iMac Pro Review – a PC Guy’s Perspective

[nicklmg]

Buy an iMac Pro on Amazon: http://geni.us/QVlX1
Or buy an iMac Pro from Apple: http://geni.us/cs4x

 

Apple's new iMac Pro is both like and UNlike any iMac we've seen before... But is it a positive step in the right direction, or is it a mixed blessing?

 

 

[mankeez]

hasn't this been up already for a couple days? @nicklmg

[kb5zue]

In the days of black and white television this would be called a "rerun".

 

[nicklmg]

6 minutes ago, mankeez said:

hasn't this been up already for a couple days? @nicklmg

I don't think so... you thinking of FP? Cus this has been there for a week

[mankeez]

Just now, nicklmg said:

I don't think so... you thinking of FP? Cus this has been there for a week

Oh yeah lol, I thought this was FP for a moment?

[nicklmg]

Just now, mankeez said:

Oh yeah lol, I thought this was FP for a moment?

Nice  you guys scare me a bit every time you say that... cus I'm like "wait... DID I SCREW SOMETHING UP? IS THIS THE DARKEST TIMELINE?"

[Guest]

22 minutes ago, mankeez said:

hasn't this been up already for a couple days? @nicklmg

Somehow you saying this made me think today was Friday... I'm going back to sleep... hopefully I forget that.

[General_Snuss]

Biggest problem with this machine, single component failure is a dead machine. No spare parts exist. With a normal PC you can swap out the parts or even upgrade them.

On top of that apple has always had a problem with heat dissipation. The cooling in that machine just does not cut it.

And my third problem, warranty. The say it is for professionals, at least have next day on-site technician or swap out.

[mrchow19910319]

Wonder why apple is being so obsessed with fan speed and the sound it produce. 

 

Why sacrifice temp in order to make the machine dead silence. 

[aiu2]

Look at this biuld

https://pcpartpicker.com/list/

[TechyBen]

Wait... I cannot even find that hardware (Xeon W-2145) for sale *anywhere*. How did they get those price comparisons? Also, the spec for the PC build is about $400 better parts (Processor, PSU, Cooling, keyboard/mouse, CASE! etc). The only thing not better is the screen, and that's a manufacturing/supply limit currently.

[abazigal]

26 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Wonder why apple is being so obsessed with fan speed and the sound it produce. 

 

Why sacrifice temp in order to make the machine dead silence. 

Because their users ask for it. When you are recording a podcast, a cool, silent machine is always welcome. 

[General_Snuss]

6 minutes ago, abazigal said:

Because their users ask for it. When you are recording a podcast, a cool, silent machine is always welcome. 

That is why a pc is better, you can stick that one under the desk for noise reduction or control the fans yourself

[Nena Trinity]

Why did Linus hate on that Vega GPU? O3O

[Bouzoo]

2 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Wonder why apple is being so obsessed with fan speed and the sound it produce. 

 

Why sacrifice temp in order to make the machine dead silence. 

You don't want the PC in the CEOs office to be loud, you know.

[raphaellz]

Hey Linus, do something that only you have the courage to do this days. Try to replace the processor and ram for the greatest it can theorically support , and also test it with the Nvidia Volta graphics on external case.

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Wonder why apple is being so obsessed with fan speed and the sound it produce. 

 

Why sacrifice temp in order to make the machine dead silence. 

You PC users and your temps. 80s is perfectly fine. Even 90s are good too. Most MacBooks I've owned get into the 100s and run well.

[raphaellz]

3 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Wonder why apple is being so obsessed with fan speed and the sound it produce. 

 

Why sacrifice temp in order to make the machine dead silence. 

Still, you can control the fan speed on a mac and make it to run at maximum 

 

[abazigal]

3 hours ago, General_Snuss said:

That is why a pc is better, you can stick that one under the desk for noise reduction or control the fans yourself

No doubt. 

 

I think one one of the things one has to understand and accept when embracing the Apple ecosystem is allowing Apple to make the decisions for you with regards to the end user experience your product offers. 

 

Sometimes, what Apple decides to emphasise happens to be what you want, and everything works like a dream. Other times, it’s the direct opposite, and results in a ton of frustration because you are effectively fighting the system, sorts like running through quicksand. 

 

What you are basically betting on is that the pros outweigh the cons. That Apple knows better than you as to what makes a great user experience, and more importantly, has the ability to offer that integrated computing experience through their control over hardware and software, in a way that no other company can. 

 

And many people are content to cede control over to Apple and say “make the hard calls for me so I don’t have to”. It’s actually not a bad solution. 

[Razor512]

When pricing a build today, keep in mind that most of the price gouging we see are happening at the retail level and not from the OEMs.

 

For a workstation, it is a bad system from both a performance and value perspective.

If the system is used for professional tasks which make you money, then the most important factors are performance for the money, total cost of ownership, and future costs from upgrading. On a PC based workstation, roughly half of the hardware will be reused when it is time for a major upgrade.

 

 

Any computer that is going to be used for actual work, should never throttle at full load when new. If it can throttle while new, then that means that the cooling is inadequate, and even if they increase the fan speed, the cooling system has no thermal headroom, thus even with a slight amount of dust buildup on the heatsink, you will directly lose performance, you will essentially have to clean the heatsink every month or 2 to maintain your performance.

 

Beyond that, a prebuilt system is the wrong way to go when it comes to a workstation, as you are more likely to have downtime when something goes wrong; this applies to both PC and Mac. For most prebuilt systems, if you do not have a service center close by, you will often have to mail the entire system in for a repair, even if the issue is with 1 component that is not a complete show stopper.

 

You also end up with shorter warranties. If you look at the warranties on the individual components on a DIY system, you will notice that most of them are in the 3-5 year range, with a few like the power supply, and SSD in the 5-10 year range, and things like RAM having a lifetime warranty. With a prebuilt system, you lose all of that for probably a 1-2 year warranty that may require you to mail the entire system in for repair (where you will have to pay for shipping to them).

 

System builders can often get their components for far less money than a store like amazon or newegg can get their inventory, as those components do not have the cost of a warranty and other aftermarket services built into them.

 

 

Beyond that, for a video editing system, 1TB of internal storage is not enough, and for applications like adobe premiere pro, even with a very fast NVMe SSD, they still get a performance boost by having the scratch disk, and and source media on separate drives due to the way it access both (simultaneous reads and writes). With the imac, you will have to buy an overpriced thunderbolt drive enclosure in order to install a few extra SSDs, at which point you will see that there are no thunderbolt NVMe enclosures, thus you will have to make due with RAID 0 SATA or mSATA SSDs, where you will not get the IOPS of a decent NVMe SSD.

 

Overall, every attempt to expand beyond the self contained unit, will require you to spend a lot extra and make compromises.

With a system you build yourself, you will have the ability to install multiple NVMe and PCI express SSDs for a raw 8K workflow (without having to wait for and buy expensive enclosures that will clutter your workspace), and you will be able to have proper cooling so that you don't throttle under a heavy workload.

[Mira Yurizaki]

55 minutes ago, Razor512 said:

On a PC based workstation, roughly half of the hardware will be reused when it is time for a major upgrade.

I don't know where you've been working, but every company I've worked for will simply replace the PC entirely when it's time for a major upgrade, because upgrades are on a 3-5 year cycle. So there's no real point in keeping any of the old hardware. The hard drive may be taken out if the employee needs something off it, but that's about it.

 

Granted engineering will find a way to repurpose the old PCs so they're simply not dumped off to the nearest IT graveyard, but the actual workstations just get replaced.

[Nicnac]

great video! eat that apple haters  

[hishnash]

vega Pro (the 64 also includes 16GB of memory) at least on macOS you have all the pro features.

[Razor512]

12 minutes ago, Nicnac said:

great video! eat that apple haters  

It only took DRAM price fixing, and GPU price gouging at the retail store level to make the Mac seem competitively priced

 

28 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I don't know where you've been working, but every company I've worked for will simply replace the PC entirely when it's time for a major upgrade, because upgrades are on a 3-5 year cycle. So there's no real point in keeping any of the old hardware. The hard drive may be taken out if the employee needs something off it, but that's about it.

 

Granted engineering will find a way to repurpose the old PCs so they're simply not dumped off to the nearest IT graveyard, but the actual workstations just get replaced.

 

Most companies will not keep a workstation system the same for 5 years, there would likely by smaller upgrades leading up to a large one.

When it is finally time to upgrade, unless the monitor no longer meets the target color standards, it will likely not need to be replaced, especially when you get a top of the line one that meets and exceeds 100% Adobe RGB. The iMac pro is simply a bad investment. A design like the trashcan mac pro would be a better option in terms of the long term cost. You are paying a ton of money, setting yourself up for more expensive upgrades, and then not being able to get the full performance out of the hardware you paid for.

[Mira Yurizaki]

17 minutes ago, Razor512 said:

Most companies will not keep a workstation system the same for 5 years, there would likely by smaller upgrades leading up to a large one.

They will, simply because OEMs they buy from have warranty periods that long. I'm sure OEMs are lenient about honoring warranties if the company makes upgrades, but it makes IT life easier if you don't touch the hardware configuration. For example, it's against my company's policy to bring your own keyboard and mouse (it's mostly due to customer assurance though).

 

Also from an armchair IT perspective, I don't see much value in making smaller upgrades. It may seem wasteful to just buy a new PC if someone requests an upgrade, but the older PCs can be repurposed for other uses. A lot of computers in our labs are simply repurposed PCs that IT no longer cares about. And if someone requests an upgrade early in an upgrade cycle, the previous computer can be given to the intern or a new employee.

 

Besides, what's to upgrade? By the time the CPU gets too slow for most people to want an upgrade, you can't really upgrade it without buying a new system. And from where I worked, few people outside Mechanical Engineering need powerful graphics cards. Maybe a new hard drive could work, but most of the stuff at my company can be stored on the network and accessed from any computer on the network.