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Do the GPUs throttle because of thermal solution? No.
I'd say "yes" - they were throttled during design in Cupertino when Apple's engineers realized how crippled the thermal solution of the MP6,1 really was. "Throttled by design" vs. "throttled by thermistor" is a nonsensical distinction. They are throttled by the failed cooling system of the MP6,1.

We were talking about how efficient solution is MP if you consider, how dense it is, and how high number of thermal power it dissipates.
How many professionals asked for a dense workstation?
 
- Yes, but not impossible.
- The only one who dropped the ball is Apple, who prefer creating standards rather than adhere to them.
- You seem to have a short memory. In 2007-2009, Apple used Nvidia and AMD. 2010-2011, AMD. 2012 was Nvidia. 2013 had some products use AMD, some Nvidia. 2014 onwards has been AMD. No reason Apple would lock them into one GPU provider (and Intel). It's not in their interests.
- They pulled staff from other teams to help with the 2016 MacBook Pro, presumably delaying everything else.

No reason why Apple couldn't use Nvidia in the MacPro7,1. As an example, a mobile GTX 1070 has a TDP of 115w; the current 450w PSU could easily power two of these, a Xeon and whatever else. And that's not factoring in advances in SFX PSUs in the last 4 years.

What sucks is that they went for some bespoke connector rather than MXM. But then I guess they'd only do that if they wanted people to upgrade, which they clearly don't any more.

Apple are clearly done with doing their version of a classic Workstation design, and the commodity-style miniaturised form factor is probably here to stay.

The gift and the curse of going with Apple is they're at the bleeding edge; you can get features and a sense of design that's way ahead of everyone else, but there's always a cost in one form or another.

Who actually uses MXM connectors now? Nvidia effectively killed that.
 
I'd actually prefer not to use liquid. I've built some pcs and if the fan breaks and things overheat, it shuts down from heat but nothing breaks. Its also easy to see a fan not spinning on boot up.

If liquid leaks - which still happens even with closed loop systems - it's a bigger more expensive problem. I understand those are rare events, but I've seen both custom and AIO solutions break on friends' pcs.

If Apple give me the current Mac Pro with two nvidia 1070s inside even slightly underclocked, I'll buy it. I'll put those cards to use. I'll even happily sacrifice performance instead of an over clocked pc. I do appreciate a quiet pc and parts that aren't covered in lights like something out of the fast and the furious.
 
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I'd actually prefer not to use liquid. I've built some pcs and if the fan breaks and things overheat, it shuts down from heat but nothing breaks. Its also easy to see a fan not spinning on boot up.

If liquid leaks - which still happens even with closed loop systems - it's a bigger more expensive problem. I understand those are rare events, but I've seen both custom and AIO solutions break on friends' pcs.

If Apple give me the current Mac Pro with two nvidia 1070s inside even slightly underclocked, I'll buy it. I'll put those cards to use. I'll even happily sacrifice performance instead of an over clocked pc. I do appreciate a quiet pc and parts that aren't covered in lights like something out of the fast and the furious.
(clicks wishlist)
 
...parts that aren't covered in lights like something out of the fast and the furious.
The Z-series, Precision and other mainstream workstations are devoid of extra LEDs.

Only the gamer systems that are marketed towards teen-age boys with inadequate equipment (you know, "small hands" like the Donald) have the light shows.
 
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The Z-series, Precision and other mainstream workstations are devoid of extra LEDs.

Only the gamer systems that are marketed towards teen-age boys with inadequate equipment (you know, "small hands" like the Donald) have the light shows.

Yes, I know they are. The precision tower that I recently recycled (still running after... 10 years? I forget) was very cleanly designed and didn't look embarrassing.

Self build parts are a horror show. Even things like motherboards are becoming more and more covered in LEDs, though. And not I'm not talking about add on led strips. The mother board itself had built in multicolored leds. And the Liquid coolers with rainbow leds and custom control panels over the pc. With custom builders I have to specify fans without LEDs!

It's insane. And cases with windows on them. My god, why did that trend start...
 
Most Mac users idea of PC systems are those gaming systems or custom building one. If you are looking for professional solutions, look to professional vendors.

HP, Dell, Lenovo, Boxx, puget, super micro etc.
 
I'd say "yes" - they were throttled during design in Cupertino when Apple's engineers realized how crippled the thermal solution of the MP6,1 really was. "Throttled by design" vs. "throttled by thermistor" is a nonsensical distinction. They are throttled by the failed cooling system of the MP6,1.


How many professionals asked for a dense workstation?
I’d agree with this. Back to cars, (temporarily);
The D700 is a W9000 in reality. One with a lot removed perhaps. What Apple have done is to lower the rev limit, (the downclock), and put in a smaller fuel pump, (the max power limit that causes shutdown). I’m betting that when they put the real 'fuel pump' back in that it overheats. They’ve created their own thermal envelope and hobbled everything else to suit.
To really see how efficient that core is what they should have done is attached three heating elements representing the CPUs and GPUs and then run them at a constant power output. Then monitor the heatsink or exhaust temperature.

But I’m still waiting for a 7,1 and if it has dual drives and more choice in GPU selection I’ll buy.
 
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I’d agree with this. Back to cars, (temporarily);
The D700 is a W9000 in reality. One with a lot removed perhaps. What Apple have done is to lower the rev limit

But they're hotted up Radeons, not down-tuned FirePros.

Given the way they burn themselves out due to the non-Firepro-based faulty memory expansion hack to the Radeon design, it's more like an entry model BMW 3Series that blows its engine due to over-boosting aftermarket turbos, vs an actual M3 with a rev limiter.

Torturing the metaphor, like Torquemada (badom-tish) himself ;)
 
Most Mac users idea of PC systems are those gaming systems or custom building one. If you are looking for professional solutions, look to professional vendors.

HP, Dell, Lenovo, Boxx, puget, super micro etc.

Do any of them over Clock? I love getting an extra 10-20% out of my pcs.
 
Do any of them over Clock? I love getting an extra 10-20% out of my pcs.

Not sure you want to go Xeons for overclocking, considering they aren't designed for such uses, but the likes of puget, Boxx etc do offer factory overclocked i7 CPUs ( including GPUs I believe )...so you might want to check them.
 
Only the gamer systems that are marketed towards teen-age boys with inadequate equipment (you know, "small hands" like the Donald) have the light shows.

Still, using indicator lights with common sense it a good thing. E.g. my SGIs use the LED to indicate startup progress. The lights change between red and white (or green and orange-red) to show what part of the startup process is being done.

And I remember the bebox which had two rows of leds to indicate the system load. I think this is a nice feature.

And the real king of indicator lights—at least in my mind—is the connection machine (about a minute into to the video).


However, common sense is important. Today controllable rgb-LEDs should be considered the default. Combine this with user defined settings.
You don't like LEDs? No problem, simply choose the all off setting (basically this a Apple today).
You don't like bright blue LEDs? No problem, choose a muted color set.
You like to have an indicator when you receive an e-mail from someone special? No problem, once the LEDs can be controlled, you simply defined a e-mail rule to a color pattern of the LEDs. At the moment I used a blink(1) USB LED to do this.

I think the surface of our desktops could be used for much more than just being a shiny clean and uncluttered exhibit of a singular design philosophy.
 
that's not an HPC Supercomputer solution, neither a workstation, this is not airmed to operate 24x7 under load and being reliable as to leave by itself for a week doing a heavy render task.

that's just a toy computer.


p.D I'm very close to Zotac, my Kodi home theater uses a Zbox Nano.
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All major vendors have liquid cooled offerings, HP, Dell, IBM, Cray etc etc
not for HPC Supercomputers, liquid cooling exists on few servers and heath use to be recycled to save energy, some apollo system are too dense for aircooling (think NY where realstate is crazy expensive), but those are special conditions not ideal, instead look at real supercomputers as Tacc Stampeede (all xeon phy air cooled).

Sometimes those 'liquid cooled' systems (as those from cray), are mere air cooled racks with an liquid cooled chiller at bottom, not cooling directly the CPU or GPUs, its the same liquid cooling you see across datacenters, they pump cold water to heat exchangers (air conditioners) at the botom of each rack providing cold air.

This is on double purpose: reliability and convenience, you cant unplug a blade server from cooling pipes as you do with lan and power, futher you need to care not droping liquid on other active blades.

The best cooing technology available today is passive phase change with heath pipes + peltier elements (heatpipes filled with propane based coolant), its effective, fast dont represent leak dangers (propane evaporates asap leaks).

Liquid cooling on computers its more marketing than actual need (except you are in NY and needs to save few sq feet to save millions).
 
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Most of what you said is totally wrong, don't know what your agenda is really, all the vendors i listed (add Fujitsu to that list) offer supercomputers with on-chip liquid cooling, there is a whole plethora of different cooling strategies for supercomputers, on-chip liquid cooling are one of them (and yes, obviously they will use heat exchangers). All of them are offering direct on-chip liquid cooling for CPU, memory, GPU and co-processors like Phi (or as a standalone processor as of the latest Phi release)

http://www.cray.com/sites/default/files/resources/CrayCS400-LCBrochure.pdf

Sure, traditional air-cooling is one of the most popular, if not the most popular strategy but on-chip liquid cooling for HPC and/or supercomputers are not as uncommon or non-existent as you make it out to be. Russia for example loves direct on-chip liquid cooling and have several supercomputers on the Top500 list that uses it.

So why you originally claimed no HPC supercomputers used liquid cooling ("please show me a single HPC super computer using liquid cooling"), yeah...
 
So why you originally claimed no HPC supercomputers used liquid cooling ("please show me a single HPC super computer using liquid cooling"), yeah...
you may find few server racks with on-chip liquid cooling (as i mentioned in NY are more probable), but datacenters use forced air with liquid cooling not on chip, bt at the bottom or side of the racks to avoid leak damage and easy blade inspection/removal..

diy you check new Cray XC line ? http://www.cray.com/sites/default/files/Cray-XC50-Product-Brief.pdf

integrating a combination of vertical liquid coil units per compute
cabinet and transverse air flow reused through the system. Fans in
blower cabinets can be hot swapped

why Cray choose forced air coolinf for it latest XC supercomputer?

check this: http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2010/05/03/nec-announces-new-phase-change-cooler/1

this is the best workstation cooling system available today.

PD at some expo I saw a similar product augmented with peltier elements cooling both cpu and gpu in a mini-itx like chasis with about 600W total tdp.
[doublepost=1485093014][/doublepost]back to the thread, an 800W nMP tc its possible replacing the current aluminum thermal core with well known heath pipes, maybe a 50% fan speedup maybe necessary but other strategies/designs maybe used to deal with the fan noise.
 
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Not sure you want to go Xeons for overclocking, considering they aren't designed for such uses, but the likes of puget, Boxx etc do offer factory overclocked i7 CPUs ( including GPUs I believe )...so you might want to check them.

Thanks, gonna take a look. If I'm going to suffer through another pc, I want the benefit of an unlocked i7.
 
back to the thread, an 800W nMP tc its possible replacing the current aluminum thermal core with well known heath pipes, maybe a 50% fan speedup maybe necessary but other strategies/designs maybe used to deal with the fan noise.

If they design a taller, 4 sided system it would remove a lot of the gripes with the design of the nMP. The so called stunted 'thermal core' will have more surface area to cool the innards, not to mention provide more space to fit peripherals.
 
Yes, I know they are. The precision tower that I recently recycled (still running after... 10 years? I forget) was very cleanly designed and didn't look embarrassing.

Self build parts are a horror show. Even things like motherboards are becoming more and more covered in LEDs, though. And not I'm not talking about add on led strips. The mother board itself had built in multicolored leds. And the Liquid coolers with rainbow leds and custom control panels over the pc. With custom builders I have to specify fans without LEDs!

It's insane. And cases with windows on them. My god, why did that trend start...

Well, they've got the lights so that you can see them because your case has a window on it :p

The fixation and weird religiousity with PC gaming on making your computer like you're assembling a bespoke lightsaber is... weird. Those are the guys who say "PC master race" and they really mean it.
 
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Well, they've got the lights so that you can see them because your case has a window on it :p

The fixation and weird religiousity with PC gaming on making your computer like you're assembling a bespoke lightsaber is... weird. Those are the guys who say "PC master race" and they really mean it.

I can second this. I built a hackintosh to hold me over until a new mac pro is released and the micro center guy looked like I was crazy that I didn't want a window on the side of my case to see all the flashy lights.
 
Most Mac users idea of PC systems are those gaming systems or custom building one. If you are looking for professional solutions, look to professional vendors.

HP, Dell, Lenovo, Boxx, puget, super micro etc.

Yeah, only this is not so fair, right!

With Apple, you can only choose between a iMac with build-in screen (basically an big laptop and not a desktop), ore a mac Pro, an high end machine with Xeon and ECC, etc etc.

The gab in the middle is where a lot of users easily can fit in. I was tired of the waiting game and invested my money in a PC. I switched to W10.

As an profesional digital artist, i am in the need of serious power for massive Photoshop documents. And still able to paint in it, add photo's and textures. U get the picture right. And i mean massive.. 15GB PSD files just like that.

But, i am not in the need of an Xeon cpu. Nor do I need ECC memory. Most of my software doenst use Dual GPU and it can even effect it negatively in the performance. Also, a lot of tools where graphic people work with use CUDA and OpenCL. Also a thing with Macs. So, here we are.. I ordered an PC with an 6800K i7 (Extreme CPU's) which are very good, 32GB DDR4 mem, 950 PRO m2 SSD, plus some extra normal SSD drives, and a GTX 1070 to back up any GFX task out there. Its a blazing fast PC whith high end components and kicking almost every MAC out there in the nuts. It cost me 2600 euros and ordered a curved 34" dell on top. So 3200 euro and a superfast system and a awesome good screen. Not so bad.

I wish Apple had something in the middle of the nice looking iMac but weak, and the Xeon horse old Mac Pro's. I think they will sell a lot of them. But like we know by now, there desktop systems are not high priority. So i think I need to stay with Windows for a long time! It goes fine by the way.. its just another OS with a different name.
 
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The nMP is hardly a supercomputer. Supercomputers have their own closets, if not rooms, with their own controlled environment. When you can control the environment and say, cool it down to a constant 18°C, you can of course go for the otherwise cheapest and most reliable cooling solution, which uses air as its medium. Air is plentyful, available everywhere and doesn't cause problems if it leaks. If you've ever been in a room with a supercomputer, or just in a server room though, you'll agree that this solution is neither quiet nor affordable, once you include the costs for the airconditioning and the real estate.

Do we agree that the current 2013 (oh the irony of seeing these numbers in the same sentence as the word "current") nMP is a thermally very restricted design? I believe we do. Do we agree that if heatpipes or an LCS were used, a higher thermal ouput could be handled in a similarly small enclosure? I think so.
 
Do we agree that the current 2013 (oh the irony of seeing these numbers in the same sentence as the word "current") nMP is a thermally very restricted design?

Yep, I agree. Apple defined the power and thermal envelope they wanted for the mac pro and restricted the clock speeds of the various components to operate within it.

Do we agree that if heatpipes or an LCS were used, a higher thermal ouput could be handled in a similarly small enclosure? I think so.

I disagree with this. One of the primary functions of heat pipes and liquid cooling is to transport heat. For instance they are popular in custom PCs because you can take the heat from the processor and transport it so its directly ejected from the case. Heat pipes is the same concept. Take a look at graphics card coolers. You see heat pipes all over the place trying to distribute the heat from a single source across a large horizontal area.

Apple designed the thermal core to avoid the necessity of these things. They spread out the heat by spreading out the components that generate heat and positioning it in a chimney so that the heat is directly ejected from the case and takes advantage of the natural convection of heated air in that it moves up.

If heat pipes could have improved the cooling the mac pro Apple would have used them. They certainly are used in other Apple products.

Could you design a mac pro where these things are advantageous? Sure. Look back at the PowerMac G5 that had liquid cooling. It could dissipate more heat but it came at the cost of reliability. It was also certainly not as quiet as the current mac pro.
 
The problem with Apple's simple aluminium vs chip solution is that the heat can only dissapate as fast as the aluminium physically allows. Eg you have maybe 10 square centimeters of chip surface that actually touches the aluminium. Due to physics you will have much higher local temps there than in the fins that help dissipate the heat eventually. Hot spots are a problem for chips, one that gets solved very well by heatpipes as you essentially achieve a higher volume of cooling medium (in this case metal and the coolant/gas in the heatpipes, vs. just the touching aluminium) vs the same die surface.

If Apple had designed the thermal core with heatpipes to distribute heat quicker across a similar volume of metal, they would have at least achieved better thermal balance for when only the cpu or say one gpu are under load and if they had made the core mushroom shaped with a big cooling head on top with a fan extracting air through it, they might have creased the total thermal potential effectively without changing the dimensions of the case much, maybe increasing its height by an inch.

Heatpipes allow you to determine where you want to get rid of the excess heat. Instead Apple chose where they wanted the heat to be produced. The result is a physically very limiting if clever design that is 100% dependant on the thermal conductivity of aluminium and the volume of metal used in the triangular thermal core.

It's a pricey way of solving a problem and you tie yourself in to a very inflexible platform. And that is what I think lies at the heart of this 4 year wait for a new nMP. They designed a new case for the next ten years and then failed to find another configuration of gpus and cpus and peripherals that they could actually cram into the existing limits of the new design.
 
Love z 840 but i've been using more fcpx lately. I got basic down with adobe premiere but i had to quickly get stuff done. learning curve is huge with hp computer...but I'll definitely not gonna sell it.
The learning curve is a steep one but a lot of that is because Apple has handled so much of that for us. I am amazed at how many things are accessible through Properties.

There are some frustrations such as Keywords (tags) not being displayed or searchable in Explorer for PSD and PDF files. If you save images as TIF instead of PSD, then you see the tags (and search for them) and there is, from what I understand, a third party add-on that will display tags for PDF in Explorer. Also, there is no image preview for PSD or TIF files. Another oddity is that Adobe Bridge also appears to use the Windows search engine so no searching by tags with PSD there either but it does display previews. Easiest answer is to use Lightroom which does it all itself. None of these are deal breakers and I can't say that I really miss my Mac to any real degree.
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the micro center guy looked like I was crazy that I didn't want a window on the side of my case to see all the flashy lights
The other favorite light up toy is the keyboard. OMG, I had a hard time finding a mechanical keyboard that didn't have lights that made it look like the Fourth of July. Sometimes, if you didn't know better, you'd swear that users just want to play games on PC's based on all the lit computers and keyboards.
 
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