MP 7,1 2019 Mac Pro from a Pro Photographer & some video work

[jcxstar13]

I ordered a 12 core 96gb ram 2TB 580x graphics card.

Also ordered a few different storage solutions to really try and speed up my workflow.

Pegasus R4i for internal storage and access to raw files. Speeds 600mb/s

Amfeltec PCIx gen 3 carrier board with 2 4tb nvme drives installed raid 0. Speeds 5000 mb/s

The fans on this card are annoyingly loud. I spoke with their support about this and we came to the conclusion that they really aren't needed. The Mac Pro fans are so big and move enough air over the board to keep it cool enough. The temps of the drive under a load were around 34-40 degrees C so the Mac is keeping them cool enough to take the fans off the board which obviously cuts the noise to just the Mac Pro fans which are nothing.

Stock 2tb Ssd 2000mb/s

Over night I tried to build 30,000 1:1 previews of images to work on to see how much faster it was to work on. Woke up and it was still working on them and all 12 cores are maxed out at 98% load.

I have noticed the basic graphics card seems to be struggling to keep up. I am hooked up HDMI to one benQ 32" 4k display, haven't even tried to use both monitors yet.

Talked to apple about swapping the graphics card and that basically not possible. Have to return the machine and order it the way I want which is a huge pain in the ass but hey ill order less ram and upgrade that myself later.

I am not sure Lightroom is any faster with on the 8tb raid 0 nvme drive so I think I will be returning those and going for the 8tb option from apple and getting the afterburner card to help with video projects. This will also be in the last available 16x slot on the computer so the Amfeltec card would have to be used in a 8x slot. I like the speed and Amfeltec card but not sure I'm getting the best use for my money with it.


Hope this helps anyone in a similar situation looking at this machine.

 

[Average Pro]

Thank you for the initial info. Please continue to update.

 

[macdos]

Geez… you are limited by software, and you might as well get an Imac for what you are doing.

 

[Macshroomer]

Geez… you are limited by software, and you might as well get an Imac for what you are doing.

But that is not helpful and assumes that their path is not one of expanding revenue streams which many of us strongly consider and then procure hardware accordingly.

This video on the other hand, might be of some help in understanding the current pros and cons:

 

[jcxstar13]

Geez… you are limited by software, and you might as well get an Imac for what you are doing.

Like I mentioned I do video work as well 4k pro res footage and the plan is to grow into more video work.

I much prefer a desktop setup with internal storage and I prefer to use my own monitors that are 100% sRGB color space so what I see is what prints. Cant stand a glossy saturated iMac screen.


My hopes are that adobe makes some fixes to Lightroom to start to take advantage of this kind of hardware.

 

[Macshroomer]

My hopes are that adobe makes some fixes to Lightroom to start to take advantage of this kind of hardware.

I can't help wonder if this is not a 7,1 / Catalina / Adobe growing pain. I bet it gets sorted out...

 

[moab1]

Why did you choose that card over the Sonnet or High point?
links to card and drives?
any idea if you can put 4 of those drives (raid 0) into any of these cards? Also how reliable are those drives vs. Samsung evo plus?
I’m looking for a 10-16tb or larger working drive for active video projects.

 

[jcxstar13]

Why did you choose that card over the Sonnet or High point?
links to card and drives?
any idea if you can put 4 of those drives (raid 0) into any of these cards? Also how reliable are those drives vs. Samsung evo plus?
I’m looking for a 10-16tb or larger working drive for active video projects.

I went with that cause because it holds 6 nvme drives.

I used two 4TB sabrent drives and they worked great. I had them setup as a raid 0 for one 8TB drive. The plan was to add to that as I needed to.
They say with 6 drives in there setup raid 0 you get 14GB/s read and 12gb/s. So this card would get you there from a size stand point. Realizability I can really vouch for that since I only ran them for a couple days. But in my research they looked very similar to the Samsung drives.

PCI Express Gen 3 Carrier Board for 6 M.2 or NGSFF (NF1) PCIe SSD modules

amfeltec.com

SABRENT 256GB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Internal SSD High Performance Solid State Drive (SB-ROCKET-256) - Newegg.com

Buy SABRENT 256GB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Internal SSD High Performance Solid State Drive (SB-ROCKET-256) with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

 

[Kedbear]

I went with that cause because it holds 6 nvme drives.

I used two 4TB sabrent drives and they worked great. I had them setup as a raid 0 for one 8TB drive. The plan was to add to that as I needed to.
They say with 6 drives in there setup raid 0 you get 14GB/s read and 12gb/s. So this card would get you there from a size stand point. Realizability I can really vouch for that since I only ran them for a couple days. But in my research they looked very similar to the Samsung drives.

PCI Express Gen 3 Carrier Board for 6 M.2 or NGSFF (NF1) PCIe SSD modules

amfeltec.com

SABRENT 256GB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Internal SSD High Performance Solid State Drive (SB-ROCKET-256) - Newegg.com

Buy SABRENT 256GB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Internal SSD High Performance Solid State Drive (SB-ROCKET-256) with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

How loud is the fan in the Amfeltec? I’m hoping to find a card that does not add any noise to the near silent Mac Pro.

 

[Pro7913]

My hopes are that adobe makes some fixes to Lightroom to start to take advantage of this kind of hardware.

I highly doubt that. Adobe is in a monopoly for a long time. After creating CC versions, they no longer update their software dramatically, especially with optimizations. They are still well known for poor performance and optimization! I have both LR CC Classic and Capture One Pro 20 on Mac Pro 2010 but C1P is def faster and better than LR CC Classic.

 

[bsbeamer]

I went with that cause because it holds 6 nvme drives.

I used two 4TB sabrent drives and they worked great. I had them setup as a raid 0 for one 8TB drive. The plan was to add to that as I needed to.
They say with 6 drives in there setup raid 0 you get 14GB/s read and 12gb/s. So this card would get you there from a size stand point. Realizability I can really vouch for that since I only ran them for a couple days. But in my research they looked very similar to the Samsung drives.

PCI Express Gen 3 Carrier Board for 6 M.2 or NGSFF (NF1) PCIe SSD modules

amfeltec.com

SABRENT 256GB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Internal SSD High Performance Solid State Drive (SB-ROCKET-256) - Newegg.com

Buy SABRENT 256GB Rocket NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 Internal SSD High Performance Solid State Drive (SB-ROCKET-256) with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

Any experience using this with NF1 SSDs in macOS? There's another thread asking similar questions with large capacity SSDs and U.2 drives are being suggested. NF1 actually seems like they might be "cheaper" and a better solution. Something like the Samsung PM983 NF1's (up to ~15TB/blade) are basically M.2 form factor with U.2 capacity and most have NVMe-like speed or very close.

 

[jcxstar13]

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I highly doubt that. Adobe is in a monopoly for a long time. After creating CC versions, they no longer update their software dramatically, especially with optimizations. They are still well known for poor performance and optimization! I have both LR CC Classic and Capture One Pro 20 on Mac Pro 2010 but C1P is def faster and better than LR CC Classic.

I need to look into Capture one, just been using adobe for 10+ years.

How loud is the fan in the Amfeltec? I’m hoping to find a card that does not add any noise to the near silent Mac Pro.

The fans on the card were pretty loud and annoying. I read reviews on all of them and that was the case on all of them. I chatted with tech support from amfeltec and they said I could remove the fans which I did and used them under a heavy load and they stayed at about 35-43 degreees C and they need to stay under 70. The Mac Pro with the large fans and the air flow from that will keep them cool enough on its own.
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Any experience using this with NF1 SSDs in macOS? There's another thread asking similar questions with large capacity SSDs and U.2 drives are being suggested. NF1 actually seems like they might be "cheaper" and a better solution. Something like the Samsung PM983 NF1's (up to ~15TB/blade) are basically M.2 form factor with U.2 capacity and most have NVMe-like speed or very close.

I don't have any experience with those drives but I did look into them as well and that might be the best option going forward since I will go with the afterburner card in the 16x slot.

 

[Pro7913]

I need to look into Capture one, just been using adobe for 10+ years.

Yeah, you should check.

 

[Z28McCrory]

Capture One would scale a heck of a lot better with the better hardware. It can utilize dual GPUs and higher core count CPUs.

Not to totally derail this thread, but I have slowly transitioned away from Adobe over the last year or two, and Capture One has been my single favorite switch.

My 7,1 will hopefully be here soon, and I can’t wait to test my somewhat unconventional configuration. Instead of ordering the Vega II, I stuck with the 580X and ordered 2x Radeon VIIs. A few people have “confirmed” that I should be able to add both VIIs while keeping the 580X in place, so a total of 3 GPUs. And the VIIs are on sale for $499 each right now, so it’s a huge savings and a pair of them should very much outperform the Vega II (barefeats.com reported a single VII outperforming a single Vega II in 2 out of 3 tests). Capture One will be able to utilize 2, and possibly all 3.