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Warranty: Opening + Adding Hard Drives

E

Ethosik

Contributor
Original poster
Oct 21, 2009
8,357
7,416
Hey guys. My Dell just popped and died on me, so I have decided to get a 8-core Mac Pro. I have a question about the warranty though. Can I put my old hard drives from my Dell in the Mac Pro without voiding the warranty? I know some companies that have rules to where even if you open the system, the warranty is void.

Is there a link directly from apple that states this? I only found one on the Macbook Pro.

Thanks!
 
jessica. said:
Yes but make sure they're compatible.
Click to expand...

I just got the crappy Dell about 8 months ago so I am pretty sure they are compatible. All I need it for is Read-Only.

Would you guys recommend the 8-core and 6GB of ram, or 4 core and 8GB of ram?
 
xWhiplash said:
Would you guys recommend the 8-core and 6GB of ram, or 4 core and 8GB of ram?
Click to expand...
It's hard to say for certian due to no idea of your software usage, but as a general rule, most software cannot take advantage of triple channel configured DDR3.

So additional capacity usually trumps the channel configuration as a means of improving memory performance.
 
I use After Effects (Windows and Mac side), Camtasia Studio (Windows and Mac side), Photoshop (Windows and Mac side), and GarageBand a lot. On the Windows side I also use Visual Studio. Those are about the five major applications I use daily.

Will I benefit from the additional 4 cores? By how much?
 
xWhiplash said:
I use After Effects (Windows and Mac side), Camtasia Studio (Windows and Mac side), Photoshop (Windows and Mac side), and GarageBand a lot. On the Windows side I also use Visual Studio. Those are about the five major applications I use daily.

Will I benefit from the additional 4 cores? By how much?
Click to expand...
  • After Effects = n core multi-threaded, so this can benefit from an additional processor
  • Camtasia Studio = single threaded, so it can't use the second CPU
  • Photoshop = fixed at 2 core multi-threading from what I've been able to dig up
  • Garage Band = maybe, depending on what you do with it
Are you earning a living with this machine, or a hobbyist?

If you're generating an income, you may want to consider a DP system. If not, then go with a SP model (Quad or Hex).
 
nanofrog said:
  • After Effects = n core multi-threaded, so this can benefit from an additional processor
  • Camtasia Studio = single threaded, so it can't use the second CPU
  • Photoshop = fixed at 2 core multi-threading from what I've been able to dig up
  • Garage Band = maybe, depending on what you do with it
Are you earning a living with this machine, or a hobbyist?

If you're generating an income, you may want to consider a DP system. If not, then go with a SP model (Quad or Hex).
Click to expand...

A little of both I guess? I make tutorials and provide them to people, and I make video games that I plan to sell on the Xbox Indie Games. If After Effects can benefit from this, I say it is worth it to get the octo. I can always force affinity right? Have camtasia use one core while garageband uses another?
 
xWhiplash said:
A little of both I guess? I make tutorials and provide them to people, and I make video games that I plan to sell on the Xbox Indie Games. If After Effects can benefit from this, I say it is worth it to get the octo. I can always force affinity right? Have camtasia use one core while garageband uses another?
Click to expand...
You can run the applications simultaneously. Just keep in mind the actual resource scheduling is up to the OS and other bits of the system (i.e. memory controller, CPU controller, SATA controller for disk I/O,...).

But so long as you can work like that (keep one application running while setting up a process in another for example), you'd be fine. But I'd expect a lot of idle time due to user input (setting up a process).

I'd recommend looking at how much time you spend in which application, and go from there.

If the AE work is minimal of your overall time consumption for example, you may be fine with a Hex core (decent balance of clock speed and cores for the money). But if you spend a lot (most) of your time in AE creating game graphics for example, you could even be better served by a 12 core model.
 
Yeah I do a lot of stuff in After Effects. Are you sure Camtasia Studio on Windows is single threaded? I thought I read some place where it was multi-core supported.

Either way, why does the hex cost me $1,000 more than 2x4 core?
 
you39 said:
It doesn't? Unless you configure both with 16GB RAM from Apple, which would be a waste of money anyway.
Click to expand...

Quad to Hex: One 3.33GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” [Add $1,200.00]

Its still a few hundred more than the octo since I need 8GB of ram, several TB, and 5870. I am having a little debate with somebody else. With the applications I use, is the octo setup much slower than the quad?

I have an i7 920 2.66Ghz in my dell right now, so I do not think going to 2.4Ghz will hurt me that much for single-threaded programs do you?
 
Reviewers have shown that the 3.33GHz 6-core will run most tasks much faster than the 2.4GHz 8-core. Don't compromise on CPU speed to get 2 more cores, it's not worth it for today's less-than-optimal single or multi-threaded applications.

And I moved 4 WD Caviar Black 2TB drives from my Dell and 2 external enclosures to my Mac Pro with no problems. After reading the data off the NTFS drives with backup NTFS drives, I reformatted all 4 to HFS+ (with a 500GB Boot Camp partition) and restored the data. Also don't order Apple RAM or drives - get your RAM from OWC and your drives from Newegg, both are user-replaceable without affecting your warranty.
 
PenguinMac said:
Reviewers have shown that the 3.33GHz 6-core will run most tasks much faster than the 2.4GHz 8-core. Don't compromise on CPU speed to get 2 more cores, it's not worth it for today's less-than-optimal single or multi-threaded applications.

And I moved 4 WD Caviar Black 2TB drives from my Dell and 2 external enclosures to my Mac Pro with no problems. After reading the data off the NTFS drives with backup NTFS drives, I reformatted all 4 to HFS+ (with a 500GB Boot Camp partition) and restored the data. Also don't order Apple RAM or drives - get your RAM from OWC and your drives from Newegg, both are user-replaceable without affecting your warranty.
Click to expand...

Seemed it did not like my credit card info, I must have typed it in wrong. I took that opportunity to swap it out with a 6-core. Is it really that much faster?
 
xWhiplash said:
Seemed it did not like my credit card info, I must have typed it in wrong. I took that opportunity to swap it out with a 6-core. Is it really that much faster?
Click to expand...

For single threaded applications, it is up to 35% (3.6GHz vs. 2.66GHz) faster than the 8-core.
 
xWhiplash said:
Quad to Hex: One 3.33GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon “Westmere” [Add $1,200.00]

Its still a few hundred more than the octo since I need 8GB of ram, several TB, and 5870. I am having a little debate with somebody else. With the applications I use, is the octo setup much slower than the quad?

I have an i7 920 2.66Ghz in my dell right now, so I do not think going to 2.4Ghz will hurt me that much for single-threaded programs do you?
Click to expand...

You said "Either way, why does the hex cost me $1,000 more than 2x4 core?"

I read that as hex 1000$ more than eight core. Anyway... the general consensus here in many posts, also in this thread, is that you should only consider the 8-core if you're sure you need all the 8 RAM slots or you're sure you want to upgrade the CPU yourself. For everybody else the 6-core is a much better choice.
 
Transporteur said:
For single threaded applications, it is up to 35% (3.6GHz vs. 2.66GHz) faster than the 8-core.
Click to expand...

What about applications like After Effects? What kind of performance hit am I losing going from 2x4 cores to 1x6 cores?

Also, how much better will it be vs my i7 920 2.66Ghz?
 
xWhiplash said:
What kind of performance hit am I losing going from 2x4 cores to 1x6 cores?
Click to expand...

In both single- and multithreaded applications, the hex is faster, so you won't lose any performance at all.

As already said, unless you're going to upgrade the processors in the octad, go hex.
 
Ordered Build:
One 3.33GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
8GB (4X2GB)
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
One 18x SuperDrive
Magic Mouse.
Apple KB User's Guide.
Price: $3,897.00

Good? How much better will it be vs my i7 920 2.66Ghz?
 
xWhiplash said:
Ordered Build:
One 3.33GHz 6-Core Intel Xeon
8GB (4X2GB)
ATI Radeon HD 5870 1GB
1TB 7200-rpm Serial ATA 3Gb/s
One 18x SuperDrive
Magic Mouse.
Apple KB User's Guide.
Price: $3,897.00

Good? How much better will it be vs my i7 920 2.66Ghz?
Click to expand...

Are you sure that you want to buy the Apple RAM? OWC might have some better deals (3 x 4GB).

Well, in single threaded apps, your i7 will boost to 2.93GHz, the XEON boosts to 3.6GHz, a difference of 22%. In case that your apps use all available cores, the XEON will be close to twice as fast.
 
Transporteur said:
Are you sure that you want to buy the Apple RAM? OWC might have some better deals (3 x 4GB).

Well, in single threaded apps, your i7 will boost to 2.93GHz, the XEON boosts to 3.6GHz, a difference of 22%. In case that your apps use all available cores, the XEON will be close to twice as fast.
Click to expand...

Yeah I am sure. It was only +$300 or so to go from 3GB to 8GB with the student discount.

How does that GPU compare to the Geforce GTS 240 that is in my dell?
 
xWhiplash said:
Yeah I am sure. It was only +$300 or so to go from 3GB to 8GB with the student discount.

How does that GPU compare to the Geforce GTS 240 that is in my dell?
Click to expand...

You probably could have gotten 3x4GB for the same price - which is much better, not only because it's 4GB more (->Triple Channel+one slot open in case you need more)

And no, installing third party ram does not void warranty either...
 
xWhiplash said:
How does that GPU compare to the Geforce GTS 240 that is in my dell?
Click to expand...

That's a tougher question - I have the 5870 also, and while in theory it's much faster than the 240 (which I also have in my Dell), in practice many programs use NVidia's CUDA technology to speed up computation and haven't been rewritten to use OpenGL or OpenCL in Snow Leopard. In fact, I read one review where a piece of software was faster when OpenGL was turned off (don't have any idea how they turned it off). So the answer is: it depends on the programs you use and if they depend exclusively on CUDA for faster processing.
 
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