Maxed out MacPro pricing?

[kingtj]

It's funny ....

I was just talking last week with a small computer shop owner who I've been good friends with for many years. He was just complaining about how many people just seem to take it for granted that complicated (and frankly, amazing) technology should cost so little. The prices we're able to buy many computer products for today are unreasonably LOW. It's only possible because we take advantage of what's essentially slave labor in other countries like China.

For example, I just got email today from NewEgg offering a DVD+/-RW internal CD/DVD recorder drive for $14.99 on sale. Think about that a minute! You're talking about a device with a motorized tray on the front, and a precision stepper motor inside that moves the multi-wavelength capable laser diode back and forth to different "tracks" of the optical disc. Then a third motor spins the disc itself at the exact speed required. You've got all the associated circuitry in there to calculate what type of media was inserted and the correct laser power to apply to record or just play back media, and everything needed to transfer the data to a SATA port to go to the machine using it. Now you factor in the costs to assemble this thing, do some kind of quality testing as they move through the line, AND to package it all up and ship it (probably with a printed instruction sheet of some sort, mounting screws for it, a SATA cable, and maybe even a disc of CD/DVD recording software thrown in). And you can get this for $15?!

If we're going to bring Mac Pro production back to the USA and we're really going to use the latest cutting-edge technologies in it, I don't think the $10,000 price tag is out of line at all! Have you seen what places charge to put together a 30 second commercial spot or to do a quick animated production for someone? This is a tool that could literally earn its cost back for someone in 1 project.

Twice the size likely wouldn't necessarily make it half the price. If you think that is an absurd amount, you probably don't have need for that much power. Those who need that much power know that $10000 is a fraction of what they spend on employing the people who make use of that much power.

 

[rei101]

Creativity is not discouraged here, actually. The question is what is more cost effective. For us, the actual time spent (2-3 days, I'd estimate) researching, ordering, building and setting up a homemade rig is better spent on doing actual work for clients. Even if I were to save $5-10,000 in hardware in those 2-3 days, we'd be losing far more money than that by having me not doing my actual job.

I have the same problem with a client, they want to hire cheap labor at $10 an hour. But it takes 3 times to fix what those same people without experience did. At the end is costing $40 or even $50 to do the procedure instead of paying $20 and do it right the first time.

 

[.:Aleph:.]

HP Z820, Dell Precision 7610

http://www.avadirect.com/workstation-pc-configurator.asp?PRID=27171

http://www.digitalstormonline.com/aventum-ii.asp?workstation=1

http://www.originpc.com/workstation/desktops/genesis-pro/

or buy one of these and plug what you want in: http://www.supermicro.nl/products/nfo/superworkstation.cfm

I clicked on one of those links and tried to choose GPU options.

My screen filled up with 100 or so cards.

Yet Apple typically offers 2 or 3.

I can tell you this, the Nvidia EFI rom has notations for every card Nvidia ever made. The Nvidia drivers have contained the same entries. The only thing left was for someone to do what we did, connect the EFI with the PC BIOS and the drivers to make more cards work as OSX native cards. The groundwork sat there for years, untouched by dozens of alleged hackers.

There are literally dozens of cards we will never get to, but the drivers await. Sadly, all of the other card flashers seem to be more of the "copy & paste" variety and many of the cards in the drivers will just never exist.

Would have taken Apple about 15 minutes of effort to publicize how to do this.

Dell T7610
HP Z820

Both will support two of the twelve core chips, and have 16 DIMM slots supporting 32 GiB DIMMs.

Supermicro 7047AX-TRF (supports up to 1 TiB of RAM)

The Lenovo D30 should be there soon, but I haven't seen any announcements about supporting the E5 v2 Xeons.

Yep, thank you!

Before I saw your replies I ended up here:

http://h71016.www7.hp.com/dstore/Mi...=3551&BaseId=38347&oi=E9CED&BEID=19701&SBLID=

Picked some options and ended up with a $20,000 and I haven't even finished.

I didn't find the 24-core version.

 

[mrhick01]

I will amend my $50,000 over-estimate to $25,000-$30,000 maxed out ($40,000 with 1 TB of memory), although you do have to keep in mind the costs of expansion cards and RAID arrays. Might approach $50,000 after all.

Again, anyone that needs THAT will likely be paying for warranty and service when things go wrong, and not for the purpose of tinkering themselves.

Few people have that much money AND time on their hands.

 

[slughead]

I was just talking last week with a small computer shop owner who I've been good friends with for many years. He was just complaining about how many people just seem to take it for granted that complicated (and frankly, amazing) technology should cost so little. The prices we're able to buy many computer products for today are unreasonably LOW. It's only possible because we take advantage of what's essentially slave labor in other countries like China.

For example, I just got email today from NewEgg offering a DVD+/-RW internal CD/DVD recorder drive for $14.99 on sale. Think about that a minute! You're talking about a device with a motorized tray on the front, and a precision stepper motor inside that moves the multi-wavelength capable laser diode back and forth to different "tracks" of the optical disc. Then a third motor spins the disc itself at the exact speed required. You've got all the associated circuitry in there to calculate what type of media was inserted and the correct laser power to apply to record or just play back media, and everything needed to transfer the data to a SATA port to go to the machine using it. Now you factor in the costs to assemble this thing, do some kind of quality testing as they move through the line, AND to package it all up and ship it (probably with a printed instruction sheet of some sort, mounting screws for it, a SATA cable, and maybe even a disc of CD/DVD recording software thrown in). And you can get this for $15?!

If we're going to bring Mac Pro production back to the USA and we're really going to use the latest cutting-edge technologies in it, I don't think the $10,000 price tag is out of line at all! Have you seen what places charge to put together a 30 second commercial spot or to do a quick animated production for someone? This is a tool that could literally earn its cost back for someone in 1 project.

You have to compare it to to what else is out there. This is the nature of technology. The transition from whale oil to kerosene transformed the whole economy and increased the standard of living to a ridiculous degree. You didn't see people defending the kerosene companies that were selling it at close-to-but-not-quite whale-oil prices. You didn't see people saying "sure, it's twice the price of the competition, but it's still a good deal relative to the previous alternatives!"

I'm not sure if you can call the nMP unreasonably priced when you compare it to other workstations, what I do know is: calling something "undervalued" or saying that the price is "unreasonably low" because it is inexpensive compared to previous offerings is historically perplexing.

Finally, I think the Chinese factory workers working at Foxconn and elsewhere would take offense to being called "Slaves." Also, I think people who have actually been slaves would take offense to you downplaying their plight by comparing voluntary labor to involuntary labor.

You have my full permission to ride a horse to work and illuminate your house with whale-oil. I'll enjoy my $15 DVD drive and the rest of the products of technological advancement.

 

[handsome pete]

Yeah, so we can work it into the budget. If it was $5,000 or $15,000, we just need to know what to expect. And I do very much appreciate all of your responses and help.

No one knows yet what the max configuration will cost. I'd aim high at $15k until you know for sure.


I'm still wondering what kind of work you're actually doing though, where you have older Mac Pros just sitting on the shelf because they can't handle it. What are their specs?

 

[td2243]

Where can I get this whale oil you speak of? Winter is coming.

 

[JavaTheHut]

$12,999 +tx

 

[bearcatrp]

Anyone with a dual westmere mac pro would waste there money buying this new mac pro. What, 15% performance, a bit more energy savings but serious lack of expansion. Sure, spend more money on external exclosures but more money. Can't see but a few pro folks buying this. Allot cheaper to build your own if your comfortable. Glad I left after my 2008 mac pro. Easier on the pocket book.