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To be quite honest, I think the new mac pro's design is on the ugly side from an internal standpoint. There are existing standards for things like small form fa

To be quite honest, I think the new mac pro's design is on the ugly side from an internal standpoint. There are existing standards for things like small form factor graphics interface, like MXM, that seem like they would work much better than apple's variant which requires a rather frail looking connector between the graphics cards and the I/O card. Though I imagine one of the problems there is that it would be much harder for Apple to keep people from purchasing a third-party video card two years down the road when the current boards start getting long in the tooth.

2muchcoffeeman 13y ago
The interesting thing about the Pro is the heat management & power in such a small form factor. I have yet to see a Pro IRL, but reports indicate that it is very quiet for such a powerful machine. The last tower machine I had years ago was loud and doubled as a room heater in winter. I still see video cards being made that require their own heat sink and fan. Then add all the other standard fans: power supply, CPU (+ heat sink), one or two on the case. You have these huge empty, inefficient boxes. I really hope Apple brings their heat management knowledge to their other lines. Edit: grammar.
- kayoone 13y ago
  Why compare a box you had a few years ago to the new Mac Pro? Today you can put amazing performance in mini itx or micro atx cases.[1] Granted Apples custom design still offers some space savings but also zero upgradability. Of course those small standard cases aren't made for xeon CPUs and Dual GPUs, but most people that buy/need powerful workstations do not really care about the size of the thing. [1] https://teksyndicate.com/videos/build-most-powerful-mini-itx-system-july-2013 https://teksyndicate.com/videos/build-most-powerful-mini-itx...
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >Granted Apples custom design still offers some space savings but also zero upgradability. Zero upgradability? The Mac Pro is quite upgradable, with the exception of the GPU. It got a 8/10 from iFixit in this area.
    - TheAnimus 13y ago
      Depends what you mean by upgradability, my main dev and gaming rig is watercooled. It is so silent the only noise detectable is the spindle HDDs. I can slam in another PCIe SSD RAID next year and hopefully get rid of those too. The Mac Pro of course can't slam in a PCIe RAID, you have only thunderbolt, which isn't as fast as a 16 lane. You have no ability to choose graphics cards made by third parties, my box just has reference design ones, with ek blocks on them for the cooling. Of course this means changing the graphics card takes 1 hour, then letting it "leak test" in the bathroom for a night. I would still say it's upgradable, but clearly I've traded ease for silence and performance (you can generally get very reliable over clocks with such cooling). This is why people complain it isn't upgradable. You can't easily put in anything you want, it has to go external, which is fine for some, but abhorrent for others. The options of what you can upgrade are entirely a single vendor lock-in. Some people dislike that. These people (such as myself) like to have a free market of competition and innovation on every component available.
    - kunai 13y ago
      Replacing the SSD and RAM is not "upgradable." Being able to replace the PSU, GPGPU, 5.25" drives and 3.5" drives is upgradable. Expansion will have to be entirely done through external PCIe chassis, and TB2 is NOT as fast as PCIe3. It's such an inelegant solution and very half-assed. I don't just want an engineering marvel on my desk. I want it to be pragmatic and easy to expand. Using the excuse that most machines are going the other way is not viable – this is a professional machine, and every professional has different standards.
      - edvinbesic 13y ago
        I think you hit the nail on the head. This is a professional machine, and the professionals it is aimed and, that are going to be buying this machine, are not interested in upgradability in the sense you talking about. Find a good price/performance ratio, buy and use machine for 2-3 years, sell and buy a new one. The fact that this machine houses all the components you want to upgrade inside of it (CPU,GPU,RAM,PSU) and all the components you want to keep outside (NAS/RAID primarily), makes this prospect that much better, less waste. Not to mention the usually excellent value retention on Apple hardware makes this a pretty darn good investment. Again, if you are in the target market that is.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 13y ago
    I get things are better now. I type this on a 2013 Macbook Air. This is my main, personal dev machine. I understand the levels of improvement we have achieved. But Apple has a truly novel design with the new Pro. Even the machine in your link has 1 CPU fan, 1 GPU fan and a power supply fan. And it's still quite empty and not that small. No one except Apple is even trying.
- Sanddancer 13y ago
  Video cards require their own heat sinks and fans because the average video card these days uses more power at peak than a CPU. However, video cards these days also tend to have the same sorts of power throttling that most cpu fans have these days, so tower boxes are a lot more quiet than they were a few years back. Also, there are a lot of different case sizes even in the area of "tower"s, with many of the higher end ones being very quiet even at full power. Also, for super-quiet computing, there are companies that make fanless power supplies now, or for those really concerned about silence, there are water cooling setups that use their big radiator, and a large, slow fan, to quietly cool the gpus and cpu in a modern system.
- meerita 13y ago
  They're quite. I was able to test one at a Mac Store, some people in there, but in general feels like the machine isn't ON.
coldtea 13y ago
Well, OTOH the Mac Pro does have use replacable CPU, HD and memory for what is worth. It got a 8/10 user-servisability score at iFixit, which is very good for a device of this size and design. And it can also use thunderbolt based GPUs. But if your work justifies a $3K dual-GPU machine, would you really go about replacing graphics cards 2-3 years down the road, instead of just buying the latest model? It would have new-everything, and it would be a tax deductible busines expense after all.
astrodust 13y ago
A connector like MXM isn't enough to handle the sort of bandwidth those cards need to move. They need PCI-e and multiple DisplayPort channels as the ports are not on the video cards, but instead on the back panel.

2muchcoffeeman 13y ago

The interesting thing about the Pro is the heat management & power in such a small form factor. I have yet to see a Pro IRL, but reports indicate that it is very quiet for such a powerful machine. The last tower machine I had years ago was loud and doubled as a room heater in winter. I still see video cards being made that require their own heat sink and fan. Then add all the other standard fans: power supply, CPU (+ heat sink), one or two on the case. You have these huge empty, inefficient boxes. I really hope Apple brings their heat management knowledge to their other lines. Edit: grammar.

kayoone 13y ago
Why compare a box you had a few years ago to the new Mac Pro? Today you can put amazing performance in mini itx or micro atx cases.[1] Granted Apples custom design still offers some space savings but also zero upgradability. Of course those small standard cases aren't made for xeon CPUs and Dual GPUs, but most people that buy/need powerful workstations do not really care about the size of the thing. [1] https://teksyndicate.com/videos/build-most-powerful-mini-itx-system-july-2013 https://teksyndicate.com/videos/build-most-powerful-mini-itx...
- coldtea 13y ago
  >Granted Apples custom design still offers some space savings but also zero upgradability. Zero upgradability? The Mac Pro is quite upgradable, with the exception of the GPU. It got a 8/10 from iFixit in this area.
  - TheAnimus 13y ago
    Depends what you mean by upgradability, my main dev and gaming rig is watercooled. It is so silent the only noise detectable is the spindle HDDs. I can slam in another PCIe SSD RAID next year and hopefully get rid of those too. The Mac Pro of course can't slam in a PCIe RAID, you have only thunderbolt, which isn't as fast as a 16 lane. You have no ability to choose graphics cards made by third parties, my box just has reference design ones, with ek blocks on them for the cooling. Of course this means changing the graphics card takes 1 hour, then letting it "leak test" in the bathroom for a night. I would still say it's upgradable, but clearly I've traded ease for silence and performance (you can generally get very reliable over clocks with such cooling). This is why people complain it isn't upgradable. You can't easily put in anything you want, it has to go external, which is fine for some, but abhorrent for others. The options of what you can upgrade are entirely a single vendor lock-in. Some people dislike that. These people (such as myself) like to have a free market of competition and innovation on every component available.
  - kunai 13y ago
    Replacing the SSD and RAM is not "upgradable." Being able to replace the PSU, GPGPU, 5.25" drives and 3.5" drives is upgradable. Expansion will have to be entirely done through external PCIe chassis, and TB2 is NOT as fast as PCIe3. It's such an inelegant solution and very half-assed. I don't just want an engineering marvel on my desk. I want it to be pragmatic and easy to expand. Using the excuse that most machines are going the other way is not viable – this is a professional machine, and every professional has different standards.
    - edvinbesic 13y ago
      I think you hit the nail on the head. This is a professional machine, and the professionals it is aimed and, that are going to be buying this machine, are not interested in upgradability in the sense you talking about. Find a good price/performance ratio, buy and use machine for 2-3 years, sell and buy a new one. The fact that this machine houses all the components you want to upgrade inside of it (CPU,GPU,RAM,PSU) and all the components you want to keep outside (NAS/RAID primarily), makes this prospect that much better, less waste. Not to mention the usually excellent value retention on Apple hardware makes this a pretty darn good investment. Again, if you are in the target market that is.
- 2muchcoffeeman 13y ago
  I get things are better now. I type this on a 2013 Macbook Air. This is my main, personal dev machine. I understand the levels of improvement we have achieved. But Apple has a truly novel design with the new Pro. Even the machine in your link has 1 CPU fan, 1 GPU fan and a power supply fan. And it's still quite empty and not that small. No one except Apple is even trying.
Sanddancer 13y ago
Video cards require their own heat sinks and fans because the average video card these days uses more power at peak than a CPU. However, video cards these days also tend to have the same sorts of power throttling that most cpu fans have these days, so tower boxes are a lot more quiet than they were a few years back. Also, there are a lot of different case sizes even in the area of "tower"s, with many of the higher end ones being very quiet even at full power. Also, for super-quiet computing, there are companies that make fanless power supplies now, or for those really concerned about silence, there are water cooling setups that use their big radiator, and a large, slow fan, to quietly cool the gpus and cpu in a modern system.
meerita 13y ago
They're quite. I was able to test one at a Mac Store, some people in there, but in general feels like the machine isn't ON.

coldtea 13y ago

Well, OTOH the Mac Pro does have use replacable CPU, HD and memory for what is worth. It got a 8/10 user-servisability score at iFixit, which is very good for a device of this size and design. And it can also use thunderbolt based GPUs. But if your work justifies a $3K dual-GPU machine, would you really go about replacing graphics cards 2-3 years down the road, instead of just buying the latest model? It would have new-everything, and it would be a tax deductible busines expense after all.

astrodust 13y ago

A connector like MXM isn't enough to handle the sort of bandwidth those cards need to move. They need PCI-e and multiple DisplayPort channels as the ports are not on the video cards, but instead on the back panel.