Apple's Mac Pro to sport twin engines

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  • Reply 181 of 215
    mwswamimwswami Posts: 166member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sunilraman



    Dark Aluminium Midi-Tower* config with 24" Cinema Display (iSight, frontRow)





    I really like your Mac Pro mockup but I believe that the IR sensor for frontrow will be on the computer (like the mini). The Mac Pro should continue to work with an older Cinema Display and external iSight camera.
  • Reply 182 of 215
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by onlooker

    I'm pretty sure the G5 is an EATX (Extended ATX) which is considered the full sized tower which holds the largest of the server motherboards. There are bigger and taller ones, but there will always be.



    According to Apple's site spec's, and my measurments of my own here, the G5 is a bit under 21 inches high. If you remove the handles and feet, which really don't count, you get about 16 inches in height.



    Look here, this is a full size tower (almost):



    http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1958682,00.asp



    size: 8.1 x 21.3 x 25.6.
  • Reply 183 of 215
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by emig647

    I'm really confused as to why everyone wants hot swappable stuff? What's the point with a workstation?



    Tape backups, disk backups, etc.



    I juxzt had my Granite Firewire power supply burn up. And I do mean "burn up". The entire house smelled from it. I find that Apple's machines are more reliable than these outboard drive cases, even though I need them.



    The more I can do in my machine, the better I feel. Two swappable brive bays would let me have a swappable raid without need for another case.
  • Reply 184 of 215
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sunilraman

    I think that was just ChevalierMalFet's wishing. Hot-swappable would only be really useful on a server setup, of course.



    Most people are clamouring for easy access to replace the internal SATA hard disks. By opening up the case and easily accessing optical/ hard disk drive bays. And having decent and accessible PCIex, PCI, memory slots.



    And SLI Quadros/ nVidia high-end 7series as options for the 3D peoples.




    That's not true. It's very usefull.
  • Reply 185 of 215
    onlookeronlooker Posts: 5,252member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by melgross

    According to Apple's site spec's, and my measurments of my own here, the G5 is a bit under 21 inches high. If you remove the handles and feet, which really don't count, you get about 16 inches in height.



    Look here, this is a full size tower (almost):



    http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1958682,00.asp



    size: 8.1 x 21.3 x 25.6.




    16 inches is enough to fit EATX. I think it's almost square 16 x 16. (without handles) An EATX motherboard, which is what dictates the size of an EATX case, is 12-inches x 13-inches so it could fit EATX.



    The thing is they really didn't use the same designs with the PPC motherboards that they'll be using for x86 so it didn't really matter. I was just saying the size of the case was EATX.
  • Reply 186 of 215
    molokomoloko Posts: 21member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by melgross

    According to Apple's site spec's, and my measurments of my own here, the G5 is a bit under 21 inches high. If you remove the handles and feet, which really don't count, you get about 16 inches in height.



    Look here, this is a full size tower (almost):



    http://www.extremetech.com/article2/...1958682,00.asp



    size: 8.1 x 21.3 x 25.6.






    51 cm high (20")

    - 44.3 cm (17.4") without the handles, measuring from bottom to top of case exterior



    20.6 cm (8.11") wide from edge to edge ? 20cm (7.87") inside (excluding the width of the aluminum panels)



    (@least according to my tape-measure & cheese-grater )



    or, from the official specs:



    Size and weight

    Height: 20.1 inches (51.1 cm)

    Width: 8.1 inches (20.6 cm)

    Depth: 18.7 inches (47.5 cm)



    Weight: Single-processor

    configuration, 36 pounds (16.4 kg);

    dual-processor configuration, 44.4

    pounds (20.2 kg)
  • Reply 187 of 215
    imacfanimacfan Posts: 444member
    I'd never seen the weight of these things before - 22Kg is absurd!



    Shaving some size and weight could make a major saving on the cost of shipping alone!



    David
  • Reply 188 of 215
    ~ufo~~ufo~ Posts: 245member
    can we stop with the which one's bigger already ? ? ?
  • Reply 189 of 215
    Here's the case that Dell sells at this price point:





    Hopefully with a less extreme cooling system required, there can be room for more internal drive expansion than the current PowerMac.
  • Reply 190 of 215
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    IMO computers need to get smaller. I wouldn't argue against Apple adding another drive bay but then again I won't be crushed if they don't.



    In the next 18 months you'll have the option of a full Terabyte on one drive. We're rapidly approaching the point where it makes more sense to shrink the size of the computer and if people need beyond 3 TB of data they are best off using an external drive enclosure.



    We've gotten rid of heat generationg CRT monitors and people aren't going back so we may as well let the CPU enclosure go on the same weight loss plan.
  • Reply 191 of 215
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by hmurchison

    IMO computers need to get smaller. I wouldn't argue against Apple adding another drive bay but then again I won't be crushed if they don't.



    In the next 18 months you'll have the option of a full Terabyte on one drive. We're rapidly approaching the point where it makes more sense to shrink the size of the computer and if people need beyond 3 TB of data they are best off using an external drive enclosure.



    We've gotten rid of heat generationg CRT monitors and people aren't going back so we may as well let the CPU enclosure go on the same weight loss plan.




    The problem is that we have to use HD's to do full backups of HD's.
  • Reply 192 of 215
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by melgross

    The problem is that we have to use HD's to do full backups of HD's.



    That's the trend today. Companies tier their storage.





    10k-15k SCSI/SAS for Production level computers



    7200-10k SATA for near line storage



    Tape or Optical for off line storage.



    Power Users would do well to emulate the design of larger companies. Even today (on a PC) you can store block level data on a $112 device in a cheapo SAN which is going to be easier to manage (ie backup and maintain) and faster than stuffing a bunch of hard drives into the CPU enclosure and using the slow tools in the OS for sharing that data.



    I suspect the overriding desire for internal storage is born from people wanting to keep their storage costs low. As the size of today's hard drives continues to grow Direct Attached Storage becomes harder and slower to manage.
  • Reply 193 of 215
    emig647emig647 Posts: 2,455member
    Agreed as usual.
  • Reply 194 of 215
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Anyone have any links or recommendations for a simple, cheap say 250-500gb external redundant RAID* setup (a few 3.5"drives) connected via fw400?? in a nice, heat-dissipating casing?



    hmurchinson I have seen some around but do you have any recommendations? such as would be suitable for Power Users you mentioned?



    *RAID 1, or 0+1 ... others??



    Something like this:

    http://www.acnc.com/index.html

    seems a bit too overkill for average video/creative/photo power user.
  • Reply 195 of 215
    mwswamimwswami Posts: 166member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sunilraman

    Anyone have any links or recommendations for a simple, cheap say 250-500gb external redundant RAID* setup (a few 3.5"drives) connected via fw400?? in a nice, heat-dissipating casing?



    hmurchinson I have seen some around but do you have any recommendations? such as would be suitable for Power Users you mentioned?



    *RAID 1, or 0+1 ... others??



    Something like this:

    http://www.acnc.com/index.html

    seems a bit too overkill for average video/creative/photo power user.




    I would love to see Apple come out with a consumer version of XRAID along with the Mac Pro. Something like the Intel SS4000-E maybe connected via eSATA.
  • Reply 196 of 215
    sybariticsybaritic Posts: 340member
    Yes. Yes. Yes. A consumer version of XRAID ? Yes. It might not be a niche that appeals to Apple's bottom line, but it would appeal to a lot of prosumers.
  • Reply 197 of 215
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by hmurchison

    That's the trend today. Companies tier their storage.





    10k-15k SCSI/SAS for Production level computers



    7200-10k SATA for near line storage



    Tape or Optical for off line storage.



    Power Users would do well to emulate the design of larger companies. Even today (on a PC) you can store block level data on a $112 device in a cheapo SAN which is going to be easier to manage (ie backup and maintain) and faster than stuffing a bunch of hard drives into the CPU enclosure and using the slow tools in the OS for sharing that data.



    I suspect the overriding desire for internal storage is born from people wanting to keep their storage costs low. As the size of today's hard drives continues to grow Direct Attached Storage becomes harder and slower to manage.




    SANs are nice, but when you have a number of large HD's to back up they don't work. You need to take a drive offline for it to be of use as a back-up. You don't want to keep that drive working.
  • Reply 198 of 215
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by sunilraman

    Anyone have any links or recommendations for a simple, cheap say 250-500gb external redundant RAID* setup (a few 3.5"drives) connected via fw400?? in a nice, heat-dissipating casing?



    hmurchinson I have seen some around but do you have any recommendations? such as would be suitable for Power Users you mentioned?



    *RAID 1, or 0+1 ... others??



    Something like this:

    http://www.acnc.com/index.html

    seems a bit too overkill for average video/creative/photo power user.




    Yeah the Jetstor stuff is nice but spendy. check out



    http://www.sonnettech.com/product/fusion.html



    The Fusion isn't bad and then there's Firmtek's enclosure



    http://www.firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2eEN4/
  • Reply 199 of 215
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by melgross

    SANs are nice, but when you have a number of large HD's to back up they don't work. You need to take a drive offline for it to be of use as a back-up. You don't want to keep that drive working.



    Well this is beyond the scope of consumers quite honestly but if some brave programming soul could do this you'd just create a LUN(virtual partition) for your backup apart from the rest of your SAN so that you'd never need to utilize it.



    Sadly no one's into business level tools for the rest of us. Perhaps this will change. Imagine in 5 years when most of us are laughing about the Pre-Terabyte days



    Oh a trend I'm definitely seeing in the biz sector is a move away from 3.5" drives to 2.5" SFF (Small Form Factor) SAS/SATA drives. Seagate just came out with their PR 146GB 10K SAS SFF drive. Great news for me because despite the 300GB drives that are available most customers seem to use the 73 and 146GB drives as their bread and butter size.



    Now image the Xserve RAID going from a 14 Bay system to a SFF 22 Bay system? Now only would power consumption drop but you've added 8 more spindles and your performance jumps.
  • Reply 200 of 215
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by hmurchison

    Well this is beyond the scope of consumers quite honestly but if some brave programming soul could do this you'd just create a LUN(virtual partition) for your backup apart from the rest of your SAN so that you'd never need to utilize it.



    Sadly no one's into business level tools for the rest of us. Perhaps this will change. Imagine in 5 years when most of us are laughing about the Pre-Terabyte days



    Oh a trend I'm definitely seeing in the biz sector is a move away from 3.5" drives to 2.5" SFF (Small Form Factor) SAS/SATA drives. Seagate just came out with their PR 146GB 10K SAS SFF drive. Great news for me because despite the 300GB drives that are available most customers seem to use the 73 and 146GB drives as their bread and butter size.



    Now image the Xserve RAID going from a 14 Bay system to a SFF 22 Bay system? Now only would power consumption drop but you've added 8 more spindles and your performance jumps.




    Unfortunately, so does the breakdown rate. But, I think we will see 2.5's moving into the consumer desktop space when they hit 300GB, and the price comes down another 25%.
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