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What do you use your Mac Pro for?

X

XvMMvX

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 21, 2010
20
0
Everytime my wife and I go to the mall we stop by the apple store to goof around. I always drool over the demo mac pro they have there, such hardware :D. My wife always has to pull me away, but I also realize that I truly have no use for that kind of power. Other than ePeen enhancement of course.

I was just curious what you guys use them for. Maybe I could find something I "needed" (HeHe) it for and could convince her. The only thing I could think of would be ripping and encoding our movie collection.

Just curious.
 
tell her it is either this or a motorbike. pretend it is a midlife crisis, are you starting to go bald (this will help) ... say things like "you obviously don't want me to have an affair... so let me buy this mac pro!"

i am sure the conversation will go well. ;)
 
Porn!



(j/k, actually - running small molecular dynamics models or staging larger ones for runs on a cluster, testing cluster based software using virtual machines, statistical analysis on my results and post processing for creating graphics from said results)
 
Mine apparently works in conjunction with my keyboard to serve as an air filtration device, sucking in dust from the entire house.
 
brentsg said:
Mine apparently works in conjunction with my keyboard to serve as an air filtration device, sucking in dust from the entire house.
Click to expand...

++

I gave mine its twice a year de-dust yesterday. :eek:


I use mine for the usual stuff... Mostly web surfing, light productivity stuff but also photo editing with Lightroom and a bit of video editing with FCP.

All I really wanted was a machine with expandable disk storage (don't like noisy external boxes). It's annoying that the MacPro was the only machine that suited - the processor power goes to waste most of the time.
 
To the OP....

While there's a lot of sarcastic remarks here, it's probably because this question is asked a lot ... and well, those threads also get filled with sarcastic remarks.

As for me, I beat people up with my Mac Pro, the tough aluminium case is perfect for delivering damage - just attach a chain to the handles and it's like a blocky mace.

And when I'm not delivering terror to people, I sometimes write software, and process photos.
 
firestarter said:
++
I gave mine its twice a year de-dust yesterday. :eek:
Click to expand...

How do you go about that? I've dusted mine before, but I wonder if there's some kind of "deep de-dusting" I should do... do you take off the fans to clean them? disassemble the CPU heatsink to de-dust inside it? inside of the power source compartment? finally, the inside of the graphics cards - the 4870 and GT120, is there a way to clean them on the inside?

any tips will be very appreciated

thanks!
 
Scientific computing (simulations of the physics of medical imaging systems, tensor field analysis, boot-strap statistics, data visualization) and Facebook. :p
 
Is this like a geek middle age crisis? Buy a red Corvette.

As for my beast, its speed calms my impatient nature. Its expandability will keep me from buying another machine for years.
 
diazj3 said:
How do you go about that? I've dusted mine before, but I wonder if there's some kind of "deep de-dusting" I should do... do you take off the fans to clean them? disassemble the CPU heatsink to de-dust inside it? inside of the power source compartment? finally, the inside of the graphics cards - the 4870 and GT120, is there a way to clean them on the inside?

any tips will be very appreciated

thanks!
Click to expand...

I use a compressed air aerosol with a long tube nozzle (kenro brand in the UK, but there are equivalents in the US).

I either take the computer outside (if it's nice) or put it in the (dry!) bath and take the side panel off. I remove the hard drives.

I then spray with short bursts of compressed air. These sprays are really strong - so you don't need that much (or to get that close). I spray inside-out so it forces the dust out of the computer. The fans all spin when I'm doing this and the dust falls off them too. You can also fire air down the graphics card exhaust - and all the dust jumps out of the heatsink!

After a couple of minutes doing this there's basically no dust left - and you haven't had to risk the computer by actually touching any components.
 
Be wary of course of some compressed air cans, diazj3 - they can have moisture in them and consequently spray liquid on your components.

I forego compressed air cans and do things manually - use a hand blower that I use on my camera lenses.... might buy a bigger one soon.. heh
 
firestarter said:
I use a compressed air aerosol with a long tube nozzle (kenro brand in the UK, but there are equivalents in the US).
...
After a couple of minutes doing this there's basically no dust left - and you haven't had to risk the computer by actually touching any components.
Click to expand...

Right, perhaps it's better not to disassemble anything other than the HD and the GPU... thanks.

Vylen said:
Be wary of course of some compressed air cans, diazj3 - they can have moisture in them and consequently spray liquid on your components.

I forego compressed air cans and do things manually - use a hand blower that I use on my camera lenses.... might buy a bigger one soon.. heh
Click to expand...

Thanks Vylen... I use Dust-Off compressed gas duster, bought it at Costco. It has the long tube nozzle for dusting - carefully not to tilt or turn it too much to avoid condensation and freezing air to spray out, thus avoiding moisture.

cheers!
 
firestarter said:
I use a compressed air aerosol with a long tube nozzle (kenro brand in the UK, but there are equivalents in the US).

I either take the computer outside (if it's nice) or put it in the (dry!) bath and take the side panel off. I remove the hard drives.

I then spray with short bursts of compressed air. These sprays are really strong - so you don't need that much (or to get that close). I spray inside-out so it forces the dust out of the computer. The fans all spin when I'm doing this and the dust falls off them too. You can also fire air down the graphics card exhaust - and all the dust jumps out of the heatsink!

After a couple of minutes doing this there's basically no dust left - and you haven't had to risk the computer by actually touching any components.
Click to expand...

One day, remove the fan casings from the front and look at the heat sinks. You'll be amazed how much dust lives within a MacPro heat sink.
 
G4DP said:
One day, remove the fan casings from the front and look at the heat sinks. You'll be amazed how much dust lives within a MacPro heat sink.
Click to expand...

You beat me to it, that's where most of the dust in my dual-CPU floor vacuum ends up. Pulling off the fan assemblies is rather easy, and worth it
 
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