2019 Mac Pro – show of hands

[Dom Silverio]

After the debacle that was Trashcan 2013, we are definitely all in for the MP2020. Price-wise, I don’t see it being any different from HP z8 (which are wonderful boxes IMHO). It is just hard to compare because z8 uses the Plat/Gold Xeons and the MPs will use the W series. Plat/Gold Xeons gives you more flexibility.

Second, we do not know how the GPU landscape will be for this new MP. Luckily, AMD’s newer GPU seems to be competitive at least in the mid-range price point. Either way, I’m looking forward to the new MP2020 and retiring dozens of MP2013.

HP z boxes will still offer the most flexibility in terms of configuration and price point. MP2013 offers PCIe for Mac users (LOL).

[Eric Santiago]

[Dom Silverio] “HP z boxes will still offer the most flexibility in terms of configuration and price point”

I have a hard time swallowing that.
I went through 3 HP Z240s due to Thunderbolt card issues.
Every time it went down, they blamed it on the mobo and so they replaced the whole box.
I lost a lot of rendering projects during that mess.

[Dom Silverio]

[Eric Santiago] “I have a hard time swallowing that.
I went through 3 HP Z240s due to Thunderbolt card issues.
Every time it went down, they blamed it on the mobo and so they replaced the whole box.
I lost a lot of rendering projects during that mess.”

I’m not understanding. You are talking about stability and tech support. I was talking about configuration and price point. The fact that HP can be configured with the Bronze, Silverio, Gold and Plat Xeon it means your options are well below and well above the Xeon W configured MP2020, not to mention the ability to use NVidia cards.

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Dom Silverio] “The fact that HP can be configured with the Bronze, Silverio, Gold and Plat Xeon”

Intel made a processor named after you? Sweet!

[Eric Santiago]

[Dom Silverio] “. You are talking about stability and tech support. I was talking about configuration and price point.”

Well I had to take that into consideration.
What good is all that if the thing sits there like a brick?

[Andrew Kimery]

I’m happily running a Hack I built a few months ago so I’m out of the running for the foreseeable future. TBH though, a nnMP (new, new MP) would probably be borderline overkill for the typical projects I do out of my home studio.

I’ve also been doing a lot work in the world of esports recently and that’s all been PC-centric (for obvious reasons). The sinew connecting me to Apple-centric workflows is probably the weakest it’s been in 20yrs.

[Herb Sevush]

[Andrew Kimery] “I’m happily running a Hack I built a few months ago “

Can you describe the components you used for the Hack ?

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Andrew Kimery]

[Herb Sevush] “Can you describe the components you used for the Hack ?”

Of course. It pretty much sits between the high-end iMac and the entry level iMac Pro.

3.6ghz, 8-core i9
Gigabyte Z390 mobo (Thunderbolt 3 and USB C)
64gig RAM (3200 Mhz)
AMD Vega 56
BeQuiet! Dark Base 700 case (I’ve yet to hear the fans ramp up even when doing long exports or transcodes).
1TB SSD SATA (MacOS)
1TB SSD NVMe (Win10)
43″ 4K LG display (Yes, that’s huge, but CostCo had a great sale going on). I didn’t set out for a 4K monitor, but the deal was too good to pass up.

Including a new keyboard (my 2007-era white Mac keyboard was dying a slow death), the total cost (with tax and shipping) was about $2600.

It’s the first machine I’ve built in about 20yrs so I was a little slow in getting it put togther (it took me the better part of a day), but it was a lot of fun. Getting MacOS installed took me the better part of three days. I found a very good online guide and mirrored the build, so it wasn’t hard per se, but it was a lot of steps to follow mixed with a little bit of trouble shooting.

[Herb Sevush]

Did you go Vega over Nvidia for OSX comparability? Also was there any reason to put your OSX boot on the sata card as opposed to the NVMe?

Thanks.

Herb Sevush
Zebra Productions
—————————
nothin\’ attached to nothin\’
\”Deciding the spine is the process of editing\” F. Bieberkopf

[Andrew Kimery]

[Herb Sevush] “Did you go Vega over Nvidia for OSX comparability?”

Yes. If I was building a straight Win10 machine I would’ve gone with Nvidia.

[Herb Sevush] “Also was there any reason to put your OSX boot on the sata card as opposed to the NVMe?”

I think it was recommend for this particular build of Hack (something to do with specific UEFI settings). Also, since I’m running a separate Win10 it was recommend to disconnect the MacOS drive prior to installing Win10 (to prevent he Win10 installer from overwriting some files on the boot portion of the Mac drive) and it’s easier to pull a plug on the SSD than unscrew the NVMe.