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mrongey

macrumors member
Aug 9, 2011
89
94
I literally quoted you the tray pricing for each one - the pricing OEM vendors pay. You're quoting the retail pricing because it's the only way your argument holds any weight.



The "Trash can" Mac Pros were not viable going forward because they couldn't handle more heat. Apple literally told us this when they announced they were working on a new Mac Pro, over 2 years ago.

They couldn't even handle the current heat. At work my department is limping along with three Trash Cans and two of them have had to go in for heat-related repairs.
 

mrongey

macrumors member
Aug 9, 2011
89
94
Again, we have no idea what price Apple would be paying.
Seriously, you don't have to admit you were wrong but give it up. You've been shown general OEM tray prices and Intel's specific prices. The price difference for Apple wouldn't be anywhere near the retail prices you quoted.
 

Sedulous

macrumors 68030
Dec 10, 2002
2,530
2,577
Seriously, you don't have to admit you were wrong but give it up. You've been shown general OEM tray prices and Intel's specific prices. The price difference for Apple wouldn't be anywhere near the retail prices you quoted.
Apple likely does not pay those prices either. If it makes you feel better to say I am wrong, that is fine. I probably am and have no problem saying so. That said, it still makes no difference. It still seems smart to me to make a consumer tower that shared as many components as possible with the “workstation” version of the Mac Pro. This would still increase volume and uptake of some of the less standard features (like double PCI slots) and all of this would work better with AMD CPU options.
 

theluggage

macrumors G3
Jul 29, 2011
8,000
8,433
... Don't you mean non-Xeon tower?

I thought the whole point of the "ProSumer" machine was that people don't want a Xeon, which expensive ECC Ram, etc etc.

Sorry, I should have just said "tower". I gave a $2k to $4k price range - the lower end wouldn't be Xeon, the higher end could be. Mac Pros have always been Xeon in the past.

The ridiculous idea is that the #4 largest PC maker in the world can't afford to offer more than one type of tower system, when they're the easiest thing to design and build (c.f. laptops and SFF).
 

Zdigital2015

macrumors 601
Jul 14, 2015
4,139
5,620
East Coast, United States
Here’s the issue with a lower price Mac tower, using a Core i5/i7/i9...Apple simply doesn’t want to push everything through the PCH and that’s what would be required.

Using the iMac as the example...the Core i9-9900K CPU in mine has x16 lanes of PCIe 3.0, all of which are dedicated to the GPU,a Radeon Pro Vega 48, to have the optimal GPU performance. This exhausts the PCIe lanes of the CPU and in a typical PC tower, you have either one x16 slot and one at x0 or you can support 2 GPUs at x8/x8 By splitting the bandwidth. Everyone here knows this, right?

Any remaining PCIe slots in a PC (or mythical Mac) tower are routed through the PCH (Intel Z300-Series for 9th Gen CPU-based PCs) which has a total of x24 lanes of PCIe 3.0, which are allocated to the vacant PCIe slots on the motherboard, typically in and x4/x1/x1 scenario with an extra x4 m.2 slot, maybe more, somewhere on the motherboard.

But Apple made that decision for you by integrating a single Titan Ridge controller for a pair of Thunderbolt 3 ports and installing their proprietary slot flash storage in place of leaving a m.2 slot open for the end user.

But what I’m hearing is that a lot of users on this forum want those slots, preferably x4/x4 AND the super fast storage and the Thunderbolt 3 ports, which is where Apple says...nope. Simply, nope. Because they’ve seen what happens when you try to push super fast SSD and I/O AND a couple of PCIe x4 cards (10GbE and another m.2 carrier card) through the PCH, only to have it slow down to a crawl trying to shove all that data through Intel’s puny, pathetic and tiny DMI 3.0 bus to the CPU. Something they have been doing since the inception of the Core i-Series.

This alone, should be enough for users to understand why Apple will never build a Core i-Series based tower. The engineers, like them or not, are paid to make the best decisions in the interest of Apple and of you, the users, which is not to try and crush every ounce of data through DMI from the PCH to the CPU and watch performance go in the sh!tcan as unsuspecting users try to cram more spinning rust SATA storage and 4 cheap-o PCIe SSDs on a single carrier board through a inadequate pipe. It‘s not what the engineers are paid to do, it makes Apple look bad (PC vendors don’t care, they are simply pushing tin), and it hurts customer trust. So, they went with the iMac and the Mac mini on the mid- and low-end and then moved to Xeon on the high-end where Intel deigned to put in x64 lanes of PCIe 3.0 on the CPU die itself.

As for the other parts, they would be common amongst the iMac and a mythical Slotbox Mac (GbE, USB 3, 802.11AC, BT 4.2/5.0 and DRAM is usually 2 or 4 slots, with support up to 64GB or now 128GB of DRAM.

So, basically, the only real objections to an iMac is that Apple chose your display and GPU for you (not some sh!tty Acer 24” from Costco) and made the storage proprietary (again, not some cheap Adata NVMe crap on special at New Egg) and took away a couple of slots that weren’t going to perform well anyways, because, if you really needed them to perform well, you wouldn’t be buying a Core i-Series PC, right?

I’m pretty much left with the answer that rings true once you get to the heart of the matter. You want to pay Apple the least amount of money you possibly can for the privilege of using macOS and getting free updates every year while tarting it up with cheap components and then demanding help from Apple Support if it falls down and goes boom because you put cheap crap in it.

And please spare me the arguments about customer choice, they didn’t work on Tim Cook, because he isn’t leaving money on the table (’cause it’s his job NOT to leave money on the table), it’s about getting what you want as cheap as possible and it’s on Apple to figure out how to stay profitable, am I right?

Hopefully, Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo will learn this lesson in the next few years and start jacking up the prices on PCs so that they can stay in business and restricting the crap components that they put into their builds, because that’s what I keep hearing from the so-called Windows PCMR people is the reason that we’re having Windows issues. It would behoove the Top 4 PC OEMs to rethink the race to the bottom and start building themselves a sustainable business instead. Anyone who doesn’t like them doing that would be better off building their own rig anyways, or at least that’s what I keep hearing bellowed around these forums.

So go do it. Otherwise, I’ll trust that Apple knows what they’re doing, even if I don’t always like it or don’t always want to pay for it. Meanwhile, Apple isn’t going to give you what you want, because they figured it out years, even decades ago, after nearly going belly up trying to compete in the shark-infested waters of the PC that staying alive means swimming against the current.
 
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Stephen.R

Suspended
Nov 2, 2018
4,356
4,747
Thailand
It still seems smart to me to make a consumer tower that shared as many components as possible with the “workstation” version of the Mac Pro.
If you aren’t using a Xeon a lot of the components simply won’t make any sense or work, and other components would be over kill for such a consumer system. That’s my point: sharing components doesn’t make much sense if it’s different enough to be at consumer prices.

The ridiculous idea is that the #4 largest PC maker in the world can't afford to offer more than one type of tower system
I don’t think it’s about can’t afford to. I think they just don’t want to. Apple have never catered to every single desire of potential customers.
 

Sedulous

macrumors 68030
Dec 10, 2002
2,530
2,577
If you aren’t using a Xeon a lot of the components simply won’t make any sense or work, and other components would be over kill for such a consumer system. That’s my point: sharing components doesn’t make much sense if it’s different enough to be at consumer prices.


I don’t think it’s about can’t afford to. I think they just don’t want to. Apple have never catered to every single desire of potential customers.
The logic board still is made of mostly the same parts. The case is still the same. The fans are still the same. The WiFi, power, storage, audio, etc etc etc are all the same. The GPU and all the parts stuffed into the PCI slots are the same. This leads me to why using AMD CPUs would be better: regardless of price point, they all have more lanes to support all those PCI devices, are PCIe 4.0, better IPC, support RAM and ECC RAM, are lower priced and perform better in most of the applications Apple seemed to have in mind for the Mac Pro.

We might be partly on the same page about ~why~ Apple does not want to sell such a machine. Upgradability. Yeah, the new Mac Mini has RAM modules but now soldered storage. The iMac and iMac Pro, and every other Apple product is now largely unserviceable with BTO prices that are high... and all of them are VERY thermally constrained (and whoever was the dingleberry that designed the MacBook Air thermal management should go back to school: A fan that does not blow on the heat sink!?!). Apple very much enjoys the planned obsolescence that probably features very high in their product design.

I am sorry my very short post has taken this thread far off topic. Yay, bring on the proprietary 8TB SSD option, thanks Apple!
 
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mrongey

macrumors member
Aug 9, 2011
89
94
Otherwise, I’ll trust that Apple knows what they’re doing, even if I don’t always like it or don’t always want to pay for it. Meanwhile, Apple isn’t going to give you what you want, because they figured it out years, even decades ago, after nearly going belly up trying to compete in the shark-infested waters of the PC that staying alive means swimming against the current.
Yup. The video team at my company (before they were fired and I was hired as part of rebuilding from the ground up) spent a lot of money trying to build a high-end hackintosh and just ended up with a bunch of parts that wouldn't work together. When you get into the high-end like this you REALLY need to know what you're doing, and in most cases it's better to just trust that the professionals know what they're doing.

Apple likely does not pay those prices either. If it makes you feel better to say I am wrong, that is fine. I probably am and have no problem saying so. That said, it still makes no difference. It still seems smart to me to make a consumer tower that shared as many components as possible with the “workstation” version of the Mac Pro. This would still increase volume and uptake of some of the less standard features (like double PCI slots) and all of this would work better with AMD CPU options.
Except what you're suggesting wouldn't work. Putting in a lower end processor would only save Apple a few hundred dollars, and they would have to rework the rest of the machine. I don't think we'll ever see cheaper machine in this form factor. The iMac Pro was introduced as a solution for the pros who absolutely couldn't wait for the Mac Pro and it starts at $5,000 - so no one should have expected the Mac Pro to be any cheaper than that. Apple is going to want to keep product line exclusivity for a while, if only because people are paying an R&D premium right now, but I could see them introducing a smaller Mac Mini Pro in 2-3 years.
 

Sedulous

macrumors 68030
Dec 10, 2002
2,530
2,577
Yup. The video team at my company (before they were fired and I was hired as part of rebuilding from the ground up) spent a lot of money trying to build a high-end hackintosh and just ended up with a bunch of parts that wouldn't work together. When you get into the high-end like this you REALLY need to know what you're doing, and in most cases it's better to just trust that the professionals know what they're doing.


Except what you're suggesting wouldn't work. Putting in a lower end processor would only save Apple a few hundred dollars, and they would have to rework the rest of the machine. I don't think we'll ever see cheaper machine in this form factor. The iMac Pro was introduced as a solution for the pros who absolutely couldn't wait for the Mac Pro and it starts at $5,000 - so no one should have expected the Mac Pro to be any cheaper than that. Apple is going to want to keep product line exclusivity for a while, if only because people are paying an R&D premium right now, but I could see them introducing a smaller Mac Mini Pro in 2-3 years.
Rework the entire machine or a section of the logic board? Agreed, Apple is most definitely trying to position this outside of mainstream market.

It is instructive that people are already posting hackintosh builds with Ryzen CPUs (not even Threadripper) with competitive performance at half the price. Four years from now when the Mac Pro is still languishing with the same CPU (as we all know, Intel’s “new” is the same “old”) and no new GPU modules that take advantage of that double PCI and still at the same $6000 base price... maybe then Apple will finally make a consumer version.
 
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PickUrPoison

macrumors G3
Sep 12, 2017
8,131
10,720
Sunnyvale, CA
You can max-out a Mac mini
But it doesn’t have the excellent display the iMac Pro has, which is perfect for photographers.

Many pros don’t even step up to the iMac Pro, the regular iMac has all the power they need.

That said, a mini, maxed out or otherwise, can be a great option for certain workloads. It’s a matter of selecting the solution that best meets a user’s requirements.
 

silvermacpro

macrumors member
Sep 27, 2017
73
-23
Approximately how much it will cost the Mac Pro configured with a graphics card AMD Radeon Pro W5700X?
 

wilhoitm

macrumors 6502a
Jul 22, 2002
895
1,080
It is being guessed to be maybe a $1,000 card. So to substitute it in place of the existing 580X would be +600; if you wanted a pair of them you’d be looking at +1,600.

I ordered the Mac Pro with wheels so mine does not ship until the end of January! I may cancel the order with the 580X and switch to the W5700X but it might be good to have 2 GPUs anyway! Orders with the Mac Pro wheels don't ship until mid February now! I am guessing around $1000 to $1200 for the W5700X.
 
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Apple Knowledge Navigator

macrumors 68040
Mar 28, 2010
3,685
12,849
You can max-out a Mac mini
Yes. And you would still need to purchase an external graphics solution (Blackmagic Pro egpu - £1,000+) and the same display panel (LG Ultrafine - £1,000).
This takes you close to the cost of an iMac Pro but without the super fast SSD, thermal solution, all in one design or I/O.
[automerge]1577611866[/automerge]
Because the iMac Pro costs about the same and it is not expandable or modular! Think about future growth!
That depends entirely on your needs; and more appropriately, how often you feel the need to ‘grow’. If you’re doing graphic design work, then something like an iMac Pro is essentially future-proofed for many years.
I believe you’re being very pedantic.
 

silvermacpro

macrumors member
Sep 27, 2017
73
-23
It is being guessed to be maybe a $1,000 card. So to substitute it in place of the existing 580X would be +600; if you wanted a pair of them you’d be looking at +1,600.

Thanks so much for help. I'am waiting, that video card in Apple Mac Pro configurator
 
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