I like the ability to have 3 SSD's under the MS but don't see how (if) they are secured so they don't move around when you're transporting the rack in a mobile rig.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Sonnet's Latest Enclosures Help You Rack Mount Your Mac Studio
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
$50 buys a 3RU rack shelf, less used. have a maci mini on a 2 RU. The PCIe case is interesting, but unless you have maybe a Decklink or similar videoI/O card you need, how may PCIe cards are still useful ? except GPU's that have no drivers.
What cards are you using in yours?
I'm wondering if a BMD Decklink would work? Although Davinci Resolve will now let you have a clean out over TB the Decklink will give you 10-bit over SDI.
I have a Decklink 4K extreme whatever its called working in a Sonnect PCIe extender case via TB3 just fine. Resolve on Mac already supports 10bit on displayport or HDMI provided the monitor does. has for a couple OS and app releases now.
Thanks for the info. Looking at BMD's website now at specs and realize I may be able to let go of the Decklink idea and just go with the UltraStudio 4K Mini.
blackmagic audio/video capture cards: https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/decklink
various NVME SSD (many RAID) https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/expansion-cards/pcie
various MIDI and misc audio cards
terabit ethernet cards
Hmm. I guess the actual rack unit this slips into needs to provide the security at the back. Think of this as a drawer. But sure, some sort of attachable mesh back would be a welcome addition in some peoples use cases, im sure.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone! I'm reconfiguring my system so there are a lot of new variables I have to sort out.
Another example of the tendency to adapt one company's incompatible and non-complementary design to suit its own real needs. Hackintosh in rackable server case and xserve look better than that one. I remember that lot of time ago I wanted a box similar to xserve, which was marked as Oracle. ...
A vented rack mount shelf that would easily support a Mac Studio and a few other peripherals could be had for less than £50 that would do the job just fine. I have a few of them here in my music setup holding equipment that isn't natively rack mountable, sold metal build and more flexible as they're not tied to a particular product.
You are presuming that the TBv5 controllers get provisioned more than x4 PCI-e v3 worth of bandwidth. That has nothing to do with the downstream wire being faster. Lots of the SoCs those system controllers are going to be embedded inside of have competing interests for bandwidth.
Pragmatically, a large chunk of that bandwidth increase could be allocated to video. That has happened before in TB bw allocations .
Velcro Strips with sticky adhesive will work
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
For the current version it was extremely easy because the logic board of the tower was so big. All they really did was take the same main logicboard, power supply , and major components from the tower model. Rotate them 90 degrees and them wrap a new 'container' around it. (And charge $500 more ).
Not 100% certain but ....
1. Does Apple want to pass up that extra $500 ( or 900=1,000 if they crank up the surcharge) ? Probably not.
If they have high amount of reuse of the current container then it won't cost tons of money to redeploy with 'new' internals ( e..g. Mini , MBP 13" Pro , etc. ). Almost the same box for more money would be passing up profits.
2. The 'lab' used in the Mac intro video presentations has 10+ rack mounted models on the wall. They seem to be eating their own dogfood. Probably not disinterested in using that rack space as those Intel models get retired.
3. If Apple strips too many slots out of the tower model, may need a model that puts them back in to hold back the mob of folks with torches and pitchforks storming the castle. This Studio solution only goes to 3 slots. Folks who need 4-5 are still left out.
May not 100% overlap with the tower model if its logicboard is substantially shorter (vert) /narrower (horiz). But that could be filled with drive brackets and/or slot extension/expansion board that flushes out the rest of the width.
Or because the case is still 5U tall double rack Mac Pros in the same space. The current rack case has a compute density problem for reasonably large data center deployments. If could put two Mac Pros in the space that one current Intel model goes in there are more than a few customers that will jump up and say Yes! . ( one reason the MP 2013 lingered so long was those kinds of folks were still buying it up at the very end. Even in its 6 year old state. )
If the logic board is almost as wide ... then it is back to original 2019 situation where already have a drop in board and almost 100% reusable case..
4. As long as the tower model has gratuitously large handles and feet that are 'rack hostile' they pretty much need something without the 'hostile" property. Even a less tall tower with big handles and feet extensions is just less 'rack hostile'. It is still a waste of often precious rack space volume.
5. The Mac Pro towers do not generation enough volume to be viable on their own. Need more customers to put money into the Mac Pro as a product line. ( they have cranked the price up so high , they have left lots of folks out. )
The contributors to not 100%
If it is a half as tall tower then in the slippery slope area. Some 3rd party bracket like this Sonnet Tech 'wrapper' for the Mac Studio would be the cheaper option for Apple ( do nothing on design and R&D ).
If they got rid of "space frame" on the tower and had simple screw on/off feet handles again... third parties could likely fill in the rest. [ But how are they going to sell those $100/wheel solutions.
] Somewhat like the internal J2i frame for drives that Apple was uninterested in doing themselves. Just do it on the outside for the rack option (punt to 3rd party). These racked Ultra (and M2 Pro Mini ) eat up lots of their previous volume rack customers. (too few customers left offsets the high margins).
The cards with footnotes 8 , 22 , and 24 are contributors to why it would be useful if Apple did some kind of solution that wasn't pumped though Thunderbolt.
If it is solely gravity holding those in place that probably works well. But is that setup going to survive riding down a bumpy road with potholes? Not spill in a 7.0 earthquake?
Could you please share the links to share what you're using so we can compare?
Just bring back the xserve, and the awesome RAID drives, they looked amazing but goodness me they were loud…
The form factor was a very compelling reason to get the Xserve over a tower so we bought a few of them for our edit facility.
They were louder than anything else in the server room.
Loud is an understatement.
