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May I ask your opinion on the configuration.

C

chancellormac

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 7, 2008
7
0
Folks, I've been reading the forum for a while, but before I hit the Check out button on Apple's site, I wanted to ask your opinion.

I'm ordering a new machine for me and my wife to use primarily on editing photos and videos. She's using a MacBook Pro, but I wanted something with more horse-power.

Here is the configuration I chose:

Part Number: Z0EM
One 16x SuperDrive
320GB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
2GB (2 x 1GB)
Apple Keyboard (English) + Mac OS X
Accessory kit
Two 2.8GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon (8-core)
Apple Mighty Mouse
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT 512MB (Two dual-link DVI)
$2,999.00

Apple Cinema HD Display (30" flat panel)
Part Number: M9179LL/A
$1,799.00

In addition, planning to purchase:
16GB FULLY BUFFERED PC6400 DDR2 ECC (FB-DIMM) 800MHz SPECIAL APPLE KIT (Eight modules 2GB)
Item# 4FK225672800AT
$825.00


1.0TB Hitachi SATAII 7200rpm 32mb (times 2)
Hitachi SATAII 7200rpm 32mb
Regular price: $386.39
Web price: $277.99

from MemoryAmerica.com

Does this configuration sound right? Any pearls of wisdom?

Many thanks and apologies for a needy first posting :)
 
That looks like a pretty good configuration, although for what you're going to be doing I think that 16Gigs of RAM would be overkill - Unless you plan on running FCS2, Shake, or any 3D apps like Maya I think you'll have trouble using more then 4Gigs. My advice would be to go with the 8Gig kit.

Besides that, your setup looks fine. I'm sure it will be able to handle just about anything you can throw at it.
 
I bought almost the same stuff. Works great. I have the Hitachi Ultrastar drives not Deskstar - I'm not sure which ones you are looking at. You can get 4 750 GB for about the same price as 2 1TB at OWC.
 
Stick with the 16GBs unless you're really stretching the CC.

We're running 16GBs and glad we did. If you're using Compressor for your video work, you'll make use of them. We were originally going to go with 8GBs, but for the bit of money saved, we decided to go with 16.

Running just Aperture, Pages, and Safari right now, my computer is already using 4GBs. I don't know how long you're planning on keeping your computer, but RAM usage is only going to go up.

That said, you could use 8GBs easily for most video editing work & ANYTHING photo related.
 
I'd say go for 8GB... and if you want the absolute best performance, then fill all the RAM slots so you take advantage of the quad-channel. 16 GB sounds like overkill to me, but then if you don't really care... then definitely go for it =]
 
hulkss said:
I bought almost the same stuff. Works great. I have the Hitachi Ultrastar drives not Deskstar - I'm not sure which ones you are looking at. You can get 4 750 GB for about the same price as 2 1TB at OWC.
Click to expand...

I did this for my system along with 16GB RAM. HDs from Newegg and RAM from OWC. I love my configuration (see sig)
 
Folks, received my new computer and memory with hard drives. Everything is looking great. Prior to me installing the memory and hard drives, I was wondering if there is a place on the forum with illustrated directions.

Many thanks!
 
Well, as the old saying goes: "When all else fell, RTFM". I did. So, the memory and the disks are installed. It seems that the memory is in tact, computer now reads 10Gb, but I'm getting an error message on both disks. It says that the installed disks (two message windows) is not recognized and gives me options to Initialize, Ignore or Eject. When I click on Initialize, it seems like the drives aren't formatted. Is that what I need to do? It sees that the disks are approximately 700Gb each, I'm guessing that's a good sign. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
 
chancellormac said:
Well, as the old saying goes: "When all else fell, RTFM". I did. So, the memory and the disks are installed. It seems that the memory is in tact, computer now reads 10Gb, but I'm getting an error message on both disks. It says that the installed disks (two message windows) is not recognized and gives me options to Initialize, Ignore or Eject. When I click on Initialize, it seems like the drives aren't formatted. Is that what I need to do? It sees that the disks are approximately 700Gb each, I'm guessing that's a good sign. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
Click to expand...

Go into disk utility on format them as Mac OS Extended (journaled)
 
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