[fmaxwell]

bq. "I can see you have not really used a quality Antec Case."
You are incorrect. We just have different standards for "quality."
Every time I go into MicroCenter or to a computer 'show and sale', I very carefully look at all of the cases to see what's current. There is nothing even remotely close to the quality, from the standpoint of design or construction, to the case on the Mac Pro.
bq. "I have several with 3 or 4 120mm thermal speed controlled fans"
The fans in the Apple are controlled by their system management controller (SMC). It is an embedded processor that takes input from multiple temperature sensors. In my Mac Pro, there are 30 sensors which the SMC evaluates to control four fans. I can look at the temperature of anything from an individual disc drive to a DIMM (each of which have their own temperature sensor) to a CPU to a hard drive. Anything like that in the Antec? Or is it just four fans with thermisters hanging off of them?
Besides, Antec cases don't have a cooling design. They have a bunch of fans. There is no intelligent mapping of the airflow. To be fair to Antec, they have no idea of what you're going ot put into the box. They don't know where the CPU heatsink/fan will be, how large it will be and how it will affect airflow around it. They don't know what kind of thermal load you will put in th case because you could put anything from a low-end Celeron to a dual Xeon with 32GB of RAM. You could have liquid cooling or air cooling.
The Apple is quiet because they specified RAM with heatsinks like these, minimizing the need for airflow to keep them cool:

See, that's the beauty of the Apple designs. They set a goal for acoustic noise and then designed everything to support it.
bq. "and the HD's are mounted on isolation washers. They are also large roomy cases with space to 5 to 6 hard drives."
The Mac pro hard drives are mounted on drive sleds -- with isolation washers.

You want to swap out a drive? One lever opens the side of the case and each drive slides in and out with no cables to connect. The interior of a Mac Pro shows how a system should look:

So can you install hard drives by just sliding them in and out. No power cables. No SATA cables.
bq. "It is interesting that Apple uses PCIe slots for video cards"
Except that they don't.
bq. ", most of the current (non-Apple) machines are using the faster PCIe2 x16 slots for the video cards, which replaced the older PCIe x16 slots."
The Mac Pro has two PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots and two x4 slots. All four slots can be used for video cards if the user has a need for 8 monitors (or 4 30" monitors). You can find out all about which revision of PCI Express Apple uses and how many lanes are available for each slot on Apple's web site.
Do yourself a favor and drop by an Apple store and have them pop the side cover off of a Mac Pro (it's just one latch at the back of the machine). See if you are not impressed. The first computer I built had an 8-bit CPU and I designed it and wire-wrapped it. My next one was a CP/M system with floppy discs and, later, a 5 megabyte hard drive (no, not gigabyte, megabyte). I've been in the industry since 1980. I'm not one of these pimply-faced kids who thinks that "old-school" is a Pentium IV. If I'm impressed by the hardware in the Apple systems, it's because it is impressive.

[rgreen4]

The use of sleds with isolation washers sounds a lot like the upper Antec cases, with trays and neoprene washers. The SATA cables are light enough and thin enough they don't block airflow. Beside, I have 8 SATA ports on my MB and the case can mount up to 6 HD's and up to four 5 1/4" devices with outside access such as an optical drive. The PSU is in it own lower compartment with three of the HD bays to isolate it's heat and airflow from the main compartment with it's own fans and filters. As to the heat sinks on the memory, PC's have had them for years on the faster ram modules.

I'm glad you clarified the PCIe status of your Mac, as for multiple cards, yes I have seen some motherboards that support at least three. But then we get back to the basics and how many people need 8 displays, or 6 or even 2 for that matter. Why have to pay extra for the capabilities of having up to 8 displays, when you don't need it - bragging rights?

We can discuss all day how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and won't solve anything. The point is you can customize a machine using off the shelf components to make a quality powerful and at the same time quiet machine. There is an incredible variety of components available in the on line retailers which tells me that there are a lot of people out their building their own custom machines or having them built for them. They don't have to be limited to a manufacturers pre-determined assembly line product.

There is a wide range of Windows based machines from a $300 economy model to a $3000 high quality powerhouse and to categorize them all as the same is ludicrous and short sighted. While the current Apple desktop lineup is comprised of a few models, even the manufactured Windows machines numbers into thousands of different models.

But enough off topic - we need to get this back on the topic at hand - Apple ads attempting to focus on business. While it is fine for an individual to pay extra for fit, finish and how a machine looks, business will not pay an extra penny for that. What they want is a machine that functions, is reliable and is compatible with their current systems. While there is a small percentage of Macs in certain business areas, in the general area and in manufacturing control it is Windows.

[fmaxwell]

bq. "The use of sleds with isolation washers sounds a lot like the upper Antec cases, with trays and neoprene washers. The SATA cables are light enough and thin enough they don't block airflow."
I've seen the drive trays on the Antecs. Kinda flimsy, but they work. I'm not seeing where they are a big improvement over the old drive rails that used to be used -- if you still have to manually hook up cables to the drives. One thing I like about the Mac Pro is that I can get just enough room to pull out a drive sled an I can swap drives quickly -- no crawling around with flashlights to see and attach cables.
bq. But then we get back to the basics and how many people need 8 displays, or 6 or even 2 for that matter.
I have dual 24" displays and could not consider going back to a single display. Productivity is so much higher with dual displays than with single displays. Many people assign applications to displays. For instance, they might have e-mail on one display, a remote desktop system into a server on another, a 3D rendering program on two others (tools on one side, rendered frames on the other), and a web browser on another. You really don't know how much time you waste moving and uncovering windows until you work with more screen real-estate. see: Wall Street Journal Article On Monitor Study

If you get nothing else of value from our discussion, please try using a system with dual monitors for a few hours. If you are like most people, you will be sold on the value they present.
bq. Why have to pay extra for the capabilities of having up to 8 displays, when you don't need it - bragging rights?
A few reasons. One is resale. Believe it or not, resale values on Macs are sky-high. I may not ever have more than two video cards, but the person I'm selling it to might be a graphics professional who will have more.

On the other hand, having all of the slots be fast means that any RAID card I install will scream. It means that I can install Firewire 3200 when it becomes available and have no bandwidth problems.
bq. There is an incredible variety of components available in the on line retailers which tells me that there are a lot of people out their building their own custom machines or having them built for them.
I am one of those people. I've lost count of the number of computers I've built over the years. I used to buy passes to the Marketpro Computer Show and Sale events six at a time to save money. There were months where I went every weekend. I'm not some Apple fanboy who has never seen the inside of a Windows PC. But the problem is that it's that one-size-fits-all PC mentality. You just can't build the equivalent of a Mac Mini. While there are some great cases out there (I'm rather fond of the Chieftec that I have, it's just not the machine that the Mac Pro is.
bq. There is a wide range of Windows based machines from a $300 economy model to a $3000 high quality powerhouse and to categorize them all as the same is ludicrous and short sighted.
I don't recall categorizing all PCs as being the same. But I did say that I have not seen any that are as well-built as the Mac Pro. Professional reviewers have the same reaction when reviewing the Mac hardware. It's like saying that the Maybach is the most luxurious car made -- saying that is not implying that all others are equal to one another.

But lest you misunderstand me: I'm not saying that Apple's product line is flawless. Far from it.
# The Mac Pro should have included a hardware SATA RAID as part of the motherboard. It's a pro-level machine aimed at graphics professionals, scientists, and engineers. The drives shoud be hot-swappable, too.
# Option for dual power supplies or at least hot-swappable supplies in the Mac Pro.
# Apple needs a machine between the Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. Way too big a gap.
# The machines should have ESATA ports on the outside.
# The iMacs just don't do it for me -- all of the disadvantages of a laptop without the portability: Expensive, hard to upgrade and service, screen failures mean that the entire system is unusable.
# Blu-Ray support. It's missing and it should not be from the high-end machines.
# Better keyboards and mice. Apple should have started with periperals that worked well ergonomically and then tried to make them attractive. Instead, it appears that they started out by making them attractive and then trying to make them ergonomically acceptable.
All of that said, I work with equipment from Sun Microsystems, Cisco, and high-end servers at work. The Mac Pro is definitely built to a higher mechanical standard than they are. The attention to detail inside the case, where most users fear to tread, is phenomenal. A friend of mine who works on Sun systems was blown away by the Mac Pro's hardware.

[jjs007]

@fmaxwell

When you describe the interior of the MAC, it reminds me of a machine I use to have and love, the IBM PS/2 Model 80. The design was years ahead of its time. Its interior was completely uncluttered; no wiring, all drives just plugged in, including the 1.44mb floppy. Everything connected by means of daughterboard plug-ins and such. There was a little tool inside the case that allowed you to pop the push connectors and enabled you to completely disassemble and re-assemble the setup in about 2 minutes flat.

The micro-channel architecture and simplicity of design was truly amazing, but because of the high cost of licensing the micro-channel design (i.e. other manufacturers would have to pay for cloning IBM's 286 design for years without royalties), the rest of the clone world decided to forgo micro-channel and IBM found itself in a cul-de-sac of its own construction. It never recovered and soon left the PC venue.

If you ever get a chance, look at pictures of an IBM micro-channel machine to see a thing of beauty (i.e. 1988).

[WinTard]

Come on guys, Apple does nice things, simply not cost effective. PERIOD.

You fmaxwell commenting on Antec cases trays being 'flimsy' are judgemental and purely subjective perspective of your mere opinion at best. No need to justify that Apple does have a nice physical design. It's obvious! But at what cost?

The no sata, power cable stuff is also available in simple HDD trays (all aluminum) for $30...

The Antec Sonata case I've used in multiple systems, was specifically purchased due to the low-noise. Barely a whisper. It is using rubber mounted spacers for the drives. Large low-rpm low-noise fans on either side front and back. And was in request to one of my professional musician friend, for his home recording studio. Basically anything Apple can procure, other also can. Actually we've got more choices than you do.

BTW, I know about the lotus elise, since I've got a 2005 Toyota Corolla XRS, that I redline everyday (till the cutoff of 8650 rpm), with the exact same 2ZZ-GE Toyota engine, and matched six-speed short throw teflon like Toyota C64 transmission. Here's more if you want to read on this engine/transmission: http://www.sandsmuse...ine/toyota.html Oh, and I simply love it! Especially, when outrunning a 6.4 liter Hemi V8 police package car (in a fake police car, you know those private security guys)... LOL! What can I say, big engines just can't keep up! Consider it is a 1.8L four, normally aspirated. But I digress... :D Oh, my Corolla XRS and Honda Civic Si (also 8650 RPM cutoff) are neck-to-neck, and actually beat my Toyota Supra Turbo as well.

OK back to topic.

Consider this $300 mobo:
>
>

Hey, 48GB RAM and two "Nehalem" Xeon sockets onto one single 10"x10" motherboard... hmmm, Unavailable from your Mac Pro?

How about that i7-920 "Nehalem" PC for $1000 complete including 12GB of ultra-fast @1600MHz DDR3 RAM? Overclockable to 2000MHz bus? Also unavailable in Mac Pro...


What do you get in a bare-bones (Quad-Core) Mac Pro @ $2500 http://store.apple.c...rowse/home/shopmac/family/macpro
1066MHz DDR3 ECC SDRAM
Quad-core: Four memory slots supporting up to 8GB of main memory using 1GB or 2GB DIMMs
One 2.66GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processor
3GB (three 1GB) memory
640GB hard drive 1 640GB hard drive1
18x double-layer SuperDrive 18x double-layer SuperDrive
NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 with 512MB

Looks pretty pricey and a lousy value to me! At that price. Sure it looks nice, and well built. So? Shouldn't it be at that price?

And um, I've been using dual monitors since the day of dual-headed video cards like Matrox G450, what, back in 2001? And how does anyone compare 3GB RAM to 12GB RAM...?

[asiafish]

jjs007 said:

@fmaxwell


When you describe the interior of the MAC, it reminds me of a machine I use to have and love, the IBM PS/2 Model 80. The design was years ahead of its time. Its interior was completely uncluttered; no wiring, all drives just plugged in, including the 1.44mb floppy. Everything connected by means of daughterboard plug-ins and such. There was a little tool inside the case that allowed you to pop the push connectors and enabled you to completely disassemble and re-assemble the setup in about 2 minutes flat.

I had a PS/2 as well, great machine. If I remember, it had the exact same connectors as PCI slots though IBM called it Microchanel and it is not compatible.

I do remember how difficult and expensive it was when I wanted a sound card.

Quote

The micro-channel architecture and simplicity of design was truly amazing, but because of the high cost of licensing the micro-channel design (i.e. other manufacturers would have to pay for cloning IBM's 286 design for years without royalties), the rest of the clone world decided to forgo micro-channel and IBM found itself in a cul-de-sac of its own construction. It never recovered and soon left the PC venue.


If you ever get a chance, look at pictures of an IBM micro-channel machine to see a thing of beauty (i.e. 1988).

>

[jjs007]

You are correct. This is when the rest of the industry was still using ISA slots and coming up with the secs for EISA, a much poorer cousin to pci, but it supported virtually all the cards out there and card manufacturers didn't have to retool for PCI for years.

[WinTard]

Yes I had a PS 2 Model 80 too! The beauty inside is it was all made of conductive plastic! For RFI shielding. Just pull on some push-pins and you could pop the trays, and mezzanine levels inside the machine apart, you are right, in about 2 minutes flat. Everything was modular and plugin. The 'metal' looking plastic molded parts were 'golden' looking.

Also, IBM back then had composite titanium cases for their ThinkPads. Smooth as skin, strong like titanium... But all made of plastic! Conductive plastic no less!

[asiafish]

WinTard said:

Yes I had a PS 2 Model 80 too! The beauty inside is it was all made of conductive plastic! For RFI shielding. Just pull on some push-pins and you could pop the trays, and mezzanine levels inside the machine apart, you are right, in about 2 minutes flat. Everything was modular and plugin. The 'metal' looking plastic molded parts were 'golden' looking.

Mine was a desktop model (not a tower) that somehow managed to include four slots. It was very nice and still worked when I finally put it curbside about four-years-ago.

Quote

Also, IBM back then had composite titanium cases for their ThinkPads. Smooth as skin, strong like titanium... But all made of plastic! Conductive plastic no less!

I don't know what year you are talking about. ThinkPads first came on the scene in 1992 which is about when the PS/2 was on its way out.

I love ThinkPads and have had many. For build quality the current Lenovo models are actually quite close to the old tanks of the 90s. Magnesium rollcages replaced titanium lids with the T61 about 2-years-ago. The T20, introduced in the year 2000, was the first ThinkPad with a titanium lid. Before that, they were all steel or plastic, depending on series.

The 600 series of the late 1990s are widely regarded as the strongest of all ThinkPads, though these were a bit heavy for their size. Most diehard ThinkPad fans can be found on Bill Morrow's excellent ThinkPads forum at http://www.thinkpads.com/forum

My personal favorite is the T42p from 2005. This was a machine barely a hair over an inch thick, that weighed 5 lbs with the 6 cell or 5.4 lbs with the 9 cell and had a stunning 1440X1050 14.1" 4:3 display driven by an ATI FireGL T2 graphics card with 128 MB of dedicated VRAM. Those specs are still vastly superior to any integrated GPU today, and few machines at any price, TODAY, can match the combination of light weight, trim dimensions, dedicated graphics power and 6 hour battery life (with the 9 cell). Mine had a 2.0 GHz Pentium-m (Dothan) processor, 2 GB of RAM and a 60 GB 7200 RPM hard drive.

This was a business-class laptop in every sense, and I wish that I still had it.

My ThinkPads today are a T60p (14" non-wide) that is more powerful than the T42p it replaced, but somehow not as nice in design and feel, and a lower-end T61 with 14" widescreen that is slightly thicker than the older ones, but otherwise smaller and lighter. it will run its Core2Duo processor for about 6 hours on its 7 cell battery thanks to the power efficiency of integrated graphics (integrated sucks for games, but is king for battery life).

[fmaxwell]

bq. Come on guys, Apple does nice things, simply not cost effective. PERIOD.


No, not "PERIOD." Maybe not cost-effective for a hobbyist, but for a professional or a business, it's very cost effective.

bq. Hey, 48GB RAM and two "Nehalem" Xeon sockets onto one single 10"x10" motherboard... hmmm, Unavailable from your Mac Pro?
Time to school you: That's a server motherboard That's why it has low-performance built-in motherboard video with a single VGA (not DVI-D) connector. It doesn't have the dual, double-wide PCI Express 2.0 x16 slots paired with two PCI Express 2.0 x4 slots like the Mac Pro. It supports 667mhz RAM, which is half of the speed of the 1066mhz DDR3 RAM in the Mac Pro. It doesn't have four Firewire 800 ports. It doesn't have optical digital audio input and output TOSLINK ports. And, according to the Supermicro specs and the user manual it does not support the Nehalem CPUs. It supports the previous generation Cloverton/Harpertown Xeons. So much for that comparison. Next...
bq. How about that i7-920 "Nehalem" PC for $1000 complete including 12GB of ultra-fast @1600MHz DDR3 RAM? Overclockable to 2000MHz bus? Also unavailable in Mac Pro...
Now you've gone to a consumer PC (of crap) "kit" with a window on the side of the case and an ad featuring a picture of a dinosaur -- obviously aimed at a sophisticated audience. LOL! No ECC on the RAM, so no reliability (don't argue about it -- if ECC was not necessary for reliability, it would not be in every high-end server made). It's not running a Xeon, it's running a bottom of the Core i7 line desktop CPU (not a Nehalem Xeon). It's single CPU only. You're kidding about the overclocking, aren't you? No business putting a system on the desk of an engineer, graphics, video, or audio professional would ever overclock it. It comes with one of the least reliable drives in production (a Seagate 7200.11 drive). No operating system. No video card. No DVD-R/W drive. No quick-swap drive trays. Unassembled. Untested. And it comes with a 30 day guarantee. No software support. No on-site service. No local store where service can be done. And you're comparing that to a Mac Pro? Wow. Just wow.
bq. You fmaxwell commenting on Antec cases trays being 'flimsy' are judgemental and purely subjective perspective of your mere opinion at best.
It's not a "mere opinion." They are flimsy. It's a fact. We can measure deflection with a torsional force if you want to quantify how flimsy they are, but a lack of measurements does not mean that it's subjective.
bq. No need to justify that Apple does have a nice physical design. It's obvious! But at what cost?
Quite a reasonable cost. You act like they cost $20K. They are available starting at well under $3,000. At that price, they have a single vendor (Apple) that services them -- both hardware and software. No pissing contests with multiple vendors about what component is at fault. Try that with your FrankenWindows machine. There are reasons why businesses and professionals don't start their own screwdriver shops to assemble desktop systems and servers from components.
bq. The Antec Sonata case I've used in multiple systems, was specifically purchased due to the low-noise. Barely a whisper. It is using rubber mounted spacers for the drives. Large low-rpm low-noise fans on either side front and back.
So, looking at the temperature sensors on all of the major components of my system, I see this:
!http://forums.pcworld.com/legacyimages/
1!

Do you have that kind of information? Are your fans controlled by a microcontroller monitoring all of those parameters?

bq. Basically anything Apple can procure, other also can.
But they don't because hobbyists building their own systems don't want to fork over the cash for something of the quality that Apple builds (as your post demonstrates). So there is exactly one case that is of the quality of the Mac Pro: The one on the Mac Pro. The professional reviewers have said this over and over. They examine countless systems and they repeatedly praise the Mac Pro as being the best built.
bq. Actually we've got more choices than you do.
Right: Do you want the case made from sheet metal so thin that you'll cut yourself bleed to death while assembling it or the top-of-the-line $200 case that's less sucky? You do realize that I've built dozens of systems over the years, don't you? You know that I've got 25+ years in the PC compatible market? You're not talking to some 18 year old kid who thinks that the first personal computer ever made had a Pentium CPU.

[artzy65]

You might want to inform your friend that 'popping the side cover' ? as you put it ? off these new macs is REALLY 'old hat' for Apple... I have a PM 8600 (1997), a B/W G3 (1999) and a G4 Quicksilver (2002) to prove it (all still running and all still very useful, I might add). Talk about easy access!

[Dbater]

I own both PC's and Macs and use them both for work and there is one hell of a difference between them. Remember the difference in the PC you have to work with XP or Vista or (getting closer but no cigar) Windows 7. The MacOS is by far much more elegant and intuitive and a pleasure to use. The people at Apple Inc. are innovative and forward thinking and produce a first class OS and hardware to match basically the same price. The MacOS is worth every penny...