MP 7,1 Mac Pro 2019 Recommend Config?

[yugioh5d]

Hi,

I plan to get a Mac Pro for both work and personal use. My workflow generally involve coding (like Xcode, Android Studio), Offices, Latex, Bootcamp. Apart from that, I will use it for general use (like watching videos). Currently I am thinking of 12-core, 48gb ram, 580x, and 2TB storage. The Vega II is expensive, and I am not sure if I even need it in my use case. Is this build good enough? What would you recommend?

Thanks.

 

[darthaddie]

Looks good. I’d recommend getting factory 32gb and spend the savings on 2 sticks of ram off market. 6 sticks = great perf increase.
you can always add a better gpu later IF you need it.

if you really need the 2 tb then fine otherwise faster / cheaper and better solutions are available.

 

[bxs]

Hi,

I plan to get a Mac Pro for both work and personal use. My workflow generally involve coding (like Xcode, Android Studio), Offices, Latex, Bootcamp. Apart from that, I will use it for general use (like watching videos). Currently I am thinking of 12-core, 48gb ram, 580x, and 2TB storage. The Vega II is expensive, and I am not sure if I even need it in my use case. Is this build good enough? What would you recommend?

Thanks.

I would go with the darthaddie suggestion, but drop down to a 1TB internal Apple SSD.

I would also suspect the 8-core that saves you $1,000 should work OK for your use case.

 

[yugioh5d]

if you really need the 2 tb then fine otherwise faster / cheaper and better solutions are available.

Thanks for the suggestion. What are the faster/cheaper solution?

 

[darthaddie]

You could get a 1tb from Apple and get a nvme PCIe card to add your own ssd drives. There is a thread going on for PCIe expansion cards.

I added these

Intel 2TB 660P NVMe M.2 Internal SSD

Buy Intel 2TB 660P NVMe M.2 Internal SSD featuring 2TB Storage Capacity, M2. 2280 Form Factor, PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 Interface, 1800 MB/s Sequential Read Speeds, 1800 Sequential Write Speeds, Intel QLC 3D NAND. Review Intel 660p

www.bhphotovideo.com

The pcie adapter

Mailiya M.2 PCIe to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter - Support M.2 PCIe 2280, 2260, 2242, 2230

Mailiya M.2 PCIe to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter - Support M.2 PCIe 2280, 2260, 2242, 2230

www.amazon.com

So for about $260 you get a 2tb. Speeds are approx 1600MB/sec

there are of course way Higher capacities and speed options but this would be great for your work.

 

[penguinlust]

Depends on the time you spend coding -- Xcode will use every core you've got. Since I do most of my work in it, be it for Mac OS or iOS, I opted for the 16 core machine. But yeah, 1 TB is the way to go. I went with 48 GB RAM just because I didn't want to tempt fate matching up dimms, but have since added 192 GB third party and it works great. I already had a 4 TB SATA SSD card and just put it in there.

I dropped the 580 and replaced it with a Sapphire Pulse 5700 XT -- worked great so far and as of 10.15.2 I've had full boot screens.

 

[Coyote2006]

Hi,

I plan to get a Mac Pro for both work and personal use. My workflow generally involve coding (like Xcode, Android Studio), Offices, Latex, Bootcamp. Apart from that, I will use it for general use (like watching videos). Currently I am thinking of 12-core, 48gb ram, 580x, and 2TB storage. The Vega II is expensive, and I am not sure if I even need it in my use case. Is this build good enough? What would you recommend?

Thanks.

I'd consider

8-core, 36gb ram (upgrade by yourself 2x8), 1TB and 580 and upgrade CPU next next year when the price for 16-core goes down (that's the config I've ordered)

or 12-core if more cores are really needed right now and/or you'd like to invest the saved money on self RAM-upgrade and only 1TB into more cores

 

[zhpenn]

Stick with 580x, but add a 2nd hand Radeon VII instead, no big difference from Apple Vega II, I use 5700XT, which also has similar performance in most cases.

 

[Coyote2006]

Stick with 580x, but add a 2nd hand Radeon VII instead, no big difference from Apple Vega II, I use 5700XT, which also has similar performance in most cases.

How is the fan noise of your system compared to the MPX only?

 

[zhpenn]

How is the fan noise of your system compared to the MPX only?

VII is a bit noisy when fully loaded, but a 800aud vs 3800aud , the huge price different but almost the same performance, I can accept those noise

 

[sage73]

Xcode guy here myself..I'm probably going to order a base model with the only change being the 1TB SSD for bootcamp reasons. Everything else can be bought cheaper and upgraded later as needed.

 

[yugioh5d]

You could get a 1tb from Apple and get a nvme PCIe card to add your own ssd drives. There is a thread going on for PCIe expansion cards.

I added these

Intel 2TB 660P NVMe M.2 Internal SSD

Buy Intel 2TB 660P NVMe M.2 Internal SSD featuring 2TB Storage Capacity, M2. 2280 Form Factor, PCIe NVMe 3.0 x4 Interface, 1800 MB/s Sequential Read Speeds, 1800 Sequential Write Speeds, Intel QLC 3D NAND. Review Intel 660p

www.bhphotovideo.com

The pcie adapter

Mailiya M.2 PCIe to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter - Support M.2 PCIe 2280, 2260, 2242, 2230

Mailiya M.2 PCIe to PCIe 3.0 x4 Adapter - Support M.2 PCIe 2280, 2260, 2242, 2230

www.amazon.com

So for about $260 you get a 2tb. Speeds are approx 1600MB/sec

there are of course way Higher capacities and speed options but this would be great for your work.

Thank you, that's a lot cheaper.

Depends on the time you spend coding -- Xcode will use every core you've got. Since I do most of my work in it, be it for Mac OS or iOS, I opted for the 16 core machine. But yeah, 1 TB is the way to go. I went with 48 GB RAM just because I didn't want to tempt fate matching up dimms, but have since added 192 GB third party and it works great. I already had a 4 TB SATA SSD card and just put it in there.

I dropped the 580 and replaced it with a Sapphire Pulse 5700 XT -- worked great so far and as of 10.15.2 I've had full boot screens.

Is the 12-core and 16-core performance differs alot? For GPU, I think I will stick with 580x and upgrade to W5700X if I need it.

Stick with 580x, but add a 2nd hand Radeon VII instead, no big difference from Apple Vega II, I use 5700XT, which also has similar performance in most cases.

I heard that Radeon II had problem with sleep mode (Fan runs at fullspeed)?

 

[MisterAndrew]

If you plan to Boot Camp you may want to stick with 2TB storage because I think Boot Camp likes it best on the main drive. There is actually a pretty large performance difference between the 12 and 16 core CPUs according to Geekbench results. It shows single core performance of the 12 core is slower than the i7 in the Mac mini. Multi-core performance of the 16 core is better than the 18 core in the iMac Pro.

Mac Benchmarks - Geekbench

 

[flowrider]

Thanks for the suggestion. What are the faster/cheaper solution?

The Apple upgrade price to go to 48GB (two more sticks of 8GB) is $300. I upgraded to 96GB (eight additional 8GB sticks) for less than that. Some nice folks on this forum (who upgraded their RAM) sold me their OEM Apple modules. I also replaced my 580X with an Aorus RX 5700 XT GPU.

As far is PCIe SSD cards I have two, a Syba I/O Crest and a Highpoint 7103.

Lou

 

[OkiRun]

You might consider initially going with the Pro Vega II as it gives you some needed Tb3 connections that the 580 doesn't have.

 

[MikeabMac]

Go with a 12c or 16c .. then 32 GB ram and upgrade with 3rd party , Get at least 1 TB apple SSD and a Pro Vega II ( 580X is trash, would limit your options since it only uses HDMI)..

 

[yugioh5d]

You might consider initially going with the Pro Vega II as it gives you some needed Tb3 connections that the 580 doesn't have.

I only plan to connect one XDR monitor to it, I'm not sure whether I need more ports. The Mac Pro does come with 2 Tb3 ports at the front and 2 Usb ports at the back (so for me that's suffice). The Pro Vega II is expensive to upgrade. I may upgrade to 5700X in the future or maybe when the Pro Vega II price drop .

 

[MisterAndrew]

If you don't need the system right away then I suggest wait for the W5700X. It should be available soon for CTO, but it will probably be quite a while before they offer it standalone since the Vega cards still aren't available standalone.

 

[zhpenn]

yes VII hase Sleep fan problem, but use RX5700XT and unplug the 580X will be the perfect setup if you dont need usbc for XDR

 

[Coyote2006]

I wonder what the price for the W5700X will be. As there is also a dual card being release it might cost $1800/3600 (to fit in between actual cards prices).

 

[flowrider]

^^^^I figure about $1.2K for the W5700X. About twice the cost of an RX5700XT + $3 to $400 for the added RAM. Seems Apple values the base 580X at $400, about twice the cost of a top end RX580. I get $400 by looking at the price of the Vega II at $2.4K. If we multiply $2.4 X 2 we get $4.8K. Two Vega IIs cost $5.2K. So the second Vega II costs $2.8K.

Lou

 

[straightMacin]

16c/32gb/1TB/580x would be my suggestion. According to most of the benchmarks I've seen around here and other blogs/forums, the 16c is a major sweet spot for performance, both from a numbers standpoint and a clock speed/core count standpoint. Seeing how finicky the swapping of a CPU is, i'd recommend maxing that out as much as you can from the get-go.

 

[yugioh5d]

Thanks everyone for the recommendation/suggestions. Really appreciate all the insights. Cheers 👍.

 

[1147402]

Apple's Mac Pro white paper has suggestions for all kinds of usage. You might want to check out.

Also, if you want to go with MPX, the yet to be released W5700X might also worth your consideration.