MP 7,1 Just bought a 7,1

[mattspace]

Yup. No doubt there’s any number of reasons I was “mad” to do so… but I did it.

My beloved old 4,1-5,1, which up until October last year had been the most stable Mac I’d ever owned started experiencing wake from sleep failures - all screens black, USB partially dead (Wacom tablet OLEDs non-responsive, but trackpad haptics working), no remote login response etc. Sometimes the dead wake would even include the PCI fan not spinning up.

No amount of elimination testing produced a solution - literally 8+ months of daily records of config trees and sleep / wake success / fails. Sometime I’d get 20 days of successful wakes, sometimes it’d fail after 3, or after a short sleep during the day. Temps & fan speeds have always been stable and consistent. New OS install on new disk didn’t solve it. Then it began spontaneously rebooting during use last month. Which over the past week+ turned into shutting down to dead. Replaced the power supply, no difference. Tried running AHT with my GT120 installed, it found memory errors, but then the GT120 wigged out, inverted colours, and refused to work. Booting produced a machine that wouldn’t POST, and the GT120 running like a hair dryer.

With a GOPInject mod to the ROM I was able to get back to AHT with rx580 (and bootscreens worked great, thanks @tsialex) but the crashes to dead continued when booted back to the running OS to look at System Profiler, and eventually I couldn’t get it to POST on AHT with any RAM config.

So, done. 14 years is a good run, but I need to get more current with my gear (typing this as I am on a new iPad Pro, with external display, keyboard & trackpad - it’s a munted alternative to a Mac in this config, actually it’s a munted alternative to a Mac in general, but the pencil drawing experience is sublime), and the thought of dealing with Opencore after all this were I to build another cMP… *sigh* just not up to it.

So, there I was, looking to spend Studio Ultra money, and my simple criteria was I needed equal or better than my Mac Pro. Configs with 96GB+ of RAM, a little more for graphics, so 128GB… but there’s only 1 ethernet port, and no secondary internal storage. I want to go Synology-centric and have some non-Synology fast storage, but that means all my traffic on a single ethernet, or having to lose a TB port for a 10gb adapter… and only 6 TB ports total.

Then there’s the 2023 Mac Pro. Nope, that’s just a hard NOPE, no way, no how am I putting money into a kludging together of a studio, and a PCI chassis for 30% more than the studio, and an entry price rise over the Xeon predecessor.

I began searching, and secondhand prices here in Australia are not like they are in America - we have no Pro gear in Apple’s refurb store ever. Also, if you live in Sydney, you have a choice of machines, but here in regional Qld, not so much. There‘s one Vega II 12 or 16 core that’s been for sale in Brisbane for over a year, for AU$13k. The prices just don’t shift (until very very recently).

Then I saw something local - 30 minutes drive from me, with 18months of Applecare+ still on it.

Minis and Studios are too limited for what I want a computer to give me right now, and AS Mac Pros add expense to that. AS also has display scaling issues with sub 4k screens that would necessitate replacing all my displays, because of my specific display setup. So there’s an additional ~AU$4k in monitors.

So, and this is the gross part, the money - I spent AU$10k on a secondhand computer (Imagine that in Captain Willard’s voice from the opening narrative of Apocalypse Now - for my crimes of constantly advocating Slotbox Mac Pros, I was being sentenced to buy one).

What did I get for that?

- 16 core, 1TB, 96GB RAM (32 of that is Apple 8GB DIMMS, the rest is OWC 16GB, so I can replace the Apple DIMMs with matching OWCs pretty cheaply).
- Dual W5700X MPX, the Original 580X MPX, Afterburner, and Blackmagic Mini Monitor 4k.

It’s a video editor’s machine, which isn’t my major thing, but again, I could drive to it, and it has warranty. It should tide me over for the next 5 or so years. It’s only 18 months old at this stage.

So, there’s the project, getting this set up and everything migrated over. No doubt I’ll have plenty of questions. Thanks to all the folks I’ve asked for advice in direct messages as I agonised over this decision.

Happy to hear any tips - I have to give it a bit of a blow-out de-dusting tomorrow.

 

[Matty_TypeR]

Congratulations you will enjoy your new 7.1 machine. The last of the true Mac pro machines.

 

[avro707]

What did I get for that?

- 16 core, 1TB, 96GB RAM (32 of that is Apple 8GB DIMMS, the rest is OWC 16GB, so I can replace the Apple DIMMs with matching OWCs pretty cheaply).
- Dual W5700X MPX, the Original 580X MPX, Afterburner, and Blackmagic Mini Monitor 4k

Congrats on the new machine! Hope it serves you well. The last real proper Mac Pro.

But you took a risk posting that, the general crowd will rip you to pieces for daring to go against the ASI trend and their heavy lobbying of ASI.

You could probably put a 6900XT in it too later on. Or move to windows and put whatever monster modern GPU you want to use.

 

[AlexMaximus]

You will be so happy, what a great machine. Forget the mainstream, this is the pinnacle of design and technology that makes sense. I am on the hunt myself to get one. And it's the last one with Jony Ive's handwriting on it. Apple will not crash and burn, but unfortunately it's a hermetic, sealed and walled garden from now onwards...
Congrats !

 

[mcnallym]

I don’t think your mad for doing it.

current machine is not relaible so you need something now.

as rejecting the Mac Pro 2023 (perfectly acceptable for you to do so) then will give you the time to plan way forward as clearly won’t be staying with Mac platform.

mini and studio are not going to change and if the 2023 not for you then don’t see m3, m4 etc changing your mind either. With what the Mac Pro is then no reason as m3, m4 etc come through along with the studio you would be happy with it then.

from what can gather your requirement is not so much GPU but local storage And not happy with the pricing over the studio.

expecting the m3, m4 studio/pro to change your mind about them would be what I would call crazy.

in fact would say very sensible thing to do swapping to windows/Linux not an overnight thing and this will give you time to make the migration. Whilst still being productive with what you know.

 

[mattspace]

mini and studio are not going to change and if the 2023 not for you then don’t see m3, m4 etc changing your mind either. With what the Mac Pro is then no reason as m3, m4 etc come through along with the studio you would be happy with it then.

eh, my needs for file sizes / capacity aren‘t accelerating, eventually Apple Silicon will catch up with the utility combo that Intel had, eg a Mini could have huge display capacity with eGPU, etc.

In a few years, no doubt Apple will grow past where they were with Intel. Conversely, its also quite likely that ARM Apple Silicon will peter out, just like 68k did, just like PowerPC did, just like DEC Alpha did, just like StrongARM did etc.

One of my options was going to be a mini or a Studio, connected to a Wacom 27” touch enabled 4k Cintiq, sortof recreating the anglepoise G4 iMac, but the pencil haptics on the iPad made me think Wacom isn’t quite there yet.

I spent ~AU$6500 in 1999 for a G3 Powerbook, which I‘ve just researched is $12k in today’s money, so that puts things in perspective.

from what can gather your requirement is not so much GPU but local storage And not happy with the pricing over the studio.

I need GPU for driving displays, and manipulating large photosets, but Apple has put some pretty boneheaded restrictions on what GPU can do on AS, so no sale to them.

That’s pretty hilarious really - if AS macOS was able to scale a display above its physical resolution, like it can on Intel, I probably would have bought a studio.

Something something evil containing the seeds of its own destruction etc.

expecting the m3, m4 studio/pro to change your mind about them would be what I would call crazy.

Becoming Synology-centric, I expect over time my individual devices to matter less - there’s still the iCloud thing however, but maybe the multi-screen stuff I do now is a use case for a head mounted display 🤷‍♂️

in fact would say very sensible thing to do swapping to windows/Linux not an overnight thing and this will give you time to make the migration. Whilst still being productive with what you know.

I’ll certainly have better VM support on this machine to try out different OS’.