MP 7,1 Worth buying a 2019 Mac Pro where storage is a priority?

[Resseh]

Im running out of storage on my Corsair One pc (PC version of trashcan Mac in design). Im tempted to get a Mac Pro 2019 but its really tough finding decent information on YouTube on the differences between graphics cards etc or benchmarks comparing it to the Mac Studio etc. The YT algorithm favours the first looks of the latest Mac Pro from people who barely use them before returning them for a refund.

As a photographer - I can take up to 1TB of photos on a shoot when using burst mode and as a digital hoarder I don’t like to delete anything. So the Mac Pro is quite appealing as i can load it with HDDs and SDDs. But id be going down the eBay route so no warranty. Or I can buy a M2 Ultra Studio for about £3800. With that scenario i would need external storage but I don’t want loads of external Hard drives. Sandisk sells a nice raid unit but it’s so expensive and big. (Which is what made me consider the Mac Pro Route.

Edit: I was going about it wrong - looking for videos on the Mac Pro 2019 rather than watching videos on the Mac Studio where it seems that apples processors trounch Intels.

Apologies for all the waffle - so to summarise,

1. Is the Mac Pro worth getting in 2023?
2. What are the (budget) Storage devices that go well with the Mac Studio

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

if You need mass and fast storage either will work, but you might be served better by a very fast NAS. You can get NAS with like 8 u.2 bays and 100gbps to 400gbps network access and insane transfer speed.

As for it being worth it, getting a sense of how many terabytes you need access to would help get a sense of scale.

 

[avro707]

For photography use, probably no use in getting the 2019 Mac Pro.

Is the Studio even needed? Wouldn't a Macbook Pro with a a couple of high quality screens connected and some fast external storage do the job better? Then you have something portable.

 

[HDFan]

1. How much storage do you use now?
2. How much storage will you use in the future?

I have gone through a lot of NAS units, starting with a 4 bay, 5 bay, 6 bay, and now have 2 8 bay units. I learned that I was adding so much media and pictures that I was filling them to capacity. Finally settled on QNAP and Synology 8 bay units. Initally had 3 free slots, now am down to 1 free on each. Plan your space needs so that you have maxed it out at the point you will replace it.

These are, however, not my primary devices as they are relative slow even with 10 GbE or Thunderbolt. Readspeeds with 7 drives is ~1000 MBs. Write speeds I have found vary greatly, as low as ~300 MB/s to a max around 500 MB/s. They require maintenance as they run an OS. Multiple vendors have had problems with ransomeware. Synology for some units is now only officially supporting their own very expensive memory and disks although other brand products will work.

Assuming you value your pictures I would not skimp on your external storage. That's your most important investment. You want something that is rock solid, not subject to failures and annual upgrade feees such as SoftRaid. The only RAID device I have that has given me no problems is my 8 bay Promise drive. ~1522 MB/s write/read. It is a very expensive solution unfortunately. They down't sell drive-less units and their drive prices are exorbitant. I had to purchase their lowest capacity unit, pull out the drives and sell them, replacing them with 16 TB ones. It is unclear to me whether you can add drives to open slots to increase capacity or have to fully populate the enclosure since hardware RAID is less flexible than those implemented in software. There may be a torturous way to replace smaller capacity disks with larger ones. With the drives cost nearing the cost of the unit itself it was a very expensive purchase. Well worth it though to save my pictures.

 

[DrEGPU]

Spend the funds you’d have spent on a Mac Pro and get a high quality, high capacity NAS to pair with a Mac Studio or a MacBook Pro, depending on what suits your work best

 

[TobiasT]

NAS (true nas is lovely) + Mac Studio is way better. MP 7.1 is like burning money.

 

[HDFan]

Im tempted to get a Mac Pro 2019

Waste of money, both in initial expense and running costs. But your needs could be different.

"The Mac Pro has a single-core score of 1152 and a multi-core score of 19951."

Mac Studio Benchmarks Compared To Mac Pro 7,1 | Production Expert

Early benchmarks are in for the new Apple Mac Studio , with comparison to the Intel Mac Pro 7,1. We have the results.

www.production-expert.com

On Geekbench 6.1's CPU test, the Mac Studio with M2 Ultra earned a single-core score of 2,819 and a whopper of a multi-core score of 21,802.

Mac Studio Review: M2 Ultra Powers a Small Workstation Wonder

The little workstation that could.

www.tomshardware.com

It is unclear to me whether you can add drives to open slots to increase capacity or have to fully populate the enclosure since hardware RAID is less flexible than those implemented in software.

Had to call Promise support today for another issue. Turns out you can add additional disks when space is needed, although the process is complicated. Their support is excellent, by the way. That's another thing you get with a premium product.

Again NAS units are slow in comparison with hardware based RAID (depending on vendor) even with Thunderbolt or 10 GbE interfaces, require constant maintenance since you are maintaining another OS, have security vulnerabilities which have to be fixed, etc.

 

[darngooddesign]

Im running out of storage on my Corsair One pc...

Why aren't you connecting external storage to your PC?

 

[Resseh]

thanks for the replies. i do have a NAS but it’s quite far from my pc and i only have cat 5 cables to it.

unfortunately my NAS is full (40TB). i really want to upgrade the HDDS from 8tb to 22TB but that’s going to cost £1000s. plus im going to need at least an external set up of 40tb to copy the NAS files too.

i am conscious of energy consumption of having a NAS running 24/7 so as a temporary measure ive just hooked up an external hdd to my media centre.

it’s really difficult to gauge the performance i will need. one example is on my pc - i did an ice skating shoot and shot something like 300GB of photos. i didn’t have time to cull them and just copied some of lightroom portrait and auto settings to all of them. it took something like 24 hours on my pc with nvidia 2080ti.

i also bought my fiancé a high spec intel laptop and lightroom has this horrendous lag on pretty much everything. after a week - i bought her an m2 ipad pro and the difference was massive. The m2 is so much snappier.

So i have no idea if that’s a windows problem or if lightroom is just better optimised for the apple processors.

After typing all this - replacing my NAS seems like the best bet.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

StorageReview.com (@storagereview) on X

A brand new QNAP TS-h1290FX just rolled into the lab. AMD CPU with 8 DIMM slots, 4 PCIe slots and of course, 12x NVMe SSD support. 2x 25GbE on board with a few 2.5GbE ports as well. Starts at $4900, our review is in the works. #qnap #nas #storage @QNAP_nas

x.com

Sadly synology has become the “Apple” of NAS. Their hardware is a joke compared to competitors but their software is so much nicer. But if you get a qnap like this you can get crazy speed u.2/u.3 drives with crazy fiber speed connections.

 

[jimmy_john]

+1 for the TS-h1290fx.

Who needs local storage when you can get 10 GB/s over fiber

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

+1 for the TS-h1290fx.

Who needs local storage when you can get 10 GB/s over fiber

It comes with dual 25gbps ports. Pooled ports would give you 6250MB/sec throughput. A single u.2 drive could saturate that line, so if you have several such u.2 drives, it would be a monster.

 

[jimmy_john]

It comes with dual 25gbps ports. Pooled ports would give you 6250MB/sec throughput. A single u.2 drive could saturate that line, so if you have several such u.2 drives, it would be a monster.

It works great with the Micron 9400 series (and all manner of drives for the most part) and 100GbE.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

It works great with the Micron 9400 series (and all manner of drives for the most part) and 100GbE.

I bet you could even put in a 400gbe nic in there.

 

[jimmy_john]

I bet you could even put in a 400gbe nic in there.

They aren't officially supported but that could be a fun test. I am using ConnectX-6 now but I do wonder if the ConnectX-7 would be faster even though it'd have to down clock to PCIE-4. The raid can certainly run faster than 10GB/s.

 

[atonaldenim]

Apologies for all the waffle - so to summarise,

1. Is the Mac Pro worth getting in 2023?
2. What are the (budget) Storage devices that go well with the Mac Studio

Don’t spend a lot of money on an Intel Mac Pro (or any Intel Mac) going into the 4th year of Apple Silicon. New versions of MacOS will only support Intel for another year or two, and then you’ll be stuck on an old OS. Many apps will likewise abandon Intel support soon, it’s hapoening already. The cost of the Intel Mac Pro will be wasted on a dead end machine, since you don’t specifically need the Intel architecture for your work.

The 2023 Mac Pro is a fine machine but not worth it for the sole purpose of being able to put a few HDDs inside (with the purchase of an additional 3rd party adapter since mounting HDDs is not something it can even do natively.)

If you want a Mac with a lot of storage cheaply, then you want an HDD RAID. Look at OWC brand Thunderbolt RAID for example. Depending on the fluctuations of HDD prices, you can sometimes save money with the 0TB enclosure plus adding your own HDDs bought elsewhere.

For example the 80TB option from OWC is $2580, but it’s only $1760 if you get the $600 0TB enclosure w/SoftRAID, plus four of these 20TB drives for $290 ea from Newegg. Just as a random example.

Get a long Thunderbolt cable so you can move the RAID off your desk because it makes a lot of noise. (So would a NAS of similar capacity, the drives themselves are the noisemakers.) NAS is easier to hide away since network cables are meant for long runs. But NAS is slower than Thunderbolt and more of a management hassle. You have to have a little networking understanding. Thunderbolt RAID is basically a very large external hard drive with not much extra admin overhead, and much faster potentially.

I’d recommend RAID 5 mode with SoftRAID if you want speed and data safety with all the drives joined together as one big storage volume. Or you could even stay as simple as keeping the 4 drives as separate volumes (which people call JBOD - Just a Bunch Of Disks). No SoftRAID required for JBOD.

EDIT: sorry I missed your later post saying you have a full 40TB NAS. If you’re familiar with that workflow already NAS is a great option too. With Apple Silicon you’ll be drawing way less power than your Intel machine, even if you added a second NAS I’m sure the switch to AS would be a net reduction in energy use!

 

[prefuse07]

Many apps will likewise abandon Intel support soon, it’s hapoening already.

Can you please list a few of these apps, I am generally curious about this.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Don’t spend a lot of money on an Intel Mac Pro (or any Intel Mac) going into the 4th year of Apple Silicon. New versions of MacOS will only support Intel for another year or two, and then you’ll be stuck on an old OS. Many apps will likewise abandon Intel support soon, it’s hapoening already. The cost of the Intel Mac Pro will be wasted on a dead end machine, since you don’t specifically need the Intel architecture for your work.

The 2023 Mac Pro is a fine machine but not worth it for the sole purpose of being able to put a few HDDs inside (with the purchase of an additional 3rd party adapter since mounting HDDs is not something it can even do natively.)

If you want a Mac with a lot of storage cheaply, then you want an HDD RAID. Look at OWC brand Thunderbolt RAID for example. Depending on the fluctuations of HDD prices, you can sometimes save money with the 0TB enclosure plus adding your own HDDs bought elsewhere.

For example the 80TB option from OWC is $2580, but it’s only $1760 if you get the $600 0TB enclosure w/SoftRAID, plus four of these 20TB drives for $290 ea from Newegg. Just as a random example.

Get a long Thunderbolt cable so you can move the RAID off your desk because it makes a lot of noise. (So would a NAS of similar capacity, the drives themselves are the noisemakers.) NAS is easier to hide away since network cables are meant for long runs. But NAS is slower than Thunderbolt and more of a management hassle. You have to have a little networking understanding. Thunderbolt RAID is basically a very large external hard drive with not much extra admin overhead, and much faster potentially.

I’d recommend RAID 5 mode with SoftRAID if you want speed and data safety with all the drives joined together as one big storage volume. Or you could even stay as simple as keeping the 4 drives as separate volumes (which people call JBOD - Just a Bunch Of Disks). No SoftRAID required for JBOD.

EDIT: sorry I missed your later post saying you have a full 40TB NAS. If you’re familiar with that workflow already NAS is a great option too. With Apple Silicon you’ll be drawing way less power than your Intel machine, even if you added a second NAS I’m sure the switch to AS would be a net reduction in energy use!

This may be true. But considering every new macOS seems more like a downgrade, I'm not sure youre missing much. The hey day of macOS is now past. The current regime running apple has like 10 people that can do anything, the rest of the company is just cruft that should be fired. They are a drag. Those 10 people are busy on the VisionPro. The rest of apple honestly believe that system prefs in Ventura and Sonoma are good. Their big new feature is widgets rehash from what we had over a decade ago and stickers. macOS is dead. Apple just doesn't know it yet. This is like macOS 7 days, dead OS walking.

As for apps. Most have become subscription puke apps so I won't touch them. There are so few apps of any quality or worth now, it's laughable but MS Word is now one of the better macOS apps. For the few good apps, I'm probably going to look to virtualization to run them and just dump macOS as it continues. A Mac WINE-like emulator was announced, and if it gains traction, will make the move away from macOS easier.

This is no longer the company of "think different". It is bloated and dead inside.

TLDR, yea, not getting updates these days isn't that big a deal.

 

[atonaldenim]

Can you please list a few of these apps, I am generally curious about this.

Some high-profile games have launched in the last year that only support Apple Silicon Macs, no Intel support at all. Baldur’s Gate 3, Resident Evil Village, GRID Legends, Total War: WARHAMMER III, and coming soon: Death Stranding, Resident Evil 4. Presumably the Apple Silicon requirement is part of a cross-device strategy for them to build in such a way that can be easily ported to iPad, iOS, Apple TV.

For OP, I looked up Synology’s latest offerings and the DS923+ and the 10GBe upgrade would cost about $700, so about in the same price range as the OWC Thunderbolt RAID I mentioned for a NAS equivalent. Also, check OWC’s Garage Sale section for good discounts in open box and used items, can often save quite a bit!

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

Some high-profile games have launched in the last year that only support Apple Silicon Macs, no Intel support at all. Baldur’s Gate 3, Resident Evil Village, and coming soon: Death Stranding, Resident Evil 4. Presumably the Apple Silicon requirement is part of a cross-device strategy for them to build in such a way that can be easily ported to iPad, iOS, Apple TV.

For OP, I looked up Synology’s latest offerings and the DS923+ and the 10GBe upgrade would cost about $700, so about in the same price range as the OWC Thunderbolt RAID I mentioned for a NAS equivalent. Also, check OWC’s Garage Sale section for good discounts in open box and used items, can often save quite a bit!

For games, you could run them on an intel Mac native and get a much better experience. That said, no doubt youre right in that more and more Mac apps will become ASi only. That said, the installed base of intel Macs is pretty huge, so developers probably will want to support most apps for at least another 2-3 years.

 

[atonaldenim]

TLDR, yea, not getting updates these days isn't that big a deal.

I typically stay away from the latest OS on my work computer for stability reasons, I was using Mojave until I got a Mac Studio and now have been using Monterey. Even being on Monterey I found some apps I used were aggressively pushing toward requiring Ventura, one that comes to mind is MacWhisper. Adobe tools are another one I need to use often, they do maintain some support for older OSes but like Apple they automatically drop support for past OSes in a regular schedule, so the writing is on the wall.

I know a fine art photographer / starving artist whose workflow revolves around Photoshop CS4 on a 2009 Mac Pro, so you’re right, not everybody needs the latest and greatest. ZombiePhysicist I know from other Mac Pro threads you do some hardcore scientific work that hasn’t been well served by the latest Apple stuff, I’m sorry to hear that!

If OP wants the best bang for the buck Lightroom performance though, Apple Silicon is what I’d recommend.

 

[ZombiePhysicist]

I typically stay away from the latest OS on my work computer for stability reasons, I was using Mojave until I got a Mac Studio and now have been using Monterey. Even being on Monterey I found some apps I used were aggressively pushing toward requiring Ventura, one that comes to mind is MacWhisper. Adobe tools are another one I need to use often, they do maintain some support for older OSes but like Apple they automatically drop support for past OSes in a regular schedule, so the writing is on the wall.

I know a fine art photographer / starving artist whose workflow revolves around Photoshop CS4 on a 2009 Mac Pro, so you’re right, not everybody needs the latest and greatest. ZombiePhysicist I know from other Mac Pro threads you do some hardcore scientific work that hasn’t been well served by the latest Apple stuff, I’m sorry to hear that!

If OP wants the best bang for the buck Lightroom performance though, Apple Silicon is what I’d recommend.

I LOVE MacWhisper. One of my favorite, and new to me, apps! And just upgraded to Keyboard Maestro 11, one of my other favorite apps.

I agree with your assessments. ASi is going to be better for that kind of work. Frankly, even a little M2 Air these days is quite the powerhouse for photo and a good bit of video work.

 

[prefuse07]

Some high-profile games have launched in the last year that only support Apple Silicon Macs, no Intel support at all. Baldur’s Gate 3, Resident Evil Village, GRID Legends, Total War: WARHAMMER III, and coming soon: Death Stranding, Resident Evil 4. Presumably the Apple Silicon requirement is part of a cross-device strategy for them to build in such a way that can be easily ported to iPad, iOS, Apple TV.

All of the games you just listed run fine on my mid-spec 7,1 in Windows 11 on ultra settings in 4k, and therefore is a big reason why the 7,1 > the AS Mac Pro (contrary to your post).

Thanks for the laugh, but with the severity of your post -- I was hoping you'd point to real world applications, not just games, which again, are much better optimized for Windows, and thus not a problem on a 7,1 (a machine that can actually multi-boot several OS'... And no, i'm not talking about virtualization).

Cheers.

 

[atonaldenim]

Thanks for the laugh!

You asked for a list of Mac software I knew of that doesn't support Intel Mac, that's what I know of. Great that you can run those particular apps if you wanted in Windows, but who wants to use Windows? 😋 More Mac software will drop Intel support before you know it.

I bought a used 15" Powerbook G4 right after Apple started transitioning to Intel, because "it was a good deal" and I used it until the last possible day. That was a pretty foolish thing to do, the Intel Macs were so much better after just a year or two. I felt what it was like as all the software I used slowly dropped PPC support, until there was just nothing left. I think Google Chrome was one of the first to go Intel-only that really surprised me. That kind of architecture transition is exactly what's happening again now.

Anyone who already owns a 2019 Mac Pro, that was a fantastic machine in its day and still has tons of utility left for those who own one, no doubt! It is still an ideal machine in my profession for film editors running Avid Media Composer or Pro Tools, for example.

For OP who's just switching over from a Windows machine, just wanted to give them the heads up that Intel Macs will be coming to the end of their supported life before too long.

Personally I have a bunch of Intel Macs that I plan to keep using for a long time. I even still turn on that Powerbook G4 now and then! I have a whole stable of Mac Pro 5,1s that I've nursed beyond their intended life and that was fun for a while. But those old Mac Pros I could pick up for $200 or $300 used, at that price they were worth it. I wouldn't advise anyone to spend thousands of dollars on a 2019 Intel Mac Pro at this point, unless there is some Intel-specific need that you have, like super high-end 3D rendering GPUs or something that the current Apple Silicon Macs can't quite do yet, or if the software you want is slow to adopt Apple Silicon support (like Avid).

 

[prefuse07]

You asked for a list of Mac software I knew of that doesn't support Intel Mac, that's what I know of. Great that you can run those particular apps if you wanted in Windows, but who wants to use Windows? 😋 More Mac software will drop Intel support before you know it.

I bought a used 15" Powerbook G4 right after Apple started transitioning to Intel, because "it was a good deal" and I used it until the last possible day. That was a pretty foolish thing to do, the Intel Macs were so much better after just a year or two. I felt what it was like as all the software I used slowly dropped PPC support, until there was just nothing left. I think Google Chrome was one of the first to go Intel-only that really surprised me. That kind of architecture transition is exactly what's happening again now.

Anyone who already owns a 2019 Mac Pro, that was a fantastic machine in its day and still has tons of utility left for those who own one, no doubt! It is still an ideal machine in my profession for film editors running Avid Media Composer or Pro Tools, for example.

For OP who's just switching over from a Windows machine, just wanted to give them the heads up that Intel Macs will be coming to the end of their supported life before too long.

Personally I have a bunch of Intel Macs that I plan to keep using for a long time. I even still turn on that Powerbook G4 now and then! I have a whole stable of Mac Pro 5,1s that I've nursed beyond their intended life and that was fun for a while. But those old Mac Pros I could pick up for $200 or $300 used, at that price they were worth it. I wouldn't advise anyone to spend thousands of dollars on a 2019 Intel Mac Pro at this point, unless there is some Intel-specific need that you have, like super high-end 3D rendering GPUs or something that the current Apple Silicon Macs can't quite do yet, or if the software you want is slow to adopt Apple Silicon support (like Avid).

I see where you're coming from, and while I agree that nobody should be spending thousands on a 7,1, I still think it is the better purchase over an AS Mac Pro, granted you can get one at a good price. Nobody should be paying close to MSRP for either machine, and at this point I would even recommend someone look to a Studio instead (if they're seriously considering the AS Mac Pro). It's literally just a deadweight, and probably the end of the product line altogether. Tim Clown & Co. really blew it with the newer machine (there was so much potential, and for them to just squander it like that is beyond ridiculous -- especially given that they've announced some sort of push toward "high-end" mac gaming that's supposed to be announced on Monday). What a joke.