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Links to build your own mac pro
For those of you interested in purchasing a new mac and tricking it out in a somewhat affordable way to edit HD Pro Res, check this out. We put together this system this weekend and it’s testing well. I’m aware that some forum leaders are less impressed with a 3 internal drive software RAID, which is why I’m saying this is an affordable way to edit HD – not necessarily the best way. I’m including links to vendors and prices because that information was useful to me when I was doing my homework. Almost all suppliers/parts are gleaned from various posts on the ‘cow. Thanks to all the guys who’ve posted the information below all over the cow.
System.
Mac Pro Octo 2.8
Purchased from Apple business solutions. Minimum Hard Drive & Ram. Airport, Bluetooth, and Wireless Mouse included.
$2600RAM
16GB,
Other World Computing $538
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/64FB2MPK04GB/ATI Radeon 3870 (thanks for the referral Boogiesan, a VERY nice card).
Other World Computing: $231
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/ATI%20Technologies/100435928/Hard Drives
4 x 1.5 TB Seagate Barracuda (These do officially work with Mac Pros, no problem). 1 Drive for the OS, 3 in a software 4TB RAID 0
Amazon $749.08
https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-ST31500341AS-Barracuda-Cache-8-5MS/dp/B00066IJPQ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1225137554&sr=8-1Kona 3 + Breakout Box Bundle
Promax
$2867
https://www2.promax.com/AJA-KONA-3-Bundle;jsessionid=0a010c461f430ae7188ed9134409bc3ade9a4843e712.e3eSc3qPbN0Te34Pa38Ta38MbNv0?sc=2&category=62751For Displays, we were able to keep our previous system’s displays (Gateway FDH2400). This model has been discontinued and ‘upgraded’ with the FDH2401 which offers less features (no usb hub, no adjustable height, etc.) I do no recommend the 2401 as the price is the same, but the features are less.
Again, thanks to everybody in the cow for posting this information in various forums. This may not be the right edit system for everyone, but we’re very pleased with the results.
John
Magic Feather Inc. -
6 Replies
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FYI, I had 2 drives striped internally for a 1TB Raid 0…software raid…and one of the drives, Seagate barracuda, died. I mean dead dead. Not showing in Disk Utility and Disk Warrior…and clicking and whirring in bad ways. Needless to say, all information on that raid is gone.
Raid 0 is SCARY RAID. Get the CalDigit RAID card for RAID 5 protection. 1/2 as much as Apple’s, and something you can install yourself. Apple requires you to order it configured with the card.
Shane
GETTING ORGANIZED WITH FINAL CUT PRO DVD…don’t miss it.
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
They’re actually 179.99 on Amazon now – Last week they were 187 when I bought.
John
Magic Feather Inc. -
I keep backups on four IOmega 1TB FW800 drives. For the last 4 years we’ve been working off of a 1.6TB 4 drive RAID 0 and amazingly, it never had any problems. I chose to retire it from the main system because it generated a good deal of heat and sounded like a jet engine.
All my important things are copied off – just not mirrored via RAID. I may go the RAID 5 route with an additional drive in the unused mac pro disk drive sooner or later though. We’re short form so anything lost could be recreated pretty quickly were the end of the world to occur.
John
Magic Feather Inc. -
You paid too much for your hard drives. Zipzoomfly has them for $180.
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Board of Directors
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group -
Raid 0 does not exist in my world.
This business is tense as it is.
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I had read a few issues people were having with write-cache flushing causing these drives to freeze intermittently for approximately 10-30 seconds – however I assumed that was anecdotal. My first install came through migration assistant, so I attributed occasional freeze/lags to that. Unfortunately, after doing a completely fresh, clean install, I now see that these drives do in fact STILL have this problem. Seagate isn’t really addressing the issue.
Hopefully nobody purchased them based on my referral, however I’m posting this addendum to my original post just in case someone sees this post in a search.
I’m returning the drives ASAP and replacing with 1TB Western Digital drives. I’d rather have 4TB’s that work rather than 6TB’s that mostly work.
What a shame. These drives held such promise. I’m really glad I didn’t lose any media (whew).
For more information:
https://stx.lithium.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=2390&view=by_date_ascending&page=1John
Magic Feather Inc.
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