Finally pulled the trigger!

[smacman]

Hey everyone. Been researching for a month or so now and I've finally pulled the trigger on the following system.

One 2.93GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon
6GB (3x2GB)
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB
One 18x SuperDrive
One 30" ACD

I've bought an Intel X25-M G2 160gb which will be my boot / applications drive. I also plan to purchase two more 1TB WD Black drives, as well as a 2TB drive of some sort for backup. 2 of the 1TB drives will be setup with software Raid 0 for data, and the other 1TB drive will boot Windows 7. My only reservation was with the 6GB of RAM. Unfortunately, I'll have to wait a while before I can afford to order 12gb, and 3GB would have been inadequate for the time being.

Thanks to all that participate in these forums for the wealth of information.

 

[Cindori]

we kinda need a "just got my mac pro" - collection thread

 

[3587]

Sweet! Where did you get the SSD from and how much did you pay for it?

 

[smacman]

Ordered it from NCIX.COM and paid 529.99 CAD. I have noticed the price has since been raised to 549.99 but there is still stock..

 

[uujamchen]

Congrats!! Sweet system..

 

[ntrigue]

Congrats! That's a beautifully configured Apple machine.

 

[smacman]

The system was delivered a couple of days ago and I could not be happier with it. The first thing I did was open it up and add 2 WD 1TB RE3 drives (Raid 0) and 1 Hitachi 2 TB drive for backup. I then installed my Intel 160GB G2 SSD (OSX and Apps) into the secondary optical bay. Finally, I reinstalled OSX and all my apps onto the SSD. All I can say is Wow! Pics attached..

 

[Transporteur]

Congratulations!
Nice setup. Pretty much exactly the same than mine and I couldn't be happier with it (besides of a bigger display of course ).
No wait, one thing that bothers me are the WD blacks. Great performance, but pretty loud compared to the rest of the system.

BTW: Copying the pre-installed system from the WD drive to the SSD using Carbon Copy Cloner would have saved you more than an hour.

 

[smacman]

Congratulations!
Nice setup. Pretty much exactly the same than mine and I couldn't be happier with it (besides of a bigger display of course ).
No wait, one thing that bothers me are the WD blacks. Great performance, but pretty loud compared to the rest of the system.

BTW: Copying the pre-installed system from the WD drive to the SSD using Carbon Copy Cloner would have saved you more than an hour.

Believe it or not, it only took about 15 minutes to install OSX freshly onto the SSD. I ended up installing Windows 7 on the factory installed 1 TB WD Black and I know what you mean about them being noisy. Strangely my WD RE3 drives are almost silent.

 

[Transporteur]

15 minutes?
I don't think that I can top that using CCC.

 

[jetjaguar]

beautiful setup man .. im definitely jealous
I cannot wait till i can purchase mine in 6 months