Dell has launch all-new design workstation, HP too; What about Apple

To be honest, Dell's new cases look worse then their old ones.

Sure. Why not?

Apple just let's it ride. If they'd pull their heads out of the iPad long enough, we could have had a new Mac Pro as well. They seem very content selling people 2 year old technology, at rediculous prices. Whatever. I abandon ship come June.

tony3d said:

Apple just let's it ride. If they'd pull their heads out of the iPad long enough, we could have had a new Mac Pro as well. They seem very content selling people 2 year old technology, at rediculous prices. Whatever. I abandon ship come June.

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Yeah... again... As far as Xeons go, two years old was as good as it got until yesterday.

I would like them to build Mac Pros powered by magic pixie dust, but that wasn't going to happen either.

tony3d said:

Apple just let's it ride. If they'd pull their heads out of the iPad long enough, we could have had a new Mac Pro as well. They seem very content selling people 2 year old technology, at rediculous prices. Whatever. I abandon ship come June.

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Same here - no new Mac Pro by June means Hackint0sh here I come: a dual 6-core SandyBridge Xeon with 64 gigs of RAM, stuffed into my old Coolermaster Stacker case (if I can fish it out of the back of the closet that is).

goMac said:

To be honest, Dell's new cases look worse then their old ones.

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I agree, both those cases are quite bland. Dark grey plastic is the new beige. I have to wonder how hot they get, too.

mrxak said:

I agree, both those cases are quite bland. Dark grey plastic is the new beige. I have to wonder how hot they get, too.

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What's interesting is HP cleaned up their internals nicely, but Dell not only made their case more ugly, but didn't fix their internals at all.

Upgrading Dell workstations has always been a giant PITA compared to the Mac Pro.

It doesn't REALLY matter what the cases look like. They look fine. It's far more important what you can DO with the machines.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who would want an Apple take on a machine like this. The current Pro just doesn't cut it anymore in any way shape or form.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpJ30U3erkI

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goMac said:

What's interesting is HP cleaned up their internals nicely, but Dell not only made their case more ugly, but didn't fix their internals at all.

Upgrading Dell workstations has always been a giant PITA compared to the Mac Pro.

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Watch the video I just posted, swapping out parts is easier than on a Mac Pro. You don't even have to open the box for most things. And try changing out a disc drive or power supply as easily on the Mac.

Lol! They totally are trying to copy Apple's videos they do of new products.

Blaine said:

Lol! They totally are trying to copy Apple's videos they do of new products.

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Yeah but everyone is doing that these days, so who cares? What's important is that the machines look good, functionality wise. Not only that, the top end starts at 2 grand or so. Apple is just absurd on the workstation side these days. They truly do not care whatsoever it seems.

We'll see if we get an update anytime soon, and can go from there.

Yeah but everyone is doing that these days, so who cares? What's important is that the machines look good, functionality wise. Not only that, the top end starts at 2 grand or so. Apple is just absurd on the workstation side these days. They truly do not care whatsoever it seems.

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Okay, so HP's top end series (Z820) starts at $2,299, but it's totally stripped down with an E5-2630, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive and NO graphics card. It's $500 more for the same thing with 8GB of RAM and a Quadro 2000. So really, it's $2,799 for a machine that will actually boot out of the box.

It's pretty hard to pass judgment until Apple releases a new Mac Pro (when and if, that is). Just yesterday, a base quad-core Mac Pro was overpriced by $500 or so compared to the competition, but higher-end configurations (notably dual-processor models) have historically been very much in line with HP and Dell.

TennisandMusic said:

It doesn't REALLY matter what the cases look like. They look fine. It's far more important what you can DO with the machines.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who would want an Apple take on a machine like this. The current Pro just doesn't cut it anymore in any way shape or form.



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Watch the video I just posted, swapping out parts is easier than on a Mac Pro. You don't even have to open the box for most things. And try changing out a disc drive or power supply as easily on the Mac.

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I agree with you up to the point where OSX is missing.

TennisandMusic said:

It doesn't REALLY matter what the cases look like. They look fine. It's far more important what you can DO with the machines.

I'm sure I'm not the only one who would want an Apple take on a machine like this. The current Pro just doesn't cut it anymore in any way shape or form.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpJ30U3erkI

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Watch the video I just posted, swapping out parts is easier than on a Mac Pro. You don't even have to open the box for most things. And try changing out a disc drive or power supply as easily on the Mac.

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A disk drive is hardly challenging on the Mac Pro, is it?

As for that dell design, CPU B is directly behind CPU A.

What idiot thought that would be a good idea.

Concorde Rules said:

A disk drive is hardly challenging on the Mac Pro, is it?

As for that dell design, CPU B is directly behind CPU A.

What idiot thought that would be a good idea.

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Yea Im not sure why people think its hard to replace a disk drive, heck even the DVD was easy to remove (placed BD internal).
The CPU part is a strange one, but I find that of all the duals we've purchased (in the past) from Dell (that came in with single CPUs) we never bothered to upgrade to a second chip since by then the damn thing is useless and ends up a school donation

tony3d said:

Apple just let's it ride. If they'd pull their heads out of the iPad long enough, we could have had a new Mac Pro as well. They seem very content selling people 2 year old technology, at rediculous prices. Whatever. I abandon ship come June.

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You really should consider adding some meaningful information to your posts on this. It's usually the bottom end that's overpriced with Apple relative to competition. Some of their configurations are more competitive than others. What sucked was how much the price shot up for from where it started. They've never addressed some of the features available on Windows boxes, but the first couple iterations of the mac pro were priced in a really competitive manner.

CaptainChunk said:

Okay, so HP's top end series (Z820) starts at $2,299, but it's totally stripped down with an E5-2630, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive and NO graphics card. It's $500 more for the same thing with 8GB of RAM and a Quadro 2000. So really, it's $2,799 for a machine that will actually boot out of the box.

It's pretty hard to pass judgment until Apple releases a new Mac Pro (when and if, that is). Just yesterday, a base quad-core Mac Pro was overpriced by $500 or so compared to the competition, but higher-end configurations (notably dual-processor models) have historically been very much in line with HP and Dell.

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There are a lot of little factors, like the others typically carry three year standard warranties. I don't know about the quality of warranty service from brand to brand, so that would be another matter.

goMac said:

To be honest, Dell's new cases look worse then their old ones.

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I never cared about how a case looks. It's not something that would motivate me to spend more. I only care how it works.

Concorde Rules said:

A disk drive is hardly challenging on the Mac Pro, is it?

As for that dell design, CPU B is directly behind CPU A.

What idiot thought that would be a good idea.

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I'd have to watch it again, but see at least you're commenting on something that actually matters rather than case aesthetics.

Concorde Rules said:

A disk drive is hardly challenging on the Mac Pro, is it?

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With the lid closed to the internals, it is. Think about the context where the machine is rack mounted and you want to get to the hard drives while standing in front in it.

Mac Pro minimally has to be slide out from the rack ( if on sliding drawer) or removed or dedicated significant rack space to open lid into inside the rack (huge dead space).

It is similar to their design requirement for the power supply swap out from behind.

As for that dell design, CPU B is directly behind CPU A.

What idiot thought that would be a good idea.

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Current Mac Pro's have similar design. They are staggered a bit, but there is definitely overlap in the front to back airflow. However, the RAM DIMMs are in the flow of the ingest/exhaust flow too in the Mac Pro design. Dell packs the DIMMs into a different thermal zone with covers ( which presumably have blowers just for each the two DIMMs cover/channels. )
There is also a slight zig-zag in the DIMM covers so they aren't 100% line, but it mostly intersected.

They don't show the inside of the case lid so there may be something there to help direct air that went over the first down into the second. It probably will work better with just the first CPU socket filled though. Dual E5 2690's would be a challenge to keep the second one cool.

Honestly I'm not in the market for a new machine but I just want to see some commitment to the line by Apple.

Wow the new MacPro Mini Stack

deconstruct60 said:

With the lid closed to the internals, it is. Think about the context where the machine is rack mounted and you want to get to the hard drives while standing in front in it.

Mac Pro minimally has to be slide out from the rack ( if on sliding drawer) or removed or dedicated significant rack space to open lid into inside the rack (huge dead space).

It is similar to their design requirement for the power supply swap out from behind.


Current Mac Pro's have similar design. They are staggered a bit, but there is definitely overlap in the front to back airflow. However, the RAM DIMMs are in the flow of the ingest/exhaust flow too in the Mac Pro design. Dell packs the DIMMs into a different thermal zone with covers ( which presumably have blowers just for each the two DIMMs cover/channels. )
There is also a slight zig-zag in the DIMM covers so they aren't 100% line, but it mostly intersected.

They don't show the inside of the case lid so there may be something there to help direct air that went over the first down into the second. It probably will work better with just the first CPU socket filled though. Dual E5 2690's would be a challenge to keep the second one cool.

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Mac Pro isn't a server and was never designed to be a server. So suggesting that it makes a poor server when it is clearly not a server is abit... silly.


As for the DP machines, they are ever so slightly overlapped, but not fully overlapped. Plus the Heatsinks in the DP machines are a lot bigger than the ones used in the Dell.

As for memory sticks getting hot, that really doesn't matter. I've torture tested my Apple dims with ECC off overvolted and over clocked up to 80C and nothing happened.

I look forward to seeing the temperatures of the rear most CPU on that thing that is for sure!

goMac said:

To be honest, Dell's new cases look worse then their old ones.

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Year, they need a white color finish

Concorde Rules said:

Mac Pro isn't a server and was never designed to be a server. So suggesting that it makes a poor server when it is clearly not a server is abit... silly.

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I was outlining why the Dell box made them accessible from the front. People do rack mount workstations in some contexts. That Apple's current design is hostile to that is just as much a bonehead move as putting the CPU sockets 100% behind one another.

Apple even sells the box prepackaged as a server so waving your hands saying it doesn't happen is what is silly.

As for memory sticks getting hot, that really doesn't matter. I've torture tested my Apple dims with ECC off overvolted and over clocked up to 80C and nothing happened.

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It is not that they get hot, it is the fact that the heat from them gets ingested by the downstream CPU on the Mac Pro. "Nothing happened" would be temperature readings for both CPUs would read exactly the same.
Not that there was some catastrophic failure.

i found an interesting thing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjJS...DvjVQa1PpcFM8nLIQlbgkoL1ZKyh0z4JZ8e-lBFSbNyU=
hmm?!

deconstruct60 said:

I was outlining why the Dell box made them accessible from the front. People do rack mount workstations in some contexts. That Apple's current design is hostile to that is just as much a bonehead move as putting the CPU sockets 100% behind one another.

Apple even sells the box prepackaged as a server so waving your hands saying it doesn't happen is what is silly.

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I wasn't saying that it isn't used as a server, but when the G5 was originally designed it being rack mountable was NOT high up their list of priorities

Thereby comparing this dell which has had rack mounting included in the design against something that hasn't is silly

deconstruct60 said:

It is not that they get hot, it is the fact that the heat from them gets ingested by the downstream CPU on the Mac Pro. "Nothing happened" would be temperature readings for both CPUs would read exactly the same.
Not that there was some catastrophic failure.

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DDR3 DIMMS emit ~5W and ~1W at idle from my testing.

So all four DIMMs being hammered is 20W, the CPUs are emitting 95W. Slight difference, no?

Concorde Rules said:

I wasn't saying that it isn't used as a server, but when the G5 was originally designed it being rack mountable was NOT high up their list of priorities

Thereby comparing this dell which has had rack mounting included in the design against something that hasn't is silly

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The major problem is that even the previous generations of Dell/HP/etc. competitive offerings were all rack mountable. It wasn't using the Mac Pro design constraints as a baseline that was the issue.


Things change over 6-7 years. I understand that they didn't put it on the list 6 years ago. The iMac doesn't look like it escaped from the ' Luxo Jr. ' movie now either. To be competitive in the workstation market it is an issue now.

For this newest iteration HP and Dell cleaned up their designs even more so. They've borrowed insights from Apple. It wouldn't be unheard of if Apple borrowed some back.

So all four DIMMs being hammered is 20W, the CPUs are emitting 95W. Slight difference, no?

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It is a significant difference but still present. With front-to-back cooling there is going to be some ingest of upstream heat simply because limited on height/width (depending on orientation).

The over 95W configs that will likely be the problem.