-esque in concept. Its also got too much of an Alienware vibe, design wise.
- ChrisLTD 10y ago
  How so? It's an elongated version the trash can Mac Pro design.
  - remarkEon 10y ago
    The 3rd and 4th pictures, with the center panel removed...the angles are reminiscent of Alienware with the prominent angles.
    - ChrisLTD 10y ago
      Have a look at the 8th slide "Thermal Core" on the official Mac Pro page: http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/ http://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
imtringued 10y ago
16 TB ports is probably because they are also USB C ports and figuring out which ports support TB and which don't may become a hassle.

asd 10y ago

> 50% of the site was black background + scrolling for me, but I think I can get the gist of it. Nice design + expansion capabilities, right? Apple's Industrial Design group needs to get it through their skulls that folks doing REAL pro work still need traditional expansion capabilities. At the very least, pro users need to: 1) Have the ability to expand RAM 2) Have space for two video cards (ThunderBolt 3 + video card enclosures is not a desirable solution) 3) Have space for at least a couple internal hard drives For some reason, I don't think this will ever happen because the end result would probably be bigger, noisier, and uglier than what the ID group would allow. But, man.. wouldn't it be nice to be able to purchase a base config Mac Pro 2 with one stick of RAM, shipped with integrated graphics and the user could drop in any graphics card(s) they wish? Hackintoshes can work fine for some, but oftentimes we just want to be able to run software update without the fear that a patch will break our bread-and-butter making machines.

nine_k 10y ago
I wonder what OSX-specific software keeps professionals on machines that they feel are underpowered, even if it's a rather mighty Mac Pro? All the graphics and video editing suites, AFAICT, are now also available for Windows, too. For audio editing one probably does not need two video cards. So, what's your use case? Just curious.
- cschep 10y ago
  I write software for iOS / Mac as my day job and it's really gotten to a point where it feels like writing C# on Windows used to feel (which is not a bad thing). The big difference is that back then I could build a powerhouse PC for $1500 and have a handful of big monitors and really feel ahead of the power curve. I don't feel like I have the option to do that these days, and I'm pretty disappointed by it. $4,000 on a laptop is my best attempt and it's still not.. quite. there.
  - beefsack 10y ago
    Apple's vendor lock-in strategy geared towards developers appear to really be bearing fruit at the moment. They've shifted most of their hardware lineup towards consumers and is the weakest it's been for developers in a long time, but developers are still hanging around because they have to if they want to target the Apple ecosystem. People who've been in the industry for longer than 15 years would remember the last time this happened.

sonalkeshav 10y ago

Looks nice but I don't think that's practical (or realistic). That's way too many USB ports, SSDs on one machine. BTW for devs out there that need that much horsepower, what do you do? (I understand needed 32 GB of ram which was not available in the latest MacBook pros, but when do you need that much storage?)

nickcano 10y ago
At my last job, we had servers with 64 cores, 1TB ram, and 100+ TB of storage that were taxed to their full extent by one or two people at a time. The job was essentially taking multi terabyte datasets and matching, filtering, and mutating them based on some customer requirements. Those servers cost a ton of cash, and we had a handful of them. I could easily see my workflow being improved and maybe even money being saved if that much horsepower was given locally to the few who used it most. But the server model also worked fine. Personally, I have a monstrous box at home in terms of GPU, ram, and processing power, and it's mostly useful for running automated tests in multiple VMs at a time, kicking ass with ocl-hashcat, and doing hardware accelerated ML training. I don't do those things often, but I'm glad to have a beast when I do. Also, it's fun to eyefinity dual 4k on full settings ;)
nine_k 10y ago
Re storage: video editing readily comes to mind.
- Miredly 10y ago
  And multitrack audio recording.
  - nine_k 10y ago
    ...which can also be taxing on CPU / GPU if you apply effects to a lot of tracks, and can't render them (yet) because you're tweaking the whole.

j-pb 10y ago

Why for the love of god would a beast like that still have two shitty gigabit ports.

BillyParadise 10y ago
First thing I noticed, too. You beat me to it! A PC can't possibly be considered pro without a couple of CXP connectors. ;)

intoverflow2 10y ago

Just spent £2000 on a PC after 17 years of purely Apple because I wanted CUDA cores for my creative work. If Apple had something like this as an option I'd have easily gone upwards of £4000 to foolishly stay within their ecosystem. Guess my wallet is better off in the universe where Apple doesn't want my custom.

danieldk 10y ago
Yep, when we needed to buy a beefy GPU machine we did consider Apple. But no nVidia (so no CUDA) and no update in years makes it a bad value proposition. So we dropped the money on a Dell (which besides the Tesla processor has far more modern cores and allows more memory).
- adamnemecek 10y ago
  Are the external GPUs viable over Thunderbolt 3 at all http://macdailynews.com/2016/12/01/apples-thunderbolt-3-equipped-macbook-pro-can-use-external-gpus/ http://macdailynews.com/2016/12/01/apples-thunderbolt-3-equi...
  - Lio 10y ago
    They might be. Unfortunately only the new MacBook Pros have TB3 and not the desktops (Mac Mini/iMac/Mac Pro). Performance is said to be OK with TB2 and AKiTiO Thunder2 enclosures but it's still a bit hacky and unsupported in macOS.
  - jamesfmilne 10y ago
    You are constrained by poor Nvidia driver support for new cards on macOS.
Lio 10y ago
I feel very much like doing something similar but I'm reticent to move away from macOS because of privacy concerns. If I moved to Linux I would still need some commercial software available on macOS but not on Linux. The obvious thing to do would be to supplement Linux with Windows 10 but I worry about privacy in Windows 10. This maybe obvious to long term Windows users but I can only find examples from Microsoft about what they collect/track, not a definitive list[1]. Also if anyone knows, I'd also like to find out if it's possible to stop Microsoft Support from remotely accessing files on a Windows 10 machine and if you need a particular version of Windows 10 to do that. e.g. Is Windows 10 Home more or less secure than Windows 10 Enterprise. So for the moment baring in mind I don't do CUDA I'm sticking with my slow old Mac. I should probably should build a dual booting hackintosh but I think if would be a lot of trouble to keep going (and also breaks the licensing terms). [1] https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/ https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/privacystatement/

pil4rin 10y ago

No USB-C? also, what's the point of including the Thunderbolt 2 ports, I thought Thunderbolt 3 was backwards compatible. Sweet design other than that.

simonhamp 10y ago
Thunderbolt 3 is USB-C
- ff10 10y ago
  Thunderbolt 3 can facilitate the USB-C connector.
  - artimaeis 10y ago
    This seems like a fun ladder of pedantry, count me in! Thunderbolt 3 is an extension to the USB 3.1 standard which utilizes the USB-C connector and implements USB Power delivery.

agumonkey 10y ago

Almost hug to death, enjoy the http://archive.is/XkCPO http://archive.is/XkCPO

deleted 10y ago
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roryisok 10y ago

I smiled at "Standard components ... exceptionally futureproof". The way Apple are going the next mac pro will probably run an ARM CPU and have the RAM soldered on Assuming they ever make another mac pro of course

simonhamp 10y ago

It irritates me that this page was clearly designed on/for a super wide high-res display

Raphmedia 10y ago
It's heavily inspired by Apple's own page for the Mac Pro.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

super_mario 10y ago

Real Mac Pro would be an aluminum "cheese grater" large quiet box that sits under the desk that I never see or hear unless I want to upgrade something. The trashcan is at most Mac Mini Pro. Having thousand cables and external boxes sitting on your desk to expand it is not practical nor elegant, and gets out of date pretty fast. And quite frankly it's ugly as well.

terinjokes 10y ago
I have a G5 from the last generation of the cheese graters under my desk right now. The case has seen better days, so I might have to source a better preserved one soon, but I can say it runs Linux just fine.
- throwawayish 10y ago
  The power-to-POWER ratio of these G5s was a joke. The mechanical design is quite sound (forgetting about the HDD cage for a second), though, and they look fetching, even today. (imho much better than the trash cans)
  - rhinoceraptor 10y ago
    There are some really nice PC/Hackintosh builds with hacked up G5 cases. You can even get custom-built motherboard trays that are meant to go in those cases: http://www.mountainmods.com/mountain-mods-modular-removable-motherboard-tray-p-56.html http://www.mountainmods.com/mountain-mods-modular-removable-...
- beachstartup 10y ago
  i still use my 2009 8x xeon mac pro as my primary workstation. upgraded ram, gpu, ssd, video, 4k monitor, and a couple of other things. i'm trying to get 10 years out of it, which looks do-able, maybe. it refuses to install the latest OS X's though, so it may finish its life as a linux box. will 2019 finally be the year of linux on the desktop???
  - 10y ago

acomjean 10y ago

I like the size of this. The expandability of the machine is nice considering the current lack of refresh on current apple desktop hardware. I'm not holding my breath though. I have the old mac-pro (cheese grater), and it was remarkably expandable (and easy to do so). Its remarkably heavy (theft deterrent). You can go see what the hackintosh people are building with commodity hardware: User Builds: https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/user-builds.28/ https://www.tonymacx86.com/forums/user-builds.28/

SippinLean 10y ago

Top 80% of the page is just black for me. I hit the spacebar 7 times until I saw "Built-in handle" ?

SlySherZ 10y ago
It happened to me too, I just hit reload until it worked.
starquake 10y ago
I also had one big black page. I thought it was a joke and it meant the author thought there was no Mac Pro 2 coming. Then I remembered this is not Reddit and there are no funny links on HN.

chlordane 10y ago

I can dig this, but the next Mac Pro needs to compete with the current line of HP Z840: http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04400043.pdf http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04400043.pdf

cschneid 10y ago
God, I always lol at HP URLs. What a mess.
- prodigal_erik 10y ago
  It's a good thing GetPDF.aspx is there. Otherwise their web server would have no idea how to handle a GET request for a PDF file.
- throwawayish 10y ago
  At least they're stable. I have bookmarks on HP datasheet pages from the early 2000s that still work.
watmough 10y ago
Gosh, that reminds me I really need to make my software more parallel.
xanderstrike 10y ago
I think you're confused. That's a workstation for professionals. That's not the demographic apple is interested in any more.
snuxoll 10y ago
I can get behind the interior of that case, but man is that thing ugly.
- chlordane 10y ago
  I've always liked the way the HP Z series looked.

shanusmagnus 10y ago

I get that this is a concept not to be nitpicked to death for feasibility, and I love it. I'm also struck by the fact that a fucking computer has produced such heartache in people that somebody spent an ungodly amount of time on this labor of love. I don't care how little of their revenue comes directly from selling Mac Pros, it's the feeling that could produce this response that they should be optimizing for, not small-ness, thin-ness, or port-deletion.

Captain_Usher 10y ago
>it's the feeling that could produce this response that they should be optimizing for As near as I can tell, this is exactly how Apple got to be Apple and they already know how it's done. When people I know who have owned non-recent macs describe them, it's like they're having some kind of profound emotional experience. They don't even talk about it like it's a computer. I've never heard them say things like "having all the applications go to the blue 'Applications' icon on the dock is great," even though that's a useful feature they seem to understand and enjoy using, they say "it's so easy to find things" or "it just works". I know a longtime OSX user who is particularly detail-oriented and I asked him why he liked working with Sprinter vans[1] as opposed to trucks. He explained that they handled more like big cars than trucks, which is handy for maneuvering in cities and backing into cramped loading docks. He had no problem discussing his preference in detail without any prompting, the same way I'll tell anyone who asks that I like headset microphones to desktop ones because it's one fewer peripheral to manage and I have my desk laid out just right. When he talks about his Apple products being good, he just says they "work." So clearly they've succeeded in the past at giving people things that they really really like. They like them so much that they don't even dwell on the specific things that make them so likeable. I've never made anyone like anything that much in my life, and if I had a process for it I can't imagine why I'd stop. [1]: A variety of tall cargo van, which may or not be an actual Mercedes Sprinter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercedes-Benz_Sprinter
- shanusmagnus 10y ago
  I'm a pretty die hard Apple guy starting from the mid 80s, and I find a lot resonates with your friend's "they work" example. Me, I love the fact that the machines are beautiful, but also functional in these subtle ways. Like the fact that you can open the laptops with a finger -- they're balanced correctly, the hinges are and the closing mechanism are calibrated s.t. you can lift the lid without the base coming up. Such a pointless bit of design, really, but it's so satisfying that somebody spent a bunch of time working on that. To say nothing of the trackpads, which were just an order of magnitude better than any trackpad on any other brand of laptop I've ever used. Maybe high end PCs have caught up by now, I don't know. Yet. There's something about things made with such passion, such attention. They stir up the religious impulse. I really feel that, for the first time since the Jobs comeback, I'm on the verge of losing that religion, at least wrt the Mac line. (The iPhones still seem obsessed over in all the right ways, as far as I can see.)

iddqd 10y ago

> Sometimes bigger is actually better Well that's definitely something we'll never hear Apple say.

stcredzero 10y ago
They used to say it about their 17" laptop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvbuwfawqcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xvbuwfawqcc

exabrial 10y ago

The next Mac Pro will just be really really thin, have no ports, and gets it's power wirelessly from a mat underneath it, but no batteries. It'll have 8 cores and max out at 13g of ram

exabrial 10y ago
I forgot to mention it will include nerfed NFC, so you'll be able to Tap and Pay with with Apple Pay.

gallerdude 10y ago

Funny enough, the thing that had me thinking the most was the double ethernet ports. What would that be for? Two different networks? When one cuts out you just switch to the other one?

whywhywhywhy 10y ago
The current Mac Pro is mostly designed to work in studios where everything is on network storage. If you're working on video over the network you can use two ethernet cables for faster network access
kennell 10y ago
The current real Mac Pro actually has two ethernet ports too. There are a number of ways this could be useful. Number one would obviously be to connect to two different networks. It could also be useful in a scenario where the machine is used as a server and you want a semi-redundant backup network line. It could also be used to directly connect to a NAS box via Ethernet.
- skiril 10y ago
  you can bridge network cards to double your connection speed. You can connect to 2 different networks (load balancing or 2 different Internet Server Providers). You can run multiple virtual machines on your mac and separate traffic instead of putting all into one adapter. Multiple LAN is a norm now, especially if you in IT.
- corn13read 10y ago
  Bridged gigabit for twice the bandwidth
satysin 10y ago
The dual ethernet in the current Mac Pro are only 1 GigE and gets around 100MB/s (real world)[0]. I aggregate the two cards to get better speed. Even a 10 GigE couldn't max out the SSDs in these machines which are 2GB+/s r/w. [0] by real world I mean on a properly configured network. Many companies don't have that though so you often see "gigabit" speeds in the 30-50MB/s range.

robotjosh 10y ago

This type of design isn't useful. Round things don't fit neatly anywhere on a desk. Air cooling makes no sense when your design goal is high performance in a small space. What would really be useful is something 2.5" thick and as long and wide as necessary. Think about it you could lay it flat on your desk and put your screen on top of it, stand it up behind your screen, hang it on the wall behind your screen, bolt it to the under side of your desk, bolt it to the back of your desk, or bolt it to the side of your desk.

cr0sh 10y ago
So something like a 1U server?
- RandomOpinion 10y ago
  More like the early Sun "pizzabox" SPARCstation workstations, I would think. Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARCstation_5
- robotjosh 10y ago
  Yeah!
xanderstrike 10y ago
It doesn't need to be that thick or that wide even. Consider the Magnus EN1080 [1]. It's a bit taller than a mac mini, has an i7 and a GTX 1080. It's got the liquid cooling you seem keen on too. I believe this is the future of pre-built PCs. It's so much more convenient than a big beige box or the monitor stand you're talking about. 1. https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_pcs/magnus-en1080-10-year-anniversary-edition https://www.zotac.com/us/product/mini_pcs/magnus-en1080-10-y...
- robotjosh 10y ago
  That is a cool product. I'm thinking of a form factor like that but longer or wider so the components are not all on top of each other.

irascible 10y ago

Wankintosh

RichardHeart 10y ago

Looks great, it will take one hell of a custom riser to orient those video cards like that. https://hardforum.com/forums/small-form-factor-systems.102/ https://hardforum.com/forums/small-form-factor-systems.102/ has the best collection of Super small custom form factors in the world.

kyled 10y ago

I thought that was a camera lens.

greenspot 10y ago

If you are a designer, this is absolutely the best thing you can do to sky-rocket your market value over night: Create a concept design from a popular product and put it on a slick landing page. It shows that you, as a designer, are proactive and think beyond designing standard stuff (like webpages or mobile apps). Moreover, you are not limited by any client restrictions[1] which hurt your work (and portfolio), you learn 3D modelling if you haven't yet (it's not hard just time consuming), if you are lucky with social news sites you get so much free promo and finally, it's the eye-catcher on any CV. [1] A classic and recommended post if we talk about clients restricting designers: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell http://theoatmeal.com/comics/design_hell

xmmx 10y ago
What do you think the equivalent move is for front end developers?
lanewinfield 10y ago
I might argue that you're right on most counts, but there's one project type that'd be a step above that: creating a side project that stands entirely on its own. It has the effect, like you had said, of being not limited by clients and learning new skills. But on top of that, you'd show yourself as an independent thinker and started closer to zero than standing on the shoulders of other companies (in this case, Apple) and making spec work. Again, not to say it's wrong, because I think you're very correct in thinking this is great for designers, but I do think this could be one step higher. (And, for the sake of argument, I'm completely ignoring what neither of us stated: that probably more than half the battle as a professional in this industry is navigating politics, which the skills for obviously cannot be conveyed through a spec or side project.)
sulam 10y ago
Just make sure to count your ports properly. :)
Apocryphon 10y ago
Reminds me of the designer who redesigned Microsoft's branding [0], and got a job there [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4195208 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4195208 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5085915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5085915

corn13read 10y ago

In reality it will only have a power adapter "port" and they will call it portless and amazing

deleted 10y ago

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TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago

GTX 1080? That seems like an unlikely choice to me. Apple prefer AMD GPUs, not NVidia's. The GTX 1080 is also part of NVidia's consumer line, whereas the current Mac Pro has FirePro chips, which are from AMD's workstation graphics line.

mwfunk 10y ago
I don't know where you get this impression from unless you're only looking at what's currently (or recently) shipping. They've always used both and played them off against each other. Which vendor is used for a given model changes from one year to the next, although sometimes there will be long stretches of seemingly only using one or the other. There've been plenty of times over the last 15 years where one or the other has been predominant in shipping products, but it never lasts more than a couple years. There've also been plenty of times when the currently shipping product line featured both vendors.
- TazeTSchnitzel 10y ago
  Oh, right. I didn't realise they'd switched more than once.

jpalomaki 10y ago

Instead of fancy design, I would rather see some fairly boring box that would enable Apple to use almost off-the-shelf hardware. Kind of hackintosh, but made by Apple. This way it would be much easier for them to bring regular (yearly) hardware refreshes.

deleted 10y ago
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vlunkr 10y ago

I think at least one USB C port would be appropriate. Very nice though!

alfredxing 10y ago
Thunderbolt 3 uses the same connector as USB C, and it supports the same USB functionality. (https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-does-it-all https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-d...)

anonymoushn 10y ago

http://i.imgur.com/tkwUICK.png http://i.imgur.com/tkwUICK.png I am glad to learn the dard Components are Exceptionally Futur.

freehunter 10y ago
Ha I thought it was a Safari problem on my machine and I was going to say "I'm pretty sure Apple would make the website render properly in Safari".

spaetzel 10y ago

Problem being that the current Mac Pro is already the 2nd https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Pro

stevefeinstein 10y ago

Oooh, an artist spend 20 minutes with PhotoShop and now Apple can just take his pretty pictures and start pumping out new computers. It's not like anyone needs to actually create an actual prototype, source components, set up manufacturing, market and deliver anything.

kermire 10y ago
20 minutes? What are you even talking about?! This would take days if not weeks.

2ion 10y ago

Somehow the grey metal Mac Pro case shown beside the current Mac Pro and this Mac Pro concept design looks to me much better and functional than any of the other two. It makes a much more professional, high-quality, clean impression and has definitely the potential to house at least the same if not more hardware than the cyclindric ones.

gigatexal 10y ago

looks great but will never happen -- the mac pro is not a priority for Apple -- sometimes I wonder, what, if anything outside of the iPhone, really is a priority for them.

sailfast 10y ago

The Mac Pro design was fun to look at, but the concept firearms on this site were the most impressive to me. Well thought out and engineered from a concept perspective, addressing pain points for the customer that requires some pretty serious knowledge. I'm surprised somebody hasn't tried to manufacture the Thor A1 at this point, as they seem to fit a pretty sizable PPW market.

whatnotests 10y ago

Looks like what Darth Vader would have on his Destroyer.

haylem 10y ago

I have to say, it's the first time I see a Peter Dinklage used as a unit of measure: http://pascaleggert.de/EPIC_specifications.html http://pascaleggert.de/EPIC_specifications.html

sparky_ 10y ago

Here's my concept design for what I want in a new Mac Pro: https://cdn.arstechnica.net/reviews/hardware/mac-pro-2g-review.media/macpro.jpg https://cdn.arstechnica.net/reviews/hardware/mac-pro-2g-revi...

markcerqueira 10y ago
Got one of these in my closet that I use as my home server. Made in 2008 and the thing is still a beast!
- macjohnmcc 10y ago
  I have the early 2009 model but I primarily run Windows 10 on it as a file server/plex server. I was having some file system corruptions on Mac OSX and decided to go the NTFS route on Windows.
- justinclift 10y ago
  It's amazing how little the cpu's for those things cost these days on ebay. eg: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/192074836061 http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/192074836061 (that's the 2010 model though)

bitmapbrother 10y ago

Nice work, but it looks like it's transitioning from a small circular garbage can to a rectangular garbage can. The original aluminum Mac Pro shrunken down would have been the ideal design IMO.

al_biglan 10y ago

Looks great... just needs 10GbE instead of 1Gb. Add an SFP port and a RJ45 if all you got is a 1Gb or want to try your hand at getting 10GBASE-T working.

mavis 10y ago

Gigabyte announced a similarly shaped product last week at CES. http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=6151#kf http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=6151#...