Sonnet Announces Mac Pro 4U Rackmount Enclosure and Expansion Chassis

[NightFox]

Can't help but wonder what effect the horizontal configuration of the nMP will have on thermal control. It seems to me optimal cooling comes in the vertical position. I wonder if buyers of this rack will have heating issues.

Exactly what I came to comment about. The whole thermal design depends on using the physics ot "hot air rises" when the fan isn't running fast. So will the fan be running harder when it shouldn't otherwise be?

Exactly what I was thinking, before I even read the article. The nMP's cooling works optimally when the unit is in a vertical position thru convection and a 'chimney' effect, supplementing the built-in fans. With any other position, and especially built into an enclosure, the fans will have to work harder and longer, and some of the internal components may be exposed to additional heat stress, likely shortening their life span.

But for those who absolutely need rack mount, plus this unit's additional expandability, this could be a viable option.

The cooling system on the new Mac Pros is designed to provide effective cooling horizontally as well as vertically.

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT6099?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

 

[micrors4racer]

Really? Formula1 is the pro world and their designers take the time and money to make things aesthetically pleasing. A road car engine is usually unseen and has a far more important job but guess what........?
Don't be so ridiculous and short sighted one doesn't preclude the other and often one that seems unimportant generates sales so that you can have the other. You 'Pros' need to get off your high horse, your jobs aren't the only important ones and often aren't any more difficult than regular jobs. Oh we don't care as long as it does the job.... Please!

I can assure you that nothing in a formula car is made for aesthetics. In fact a formula car is the epitome of function follows form with no compromise. It just so happens that designs made to cut through wind are aesthetically pleasing (ships, planes, cars).

 

[dragje]

Really? Formula1 is the pro world and their designers take the time and money to make things aesthetically pleasing. A road car engine is usually unseen and has a far more important job but guess what........?
Don't be so ridiculous and short sighted one doesn't preclude the other and often one that seems unimportant generates sales so that you can have the other. You 'Pros' need to get off your high horse, your jobs aren't the only important ones and often aren't any more difficult than regular jobs. Oh we don't care as long as it does the job.... Please!

You're missing AgentElliot007 his point.

He's right when stating that professional users in the field of Animation and Filming industry don't give a *beep* about how thin and how good looking a desktop computer is. It's amazing without doubt what Apple has achieved with this Mac Pro, so small, yet so powerful but AgentElliot007 isn't stating here that the Mac Pro isn't good looking neither that it doesn't offers power he just stating that pro users look way beyond a computer design and it looks in general but instead relying on it's capability running high end software and possibilities to expand with third party high end hardware. In this AgentElliot007 is 100% right when stating that Pro users rather see a rack mount model that doesn't look that esthetic to the eye, all tough beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but they rather get exited when working on a device that does what it supposed to do: work hard and deliver. For these criteria a thin and "nice" looking device is totally irrelevant and AgentElliot007 is 100% right about this.

 

[benguild]

This solves the problem....

Image

Now that'd be interesting, but I wonder if it could provide enough ventilation given the angle of the fans.

Maybe someone should just redesign the rack for a Mac Pro, hah.

 

[Padaung]

Really? Formula1 is the pro world and their designers take the time and money to make things aesthetically pleasing.

Hmmm, have you seen the 2014 F1 cars?

They are ugly - however, they are designed to be as quick as possible given the set of rules they have to abide by this year. Aesthetics was probably the last thing on the designers minds.

 

[dragje]

I....to a pro who actually needs this sort of setup, what is going to matter most is what tool offers the most functionality, and then in most situations, which is the most cost effective.

There is nothing wrong with wanting nice looking things to exist, but sitting around on a message board ******** on a professional tool because it isn't so aesthetically pleasing is just a silly way to waste your time.

You're 100% right in this.

 

[knightlie]

You seem to be misunderstanding. I'm not upset.

Tell me how does, You Pros, (plural), equate to a personal attack, (singular)?

I'm saying you can quite often have both. Did you not see the part about one precluding the other?
There seems to be a lot of patronising around here from so called Pros. What makes a 'Pro' exactly?

Well, not you, for a start. You just made another personal attack - two, in fact, in one post. Your views are your own and you are welcome to voice them, but phrases like "so-called Pros" doesn't make you look very mature, knowledgeable or tolerant towards others. These people know their subject and their views are as valid as yours, whether you agree with them or not. Tell us how many rack-mounted computers you've installed...?

Perhaps you should just sit down and be quiet.

 

[MH01]

Yes.

hope the 15-20 of you enjoy it Though I suppose there are people that will find this useful, better its in the market then not I guess. Price will be scary.....

And reason why you would not just buy a rack mounted server? (I assume this thing will cost a fortune as its for an apply product)

This is like getting a Ipod nano 6th gen and using it as a watch with a wrist band enclosure???

 

[everything-i]

or just buy a real server. it would be cheaper.

But servers tend to be designed for IO rather than raw processing. Off the shelf servers just don't have the CPU/GPU power that the MacPro has. This looks like a pretty sweet setup for a post production studio, just mount this in a rack with a fast disk array and your set.

 

[MH01]

Really? Formula1 is the pro world and their designers take the time and money to make things aesthetically pleasing. A road car engine is usually unseen and has a far more important job but guess what........?
Don't be so ridiculous and short sighted one doesn't preclude the other and often one that seems unimportant generates sales so that you can have the other. You 'Pros' need to get off your high horse, your jobs aren't the only important ones and often aren't any more difficult than regular jobs. Oh we don't care as long as it does the job.... Please!

Mate, if they could get an F1 car to go around .5sec quicker, and that meant it looked like the flintstones mobile, they would do it!!!!!!

F1 car design is nothing to do with aesthetically pleasing, it about aerodynamics.

If your looking at F1 and think they were made to be sexy for you.... the nMP is the perfect machine for you Though the nMP sacrifices performance for aesthetics.

 

[dragje]

Well, not you, for a start. You just made another personal attack - two, in fact, in one post. Your views are your own and you are welcome to voice them, but phrases like "so-called Pros" doesn't make you look very mature, knowledgeable or tolerant towards others. These people know their subject and their views are as valid as yours, whether you agree with them or not. Tell us how many rack-mounted computers you've installed...?

Perhaps you should just sit down and be quiet.

You're right.

I really don't understand why people seem to get upset when mentioning the word "pro", professional users or pro users within the given context. From the replies I'm reading here I can only conclude that with "professional" people don't mean some kind of superrace human beings with opinions that are the only ones that matters....
The word professional users only points towards those who "work" in the field of film editing, audio, animation and more types of jobs that requires powerful hardware and high end software to get the job done. And you're right, these people quite rightfully don't care about things which are meaningless for them, like how tiny a desktop computer is or what it looks like. These things are secondary. For these professional users all that matters is: power, cost and expandability.

That doesn't mean these people dislike Apple.

 

[MH01]

But servers tend to be designed for IO rather than raw processing. Off the shelf servers just don't have the CPU/GPU power that the MacPro has. This looks like a pretty sweet setup for a post production studio, just mount this in a rack with a fast disk array and your set.

Though it your really need GPU power, why settle for 2 x 7970 ? Unless you really must use Apple, otherwise there are much better alternatives if you want GPU grunt

 

[chfilm]

Uh.

Six Thunderbolt 2 ports on the MacPro and these guys couldn't even expose one on this monstrosity?

That's failure, right there.[/QUOTE
That and the just single USB 3 port!

What many people here deny when they say "just get a dell.." Is that maybe people want to have a Mac, maybe they want to use fcp or they want to have thunderbolt 2!! That especially! I work at a large video facility and we still have old Mac pros in our server rooms, and whenever I go there and want to attach a portable ssd to transfer some red footage onto the really fast video raid that's in there, I have to transfer it via FireWire 800. Really??? Just for that, a nMP would be a blessing!

 

[k4rrjin]

Really Sonnet? Were customers really asking for this?

It seems some people still have not grasped the target audience for the Mac Pro nor their requirements.
No shortage of professional content-related software packages support some type of remote-calculation to crunch numbers in a well-cooled farm. That is one of the common uses for this and at that level the Mac Pro is a competitively priced package.

 

[darko256]

This boxy enclosure is an obvious example how to ugly a beautiful design.

 

[dmunz]

Hmmm, have you seen the 2014 F1 cars?

They are ugly - however, they are designed to be as quick as possible given the set of rules they have to abide by this year. Aesthetics was probably the last thing on the designers minds.

Well, the McLaren still looks, erm, ok...

FWIW
DLM

 

[blackcrayon]

Though it your really need GPU power, why settle for 2 x 7970 ? Unless you really must use Apple, otherwise there are much better alternatives if you want GPU grunt

But what would make anyone think this product is aimed at someone who "doesn't want to use Apple"? It's for someone who wants to "professionally" rack the most powerful OS X based system they can get I presume...

 

[discounteggroll]

Using the Mac Pro (Late 2013) on its side:

When using multiple Mac Pro (Late 2013) computers, do not direct the exhaust at the top of one Mac Pro towards the intake of another system. Place the computers side by side with a gap of at least several inches between them.

damn, mac pro caterpillar voids warranty

 

[joe-h2o]

This seems stupid. Why not just have multiple Mac Minis in a single 1 or 2U enclosure?

So those multiple mac minis will be able to handle FCPX with as much performance as the nMP?

This is not meant for use as a server. This is meant for rack mounting Mac Pros in studio or remote broadcast environments like the back of an OB truck or in a small edit suite.

----------

hope the 15-20 of you enjoy it Though I suppose there are people that will find this useful, better its in the market then not I guess. Price will be scary.....

And reason why you would not just buy a rack mounted server? (I assume this thing will cost a fortune as its for an apply product)

This is like getting a Ipod nano 6th gen and using it as a watch with a wrist band enclosure???

The reason you wouldn't just buy a rack mounted server is because you don't need a rack mounted server, you need a rack mounted Mac Pro.

This has not been designed to act as a fancy server.

 

[Liquidtrance]

This seems stupid. Why not just have multiple Mac Minis in a single 1 or 2U enclosure?

This.

The amount of processing power you can fit inside 4U these days is astronomical. A totally tricked out Mac Pro using up 4U is a waste of rack space. I guess if you really really really needed OSX in a Data Center than I guess.

From a PC standpoint for 6U I can put in a Cisco UCS 5108 Chassis and put almost 160 physical CPU Cores, 320 with Hyper-threading and multiple Terabytes of memory.

 

[BornAgainApple]

"Can't innovate, my ass"

 

[Gudi]

The people in this thread calling it ugly are the same people who said there was nothing wrong with FCP X when it first shipped.

Said no one ever. FCP X was a rewrite to make use of new hardware and software technologies and therefore necessary. Nobody suggested that it was completely feature equivalent with its previous versions. The people in this thread claiming to be the only ones who understand professional needs, are those who know nothing about either software or hardware development. Believe it or not there are other reasons than just looking pretty, why the new Mac Pro has become a cylinder. And this rack looks ugly, primary because it wastes so much space. A more elegant space-saving honeycomb solution has already been shown.

 

[ElTorro]

You seem to be misunderstanding. I'm not upset.

Tell me how does, You Pros, (plural), equate to a personal attack, (singular)?

I'm saying you can quite often have both. Did you not see the part about one precluding the other?
There seems to be a lot of patronising around here from so called Pros. What makes a 'Pro' exactly?

The pro user is who makes their living off of a mac pro (in this case). They care about getting the job done in a reliable and timely manner. Everything else is secondary.

 

[zapnyc]

But, but, there's no pretty lights on it! No greenish or blueish display, nothing! Especially in the music business, I've seen things in racks that actually look nice and/or impressive.

Yes, in the music business there's a thing you can call the "LTD Ratio"...Lights To Dollars......clients are easily impressed.

But...computers are almost *always* hidden in a gear closet. It's all the other gear that's out in front and blinking. I'm not talking home studios here. Rackmounting is great....as long as the aforementioned vertical heat cooling questions are answered...

 

[dragje]

Said no one ever. FCP X was a rewrite to make use of new hardware and software technologies and therefore necessary. Nobody suggested that it was completely feature equivalent with its previous versions. The people in this thread claiming to be the only ones who understand professional needs, are those who know nothing about either software or hardware development.

Actually, I do...

I'm around editing studio's for over 20 years now and I've seen some cursing editors out there once the new Final Cut X came out and it's clear to me you don't have a clue why these people quite rightfully got upset, I do, so I'll explain it to you by removing some wrong conclusions you've stating here:

1- first of all, software development had nothing to do with giving aid to professionals. Meaning, Apple, at the time, could have done both: release the new Final Cut Pro X 'while' maintaining support for the old version until the new released version would be bug-free.

2- Second, see point 1, the new version of Final Cut X was at it's release anything but bug free, it crashed frequently, it was not able to load previous versions of Final Cut...so...wait.... let's stop there! Indeed, the new version didn't allow to load previous saved projects of Final Cut. This resulted in editors where sitting ducks because they couldn't do 'anything with their work.

So there you have it. Then you could, with all your knowledge about professionals, reply with: what's the problem? Go back then to your old Final Cut version by installing it. This wasn't possible either! That was something Apple took care of forcing people to use the new version after installing it. So professional editors coudn't even step back. It took weeks and tons of rightful complains from professionals and a 1 star ranking for the new Final Cut X at the Apple Store until Apple gave in; admitting this was a wrong choice and they restored the ability to re-install the old Final Cut Pro. By then many users already left Final Cut X and exchanged it into Adobe's Premiere because they, again quite rightfully, never ever wanted to face the position again in which they couldn't do anything with their work literally....

Now we are many months further on the road and Final Cut X has slowly, with many many updates grown from being a kindergarten editing software package to a professional editing suit once again...

Now the clue...

No one, no professional out their, was blaming developers for doing a bad job, even though they did with the release of the first version which was way off from being labeled: "ok" as a product due the tons of bugs. But, this wasn't the main reason why professional users got upset, they got upset because Apple made sure they couldn't your their entire database filled with older projects any longer and they made sure the old Final Cut version couldn't be installed.

So, when you know this all, and you do now, you'll understand that it has no ground stating that people, the so called professionals, where merely whining about Apple without any good argument. They, the professionals at that given time, had all (!!!) the reasons to complain.

Believe it or not there are other reasons than just looking pretty, why the new Mac Pro has become a cylinder. And this rack looks ugly, primary because it wastes so much space. A more elegant space-saving honeycomb solution has already been shown.

Space is totally not relevant when you work in a studio. Power and the ease of adding third party high end hardware is. Every professional will subscribe to this statement.