pastrychef
Moderator
- Joined
- May 29, 2013
- Messages
- 19,457
- Motherboard
- Mac Studio - Mac13,1
- CPU
- M1 Max
- Graphics
- 32 Core
- Mac
- Classic Mac
- Mobile Phone
About the lack of rear exhaust fan, I was having an unacceptable amount of negative pressure with the exhaust fan so I've been experimenting with different configurations. the two exhausts on the top seem to do a pretty good job and the case pressure has neutralized somewhat siding with a tiny bit of negative pressure which I like. I'm going to stick with this set up for the time being.
So yeah, the iMac pro is really cool. I picked one up when Micro Center had them for $3999. You would be hard pressed to do a similar DIY Xeon set up at that price. If you compare the two as far as power goes, then yeah the hack is the most cost effective solution. However with the iMac pro you get the power, that 5K screen and a system which will be nearly crash proof due to the ECC RAM. Unfortunately ECC is a tad bit slower than non buffered ram, some say around 2%.They both have similar multi geek bench scores but the hack kills the iMac on single core. Not sure if it's enough to notice in real world use use though. I think anything over 5K for single core is pretty solid. Of course if I throw a billion polygons into a scene and whip them up into a turbulence field, the hack would probably win out eventually but I never get that crazy.
I'll also say, the iMac and this hack of ours will render a scene at about the same speed but the iMac is dead silent doing it. You can't hear a damn thing. The only issue will be the inedible throttling that we have little control over. The mac fan utility isn't yet working on the iMac Pro but I'e heard they're close to figuring it out. If we can pump the fans up manually then we can probably control the the throttling.. then we'll proabably have to put up with a little noise.
Ah. I didn't know you had fans on the top... With my case, I definitely have positive air pressure. When the CPU is being pushed (say during Handbrake video conversions), I can take out the front air filter and instatly see noticeable temp drops. I know I sound like broken record, but the Noctua fans that I use (ugly as they are) perform exceptionally while remaining inaudible to me.
I agree. With the current video card prices being what they are now, the iMac Pros almost seem like bargains. If I had choose between buying all components today or an off-the-shelf iMac Pro, I may very well lean towards the iMac Pro.
Prior to my foray in to hackintoshes, I used Mac Pros. I the MacPro1,1, then MacPro3,1, and, finally, MacPro5,1. I'm not so sure ECC RAM contributes to stability, but I do know that they ran quite a bit hotter than non-ECC RAM. I remember playing with Mac Fans Control and it took me about 2 weeks before figuring out a good fan curve compromise between noise and cooling performance. While the app worked and did what it was advertised to do, I still found myself constantly monitoring temps...
It's awesome to hear that renders happen at about the same speed. One of the major concerns I have for any iMac model is dust build up on their fans. It's very dusty where I am and I usually end up opening up my computers once or twice a year to do a major dusting. Attempting this on iMacs would be a royal pain. It's probably the single biggest reason why I never picked one up.