RiMac vs New Macbook + Pc Gaming Rig

[sakabaro]

Looking for random experiences, opinion and advices!

I have a budget right now of $3-4k and I was going to buy the new MacBook retina (~$1,700) + PC gaming rig (~$1,000/$1,500 for the rig + 1080p screen + mouse/keyboard)

I am kind of looking at people playing on RiMac and I wonder if I can just combine the two and buy a max-out RiMac (~$3,500: i7 + m295x + 16Gb ram + SSD 256Gb)

I am planing doing mostly intense ruby coding + maybe a bit of gam dev. under yosemite and multiplayer FPS + total war games under windows.

What do you think make more sense?

PS: Kind of concern that the PC rig might be more powerful that the RiMac while being way cheaper, also kind of concern of the m295x chip inside the RiMac is mobile GPU that seems to have throttling issues...

 

[QCassidy352]

The two system option seems better. Mobility plus more power when you're at the desk.

You'll lose out on the amazing 5k screen and OS X on your desktop, but given your needs, I think it's the right tradeoff.

 

[MartinAppleGuy]

Looking for random experiences, opinion and advices!

I have a budget right now of $3-4k and I was going to buy the new MacBook retina (~$1,700) + PC gaming rig (~$1,000/$1,500 for the rig + 1080p screen + mouse/keyboard)

I am kind of looking at people playing on RiMac and I wonder if I can just combine the two and buy a max-out RiMac (~$3,500: i7 + m295x + 16Gb ram + SSD 256Gb)

I am planing doing mostly intense ruby coding + maybe a bit of gam dev. under yosemite and multiplayer FPS + total war games under windows.

What do you think make more sense?

PS: Kind of concern that the PC rig might be more powerful that the RiMac while being way cheaper, also kind of concern of the m295x chip inside the RiMac is mobile GPU that seems to have throttling issues...

Why not get a Macbook Air (more power, cheaper), and a non retina iMac with an upgrade to the 780m GPU. Means you will have the great gaming performance, but also great temps and no major throttling.

Just throwing the idea out there

 

[sakabaro]

I currently have a retina macbook pro 15" mid-2012 (I plan to leave this one at the office), it will be hard to switch back to non-retina.

The reason I am considering the RiMac is I was kind of disappointed when I've played with the new macbook in stores:
- Design looks cheap (I know that's very subjective, but I didn't have the whao moment I had when I've seen for the first time the very first macbook air)
- None in stock, have to wait for 4-6 weeks (Specially for the 1.3ghz)
- Performance benchmark seems behind my current laptop

 

[fathergll]

Why would you need OSX in the first place? Game development in Yosemite?

 

[sakabaro]

Mainly doing ruby on rails dev., plan to have fun coding game for IOS. So, both OSX is a natural choice to do it.

 

[fathergll]

If your worrying about throttling and want the best PC gaming experience I would purchase a Mac Mini(fusion drive or SSD+ at least 8GB ram), a PC gaming rig, 1080p screen and KVM switch to easily switch between Windows and OSX on the monitor.