What would you like to see in a Mac Pro case update?

[maclover001]

I'm not asking about what you want to see in the new Mac Pro. I'm asking, what would you like to see in a new Mac Pro case/enclosure?

Me? I would like to see:

• Slot-loading drives
• Make the cheesegrader finer, like the uMBP speakers, as opposed to the classic MBP's
• I don't really know what to think of the handles. Would you give them up for MacBook-like rubber feet?
• Power supply back on the bottom, like the G5

 

[grue]

• Slot-loading drives

No no no no no no no no NO HELL NO and SCREW THAT.

Slot loading drives are more expensive, slower, less reliable, and less compatible. There is ZERO real world benefit to those pieces of tripe.

• Make the cheesegrader finer, like the uMBP speakers, as opposed to the classic MBP's

Function over form. Airflow is important.

• I don't really know what to think of the handles. Would you give them up for MacBook-like rubber feet?

Nope. Again, I prefer function over form.

• Power supply back on the bottom, like the G5

Who gives a damn?



Honestly, the only change I'd like to see would be the addition of onboard eSATA, and more drive bays.

 

[TheStrudel]

Not to bash you, but all of those ideas seem frightfully bad to me. I'm with Grue on this one. All I could ask for is more bays and more ports.

 

[Cynicalone]

Not much wrong with the current design imo. But I suppose adding more drive bay's wouldn't hurt. Not sure where you put them though, I guess make the case a bit taller and add a second row?

 

[grue]

Not much wrong with the current design imo. But I suppose adding more drive bay's wouldn't hurt. Not sure where you put them though, I guess make the case a bit taller and add a second row?

Exactly

 

[Flash SWT]

But I suppose adding more drive bay's wouldn't hurt. Not sure where you put them though, I guess make the case a bit taller and add a second row?

That would be pretty cool. On a machine this expensive I think there should also be a microphone jack in addition to the line-in. I'm also finding that having only 3 USB ports on the back is kind of limiting. My 7 year old home built PC had 6 on the back and 4 on the front.

 

[JesterJJZ]

More drive bays, more ports, more pci slots...

I couldn't care less what it looks like...current style is beautiful...

 

[Dr.Pants]

More drive bays, more ports, more pci slots

Seconded! If Apple has to make the case bigger, so be it. Would like to see the BTX-style PSU again, however. The handles, methinks, are the bomb - makes maneuvering my G5 out of the corner where it sits and back fairly easy when I have to pull it out for whatever reason. The only thing I really am begging for on a case update would be the soldiered-in HDD connectors. Not necessarily a bad thing, I could work around them (like wonkey third-party RAID)

 

[ziggyonice]

More drive bays, more ports, more pci slots...

I couldn't care less what it looks like...current style is beautiful...

Agreed. The current style, with the slide out drawer and easy access is incredible.

 

[maclover001]

Okay, let me add details.

• Slot-loading drives

This is Apple we're talking about here. The tray-loading drives aren't going to last much longer.

• Make the cheesegrader finer, like the uMBP speakers, as opposed to the classic MBP's

This will reduce airflow, yes, but it's again something I can see Apple doing.

• I don't really know what to think of the handles. Would you give them up for MacBook-like rubber feet?

Handles stay then.

• Power supply back on the bottom, like the G5

I like how the power cord socket is at the bottom on my G5. It's one less cord covering the peripheral slots.

 

[grue]

I seriously can't see them adding a slot loading piece of ****, as the Mac Pro is the only machine left in APple's entire product range that can deal with not-full-sized optical media. Apple does a lot of stupid crap, but I don't see them throwing that away.

Then again, the jackasses made the 15" MacBook Pro with a glossy screen only, so perhaps there is no end to their idiocy.

Likewise, the air holes are functional. You don't intentionally reduce airflow in a machine carefully designed to have excellent cooling, when such a change would increase heat and decrease reliability.

 

[grue]

I like how the power cord socket is at the bottom on my G5. It's one less cord covering the peripheral slots.

They'd have to totally re-engineer the internal design of the machine for absolutely zero real-world benefit. They might be jackasses sometimes, but they don't piss away money for no benefit.

 

[VirtualRain]

Honestly, the only change I'd like to see would be the addition of onboard eSATA, and more drive bays.

I agree... and would add... HD sleds that can accommodate either 3.5 or 2.5" drives

And while we're at it, some changes to the logic boards would be great...
- An additional pair of PCIe graphics 6 pin power connectors for running dual high-end cards
- A redesigned quad CPU riser card with 6 DIMM slots

 

[surflordca]

Honestly, the only change I'd like to see would be the addition of onboard eSATA, and more drive bays.

It would be nice to have a Hot Swappable HD in the front.

 

[Tesselator]

I like it the way it is even tho it's pretty old! It's high quality materials, aesthetically appealing and function is good.

I would like to see better and more internal rubber mounting tho. I would also like to see hot-swappable HDDs. So I could see adding precision fitting plates to the sleds and cutting out a long rectangular area from the side cover - or something like that. Besides that no, no changes.

As to the cheese grader holes bigger if anything.
Rubber feet? No thanks.
Lose the handles? Nope!
Power supply on the bottom? Nope that's silliness. DELL did that for a spell too in their PowerEdge and Precision units. Pretty weird and unwelcome.
Slot loading optical drives? A very loud and resounding nope!

2 or 3 more USB ports in front would be kewl tho!
Also I could see adding a drive activity light next to the power indicator lamp.
The power indicator lamp couls be color coded too. say, 5 or 6 colors for various error conditions.

Internally I would like to see them ditch the newly introduced daughter board in favor of the 2008/2006 design and add back in the memory slots they removed.

I also wouldn't mind if they made the case 1.5" to 2" taller to accommodate for a second row of hard drives. Four is not enough. Eight would be tho!

So that's me... They have a wonderful case design so don't be like Apple and mess up a good thing. Oh, whoops... jinxed!

 

[mason.kramer]

More I'd like to see some 2.5" bays for SSDs, or at the very least, mounting brackets for them.

And I want quieter case fans.

 

[wfj5444]

Maybe the option of a slot loading drive? Meh.. doesn't matter to me much.


More USB ports would be SO welcome. There is no good reason not to have them. It isn't as if bandwidth on the logic board is a real issue with more USBs. Especially since a current generation $200 PC motherboard from ASUS has like 8 rear facing.

 

[J the Ninja]

*snip*

What's wrong with a bottom-mount PSU? The top-mount is a relic from the days when we didn't have dedicated rear exhaust fans. Putting it on the bottom lowers the machine's center of a gravity (and not by a small amount either, mind you). Makes it MUCH harder to tip over. It just feels more stable when you are, say, scooting it along the carpet.

I too miss the risers. I think there would have been room for 6 slots without the heatsinks. They could also do a combo of both layouts, with the CPU sockets in a line, and each CPU's riser right above the heatsink. The problem was, DDR3 doesn't lend itself as well to riser-cards as FB-DIMM does. It requires more connections to the controller, and needs a seperate connection for each DIMM. Intel got around this for Beckton by using on-mobo buffers feeding normal DDR3 sticks, essentially getting the best of both. I guess this would fix the riser-pin problem provided you put the buffer on the riser itself. Not sure the lower-end Xeons support this though.


As for my own thoughts.....I don't know. The current case is pretty well laid out. It's tough to move something without leaving something else in a worse position. I would, however, appreciate some things like foam padding and damping materials on the side panel, and rubber HDD mount. Maybe thumbscrews there too. Rubber-washered thumbscrews. Maybe do some variant on the G5 drive-rails, but make the guides foam?

 

[Anuba]

more drive bays.

All I could ask for is more bays and more ports.

I suppose adding more drive bay's wouldn't hurt.

More drive bays

Seconded!

It has four drive bays. FOUR. Which is 2 more than I will ever use for internal storage. Why the hell would anyone want more than four? You know it's a workstation, right, and not a server room? How often do you run across workstations with more than 4 drive bays anyway? PC's come with 8 drive bays standard now, or what?

I agree with MacLover001 on most points except the slot-loading optical drives. This antiquated POS cheese-grater design is six years old and a makeover is long overdue. I don't think Apple has ever stayed with any design that long. Everything else except the Mini has gone through several revisions since then. There's no reason why they couldn't come up with ways of improving it both in terms of aesthetics and functionality... or do you think the 2003 PowerBook was the definitive statement in functional design? The 2008 UMBP brought no improvements to the table?

 

[grue]

It has four drive bays. FOUR. Which is 2 more than I will ever use for internal storage. Why the hell would anyone want more than four? You know it's a workstation, right, and not a server room? How often do you run across workstations with more than 4 drive bays anyway? PC's come with 8 drive bays standard now, or what?

I agree with MacLover001 on most points except the slot-loading optical drives. This antiquated POS cheese-grater design is six years old and a makeover is long overdue. I don't think Apple has ever stayed with any design that long. Everything else except the Mini has gone through several revisions since then. There's no reason why they couldn't come up with ways of improving it both in terms of aesthetics and functionality... or do you think the 2003 PowerBook was the definitive statement in functional design? The 2008 UMBP brought no improvements to the table?

Ok, because you don't have need for more than four bays, means nobody does? I don't have a need for body armor, but plenty of people do.

As for the PowerBook and MacBook design allegories, those are portable machines that, let's face it, people buy as much to show off their style as much as do work on. At least some of the people in this thread, myself included, couldn't possibly care less what a desktop machine looks like (within reason), because we need the machine's performance far more than we need some shiny chattel to show off to the neighbor in a fireworks-laden masturbatory dance of consumerism.

 

[snouter]

I like the big cheese grater since it's easy to just vacuum clean it...

the handles are too sharp, they need to roll the edges up or something... I used to have to move my dual G5 around a lot and I always had to get towels to tuck into the handles to protect my hands from the edges. That's pretty minor though.

I've always thought it was a little bit large, if they could shrink it at all, that would be cool...

 

[Cynicalone]

It has four drive bays. FOUR. Which is 2 more than I will ever use for internal storage. Why the hell would anyone want more than four? You know it's a workstation, right, and not a server room? How often do you run across workstations with more than 4 drive bays anyway? PC's come with 8 drive bays standard now, or what?

Well here is what I have right now 4 1TB internal soon to upgraded to 1.5TB or 2TB internals. A Drobo with 4 1TB drives in it. And 8 external 1TB drives to backup everything that is on the Pro and the Drobo. More bay's really couldn't hurt anything in my case. If you work with HD video you know what I mean. More HDD space is a good thing.

Soon I'll be consolidating the 8 externals to 4 2TB external WD Greens. Since speed isn't that important on the backup drives.

 

[Tesselator]

What's wrong with a bottom-mount PSU?

It adds 4 inches to the total height, it sits on the bottom just centimeters up off the floor and collects dust like mad. It usually needs an intake from under the machine so this limits the surface type one can set it on. They also usually use two little fans which are not long lived. Then there's the non-standard form-factor. This probably isn't a big deal for Mac as nothing is standard but on the DELLs a PC, non-standard isn't really desirable.

I too miss the risers. I think there would have been room for 6 slots without the heatsinks. They could also do a combo of both layouts, with the CPU sockets in a line, and each CPU's riser right above the heatsink. The problem was, DDR3 doesn't lend itself as well to riser-cards as FB-DIMM does. It requires more connections to the controller, and needs a seperate connection for each DIMM. Intel got around this for Beckton by using on-mobo buffers feeding normal DDR3 sticks, essentially getting the best of both. I guess this would fix the riser-pin problem provided you put the buffer on the riser itself. Not sure the lower-end Xeons support this though.

Excellent points. I just meant I wanted the number of slots back. I don't care where they are. Actually in the 2009 machines I think there should be 6x2 (12) total slots. And it's also kinda lame that the single processor machines only have half the slots.

It has four drive bays. FOUR. Which is 2 more than I will ever use for internal storage.

Well if you don't need them then that's cool but what about those of us that do want them? The entire system for a very large part, profiles like a server more than a workstation - or at least a very server-ish workstation. So those of us that recognize that and want to take advantage of it are often wanting lots of drive space. Anyway, that was where I was coming from. I think it would be great marketing too. "Expandable to 16 TB Storage"

 

[Anuba]

Ok, because you don't have need for more than four bays, means nobody does?

I didn't say that, but it sounds like a highly specialized thing that's outside the scope of what they're trying to cover with the Mac Pro. I mean let's face it, it's a "pro" machine but there are relatively few BTO options. You could build a billion different combinations of an industry workhorse like the Dell Precision 7500 series, but with the Mac Pro it's like, what, a hundred combinations? It's the same on the laptop side. You can get a PC laptop with 6 USB ports, quad CPU, 32 GB RAM, full sized keyboard with num pad, whatever, while on the MacBook "Pro" you're lucky if you get an option for anti-glare screen.

To suddenly have an option for 8 drive bays on such an inherently limited machine in terms of configurability sounds kind of like being able to order your Volkswagen Rabbit with factory mounted air defense gun on the roof. They'd have to size up the machine considerably and charge extra for tons of empty drive bay drawers just to cater to the 5-10% who are interested in massive internal storage. I dunno, I guess I don't see the point in having that much internal storage these days. I have lots of storage too, but it's external. With USB 3.0 and Firewire 3200 you'll have 3.2-4.0 GB/s speed which is more than adequate for just about everything, and you can move the storage between machines, so why cram the workstation chock full of 6 to 8 drives that will be spinning like crazy even when you're checking your mail...?

 

[pprior]

1) More hard drive bays - at least 6, preferably 8
2) Quieter fans (not bad now, but quiet is key)
3) eSATA ports on back and more FW800 ports
4) More hard drive bays

Did I mention more hard drive bays?