New Mac system advice

josh bear · Mar 3, 2014

Hi All,

I would appreciate your thoughts. I would talk this through with my other half but frankly she adopts that blank look I adopt when she starts talking to me about handbags!

I am a longterm mac user. My hobby is photography and for a time I was doing a lot of editing. This is no longer the case. However back in 2009 I was and to help I bought a quad core mac pro and two Apple LED 27inch displays. I have multiple backups of my raw files and have 4 external drives and 4 internal drives. That said at that time storage was limited had each drive is between 1 and 2TB so my files are split across multiple drives!

For the last two years, time for photography has pretty much gone and I find myself using my 2012 macbook pro (retina) for the small amount of editing I do do.

I am now considering replacing the increasingly slow mac pro with a new iMac. I would also replace the usb 2.0 external drives with 2 external thunderbolt drives, say 4GB each. Obviously the LED Cinema displays would go as well.

All of this would:
1. Allow me to speed up my system and remove years of hard drive clutter
2. Allow me to have faster access to all my files via thunderbolt
3. Allow me to reclaim significant space in my home office i.e. losing the two displays and the rather large hunk of metal that is the mac pro
4. Simplify my filling system. I am slightly OCD and the whole having files across multiple drives is beginning to bug me

I have briefly looked at replacing the mac pro with a new one but frankly I think that is far more processing power than I will ever need.

So what do you think? Does this sound like a plan? The alternatives are to wipe the mac pro and reinstall everything i want but that won't get me thunderbolt / allow me to speed up my system / reclaim space.

Thanks for any guidance

Josh

GovtLawyer · Mar 3, 2014

What sized monitor?

I also have a photography hobby. I use Lightroom and import at mostly at one time around 200 20MB sized photos. However, I never actually batchprocess that many of the same time. Depending on what you wanted 21.5 or 27 inch monitor, I think the iMac is a perfect solution for you.

I would definitely get 16MB of Ram. That is the max for the 21 inch. I do not think you would need more than that even if you got the 27 inch.

I would get a 226 or larger SSD. I use a fusion drive, but it seems that all of your files are externally stored to begin with.

I have the NVIDIA 750, and it is more than enough for me, as I do not use the computer for graphics intensive gaming.

Hope that helps. I'm sure others here have differing opinions. Whatever you do, the iMac would save you the space you want, and it is beautiful and elegantly built.

josh bear · Mar 4, 2014

Thanks for the reply. Much appreciated. I think Imac is the way to go. I am just looking for power with simplicity.

Josh

yjchua95 · Mar 4, 2014

josh bear said:
Hi All,

I would appreciate your thoughts. I would talk this through with my other half but frankly she adopts that blank look I adopt when she starts talking to me about handbags!

I am a longterm mac user. My hobby is photography and for a time I was doing a lot of editing. This is no longer the case. However back in 2009 I was and to help I bought a quad core mac pro and two Apple LED 27inch displays. I have multiple backups of my raw files and have 4 external drives and 4 internal drives. That said at that time storage was limited had each drive is between 1 and 2TB so my files are split across multiple drives!

For the last two years, time for photography has pretty much gone and I find myself using my 2012 macbook pro (retina) for the small amount of editing I do do.

I am now considering replacing the increasingly slow mac pro with a new iMac. I would also replace the usb 2.0 external drives with 2 external thunderbolt drives, say 4GB each. Obviously the LED Cinema displays would go as well.

All of this would:
1. Allow me to speed up my system and remove years of hard drive clutter
2. Allow me to have faster access to all my files via thunderbolt
3. Allow me to reclaim significant space in my home office i.e. losing the two displays and the rather large hunk of metal that is the mac pro
4. Simplify my filling system. I am slightly OCD and the whole having files across multiple drives is beginning to bug me

I have briefly looked at replacing the mac pro with a new one but frankly I think that is far more processing power than I will ever need.

So what do you think? Does this sound like a plan? The alternatives are to wipe the mac pro and reinstall everything i want but that won't get me thunderbolt / allow me to speed up my system / reclaim space.

Thanks for any guidance

Josh

The 21.5" is pretty powerful if you load it up with an i7 and 16GB of RAM.

The GT750M can actually handle quite some games (it outperforms the GTX660M because Apple uses the GDDR5 variant of the GT750M).

Having the i7 in the 21.5" makes a huge difference as the 3.1GHz i7-4770S in the 21.5" outperforms the 3.4GHz i5-4670 in the high-end 27". Source: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench3/compare/191168?baseline=446117

Go for the 256GB SSD for pure speed. If you can afford it, make it a 512GB, although the performance difference between 256GB and 512GB isn't that great (660/720 MB/s in the 256GB versus 720/750 MB/s in the 512GB). These results are from my 21.5" (256GB) and 27" (512GB).

josh bear · Mar 4, 2014

Thanks for the link, very useful. I am in the enviable postion that I have put aside sufficient funds for this project so will look at the larger SSD.

Best Regards

Josh

yjchua95 · Mar 4, 2014

josh bear said:
Thanks for the link, very useful. I am in the enviable postion that I have put aside sufficient funds for this project so will look at the larger SSD.

Best Regards

Josh

Oh and by the way, since you're mainly working off external drives, you could probably go for just the 256GB and use it as a scratch workspace

Note that for the 256GB variant, it comes in SanDisk (SD) and Samsung (SM) variants. The SD variant is about 150MB/s slower than the SM variant in writes.

Meanwhile, the 512GB only comes in the SM flavour.

Intelligent · Mar 4, 2014

josh bear said:
Hi All,

I would appreciate your thoughts. I would talk this through with my other half but frankly she adopts that blank look I adopt when she starts talking to me about handbags!

I am a longterm mac user. My hobby is photography and for a time I was doing a lot of editing. This is no longer the case. However back in 2009 I was and to help I bought a quad core mac pro and two Apple LED 27inch displays. I have multiple backups of my raw files and have 4 external drives and 4 internal drives. That said at that time storage was limited had each drive is between 1 and 2TB so my files are split across multiple drives!

For the last two years, time for photography has pretty much gone and I find myself using my 2012 macbook pro (retina) for the small amount of editing I do do.

I am now considering replacing the increasingly slow mac pro with a new iMac. I would also replace the usb 2.0 external drives with 2 external thunderbolt drives, say 4GB each. Obviously the LED Cinema displays would go as well.

All of this would:
1. Allow me to speed up my system and remove years of hard drive clutter
2. Allow me to have faster access to all my files via thunderbolt
3. Allow me to reclaim significant space in my home office i.e. losing the two displays and the rather large hunk of metal that is the mac pro
4. Simplify my filling system. I am slightly OCD and the whole having files across multiple drives is beginning to bug me

I have briefly looked at replacing the mac pro with a new one but frankly I think that is far more processing power than I will ever need.

So what do you think? Does this sound like a plan? The alternatives are to wipe the mac pro and reinstall everything i want but that won't get me thunderbolt / allow me to speed up my system / reclaim space.

Thanks for any guidance

Josh

You can't "be" Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, you have it
and have you considered CBT?

josh bear · Mar 4, 2014

Thanks. Any advice on the topic?

Best regards
Josh

josh bear · Mar 10, 2014

Just wanted to finish the thread. First sincere thanks to all who responded with advice. Very much appreciated.

Spent a while looking at all the options and in the end decided to rebuild my 2009 mac pro. Fitted a couple of 3 TB Hds internally, added a usb 3 card and invested in 2 external usb3 hard drives. Finally when I have sorted all the hardware I will install maverick.

I think this will keep me going a while and for a total cost of approx £450 as opposed to the £3k I was going to spend on a new iMac + two thunderbolt drives.

Best regards

Josh

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