What Would It Cost To Build a Windows Version of the Pricey New Mac Pro? 804
zacharye writes "The new Mac Pro is the most powerful and flexible computer Apple has ever created, and it's also extremely expensive — or is it? With a price tag that can climb up around $10,000, Apple's latest enterprise workhorse clearly isn't cheap. For businesses with a need for all that muscle, however, is that steep price justifiable or is there a premium 'Apple tax' that companies will have to pay? Shortly after the new Mac Pro was finally made available for purchase last week, one PC enthusiast set out to answer that question and in order to do so, he asked another one: How much would it cost to build a comparable Windows 8 machine?"
People forget (Score:2, Insightful)
This is a business level product.
While you can build one cheaper using DYI parts, however the time spent in wages, for souring the hardware, software and doing the software can add up very quickly
.
Then there is also support and maintenance - will having a custom built machine cost more in the long run?
The more you spent on the machine - the bigger the margin for the DYI version - however at the end of the day - is the cost worth it for business?
$10199.99 (Score:5, Insightful)
Simple, add $199 for a copy of Windows, and you have an equivalent Apple machine, duh.
Obvious Question (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you put Windows 8 on a work computer?
Why is this a surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
The Mac tax has always been about the actual parts they use and that there are cheaper alternatives. For this comparison, they try to match the parts exactly. That of course is going to cost more because you are paying 3rd party markup prices while Apple is being direct from the manufacturer. The article even admits that you can buy things like a different video card that is equivalent for half the price. The question isn't if you can make the exact same system (or as close as possible) for cheaper but whether you can make an equivalent system for cheaper, and the answer to that is almost always yes.
64 GB ECC 32 consumer, pcie vs. sata. compare HP (Score:5, Insightful)
They've speced a machine with half as much RAM, and the Mac has server grade ECC RAM. They've replaced PCIe storage with SATA. It's not a comparable machine. For a fair comparison, compare the Mac to a similarly speced HP server. Alternatively, at least spec the Mac lower to match, rather than maxing out everything.
Also, the Mac includes little niceties, some of which the HP will match better. I have the Macbook Pro, not the newer Pro, but by way of analogy compare Apple's reversible magnetic power cable vs. everyone else's barrel plugs. Apple does a lot of little things better on their computers. (Unlike their iOS iPhone and iPad, which I wouldn't buy.)
Missed the point completely... (Score:2, Insightful)
Whether you can build a Mac Pro equivalent and save even 50% is irrelevant. The costs of the folks that offer the talent necessary to "git 'er done" in a lot of the film and graphics industries (to use popular examples) times the efficacy of the software they harness for their best productivity is all that matters. The fact that the majority of pro-level (compositing/whatever) apps are Mac-aware and optimized - and now more so or soon to be for the new Mac Pro, pretty much close the book. Have built large Linux clusters to crush a number of large computational tasks, and have always argued the "yahbbut... I could build that cheaper" case, but I think this one hits the mark *for its target market*. Buy it and get the job done. ...but damn, those monitors... ;-)
Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do I think they ordered those parts from the most expensive sources possible?
Well, if you read the fine article (the original, not the bgr rehash), you'd see that all the proces come from NewEgg -- not the cheapest, but also not the most expensive...
$11K? Another sites says $14K (Score:2, Insightful)
http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/12/24/apples-new-mac-pro-a-better-value-than-the-sum-of-its-parts [appleinsider.com]
But this has happened before.
Initially Apple gear can boast this kind of disparity; then, in fairly short order, PC hardware which exceeds Apple specs arrives and sells at a cheaper price point due to economies of scale.
Apple then holds onto the original specs for years (the last Mac Pro being a perfect example), until they are forced to retool. I'll even go out on a limb and predict a five year interim before we see another significant revision.
So if you can build a cheaper equivalent... (Score:2, Insightful)
The Mac tax has always been about the actual parts they use and that there are cheaper alternatives. For this comparison, they try to match the parts exactly. That of course is going to cost more because you are paying 3rd party markup prices while Apple is being direct from the manufacturer. The article even admits that you can buy things like a different video card that is equivalent for half the price. The question isn't if you can make the exact same system (or as close as possible) for cheaper but whether you can make an equivalent system for cheaper, and the answer to that is almost always yes.
So if you can build a cheaper equivalent... why aren't you in business, building cheaper equivalents and getting rich off the fact that it's costing you less to build equivalent hardware?
You're paying for the whole package (Score:5, Insightful)
If you were willing to budge on the form factor, shop for bargains, and substitute various components (such as a Quadro card instead of the FirePro, as suggested in the article), then you probably could build a comparable DIY system cheaper. But people who buy the Mac Pro really don't care about that. Businesses, in case you haven't noticed, tend not to go with DIY systems for the most part. They prefer having them purpose-built by OEMs. This system is aimed squarely at businesses in the creative sector: graphics design, modeling, rendering, and so forth. (Presumably a lot of them will be dual-booting with Windows 7.)
You'd be hard-pressed to build a system that has this much power at the same low noise levels (remember, you've got two graphics cards with about a 200W TDP each, plus a powerful Xeon CPU). You might be able to pull it off with the right case (most likely a Silverstone FT02 or FT04) and some careful use of fan controllers, but this would be a lot bigger than the Mac Pro, and you'd likely need to keep it under your desk instead of on top. No DIY system is going to match the Mac Pro's combination of high power, very low noise, tiny footprint, and excellent fit-and-finish. It just isn't possible within the limitations of the standard form factors of DIY parts.
Re:Obvious Question (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows 8 has far more user marketshare than Linux and probably more than MacOSX sadly.
The reason there are not many Windows 8 apps is because corps still use IE 8 for their intranets and Vistual Studio 2013 requires IE 10 which is unacceptable at work.
Software still sold last year requires IE 6 because when the software was written in 2008 their IT department had one CRM app requiring IE 6 and IT refused to upgrad etc. Silly as this sound but XP and IE is killing MS from getting people to leave.
If this were not an issue there would be more Windows 8 apps.
Gather 'round children ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's let grandpa tell you kids a story since the Apple bashing has reached a bit of a frenzy lately with the introduction of a professional-grade computer.
First things first. This is not a computer that little Billy is buying so he can run the latest warez torrent of today's game du jour. This is also not a computer that dad is buying for the family to sit in the living room and run quickbooks on. No, your average neck beard is probably not looking to max one of these out so he can whip up the the latest build of the development branch of his custom linux kernel.
This computer is a business computer. It is designed and offered at a price range that will appeal to a customer who uses the computer to make money. No, not some bit coin mining operation, but real tangible money. These are designed for professionals who bill out to real paying customers for between $200 and $800 per hour. Yes, you heard that right. In the grown up world, highly productive and effective professionals bill their clients real money. When people grow up and begin to afford products like this, they are not wearing skinny jeans and sitting in Starbucks trying to look cool on a financed Macbook.
So, this is a $10,000 computer. So what? For a business purchase, let's evaluate this whole thing.
This is a computer that based on its speed and performance may allow that professional mentioned above to be 1.5 - 3 times more productive. That means more money. At $200 per hour, that's only 50 hours to recoup the cost. That's one billable week. It's a drop in the bucket. One client engagement. But wait, there's more
You see, in the business world, there's also this neat thing called depreciation of assets. It's an accounting thing. I know, I know, they aren't elite computer dudes, but the accountants do stuff with numbers and things like that. Anyway, in a basic system, the business that buys the computer gets to take the money spent off their taxes based on certain formulas. One way they do this is taking the acquisition price minus the residual value at the end of the effective lifespan (5 years) and then take the total left and divide it across the total period. Say the company buys a $10,000 computer and estimates it will be worth $1000 in 5 years time, it then takes the remaining $9000 and divides it by 5 years, which gives $1800 per year. The company can then take $1800 each year as depreciation expense on the asset. (Disclaimer for those with some accounting background, this is straight-line depreciation and there are other allowable forms that handle things different)
This means that not only does the company get to reap the rewards of more productivity but they also get to reduce their tax liability on the money they earn from it. I know, evil capitalists are keeping the man down by denying tax money. However, this is how the world works.
That is why a company will happily spend $10,000 on a high end Apple computer that some of you can't wrap your head around.
But, can't it be done cheaper by building it themselves? Probably yes. Although TFA was a non starter in that regard. Here's a hint for you just beginning your career. Business does not care that you can twist a screwdriver and put something together off newegg. Apple, for the money, provides someone that will happily offer mature support and a one-stop shop to handle repairs and other needs. Yes, the genius bar is not perfect nor is it what is usually considered enterprise level support (believe me, I do know the difference). But, it's a good option.
Move past the point that things are upgradeable or hackable or DIY or whatever. These things are productivity appliances. They are like the big screen televisions in the conference rooms or the phone systems. If something breaks, it gets fixed or swapped out by the vendor. It's cost effective and gives management someone to yell at when things go south.
So, y'all can continue to bash the product. You can happily laugh with derision at Apple while
Re:So if you can build a cheaper equivalent... (Score:1, Insightful)
So if you can build a cheaper equivalent... why aren't you in business, building cheaper equivalents and getting rich off the fact that it's costing you less to build equivalent hardware?
Apple marketing and Apple fanboys.
Re:64 GB ECC 32 consumer, pcie vs. sata. compare H (Score:5, Insightful)
The real comparison comes in how good the machine is at doing what you need it to do. If you're making a movie or doing serious sound editing, video editing, or modeling, this machine and the accompanying software is clearly top-tier, compared to trying to assemble a full workflow yourself that includes the hardware, software, and infrastructure integration. And the fact that you just order it off the shelf and it comes with everything and integrates with everything isn't really priced into this comparison.
This is exactly what people seem to not understand. Not to mention trying to get support when your custom built system starts to have issues (blue screening due to drivers, hardware incompatibilities, etc.. ). When you have a project due for a client and some key piece of software starts crashing, or crashing the machine, the last thing you want to have to deal with are the numerous vendors playing the blame game.
Granted, not all software will be fully tweaked off the bat with the new mac pro, but its a system that no doubt the big players (The Foundry, Autodesk, Maxon, Avid, Adobe, etc) will target for testing and make sure their software works and takes advantage of as much of the hardware as is possible. As opposed to testing on randomly built DIY solutions.
For the price, how can you really beat a high end system thats custom built (down to the pcb level), using mostly off the shelf stuff (just assembled in a way thats not convenient to the DIY/tinkerer), supported by a single company, and is / will be used in testing by the actual companies that write the software you want to run on it?
Re:$11K? Another sites says $14K (Score:5, Insightful)
The Mac Pro was updated every year from 2006-2010; it was only the 2010 version that was stuck in place, probably in part due to the development of this new machine.
Re:Why is this a surprise? (Score:4, Insightful)
You didn't read the article.
The windows equivalents were MORE expensive.
4 grand for the entry level box and 11.5k for the high end, versus 3k and 9.5k for the Apple machines.
That's the surprise.
Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
i think it's cheaper to have middling computers every 2-3 year cycle than a gargantuon every 6 years
Re:$11,530.54 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
The OS I don't care about one way or another. I prefer it to Windows in the sense that it has a functional unix-ish command line, but beyond that the GUI is irritating in different ways. I'd prefer to run Linux on it, for my own reasons, but I'd rather wait until the Haswell-EP (or whatever they're calling their 2P Xeon's these days) is released. Hopefully Mac Pro doesn't miss that generation...
But building a comparable Windows machine with parts available on the market through your favorite sources (ex. newegg) is not possible at any price. You can integrate components with equal or greater functionality, but how much system test is there? Who is going to root cause every blue screen? Trust me, more of those blue screens are hardware related than I would have believed years ago. Who is making sure the PSU can deliver the needed power for the various application loads, and that it is performing with margin? Who is doing thermal measurements, checking airflow and ensuring parts are being kept safely in their operating region? This is what Apple is doing that "justifies" the price. The double quotes are there because no other system's company out there is holding to any quality standard except Apple, and as long as that's the case, Apple can charge whatever it likes.
It's not 1999 anymore. It used to be a computer would be obsolete before anything broke. Who cares about quality in this case? DIY made a lot of sense (and Apple suffered). But now even high end users can miss 3 or more processor generations and not care. It's better to pay a bit more for something that's going to hold together.
tl;dr, as a former motherboard designer and employee of a large OEM that is dying spectacularly, I assure you that Apple's computers are worth more than the sum of their parts. I
Re:Hard to believe (Score:4, Insightful)
Cheaper, certainly. But a PITA. I hate, hate, hate installing Windows.
Re:Hard to believe (Score:3, Insightful)
Why would you install Windows? Oh, sure, I get there might be some Windows-only apps you want, but put a reasonable VM on the box, install on that once, and just move the VM to successive new machines. You can allows throw more virtual hardware at it.
Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
xeons already have a luxury tax...
and while it doesn't make that much of a difference in the total their case was 160 bucks.. motherboard 280 bucks.. going mATX really bites. and get this, 50-75 bucks for bluetooth and wifi(wtf??).
and then going for luxury taxed firepro's. 3400 bucks each. the point with going with the pc is that you can choose something else as well. heck, you get a monster of a machine just by going with two 1000 bucks gaming cards, if you don't need that bit switched on to make it a "pro opengl" card(or just nvidias "pro" cards, either way you would shave off a whopping 4800 bucks!! that's nearly HALF OF THE FUCKING PRICE for no practical performance loss - or heck, maybe even a gain).
it's their choice of parts that makes it expensive as hell, not the choice of where they priced them from.
*luxury tax here refers to paying for something someone just building a pc at home with their own money would never buy... something that is marked up just because some companies don't give a shit.
Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
The service aspect is not all positive.. With a vendor built, a component failure means a 2 week minimum turnaround where you're out of a machine. If you've built it yourself it's an overnighted part and you're up and running again...and if you're crazy desperate, a drive to frys/microcenter.
If you remotely know what you're doing, your home built cooling setup easily beats the cost conscious compromises built into vendor designs, even the boutique brands like apple. It's not difficult to design a cooling system for stock clocked chips.
Finally, there's performance. It's quite easy to build an overclocked machine that'll outperform anything apple offers, even while staying away from benchmark warrior speeds. I'd rather have 8 cores at 4.6 ghz than 12 or 16 at 2.6 for 99% of the applications out there, including 'embarrassingly parallel' media heavy ones like 3D modeling and video encoding.
Yes, if you don't know what you're doing, your build's reliability will suck, but really, it's not that hard to build a decent machine yourself that outperforms apple in performance and reliability.
You can't assure me jack shit. This is an appeal to emotion. Try getting help from apple when your machine is out of its expensive applecare warranty. Good luck. At least with a home built, it'll last as long as you want it to as parts are always readily available, and at no worse reliability than the crappy refurbs apple sticks into supposedly 'new' computers when they fail. They're usually cheaper too.
Re: Hard to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not Linux's fault that the developers of Final Cut Pro and Lightroom specifically chose *not* to support Linux. It is also not Linux's fault that both Apple and Adobe guard and keep their programs' source code secret, so it is impossible for anyone else to compile it for anything other than the operating systems that these two companies choose to compile these programs for themselves.
No it will not (Score:2, Insightful)
when buying equivalent hardware
Even in the example that is "only" 11k instead of 10k from Apple, there were significant shortcomings in the hardware used compared to what Apple ships. It's not going to be equivalent - probably not even to the cheaper Mac Pro configurations that are just $3k-$5k.
Re:Obvious Question (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:So if you can build a cheaper equivalent... (Score:2, Insightful)
So if you can build a cheaper equivalent... why aren't you in business, building cheaper equivalents and getting rich off the fact that it's costing you less to build equivalent hardware?
Probably because he understands business better than you do. Your condescending attitude belies an abject lack of understanding regarding brand identity. Walmart brand cola may taste exactly the same as coca cola, but it costs quite a bit less... so why doesn't everyone drink Walmartola instead of Coca cola? Brand identity. That's what you're paying for here... and it's a small surprise a bunch of hipsters can't figure out that the cost of producting something only makes up typically 1/3rd or less of the total sale price. And no, it's not all profit, to answer your next question. Contrary to popular belief, profits don't typically appear in double digit percentages, and in fact most people can't even accurately define what profit is, or the difference between sales and revenue. -_-
Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure you got the point of the article - they were trying to match the specs of the capabilities in the Mac using commodity parts. The GPUs in the Mac Pro are the same as those firePro parts that cost a small fortune, and even a couple of R9 290x's wouldn't keep up because of a lack of VRAM (6GB of DDR5 vs 4GB on the 290's)
I'm not saying you need those gpu's, but if you're trying to match specs, those are the ones to choose. I think it's also clear that Apple are pushing gpu-based computing at the high end (they designed OpenCL after all), so high-load gpu code is likely to be common in the pro-apps. Those GPUs will be used on a mac.
Re:Gather 'round children ... (Score:2, Insightful)
There may be some who need this level of computer, however, for many business purchases, this is merely a status symbol: the PHB's boss will have one to show how important s/he is. This PHB's boss will never come remotely close to using the full technical capability of this Mac, nevertheless, this Mac will excel at the purpose for which it was bought: showing status.
Allmost all of those things utilitarian (Score:4, Insightful)
Yet the Mac Pro is ...
a) Round
A shape chosen for better cooling characteristics - they can get away with a smaller case, and a smaller fan to cool the same components that a square case would use.
b) Shiny
This is the only one of the items that really has little practical use. Yet what case maker WANTS a butt-ugly case? And in a design shop it looks better to have better looking gear.
c) Cool looking
This is only because it's small, but small has utility too. It means it's much easier to move around, and modern workers change workspaces more frequently than they used to. Have you tried moving one of the older Mac Pros? They looked great too but you sure wanted to leave them where they were.
d) expensive
That's not even right. For what you get it's NOT expensive, which is the whole point of the Slashdot story to begin with. It gives you a lot of power at a fair price, and some people do in fact need that much power. Anyone who does not can just buy an iMac.
There are a few rich people that will buy one just for fun, sure. But most of the people buying this system will do so because they have a PRACTICAL need for the power the system offers in a smallish form factor.
Re:Gather 'round children ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Obvious Question (Score:4, Insightful)
But Windows 8 does have more marketshare than OSX [netmarketshare.com].
Huh? Windows 8 is 2.64%, and Mac OS X is 4.27%, so how is that less?
What? The links splits OSX between 10.9 and 10.8 and Windows 8 between 8 and 8.1, if you want to be terrible a reading a graph and lump them together without being bias then Windows 8 has over 8% between 8 and 8.1 (dont say they are not the same you already grouped the 2 OSX's and the 2 8's arent that different) so try to swing bs somewhere else or learn to read.
Re: Why is this a surprise? (Score:2, Insightful)
A a Ford Taurus is "functionally equivalent" to a BMW 7 series too, right? They both drive around at the legal speed limit and get stuck in the same traffic.
BMW seems to sell theirs at TRIPLE the price of Ford though.
Re:64 GB ECC 32 consumer, pcie vs. sata. compare H (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure how you got "a pcie bridge over wires rather than on board connectors" from "Expose devices as hotplug PCI-E". Presenting devices to the operating system as PCI-E hotplug in no way implies they actually are PCI-E devices or are in any way electrically similar (much like how "file descriptor" hardly means "file").
In short, I agree with everything you said in the second paragraph, and I think it supports my point. The OS (local CPU) only gets involved with the Thunderbolt controller for communication relevant to it. The controller chip hides all the complexity of packet switching and routing etc. Unless you're on a Mac, which takes all that brilliant design and says "We're going to require the kernel to manage everything the controller chip should be doing for us".
Source: same as before, from someone who has read the relevant spec and implemented a driver - http://www.kroah.com/log/linux/hardware.html [kroah.com]
Re:Hard to believe (Score:2, Insightful)
Heh, I'm posting this from Slackware, but you speak like someone who doesn't use windows applications that do any heavy lifting. Try running some higher end video editing software in a VM and let me know how well that works for ya.
Right tool, right job.
Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, quite. The base Mac Pro actually turns out to be fairly reasonably priced for the combination of components inside, but - and this is important - there is essentially no reason to get that combination of components unless you have no other choice because you're buying a Mac. For instance, they're paying out quite a bit of extra money in order to fit everything into a smaller case, even though that'd actually be a downside for many customers. Also, most of the professional applications out there that use GPU acceleration can only make use of a single GPU, so the second $3400 GPU will be sitting completely idle for most Mac Pro buyers. What's more, as the article mentions many apps run better on NVidia GPUs anyway. Also, how many of the GPU-accelerated apps can also make full use of a 12-core CPU?
Re: Hard to believe (Score:1, Insightful)
If you cannot installatie a modern version of Windows in onder 30 minuten these days I would consider you top dumb to be even let naar a computer. Let alone that you'd be actually capable of building your own HW. The Windows cheap shots are getting old, really.
Lurn 2 spel (Score:0, Insightful)
"If you cannot INSTALLATIE a modern version of Windows in ONDER 30 MINUTEN these days I would consider you TOP dumb to be even let NAAR a computer."
So many LOLs. You idiot. Don't you ever look at what you've actually typed?
Re: Hard to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not Linux's fault that the developers of Final Cut Pro and Lightroom specifically chose *not* to support Linux. It is also not Linux's fault that both Apple and Adobe guard and keep their programs' source code secret, so it is impossible for anyone else to compile it for anything other than the operating systems that these two companies choose to compile these programs for themselves.
Why would i care whose "fault" it is?
Re:Hard to believe (Score:5, Insightful)
Nah.. you would want to outsource your products componants. You get the benefits og easily being able to rid yourself of old stock, not having to warehouse materials, at the ability to take advantage of lowering prices. That is a key benifit of just in time freight from third parties. Rumor is that dell and hp only have 10 days working stock on hand at one time and they pay the going rates as it comes off the trailers in the shipping docks.
At minimum, if you owned the production or resalrd companies, you would spin them off so they couldn't drag profits from the main company effectivly creating the same scenario.
Re:Obvious Question (Score:2, Insightful)
Brushed aluminum or titanium black? Seriously guys? By the time you start discussing the merits of color, you may as well just buy the damned Apple, because you've already "bought" into their culture.
And will this "new" [wikipedia.org] positive-pressure central heat tower design work under load and over time? Hey, I'll mock Apple fans for favoring style over function and paying for the privilege, but I'd go out on a limb here and bet Apple's engineers thought to at least test that sucker under full load for weeks at a time in the "dog hair and cigarette ash" lab to see if it held up. You don't sell $10k consumer hardware that doesn't work.
Yes, "consumer". At that price, you may well only really see these in the workplace, but you'll see them only because your obnoxious hipster graphic designer threw a fit until they company bought her one of these monsters - Making it targeted at a specific consumer, not business, demographic. Everyone else in need of that much horsepower will just get the black rectangular Lenovo with comparable specs at half the price.
Re:A fashion statement? (Score:2, Insightful)
This sounds like an advert for Apple, simply. Already for that reason alone, I am not going to read the articles.
Calling what I suspect is just a souped up fashion statement a "work horse", is probably just a symptom of cluelessness. And wanting to do the same with Windows supports that diagnosis. A "work horse" is a big, sweaty and dirty animal, not a dainty thing to take on a fashionable stroll along the promenade; and a souped up Macintosh or PC is more like a rich kid's toy car than a tractor. I don't know if you have noticed, but you don't often see a Ferrari pulling a plough - there's a reason for that.
As for the price - for $10000 you could get a decent sized Dell PowerEdge server; or even a Sun SPARC, IBM pSeries or HP if that takes your fancy. All of them are real work horses and all run operating systems that are meant for real work. True, you can't play games on them, and they don't pull chicks, but it is amazing how often that is not a major concern when you need to hold down a job.
Yeah, why actually bother read stuff, let's just judge books by their cover and then make informed comments about what you think is written in them.