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List of Macs that can run macOS 13 Ventura

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I don't understand why so many people complain about the price of maxed out configs of Macs. Honestly, how many people bought fully maxed out MacPro7,1s or got the 8TB option on their Mac Studios?
I suppose it's the non-upgradable nature of (most) Macs, which forces to take tough decisions from the start, and nudges towards overspending "for safety", compared with upgrading a PC as time goes. The latter may well end up costing more than buying a high-end Mac but the spending is spread over years.
Part of the whine may also be related to comparing the price of Macs with the price of consumer/gaming PC parts, from a home build, rather than with the price of complete Xeon/Threadripper workstations from Dell/HP/Lenovo/Puget Systems—which would be a more appropriate professional reference.

In 3-5 years when I feel the upgrade itch, it shouldn't be too hard for me to sell my Mac Studio on eBay for decent money.
Fair point!

If you really want NVMe storage that you can keep using through various systems whether they be PCs, Macs, or hacks, investing in something like the following might be a good idea.


Source:https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3EX4M2O/
It looks like a nice pick, but that's probably splitting the PCIe3.0x4 Thunderbolt link into four x1 links to each drive, and I see it uses an Alpine Ridge controller, which is now reported to cause issue when connected to Maple Ridge hacks.
Setting up a NAS with 10G networking is probably safer and more flexible than any directly attached enclosure. Especially for sharing with multiple systems at the same time. As pointed out by @Middleman, maximal speed is only useful for local editing, while maximal capacity can be offloaded to somewhat slower storage.

I was unable to find the WD SN850 in any capacities higher than 2TB... So, if you want 8TB, you'd have to find a motherboard with four Gen4 NVMe slots...
Or just a motherboard with a x16 PCIe slot which can bifurcate to x4x4x4x4…
Also have a look at U.2 and AIC drives: The form factor gives them better cooling, and better performance, than corresponding M.2 drives.
 
I like to compare Apple to car manufacturer Mercedes. Nice, expensive, high second hand value, parts and service are expensive too.

Unfortunately I can only afford a basic Toyota which I can service myself(not that I think the end-user can service a modern car in this day and age)
 
Setting up a NAS with 10G networking is probably safer and more flexible than any directly attached enclosure. Especially for sharing with multiple systems at the same time. As pointed out by @Middleman, maximal speed is only useful for local editing, while maximal capacity can be offloaded to somewhat slower storage.
A client gave me his 10GbE QNAP after being hit by ransomware. It's sitting under my desk. I filled it with SSD's and HD's I had lying around. I will get a second hand 10GbE PCIe card and see if it is usable storage for my DAW. I guesstimate it will do 500 Mb/s up/down tops(weak CPU). Latency will probably be the bottleneck for loading huge sample based instruments. I will not expose it to the internet, that's for sure.
 
I suppose it's the non-upgradable nature of (most) Macs, which forces to take tough decisions from the start, and nudges towards overspending "for safety", compared with upgrading a PC as time goes. The latter may well end up costing more than buying a high-end Mac but the spending is spread over years.
Part of the whine may also be related to comparing the price of Macs with the price of consumer/gaming PC parts, from a home build, rather than with the price of complete Xeon/Threadripper workstations from Dell/HP/Lenovo/Puget Systems—which would be a more appropriate professional reference.


Fair point!


It looks like a nice pick, but that's probably splitting the PCIe3.0x4 Thunderbolt link into four x1 links to each drive, and I see it uses an Alpine Ridge controller, which is now reported to cause issue when connected to Maple Ridge hacks.
Setting up a NAS with 10G networking is probably safer and more flexible than any directly attached enclosure. Especially for sharing with multiple systems at the same time. As pointed out by @Middleman, maximal speed is only useful for local editing, while maximal capacity can be offloaded to somewhat slower storage.


Or just a motherboard with a x16 PCIe slot which can bifurcate to x4x4x4x4…
Also have a look at U.2 and AIC drives: The form factor gives them better cooling, and better performance, than corresponding M.2 drives.

Yes, it's important to make the right choices for the options. But there's really only three choices... (1) CPU, (2) RAM, and (3) storage. On my 2016 hackintosh build, I got an i7-6700K and 64GB of RAM. There really wasn't much to upgrade after that. It's not like we could swap out for an i9-9900K or 128GB without a motherboard change due to chipset limitations. That would basically mean an entire new computer. So, the only real consideration is storage.

If going low end specs and upgrading over time, you end up wasting a lot of money. Hypothetically, if I started with an i3-6100 and 16GB of RAM then upgraded to an i7 and 64GB, the money spent on the i3 and 16GB would be wasted and I'd just have more junk sitting around.

Keep in mind that Intel chipsets only allow compatibility for one or two generations of CPUs so upgrade options are pretty limited. For example, if you have a Z590 motherboard and i9-11900K, you can't upgrade to an i9-12900K without a motherboard change.

The OWC Thunderbolt NVMe enclosure is rated to do 2800MB/s, so, yes, it's just a single PCI-e x4 link.

My NAS has 10GBase-T and it maxes out at about 1085MB/s...

Yes, using a PCI-e x16 slot is possible but, on consumer level motherboards, doing so would mean sacrificing the GPU slot. Yes, you can use the GPU on an x4 slot but that would mean sacrificing performance. Compromises need to made.
 
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A client gave me his 10GbE QNAP after being hit by ransomware. It's sitting under my desk. I filled it with SSD's and HD's I had lying around. I will get a second hand 10GbE PCIe card and see if it is usable storage for my DAW. I guesstimate it will do 500 Mb/s up/down tops(weak CPU). Latency will probably be the bottleneck for loading huge sample based instruments. I will not expose it to the internet, that's for sure.

Running a NAS doesn't require very powerful CPUs or a lot of RAM unless you are using ZFS. You should be able to easily saturate 10GBase-T if you have all SSDs in that NAS.
 
Running a NAS doesn't require very powerful CPUs or a lot of RAM unless you are using ZFS. You should be able to easily saturate 10GBase-T if you have all SSDs in that NAS.
I already have the occasional 50% NAS CPU load when using a 2.5GbE connection, and I think a NAS testing site concluded that 500-600 MB/s was the max throughput for this model(TS453BT3)
I am using HD's with 2 x 250 GB SSD's as fast cache/tier. Using EXT4 filesystem.
 
I already have the occasional 50% NAS CPU load when using a 2.5GbE connection, and I think a NAS testing site concluded that 500-600 MB/s was the max throughput for this model(TS453BT3)
I am using HD's with 2 x 250 GB SSD's as fast cache/tier. Using EXT4 filesystem.

Hmm... That's weird... The CPU in your NAS should be more powerful than the one in mine and I get very good performance... Here's what I get from an 8x3.5 HDD array with two of them being used for redundancy and no caches.

Screen Shot 2022-06-12 at 6.55.55 AM.png

Also, CPU and RAM usage always remains very low...

Screen Shot 2022-06-12 at 7.00.29 AM.png
 
Hmm... That's weird... The CPU in your NAS should be more powerful than the one in mine and I get very good performance... Here's what I get from an 8x3.5 HDD array with two of them being used for redundancy and no caches.

View attachment 549470
Well. There's a bunch of old HD drives in mine, some 10 years old. That may explain it. Using RAID-5, btw.
 
Well. There's a bunch of old HD drives in mine, some 10 years old. That may explain it. Using RAID-5, btw.

RAID 5 should not be very resource hungry... I'm using SHR2 on the 8 drive array which is similar to RAID 6 which is similar to RAID 5.

I have a mix of drives of all sizes and brands ranging from 12TB Seagates to 18TB Western Digitals... I just buy whatever is cheap when I need to add storage.

Screen Shot 2022-06-12 at 7.05.41 AM.png
 
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