How to build your own iMac Pro [Successful Build/Extended Guide]

[olofd]

The Supermicro boards are solid and stable mainboards.
No onboard fancy RGB LEDs and all that useless stuff

I'm building machines for heavy production use, so I recommend Xeons and ECC RAM.
There is a reason why Apple always used these components in their pro workstations.

Installation is mostly the same as for the X299 boards.
Will share some files when I finalized everything.

I agree. I could not care less about the RGB-christmas-computer-parts that are sold to consumers nowadays.
It feels like the Xeons might be the way to go here for workstation-use..

 

[warphead]

@olofd so i have make the test on 10.12.6 and 10.13.2

Fisrt 10.12.6

Second 10.13.2

in general, the graphics in the complete os run smoothly on the 10.12.6 as at 10.13.2 (NVIDIA)

Edit: all 84 channels i will test and copy more of the channels.. (i have test whit onboard audio and RME UFX)

Edit:
Logic on 10.13.2 stops on 133 Channels
Logic on 10.12.6 stops on 255 but you can not mkae more than 255 Channels make so i thing goes to 280 or so

on 10.13.2 you cane make one instance of Alchemy and if you playe 4 notes on the same time AUDIO Overload
on 10.12.6 no Problem with Alchemy

 

[olofd]

@olofd so i have make the test on 10.12.6 and 10.13.2

Fisrt 10.12.6

Second 10.13.2

in general, the graphics in the complete os run smoothly on the 10.12.6 as at 10.13.2 (NVIDIA)

Can't view the images...

Is Power-management and pstates enabled when running the benchmarks?


Edit: saw the images now, but please, supply more information. How many channels can you run before logic stopping playback?

 

[warphead]

Can't view the images...

Is Power-management and pstates enabled when running the benchmarks?

so now you can see no it's disable with comes crackle sound

 

[olofd]

so now you can see no it's disable with comes crackle sound

You need to supply better screenshots, I'm not even seeing how many channels you run in those images.. and Also test with both power-management enabled vs. disabled.

If that's only 84 channels, and you have that CPU-usage, and you have not screwed up your installation in some major way. Then something about how the x299 CPU is implemented here is seriously wrong. You should be able to run at least 200 tracks.
What buffer setting in Logic do you use? and what sound-card do you use? Have you tried any other sound-card?

 

[warphead]

If that's only 84 channels, and you have that CPU-usage, and you have not screwed up your installation in some major way. Then something about how the x299 CPU is implemented here is seriously wrong. You should be able to run at least 200 tracks.
What buffer setting in Logic do you use? and what sound-card do you use? Have you tried any other sound-card?

Logic on 10.13.2 stops on 133 Channels
Logic on 10.12.6 stops on 255 but you can not mkae more than 255 Channels make so i thing goes to 280 or so

on 10.13.2 you cane make one instance of Alchemy and if you playe 4 notes on the same time AUDIO Overload
on 10.12.6 no Problem with Alchemy

i have testet with RME UFX / RME RayDAT and Onboard sound make no diffrents

the benchmarke make no diffrent power-management enabled vs. disabled.
but
10.13.2 power-management enbaled lower performance on Alchemy and graphics are running lazily
10.13.2 power-management disabled the same a littlebit better

10.12.6 power-management enbaled lower performance on Alchemy and graphics are running lazily but better as 10.13.2
10.12.6 power-management overall much much better

buffer 128

 

[olofd]

Logic on 10.13.2 stops on 133 Channels
Logic on 10.12.6 stops on 255 but you can not mkae more than 255 Channels make so i thing goes to 280 or so

on 10.13.2 you cane make one instance of Alchemy and if you playe 4 notes on the same time AUDIO Overload
on 10.12.6 no Problem with Alchemy

i have testet with RME UFX / RME RayDAT and Onboard sound make no diffrents

the benchmarke make no diffrent power-management enabled vs. disabled.
but
10.13.2 power-management enbaled lower performance on Alchemy and graphics are running lazily
10.13.2 power-management disabled the same a littlebit better

10.12.6 power-management enbaled lower performance on Alchemy and graphics are running lazily but better as 10.13.2
10.12.6 power-management overall much much better

buffer 128

Ok. Not as bad as I thought. But 10.13 yielding half the score is not good. Weird that your graphic is affected as well. Does @kgp have any thoughts on this?

 

[kgp]

Very interesting find! Found an article about the geekbench score here:
https://wccftech.com/apple-imac-pro-geekbench-listing-more/

This might be the platform to go with instead of the x299.

How does Supermicro X11SRA work? Planing on doing a guide on it?

Still burned after a bad experience with x99 back in the day when Apple stopped updating their pro-lineup.

This looks good to: http://b2b.gigabyte.com/Server-Motherboard/MW51-HP0-rev-10#ov

I will definitely not develop another guide based on Apple's new XEON and Supermicro platform. There is simply no budget left at my side to do so... I will definitely stay with Skylake-X/X299 and I do not see any reason for another change to an even more costive system, only because of some likely minor advantages in system compatibility.

 

[olofd]

I will definitely not develop another guide based on Apple's new XEON and Supermicro platform. There is simply no budget left at my side to do so... I will definitely stay with Skylake-X/X299 and I do not see any reason for another change to an even more costive system, only because of some likely minor advantages in system compatibility.

Totally respect that, and x299 seems to be running well enough. And the xeon-platform is pricier. But native CPU-support makes a big difference in my previous experience, and is one of the things I really am looking for, even if that makes the price go up with 10%.

And my question regarding a build guide was directed to @rolandino that has this system, not to you kpg.

 

[kgp]

Ok. Not as bad as I thought. But 10.13 yielding half the score is not good. Weird that your graphic is affected as well. Does @kgp have any thoughts on this?

Nope and honestly guys, me personally I am not deeply interested in this 3rd party soft- and hardware audio developer issues. I basically use onboard audio hardware, iTunes, Youtube, photo-, audio- and video editing etc... Else I record at most myself playing my acoustic piano...

I definitely need my rig for parallel number crunching (image reconstructions, spectral lines inversion, etc. )....

But please enjoy posting and discussing what ever you want along this thread, as long your Skylake-X/X299 System is set properly and else performs as expected (Benchmarks, XCPM etc.)...