M2 Ultra, my only regret

[jpefjr]

How quiet is "quietly". Can you hear a fan ? Is there other noise going one ?

Yes, if I listen closely I can hear the fan. There's not any other noise going on. But the fan is just barely perceptible. Way quieter than the A/C when it kicks on, and there's no rattle from the A/C, just the noise of the air coming out of the register.

 

[Killerbob]

I have my fans set at 1100rpm, and no one in my family can hear the Mac Studio sitting 50cm away on the desk. At 1400rpm I can hear the faint sound of the fans, but my wife and daughter can’t. At 1600rpm they also can hear the fans, and at 2000rpm the Mac Studio is noisy.

 

[throAU]

Rosetta is a translation engine. It only runs once, when it translates your app's Intel code to ARM code. Then your app runs natively, the only difference being that the Rosetta code might not be as optimized as if the source compiler were used. Therefore, I don't think you'll see a great improvement. I like your 10% estimate.

It will depend on what the software is doing. 10% is a good rule of thumb but if the app in question is running a loop that doesn’t translate well the improvement going native would theoretically be more.

 

[tubuliferous]

Cool! I'm curious...is there a Windows version of the software you're using, and if so, do you think it would run faster in Wine? Like you might be able to run a Windows copy of the software in Whisky through Apple's new Game Porting Toolkit.

I guess the problem would still be lack of a native ARM version? Probably a Windows version of the software would not be native for ARM and would still need to be run through an Intel-to-Arm translation layer.

 

[quatermass]

I don't have enough color data yet - I shoot with individual red, green, blue, and luminance (UV/IR cut) filters on a mono camera. But here's the result of my luminance:

Full rez L NGC 6914

That's a splendid image! Sometimes I think B/W images look better than colour, like the old images from Palomar back in the 1930's. What telescope/camera are you using?
Affinity Photo: I've used it for a few tests a while back, and it seemed quite simple to use with good results.

 

[drsox]

Yes, if I listen closely I can hear the fan. There's not any other noise going on. But the fan is just barely perceptible. Way quieter than the A/C when it kicks on, and there's no rattle from the A/C, just the noise of the air coming out of the register.

Thanks. I'll buy one. Used to self-build PCs for low noise - no need since I switched to Apple.

 

[jpefjr]

That's a splendid image! Sometimes I think B/W images look better than colour, like the old images from Palomar back in the 1930's. What telescope/camera are you using?
Affinity Photo: I've used it for a few tests a while back, and it seemed quite simple to use with good results.

Thanks. I agree about the monochrome images. The "old" observatories - Palomar, Lick, Kitt Peak (not that old), etc. are really fascinating to me. I was on a motorcycle ride 15 years ago and went up to Lick Observatory but didn't have the time to go inside. I really regret that.

I'm shooting with a SkyWatcher Esprit 100 and QHY 268M camera (and QHY 7 position filter wheel).

 

[kirkster501]

I use a TEC 140 and an FSQ85 telescope and a QHY268M and a colour version. Also a Atik 460 and a G2-8300 CCD camera.

SK Astro

Nottingham Astronomy and Astrophotography

skastro.net

^^^Everything on my website has been crunched with a homebrew PC I built and also a M1 Mac Mini. I'm now going to use my M2 Studio/64G/1TB exclusively and 10G connection to my Synology NAS in RAID with 6 x 10G TB WD Red Pros. I'd have liked the Ultra but I cannot justify the price.

 

[jpefjr]

I use a TEC 140 and an FSQ85 telescope and a QHY268M and a colour version. Also a Atik 460 and a G2-8300 CCD camera.

SK Astro

Nottingham Astronomy and Astrophotography

skastro.net

^^^Everything on my website has been crunched with a homebrew PC I built and also a M1 Mac Mini. I'm now going to use my M2 Studio/64G/1TB exclusively and 10G connection to my Synology NAS in RAID with 6 x 10G TB WD Red Pros. I'd have liked the Ultra but I cannot justify the price.

Nice combination of focal lengths and high quality scopes with that TEC and Tak. What mount do you put those on? I'm guessing it has to be beefy to hold and guide that 140.

 

[kirkster501]

Nice combination of focal lengths and high quality scopes with that TEC and Tak. What mount do you put those on? I'm guessing it has to be beefy to hold and guide that 140.

I have them dual mounted on a MESU 200 mount.

 

[kirkster501]

I have three telescopes simultaneously mounted on my MESU 200. I have my FSQ85 on top of the TEC140 and then I have that combination mounted side-by-side with a Celestron C925. It was a bugger to get balanced in all possible attitude combinations!
I discuss this in this video:

 

[jpefjr]

I have three telescopes simultaneously mounted on my MESU 200. I have my FSQ85 on top of the TEC140 and then I have that combination mounted side-by-side with a Celestron C925. It was a bugger to get balanced in all possible attitude combinations!
I discuss this in this video:

Seriously nice rig! Looks like you're making fine use of that MESU mount's load capacity. And of course having an observatory must be really nice - it's on my wish list for sure.

 

[Admiral]

How quiet is "quietly". Can you hear a fan ? Is there other noise going on ?

I have a Mac Studio with M2 Max and have some processing projects, like the original poster, which peg the CPU cores at 100% or close to it for hours or days at a time. There is zero fan noise, even with my ear placed up against the exhaust grill. Now, M2 Ultra has twice the cores, and therefore possibly twice the heat to dissipate, but I am impressed as all get out with mine.

 

[George Dawes]

I was pricing the m2 pro mini vs the studio base model , seems the studio is a bit of a no brainer in this scenario

 

[Admiral]

I was pricing the m2 pro mini vs the studio base model , seems the studio is a bit of a no brainer in this scenario

The Studio with M2 Max is guaranteed silent, comes with additional Thunderbolt and USB-C ports, the card reader, 10GbE, 11 additional GPU cores, and the ability to connect five monitors instead of two. All for about US$150 more.

 

[George Dawes]

Yes , it’s amazing vfm imo

Once you add on an external sd card reader for the mini , the studio becomes even better vfm and so much more compact