Apple Announces All-New Redesigned Mac Pro, Starting at $5,999 (theverge.com) 317
The long-awaited Mac Pro is here. From a report: The new Intel Xeon processor inside the Mac Pro will have up to 28 cores, with up to 300W of power and heavy-duty cooling, "so it can run unconstrained at full power at all times." System memory can be maxed out at an eyebrow-raising 1.5TB, says Apple. There are eight internal PCI Express slots, with four of them being double-wide. Two USB-C and two USB-A ports will grace the front of the system, which is at least one more USB-C port than you'll find on a majority of desktop PC systems and cases today. With this Mac Pro, Apple is launching a custom expansion module it calls an MPX Module. This is a giant quad-wide PCIe card that fits two graphics cards, has its own dedicated heatsink, and also has a Thunderbolt 3 connector on the bottom for extra bandwidth / power / display connectivity. Apple says you can spec that out with AMD's Radeon Pro Vega 2 or Radeon Pro Vega 2 Duo, the latter of which would get you four GPUs in total. The power supply of the new Mac Pro maxes out at 1.4kW. Three large fans sit at the front, just behind the new aluminum grille, blowing air across the system at a rate of 300 cubic feet per minute. It starts at $5,999.
Seems reasonable (Score:5, Funny)
I totally would buy this for $599.90
Is that before tax?
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no, you have to pay tax, they got the decimals wrong, its only $5.99 making it a grand total of $6.49
Yeah, but that is before US tariffs, which will knock it up to $5,999 again.
Thankfully, China is paying all those tariffs ... oh, wait.
Re:Seems reasonable (Score:5, Insightful)
I totally would buy this for $599.90
Is that before tax?
That *is* the tax.
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No kidding. That'd be about $8067 Canadian plus another $968.00 in sales tax.
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Escaping the PST would be nice. Alberta winters, not so much.
The CPU is probably worth about $600 (Score:2)
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$6000.00 for a desktop (Score:2, Insightful)
They're nuts.
Re:$6000.00 for a desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
They're nuts.
It's a server, with high-end monitor(s) and peripherals, that you can put on (or, more likely, under) your desktop and use it as a desktop.
I had a SGI Indy [wikipedia.org] Workstation as my work desktop at NASA Langley back in the late 1990's and it was pretty pricey. So let's call this new Apple Mac Pro a Workstation ...
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Should-a, would-a, CUDA.
Considering the Indys were discontinued in 1997 and OpenCL and CUDA didn't appear until 2009 and 2007, respectively, why is so funny?
What is funny is that these workstations were SGI's budget line, yet they cost more than the average car.
Re:$6000.00 for a desktop (Score:4, Informative)
They're nuts.
Compared to other high end workstations [dell.com], it's not that bad.
The problem is that there is a sliiiiight product gap between the Mac mini and the Mac Pro if you're looking for headless workstations.
.
Re:$6000.00 for a desktop (Score:4, Informative)
This is nothing.
the $999 for the monitor stand is hilariously bad.
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999 for a hunk of aluminum, or 199 for a vesa stand adaptor [macrumors.com]
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They're nuts.
And there will be a long line waiting to buy it.
Re:$6000.00 for a desktop (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeesh. Back in the late 90's, I was one of the world's happiest owners of a PowerMac G4, for about $2,500. It was a workhorse. It lasted me 5 years, in an era when desktops often fell apart or hopelessly behind after 3. It was peppy, beautiful, expandible, and one of the first multi-core systems a person could buy for their home. (That was in part because the processor wars were collapsing, and multi-core was the way out, but nobody wanted to admit that yet, but still.) Having that system let me edit video that I probably had no right trying to create while working out of a guy's basement, but it fed me for a year. It was a very good computer.
It was also the last Mac desktop I could afford. They've gotten increasingly expensive. The consumer editions seemed pretty nice, but didn't have enough expansion, particularly multiple monitors, and the desktops have zoomed up into price ranges my office generally doesn't pay for servers. I loved them for a long time, and still like them in principle, but it's been ages since they've been cost effective. On the laptop side they held out for another decade, because Windows couldn't figure out how to sleep/hibernate without crashing, but even that's a solved problem these days.
Storage (Score:2)
One area glossed over was storage.Nary a mention. With this omitted, how much you wanna' bet the 'ssd' is soldered onto something.
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If you have PCI and Thunderbolt I think most people will just get the minimum SSD option and then go third party for everything else
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MacOS still doesn't support RAID for the system disk.
WTF? OS X did SW RAID fine for ages. Even better than Windows.
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Well considering that Windows SW RAID is garbage, I'm not sure that is the comparison that you want to bring to the table.
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It used to support it, but they dropped the support at some point. I think you can still use both RAID 0 and 1 as boot volumes on machines that have hardware for multiple internal drives, as long as that volume is HFS+. Around the time of the APFS launch I think they played down RAID support since the new APFS didn't support RAID booting. Not sure whether it still doesn't or if it's something they've fixed during the last few years.
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One area glossed over was storage.Nary a mention. With this omitted, how much you wanna' bet the 'ssd' is soldered onto something.
Storage? No problem. Apple offers a branded EMC storage array for an extra $50,000, but it weighs 3,500 lbs.
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With this omitted, how much you wanna' bet the 'ssd' is soldered onto something.
It appears to have built-in support for mSATA SSD cards. You lose. Pay up. [apple.com]
Yaz
Re:Storage (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not a hater. In fact, I have a trashcan in my studio running protools right now. This machine is targeted at folks like me running high-end audio and video/graphics applications. I see the product page now. Glad the storage is upgradable, but let's face it, OWC will charge a premium. I was only pointing out that during the presentation they didn't even mention storage, outside of the fact that the BB model comes with 256.
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What's to keep you from buying an off-the-shelf SSD and installing it? I did it with my 2011 MacBook Pro a few years ago and had a minor issue which Apple Support was happy to address without charge. This was always the case with the Mac Pro pre-trashcan days.
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What's to keep you from buying an off-the-shelf SSD and installing it?
Voiding the warranty. Possible hardware compatibility issues. Lack of support by apps that will assume it's impossible to have more than the standard amount of onboard storage. The usual stuff that keeps Mac users from doing anything at all to upgrade their computers. Apple might as well weld the case shut at the factory.
Thunderbolt 3 does not have the bandwith to drive (Score:4, Insightful)
Thunderbolt 3 does not have the bandwidth to drive and video card at full speed.
Also no way that one 1 Intel cpu can feed 8 slots + storage + other io.
Re: Thunderbolt 3 does not have the bandwith to dr (Score:4, Interesting)
I think you must have misunderstood. The video card is driven by PCIe slots. The Thunderbolt connector is almost certainly provided for one of two reasons:
Or both. It almost certainly is not intended to be used to actually drive the video card itself.
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but if you have base.
12 for 3 TB3 buses.
16 for video slot 1
4 T2 / base storage.
get's to 32 very fast.
Re: Thunderbolt 3 does not have the bandwith to dr (Score:4, Interesting)
The only 28 core Xeon with 64 PCIe lanes on ark.intel.com is the W-3275.
https://ark.intel.com/content/... [intel.com]
That CPU has an MSRP of $4449.
Otherwise, Xeons get you 48 lanes (I believe with 4 dedicated to the DMI link to the chipset).
You may have slots for 64 or 96 or whatever lanes, and they may all be wired as such, but it's going to be behind a bridge/muxer before hitting the CPU. There are more slots and electrical connections than there are lanes, even for the big boy $$$$ CPU.
It looks like Apple is using "MPX Modules" (and bays, and slots) to do this. The primary features of the MPX shit seems to be custom modules with a set of hardware that needs 2 x16 slots (or 1 x16 and 1x8 slot), but routing stuff (bracket I/O, PCIe power) internally via the module and the mobo. The TB3 connections connect internally to the DP ports. My guess is the modules connect to 2 x16 slots on the board and then triage power and data to the actual device.
That display is actually more interesting (Score:3)
I think demand will outstrip supply
(but most people aren't going to buy it with that "official" stand)
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You might need to think beyond your own budgetary experiences and think about the people who find themselves limited by "only" having 250 tracks in audio and want to have 1000 as per the demo, and for the people currently spending $43,000-ish (you can get it for less than what they showed) for Sony reference displays, $5000 is a huge savings.
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Nobody is working with 250 tracks at the same time in music production. Not only is that number of tracks absurd and massive overkill but you would have condensed and bounced several times before getting to that level.
Re:That display is actually more interesting (Score:5, Informative)
I regularly hit the limits with 250 tracks with video production audio. It's not at all an unrealistic boundary to hit. Say I have some CGI that has 4000 objects blowing up, and I provide subtle sound effects for just 2.5% of them, that's 100 tracks. Oh, there's a crowd? That's another 50. The main characters voice, sfx etc, that's another 25 or 50, maybe a bit of orchestration that's another 50....
Re:That display is actually more interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
And you still can't do it right! The dialog will be whisper quiet, so I have to turn up the sound. Then when 2.5% of the 4000 objects blow up, it's so loud it scares the shit out of my neighbors!
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No that's your own fault. Mixing is done for the cinema. Dynamic range compression is done by the playing device, check your Bluray player's manual. The rest of us don't want crap sound just because your neighbour is 90 years old.
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Sounds like a workflow issue. You should be bouncing those tracks into rendered audio as you go. I don't do video editing so adjust as necessary to fit your use case, but I mix as I work. mixing as a discrete step is inefficient I find. So I will be massaging each track as I develop them and once I get an entire part done, for example the drums or baseline, I bounce it to wav. Each part can on its own be multiple tracks or channels pre-rendered. Usually my drum kits will be at least 8 discrete instruments e
hows vega compared to Nvidia for scientific GPU? (Score:2)
I'm only familiar with CUDA so I've ignored the AMD scene. But with the new AMD processors and cheaper GPU I need to update my knowledge.
How do you program these like CUDA?
How are the libs for things like PyTorch or tensor Flow
How are libs for Numba or numpy? (Intel has some nice libs that Matplotlib uses. Does AMD have these parallel or SIMD optimizations too for numpy)
And finally what about Blender?
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> How do you program these like CUDA?
CUDA is only for nVidia GPUs.
OpenCL is cross platform and is mostly a replacement.
Imagian a Beowolf cluster of them (Score:2)
Are they serious? (Score:5, Insightful)
Woooow. A 6 grand base price and the best they can give you is a 256GB SSD?
The design of the new MP looks very nice, and having high-end server level logic board, etc are nothing to sneeze at, but Mr. Cook is just cheapening the whole impression by being so petty with the base configuration.
It's a pathetically transparent attempt to force people to upsize to the dramatically more expensive models, just like they've been doing with the rest of their line up.
if the 256GB SSD is locked to the MB then it's goo (Score:2)
if the 256GB SSD is locked to the MB then it's good as just an os + apps disk. Get an $200 TB1 M.2 disk.
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If you put a low-end $200 1TB M.2 in a $6000 Mac Pro, you're a moran.
Anything less than a Samsung 970 Pro 1TB M.2 [newegg.com], and you'll be wasting the CPU and RAM. Even on sale, it's nowhere near $200.
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if the 256GB SSD is locked to the MB
It's not. It appears to be mSATA.
Yaz
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FWIW, before Apple's obsession with soldering everything on the motherboard, people used to buy the default configuration and add more RAM or a better GPU later. This looks to be the case again.
I think $6K might be reasonable for upgraded version -- 28 cores and 1.5 TB of memory -- but certainly not for this machine. I know several people who build hackintoshes for Hollywood professionals (and get paid for it) as their Steve Jobs "Trashcan" Mac Pro (yep, that's the last time it was updated) and I'm sure for
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Woooow. A 6 grand base price and the best they can give you is a 256GB SSD?
The type of professional Apple is targeting with this system is probably on a network with a petabyte-range high-speed NAS attached. Massive local storage isn't as required, as you're not storing the entire project on the Mac Pro itself. And if for some reason you are, the system is configurable with up to 4Tb of SSD inside, and as much as you want externally via Thunderbolt 3.
Yaz
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That bothers me about Apple. Why don't provider bigger sized SSDs by default? Why do we have to customize order to get bigger sizes?
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That bothers me about Apple. Why don't provider bigger sized SSDs by default? Why do we have to customize order to get bigger sizes?
Most of their target customers will be working off NAS and SANs and need only enough space to work with the files.
Apple has lost the Macintosh. (Score:4, Interesting)
Back when the entire product line was fully refreshed every 2 years. Macs were exciting computers to get, they seem to show off what was going to be common in computers in the next few years, they were like a look into the future.
However now if you get a Mac, you will have to get it right after it is released, because don't expect an upgrade anytime soon, by the time it does come out, it will be hopelessly out of date.
Also this new model seems to affect my Trypophobia a bit, Something about the design makes me feel uncomfortable.
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It reminds me of a modernist 1950s airport....
They messed up w the Trashcan (Score:2)
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Here's the OS market share the last 10 years [statcounter.com]. See the dip in Macs? It's not there, not if you zoom in either. There's a ton of Win7 machines coming up for replacement soon as support runs out, I think a lot of non-gamer, non-business people will go Mac. If they are able to launch ARM desktop/laptops in time for a fresh start that would be even better, but it looks like the clock is running out on that even though project Catalyst is probably the stepping stone. Though maybe they'll have the guts to send up
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CPU upgrades were never really available. You could upgrade memory, disk space, and graphics.
The one thing I like about what they've done is that they haven't tried to cram it into a small form factor like the trashcan. So when Intel has their next generation Xeon CPUs, I'd expect that we will see a Mac Pro update shortly thereafter.
Nice hardware, but who is the market for this now? (Score:2)
Nice hardware with the usual Apple price premium.
A question for the /. crowd, what are the killer OSX only applications for someone like this? Or cross platform applications that have a real inherent advantage running OSX over Windows/Linux? (Outside of the Apple stuff like Final Cut. Logic etc)
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Media editing primarily, and as a developer workstation.
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Developer workstation? Developing for what? The only reason to get a mac with developing is if you are writing iOS applications and you do not need a Mac Pro to do that. You just need a mac that can run the latest MacOS. And that's only because they tie the SDK to the latest MacOS. If you are writing for anything other than iOS you can use whatever platform you want, although its generally recommended to develop on the platform you are developing for
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People in video production etc. have been leaving Apple in dribs-and-drabs over the past years because of the neglect of the Mac Pro (I actually know a guy who got so desperate he started hackintoshing machines with better CPUs etc than Apple offered), this could bring at least some of them back, I believe.
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Most of my colleagues at the government research lab I work at use Macs, with a smaller percentage (including me) going for Linux.
My office mate has an older Mac Pro, so this could work for them (given availability of funding!)
Big question... (Score:2)
Re: Big question... (Score:2)
Trypophobia Anyone (Score:2)
This new design, seemed to trigger my disgust reflex. The holes are too big to be neat, and the cross bars make me think of spiders setting up webs in them.
It just reminds me of a bug infested corpse.
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I think it looks like a cheese grater from the front. Isn't that what they were going for?
Looks like... (Score:3)
...a giant cheese grater?
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Is that photo at the bottom of the Verge article a fucking joke?
Is Jonny Ives being held prisoner?
Steve would have dropped this thing off the top of his giant fucking flying saucer and made the designer go pick up the pieces.
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I agree the design isn't grate but its gouda nough.
1.4kV (Score:4, Funny)
The power supply of the new Mac Pro maxes out at 1.4kW.
With that being 11 1/3 amps on typical 120v US power, I wonder how many people are going to find they don't have power lines in the walls/breakers that are rated to run this. I think the lowest breakers I have currently are 15 amps, but I've lived in several places that had 10amp breakers. Even at 15 amps, that doesn't leave much for any other outlets on that breaker.
I also wonder if there is a house-wide voltage drop when all four video cards first kick in. I remember the lights dimming momentarily in places when the refrigerator compressor kicked on. Or a window AC unit. A typical refrigerator draws 725watts/6amps. with 1.4kV being about double that. At 10,000BTU AC is slightly less at 10 amps.
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A fridge compressor can draw a lot more than the stated current during startup--it's called inrush current. It can even be far higher than the entire circuit, but since it's only for a few milliseconds it doesn't trip a breaker or (slow-blow) fuse.
Here's a Kenmore refrigerator [shopyourway.com] that draws 6.5 amps according to the label. The inrush amperage is 11. So it's slightly less than this computer when it is maxed out.
This is why turning on a 1500W space heater doesn't cause the lights to dim light turning on a 1500W vacuum cleaner does.
I've been in houses where turning on a hair dryer or space heater does dim the lights.
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At least where I live residential code has specified 15 amp minimum for at least 25 years now. So anything relatively new construction should be fine. Older houses may have a problem though. I've run a dedicated 20 amp circuit to my office specifically to keep all of my shit well powered so I doubt I will ever have issues keeping the PC + peripherals running. I know that's not common practice though.
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Interestingly, the UK is setup differently.
Our ring mains (our buildings are wired so there is a loop from the fuse box around each floor or area, and back to the fuse box, essentially doubling the cable thickness) are rated to 32 amps and generally fused to that as well.
Our plugs, however, have a fuse all of their own - yes, most devices we plug in are independently fused. These can be custom for each individual device, so you can fuse one thing at 1amp, another thing at 3 amps and plug them both into a 4
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Presumably the 1.4kW will only be used when using nearly all cores and the MPX addon, which if configured as such with the MPX monitor and stand, will at least cost you $20,000. If you're spending 20 grand on a computer you probably can afford some electrical upgrades if needed.
Block map? (Score:2)
Block map?
how are the slots / io wired up?
1.5TB of RAM, TB3 (Score:5, Informative)
With that 1.5TB of ram you won't need an SSD because you'll have a real RAMDisk!
Or just daisy chain SSDs off of your TB3 connection. Duh. The SSD is now only for booting, so who cares how big it is?
You have to think bigger, people.
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I'm hoping this is sarcasm ;-)
Bringing back the PCI Express slots are we? (Score:5, Funny)
Gosh, who predicted taking them out wouldn't go over well?
Me. It was me alright.
The stupid external box I had to get for our studio to hold PCI Express cards when they decided to NOT put them in the trashcans was expensive, unreliable, and lets face it you really don't want more things plugged in and connected than absolutely necessary.
Instead of praising them for making this decision we really need to send up a big "See, I told you so!"
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The stupid external box I had to get for our studio to hold PCI Express cards when they decided to NOT put them in the trashcans was expensive, unreliable, and lets face it you really don't want more things plugged in and connected than absolutely necessary.
Instead of praising them for making this decision we really need to send up a big "See, I told you so!"
You already praised them, by buying trashcans. That was a dumbshit move. They would have made a proper mac pro a lot sooner if you and others like you didn't give them money for trashcans.
$6000? (Score:2)
It had better come with free blow jobs for that price.
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overprized, expensive, joke (Score:2)
OWC is Going to Love This (Score:2)
The way Apple prices upgrades you know that OWC is going to get a lot of business selling at least the RAM to upgrade these things.
Re:six grands gets you the cardboard box (Score:5, Insightful)
The groans from the crowd when it was announced the display stand will cost you 999 bucks.
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Whoops, sorry, not "laptop", I meant "desktop". My bad.
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Somewhat on the heavy side for a laptop, though I have actually seen people using iMacs as portables.
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And it will still use that same hardware 8 years from now. :p
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CPU: Brand New.
Well, somewhat new. It looks like the new Xeon W.
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Ethernet ports is an add on in an $6K workstion? any only has 32GB ram and 256 SSD as base???
Try more like 2K for an 8 core cpu + 32 GB ddr + 1TB ssd.
No, dumbass.
The machine comes with TWO 10GigE ports.
Learn to listen.
BTW, it looks like the SSDs are on CARDS:
https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/
Haters.
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https://www.apple.com/mac-pro/specs/
No, it comes standard with dual 10Gbps Ethernet ports. Where did you get that it came with no networking ports???
Yaz
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It fails in the looks department as well, though. The damn thing looks even more like a giant cheese grater than the 2000's era Mac Pro systems did.
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The damn thing looks even more like a giant cheese grater than the 2000's era Mac Pro systems did.
Came for this, not disappointed. If you kept your G5 then you can now grate cheese in two different thicknesses.
You know that's not true... (Score:3)
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Sounds about right for Apple. I tried configuring a similar PC system on Newegg and ended up with $1449 as the total (1800 watt supply, same ports plus many additional ones).
[cough]Bullshiat[/cough]. The processor, even for the base model, is not available from Intel yet, and the closest match in the previous generation is the Xeon W-2155, which Newegg is selling for $1545 [newegg.com].
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