iMac Pro Base Model Teardown Reveals 2x SSD RAID Configuration and Four 8GB DIMM Modules

[Darmok N Jalad]

Regarding RAID0, if you don’t want that, can’t you just break the RAID configuration, reinstall MacOS and set it up as 2 independent disks?

Either way, you still need an external backup. There are many ways to lose the data beyond a SSD total failure.

 

[Zdigital2015]

Pros all keep their DATA on external storage. Only the easily-replaced OS and Applications ends up on the boot volume.

I agree 100%, I would stay with the default 1TB module and use the upgrade cost to purchase a TB3 RAID for my images, video, collateral material...in some cases, the applications want you to do that to maximize performance...any Pro worth his salt knows this or knows enough to find out.

 

[pearvsapple]

2666MHz ECC RAMs are too slow and quite pointless for non-servers.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Yep RAID 0 sounds way too dangerous.

I understand that they wouldn't be able to reach the 3GB/s speeds but I could settle with half of that speed if that meant a single SSD.

I'm confused by this... because a single Samsung 960 PRO MVNe is advertised at 3500MB/s read and 2100MB/s write.

And this drive is over a year old at this point.

I have no idea why Apple needs two drive to reach that speed.

However... the only way Apple could offer 4TB of storage would be to RAID0 them. Perhaps that's why they went down this route.

You're right though... RAID0 is crazy for a boot/data drive. Backup, backup, backup!

 

[itguy06]

Unfortunately this teardown reveals a typical Apple thermal paste mess. Proper thermal paste application impacts both performance and lifespan. Apple pays so much attention to so many tiny details in all its products. It's always amazed me that their thermal paste application gets such short shrift.

As long as the heatsink can dissipate as much heat as the CPU needs to work without throttling it makes no difference in performance as Apple's computers can't be overclocked. And even then as long as the CPU is not throttling it won't make any difference in performance.
Lifespan? As long as the CPU is operating within its performance design parameters it will still last longer than anyone will care to use it.

 

[CWallace]

The 5K iMac's SSD can hit over 3000MB/s in peak reads with 1MB or larger data sets, but smaller data sets incurs a not-insignificant performance hit to the point the 2015 iMac's SSD is faster. I am guessing Apple is going to simultaneous writes on two SSDs to improve performance with those smaller data sets that most applications use.

As to data reliability, anyone not backing up their data at least daily is playing with fire. And as the T2 chip encrypts data being written to the SSDs by default, even if there was only a single SSD, if it failed your data would be unrecoverable anyway, so again, you should be backing up at least daily because if you need a warranty replacement, you will likely have to restore from that backup.

And even with the RAM being upgradeable from an authorized provider, as you really need to buy it in sets of 4 to replace all the existing RAM plus the price of the fix and the time your machine will be out for said fix even OWC is currently recommending you just buy the amount of RAM you need (at least 64GB) rather than take 32GB and upgrade later.

As to CPU upgrades, the 8-core and 10-core have lower base clock speeds (and lower Turbo Boost for the 8-core) than the "retail versions". The 14-core and 18-core speeds are identical, so chances are those will be "drop-in" replacements and the 10-core also should be fine though it might throttle a bit when you are using all 10 cores depending on the thermal envelope.

 

[Michael Scrip]

NEWSFLASH. You've got absolutely no idea when that Mac Pro is going to ship (other than to say five years after the last version) or how user upgradeable it is going to be. Apple was very careful in describing it as "modular" which isn't the same thing as being user serviceable.

Exactly.

After reviewing the transcripts from the Mac Pro "apology" meeting back in April... it sounds like Apple is going to modularity for their sake... not the users' sake.

Apple was unable to offer upgraded parts in the tcMP for various reasons... and they don't want that to happen again.

They want to offer updated models year-after-year. But that doesn't necessarily mean the user can make upgrades.

 

[CWallace]

Apple was very careful in describing it as "modular" which isnt the same thing as being user serviceable.

After reviewing the transcripts from the Mac Pro "apology" meeting back in April... it sounds like Apple is going to modularity for their sake... not the users' sake.

The latest comments from Apple PR however note that the new Mac Pro will be both modular and upgradeable. Of course, what is upgradeable by the user and what is upgradeable by Apple and third parties is yet to be determined. The 2013 model is upgradeable in terms of CPU, RAM and SSD (the latter two directly user-upgradeable and the CPU with some more effort).

I expect RAM to be user upgradeable. I also expect the T2 chip (or it's successor) will be used with the SSDs which will forego them from being upgradeable. I expect CPUs to be upgradeable (at least within the socket family) though likely requiring more effort. The big question will be GPU upgradeability as that is the component that advances the quickest.

 

[Zdigital2015]

2666MHz ECC RAMs are too slow and quite pointless for non-servers.

And yet that is the fastest speed currently officially supported on Intel’s Xeon-W CPUs...not sure what your point is...that Apple should have used overclocked DDR4?

 

[mikeboss]

The latest comments from Apple PR however note that the new Mac Pro will be both modular and upgradeable. Of course, what is upgradeable by the user and what is upgradeable by Apple and third parties is yet to be determined.

since Apple doesn't advertise the iMac Pro as upgradeable, I expect MacPro7,1 to be user upgradeable.

 

[dogslobber]

I've never used a wrist strap in 20 years. No fried components, and we're talking lots of system builds. As long as you take reasonable precautions, static isn't really an issue.

Maybe, but you should always take appropriate ESD precautions as static electricity will kill your components sooner or later.

 

[Glideslope]

I am halfway down the Video, shame the lighting is so bad, music sucks too by the way.

That aside, what a nice looking machine.


Oh, and no anti static wrist strap, WTF, or do they throw this one away.

They were barefoot on cement.

 

[dogslobber]

Always wondered about this. Technically is it actually a RAID given that the first letter in the acronym stands for redundant?

RAID 0 has always been classed as such even way back in the early 90s when I first configured an IBM RAID system.

 

[phobos]

You seem to contradict yourself. If you know that any high-performance SSD is using stripe storage, whats the problem? And sure, if one of the storage chips go, you loose the entire package. Despite all this, the SSDs were proven to be rather reliable. There is nothing new that Apple is doing here, its how it worked for years now, they are just switching more of the chips in parallel. Twice of a very low chance is still a very low chance. And in case of a unlikely failure, you have your backups. So nothing really changes from the practical perspective.

I'm not contradicting myself. What I'm saying is that I understand the reasons they went for RAID0 (to get really high performance), but I would be willing to sacrifice performance for a safe volume.
RAID0 is just the most dangerous way to build a drive, especially if that drive is your startup disk. If it was a scratch disk for final cut I would say go for it. But for a startup drive? Definitely not a good idea.

Having backups of your drive isn't really solving the inherent issues with a RAID0 drive. Do you really want to go through the hassle of rebuilding your system because of an issue with RAID0? And once you go through the trouble rebuilding your system, who can guarantee that you won't hit the same problem again in a short time?
Having a RAID 0 for a startup volume is just asking for trouble.

 

[Marx55]

A display may last 20 years, but who wants to use a CRT-based monitor or an 800X600 15" LCD from 1997? I am not following your logic at all on this one.

I am using an Apple Cinema Display 22-inch (1600 x 1024 pixels) from beginning year 2000 (almost 18 years now!), and it works great! I have used it with several Macs since then. That is protecting the environment.

 

[Michael Scrip]

The latest comments from Apple PR however note that the new Mac Pro will be both modular and upgradeable. Of course, what is upgradeable by the user and what is upgradeable by Apple and third parties is yet to be determined. The 2013 model is upgradeable in terms of CPU, RAM and SSD (the latter two directly user-upgradeable and the CPU with some more effort).

I expect RAM to be user upgradeable. I also expect the T2 chip (or it's successor) will be used with the SSDs which will forego them from being upgradeable. I expect CPUs to be upgradeable (at least within the socket family) though likely requiring more effort. The big question will be GPU upgradeability as that is the component that advances the quickest.

Yeah... that's the kicker.

Wouldn't it be nice to be able to swap out a standard PCIe GPU for another standard PCIe GPU after a couple years?

But hey... if Apple makes it so they or an authorized 3rd party can swap out parts... that will be better than the "current" Mac Pro.

I just worry that they will get all clever and use non-standard parts to suit their needs. (tiny custom chassis)

Let's say Apple invents some proprietary GPU interconnect... but they lose interest after 4 years. You'd be stuck. Again.

It's frustrating when Dell, HP, Lenovo, basically EVERY other manufacturer goes in one direction... and then there's Apple going somewhere else.

 

[jon.siddi]

This whole RAID thing has me curious if they're planning to re-add RAID support within 10.13 soon.
As of right now, from recent attempts to upgrade my OS, RAID is not supported in 10.13 (.2).

So hopefully, if this is using RAID (unless the OS doesn't know about it), then Apple will be adding that functionality back in very soon.

 

[haddy]

RAID 0 with two drives doubles your chances of a complete volume failure. I would never want all my data (or even worse, a "Pro's" data) sitting on a RAID 0 volume. It seems it wouldn't take more than a little "glitch" to render your drives useless.

Okay this is from wikipedia .....

"Correlated failures[edit]
In practice, the drives are often the same age (with similar wear) and subject to the same environment. Since many drive failures are due to mechanical issues (which are more likely on older drives), this violates the assumptions of independent, identical rate of failure amongst drives; failures are in fact statistically correlated.[11] In practice, the chances for a second failure before the first has been recovered (causing data loss) are higher than the chances for random failures. In a study of about 100,000 drives, the probability of two drives in the same cluster failing within one hour was four times larger than predicted by the exponential statistical distribution—which characterizes processes in which events occur continuously and independently at a constant average rate. The probability of two failures in the same 10-hour period was twice as large as predicted by an exponential distribution.[72]"

 

[Mafoob]

I am halfway down the Video, shame the lighting is so bad, music sucks too by the way.

That aside, what a nice looking machine.


Oh, and no anti static wrist strap, WTF, or do they throw this one away.

I understand what you're saying but technology now has many many many safeguards against static and is not completely necessary to have a strap. Although it's always best to be careful.

 

[zorinlynx]

RAID 0 with two drives doubles your chances of a complete volume failure. I would never want all my data (or even worse, a "Pro's" data) sitting on a RAID 0 volume. It seems it wouldn't take more than a little "glitch" to render your drives useless.

1) You have backups, don't you? If you don't, this is all moot. Any disk volume can fail, RAID or not.
2) SSDs have become so reliable that even doubling the probability of a failure doesn't matter much.

We have many dozens of iMacs in computer labs where I work; back when they were hard drive equipped we typically had a hard drive failure or two a year. Ever since we started buying the SSD-equipped iMacs, zero SSD failures (or failures of any sort; these guys are reliable!) have occurred.

So don't worry about it, it'll probably be fine, and if it does happen to fail, you have your backups.

 

[ValSalva]

As long as the heatsink can dissipate as much heat as the CPU needs to work without throttling it makes no difference in performance as Apple's computers can't be overclocked. And even then as long as the CPU is not throttling it won't make any difference in performance.
Lifespan? As long as the CPU is operating within its performance design parameters it will still last longer than anyone will care to use it.

A lot of ifs. I admit I have never changed the thermal paste on any of my Macs but I was much more careful than Apple when building my own computers in the past. There's this too.

 

[CWallace]

I just worry that they will get all clever and use non-standard parts to suit their needs. (tiny custom chassis).

I'm optimistic that the GPU will be user-upgradeable and not use a proprietary design. The reason for this is Apple was not going to do a new Mac Pro. The iMac Pro was to be the next top-end Mac to carry the line forward and the trash can would have been end-of-lifed and not replaced.

That Apple has now changed their minds to give us a new Mac Pro is, IMO, solely due to the iMac Pro not being fully upgradeable just like the 2013 Mac Pro was not and a realization / acceptance that this lack of upgradeability is not acceptable to the majority of people willing to pay the prices Apple charges for such a product. Therefore Apple has to make the component that changes the quickest - the GPU - user-upgradeable.

To make the Mac Pro's GPU non-upgradeable serves no purpose. Even if you believe Apple would do so out of spite (and unfortunately plenty of people seem to believe that), this model is not going to sell very many (as a percentage of all Mac desktop sales, much less all Mac sales) if it is very upgradeable. If it is not, it's not going to sell at all and Apple has better things to do with their money than make a product that will not sell just to spite the "haters".

 

[Michael Scrip]

I'm optimistic that the GPU will be user-upgradeable and not use a proprietary design. The reason for this is Apple was not going to do a new Mac Pro. The iMac Pro was to be the next top-end Mac to carry the line forward and the trash can would have been end-of-lifed and not replaced.

That Apple has now changed their minds to give us a new Mac Pro is, IMO, solely due to the iMac Pro not being fully upgradeable just like the 2013 Mac Pro was not and a realization / acceptance that this lack of upgradeability is not acceptable to the majority of people willing to pay the prices Apple charges for such a product. Therefore Apple has to make the component that changes the quickest - the GPU - user-upgradeable.

To make the Mac Pro's GPU non-upgradeable serves no purpose. Even if you believe Apple would do so out of spite (and unfortunately plenty of people seem to believe that), this model is not going to sell very many (as a percentage of all Mac desktop sales, much less all Mac sales) if it is very upgradeable. If it is not, it's not going to sell at all and Apple has better things to do with their money than make a product that will not sell just to spite the "haters".

Just so we're clear... this is the kind of card that needs to plug into the modular Mac Pro:

The PCIe standard exists for a reason. This is a solved problem.

For Apple to go in ANY other direction... would be a mistake.

 

[Detnator]

Wow. Some people here make me really lose faith in the human race.

• Do you seriously believe Apple is building RAID0 into this thing to try to cut costs??? Good grief. I’ve been asking Apple to build machines with multiple striped drives - for the performance gains - for years. I’m so glad they’re finally doing it and why the hell they haven’t done it before now is beyond me. The performance gains far far outweigh the chance of lost data. Going on about RAID 0 doubling the chance of failure is idiotic at best. The chances are so low with today’s SSDs that doubling that figure is still so insignificantly small it’s meaningless. There are any number of ways your data could get hosed. The chances of you accidentally burning your office down are far higher than the chances of your internal SSD failing. Just back up your data for goodness sake. With 3GB/s instead of 1.5, you’ll restore it all in half the time! Please stop trying to persuade Apple not to double the performance of internal storage for the rest of us because of your misplaced paranoia.

• Compaining about this thing not being upgradeable is equally idiotic. This machine is designed for a pretty specific market and for that market it’s perfect. They will lease tha machine with AppleCare for three years then they will write it off and get a new one. Some may buy it and then when they want to upgrade they will sell it (these things hold their value very well) and then buy the next one. Believe it or not that’s how some of us prefer to work. This machine is perfect for those two markets. If that’s not you, fine, don’t buy it and wait for the modular one they’re promising. I agree with you that they shouldn’t have stopped making modular pro machines. But they’ve heard you and they’re doing it. Trying to say this machine shouldn’t exist and the modular approach is the ONLY approach pros want is so unbelievably short sighted.

• And complaining about the price... again, you don’t get it. Firstly price comparisons have been done and for what’s in this thing the price is very reasonable (in some cases less) compared to DIY builds with the same parts or other companies’ offerings. Again, this machine is designed for a certain market - the kind of people doing work where every second they’re sitting around waiting for their hardware to render or calculate something costs big money. This thing will pay for itself and then some in a matter of days. The performance in this thing (and hopefully in the modular one that’s coming which will also be expensive) is worth every darn cent to those people and they wouldn’t have it any other way. They WANT a machine that spares no expense in saving them time. If you’re doing that kind of work then you get it, and these expensive pro machines are for you. If you’re not doing that kind of work then this machine is not for you. Go buy the standard iMac for half the price and you won’t notice the slightest difference. But please don’t get in the way of those of us who do need this kind of performance and are willing to pay fair market price for what it actually is.


If you don’t understand those three points then this machine is just not for you. But that doesn’t mean it’s not for other people who are in the market this thing is designed for. So for the love of ...

... oh what’s the point? Complainers will complain. Sigh. I suppose now I brace myself for all the people about to give me the fanboi accusation routine...

 

[itguy06]

A lot of ifs. I admit I have never changed the thermal paste on any of my Macs but I was much more careful than Apple when building my own computers in the past. There's this too.

Not really a lot of If's. You'll know if your computer is thermally throttling - fans will be going crazy and clock speed and performance will go down. The idea of keeping cool as possible is more for overclocking as you generate more heat so you need to get rid of more heat. It does little for longevity as long as it's within the design parameters. I'm hoping Apple put the iMac in an environmental chamber, cranked it up to the max they support and ran it at 100% load for days on end to make sure their cooling solution works.

I do enterprise IT and have for 20 years. I've had experience with datacenter cooling failures where the remaining capacity was not enough to keep the DC under 90F for many hours due to parts availability. The servers throttled back, fans were crazy, and all lived their expected 3-5 year life. Not optimal by any stretch of the imagination but no harm done. These things are far tougher than most people think.