3 ms·

All this can be achieved with... well any other computer if you build it properly, for fraction of the cost.

faeriechangling 5y ago
Nope, not if you want to run something like 4x4k and you're extremely sensitive to noise and want to run in SILENCE which I did. My desk setup is like the people in Apple's press conference, I'm the target market for this computer. The primary issue is that no matter what you do, the GPU you use is never going to run on idle and will constantly be running a bit hot. You can choose to use a professional card (cooler, quieter) or consumer (flexibility, resale, cost). I choose the latter. As for the build, I had 3 options: 1: Air-cooled - What I went with. High end fans, thick oversized heatsinks on every component, I went for a low airflow low-noise case to minimize high pitched noises (although this increases fan speed requirements and fan hum). I tried to get the fans to stop completely but I ran into too many issues with the card just not staying quite cool enough and the fans suddenly ramping and now let the GPU fans spin at about 900rpm while the case fans run around ~750. 2: Water-cooled - With very careful building, you can create a custom loop with large thick rads and slow quiet fans and a quiet pump, but this setup is hardly cheaper than the mac studio, or as quiet, or as cool, or as small. 3: passive - Probably the best option was something like a compulab airtop3, which is probably the closest equivalent to a mac studio before the mac studio aside from it being a bit worse in performance. It uses a 9900k and is a bit obsolete now, and was pretty pricy back in the day, but it's pretty cool engineering. Ultimately though, regardless of the options, none of these offer everything I need in anywhere close to the power envelope of mac studio, and more power usage = more heat, more size, more noise. The power efficiency of the m1 GPU is bonkers being built on 5nm and all. I have plenty of PC builds under my belt, I spent hours of research, I did an okay job, but I will never do as good as a job as a 3 trillion dollar company can. Why would I ever fuss with any of that ever again when I can just pay a little more to grab an m1 studio off the shelf that's a better computer?

Nope, not if you want to run something like 4x4k and you're extremely sensitive to noise and want to run in SILENCE which I did. My desk setup is like the people in Apple's press conference, I'm the target market for this computer. The primary issue is that no matter what you do, the GPU you use is never going to run on idle and will constantly be running a bit hot. You can choose to use a professional card (cooler, quieter) or consumer (flexibility, resale, cost). I choose the latter. As for the build, I had 3 options: 1: Air-cooled - What I went with. High end fans, thick oversized heatsinks on every component, I went for a low airflow low-noise case to minimize high pitched noises (although this increases fan speed requirements and fan hum). I tried to get the fans to stop completely but I ran into too many issues with the card just not staying quite cool enough and the fans suddenly ramping and now let the GPU fans spin at about 900rpm while the case fans run around ~750. 2: Water-cooled - With very careful building, you can create a custom loop with large thick rads and slow quiet fans and a quiet pump, but this setup is hardly cheaper than the mac studio, or as quiet, or as cool, or as small. 3: passive - Probably the best option was something like a compulab airtop3, which is probably the closest equivalent to a mac studio before the mac studio aside from it being a bit worse in performance. It uses a 9900k and is a bit obsolete now, and was pretty pricy back in the day, but it's pretty cool engineering. Ultimately though, regardless of the options, none of these offer everything I need in anywhere close to the power envelope of mac studio, and more power usage = more heat, more size, more noise. The power efficiency of the m1 GPU is bonkers being built on 5nm and all. I have plenty of PC builds under my belt, I spent hours of research, I did an okay job, but I will never do as good as a job as a 3 trillion dollar company can. Why would I ever fuss with any of that ever again when I can just pay a little more to grab an m1 studio off the shelf that's a better computer?