d_b Posted October 4, 2016 Author Share Posted October 4, 2016 Obviously many mac fans here.....I've been thinking of getting something like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013VTRR6Q/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=1EOZ8DPV4FDV6&coliid=I2IXP5ZXAMNEE That's quite a saving....tho' refurbished (manufacturer) I think it blows an imac out of the water....I'd be interested to see your thoughts. I may build my own along similar lines. Martin I've always been a fan of refurbished computers and laptops. To me, this looks like a nice machine, especially for the price. The only thing I would double check on this is that you're actually getting what's advertised, since they mention that some parts may change depending on availability. -db Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martin Malinski Posted October 4, 2016 Share Posted October 4, 2016 d_b Thanks for your comment, I'm actually going to build my own ....I'll post the full specs once I've confirmed the set up and availability..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rich f Posted October 5, 2016 Share Posted October 5, 2016 ... (all in V6 - I still don't like V8.5). I didn't notice the slowdown that you mention. In fact, if I limited the processors to 6 instead of 24, my render times increased by more than double. V6 was fine with multi-core on Mac. The bug was introduced some time after that, and fixed in the most recent versions as mentioned by tech. Curious what OS are you running? I've had some issues beyond Mavericks with V6. I've seen some posts about using apps to control the internal fans to help with the cooling. You should at the very least download a temp monitor and compare to other similar machines. That way you can tell if your machine is operating normally or if there is something else wrong. I like the forums at macrumors for a resource. Apple tends to let the chips run hot before ramping up the fans, and the dual 3.46 is technically beyond what the chassis was designed for. Though it should shut down before there is a problem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Lemelin Posted October 6, 2016 Share Posted October 6, 2016 David, When you're using Mac Mini's or the old Dell Servers, how much time do you estimate it saves you? Say you have a render that might take 1 hour to complete on your machine. If you use 2 additional Mac Mini's (the quad core i7's), does it do it twice as fast? Or is it time saving because you can still work on your machine while doing the network render? Yes, Maxwell scales linearly... so two processors roughly double your speed, three will roughly triple it and so on. The only thing that stays the same regardless of the number of machines used, is the recompositing of all the calculations to form a single image, but this represents a tiny portion of the overall time Maxwell takes to produce a final image. In a typical day, I always have my MBP and my MacMini in gear for any rendering tasks. If I'm in a major production run, or rendering animations, then all my machines are at work. The MBP alone, which is what I model on, is insufficient to yield production level renders unless I have a night or two to devote to retracing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Lemelin Posted October 6, 2016 Share Posted October 6, 2016 Chris, I almost went the Hackintosh route, but decided to play it safe for now. I ended up purchasing a 2010 2 x 3.46Ghz 6 core mac pro. So far, it's been ok. I was hoping the rendering speeds would be faster. While it is over 2x faster than my previous iMac, I was hoping for a little more gain, especially considering the GeekBench scores of each computer (~7800 for the iMac and ~30,000 for the Mac Pro). My biggest complaint is how hot the machine runs, even when I'm not doing intensive work. I've been holding off on updating the graphics card because of the heat issue. I didn't realize about Apple marking computers obsolete until I talked to my local computer shop to see what I could do to cool things down and found out that mine was marked as obsolete and they weren't allowed to work on it (since they were an authorized Apple dealer). I will chime in here in support of your experience. My big monster rendering machine was bought as a Hackintosh, thinking this was the best option to getting around Apple's lack of vision. Unfortunately, while MacOS can be tricked into running these machines, it is not for the faint-hearted. I'm a designer, but not especially gifted when it comes to the technical side of electronics. Every OS upgrade on a Hackintosh is a potential show stopper as every component in your hand assembled investment may or may not be supported by the OS's drivers. You could potentially be spending days flashing video cards and troubleshooting hardware incompatibilities. Even with the dual E5 Xeon processors, this machine needs to be networked for Maxwell to perform at production levels, but the Hackintosh's ability to communicate reliably with the Macs was severely hampered by the hardware discrepancies between machines. Renderings would run like bats out of hell, but then I'd get wierd error messages about the ability to connect and the entire render sequence would fail (leaving me the next morning with no deliverables) When I branched into Octane and GPU rendering, I discovered that because of Apple's sealed box designs, virtually all Nvidia's cards are spotilly supported on the Mac side, as Apple has unilaterally decided AMD's incompatible video card architecture would be the only available choice.... All the top of the line Nvidia cards I was looking at would need to be "flashed" to run on the Hackintosh. Between you and me, I'm really uncomfortable with the idea of messing up a $1200 video card (voiding the warranty) just so I can run MacOS. If you're super comfortable with computer guts, cards, writing scripts and otherwise performing brain surgery on thousands of dollars of computer hardware, yes, the Hackintosh is your solution. I took my expensive box, and had it reassembled into a Windows based machine. I grit my teeth every time I boot it, but at least it's stable and I can buy accessories off the shelf. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Lemelin Posted October 6, 2016 Share Posted October 6, 2016 Obviously many mac fans here.....I've been thinking of getting something like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B013VTRR6Q/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_ttl?_encoding=UTF8&colid=1EOZ8DPV4FDV6&coliid=I2IXP5ZXAMNEE That's quite a saving....tho' refurbished (manufacturer) I think it blows an imac out of the water....I'd be interested to see your thoughts. I may build my own along similar lines. Martin These are capable machines. I run two T5400 with dual Xeons and they each are a close match for my 2012 quad-core i7 Mac Mini. I wouldn't expect them to blow a current Quad core i7 out of the water, however. Those Xeons are older and while they are extremely stable server grade processors, they rate the Xeon label for their stability rather than raw compute power. Given the extremely low price for which these older servers can be had, and the superior build of a server station, these are hard to beat. Operating system issues are really about personal preference... Once you're inside your app of choice, the experience for the user is virtually identical. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Lemelin Posted October 6, 2016 Share Posted October 6, 2016 D_B The heat is essentially from friction generated by the electrical current running in your computer. So just ramping up the fans, may keep the machine cooler, only because it is dumping it into the office faster. You would do better, dumping the heat outside with an air duct. ¢£ I'm jumping in without the entire picture, so pardon me if my suggestion ends up not applying to the question at hand. Assuming the machine we're talking about is a PC, I would suggest looking at your PSU and considering upgrading. The main source of heat and noise in a computer is the power supply. Most off the shelf machines use basic power supplies because few people appreciate the value of an expensive one and the price differential can be shocking. When I added three power hungry video cards my PC station, my tech suggested going top of the line with the PSU (I needed to upgrade for the power consumption anyways). I ended up buying a 1500 watt PSU which cost almost as much as a basic consumer PC... but the machine is as silent as a Mac Pro even at full load and the temperature considerably lower. The other culprit for heat is the Video Card.... depending on how many and how much they consume, they can REALLY create a heat issue. I never heat my office when I'm in full production, as three big video cards running flat out is enough to make me break a sweat in my small office. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
David Lemelin Posted October 6, 2016 Share Posted October 6, 2016 d_b Thanks for your comment, I'm actually going to build my own ....I'll post the full specs once I've confirmed the set up and availability..... If I may suggest, when selecting your enclosure, take a look at SilverStone's Raven enclosures... They've come up with a design for some of their models that rotate the logic board 90 degrees... This means all the ports and cables come out the top of the machine (under a decorative cover). This allows the heat to vent straight up and out, rather than trying to create a front to back air flow. I opted for a Raven 3 if I recall and the fans pull the heat of three video cards without much work, and managing connections is way easier from the top than from the rear. The added benefit, and for me the original reason for my interest in this weird placement of the logic board, is that the expansion slots now run vertically instead of horizontally. With three big video cards, in other enclosures the weight of the cards caused them to sag, straining the connector and making it hard to vent the heat from between them. Now that they sit vertically, the strain on the connector runs along it's length rather than it's thickness.. they sit straighter, don't sag, don't touch and the heat naturally rises between them and out the top fans. http://www.silverstonetek.com/raven/products/index.php?model=RV03&area=en&top=C Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_b Posted October 11, 2016 Author Share Posted October 11, 2016 D_B I have the same computer ... (2) 3.46ghz 6-Core Mac Pro but mine has a GTX 680. Mine runs very cool and quiet, though I am in a colder climate than you and keep my office around 68*. I noticed after upgrading the graphics card to a GTX680 that the machine ran cooler and quieter than the old 5770 Radeon, which are known to be hot, power hogs. Also, I keep my desktop on top of my desk, rather than on the floor or under a desk where it can get extremely dusty and hot in a short amount of time. If your fans and heatsinks get covered in dust, they will be much less effective and can cause overheating issues. Its quite easy to keep these clean, but if you do not feel comfortable, any computer professional should be able to handle that for you. I have not had any trouble with this workhorse Mac Pro, which is a lot more than I can say for the stupid trash can Mac Pros or the iMacs, which all seem to have overheating issues when running hours and hours of rendering. I hardly even hear the fans on my Mac Pro when rendering either, so if you are hearing them run loudly, often, I would look first at the video card and see if you can upgrade it to a lower powered, but higher performing NVIDIA unit. Second I would look and make sure the machine is clean of dust, including the fan blades, which need to be cleaned with alcohol every couple of years. Do not use compressed air on the fans without holding the fans from spinning, as you can overspin the bearings and cause the fan to become very loud and eventually fail. If someone did this to your Mac in the past, that could be the cause of your additional noise and heat. Hope this helps! The interior of the computer was pretty clean, with minimal dust. I did end up getting a gtx 680 from eBay last week, as well as elevating the tower to a more open space with better airflow (it was between my desk and a wall). This seems to have helped a little bit. I have noticed a considerable difference between the two graphics cards. The gtx is much cooler to the touch than the radeon was. Thanks for the info! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_b Posted October 11, 2016 Author Share Posted October 11, 2016 V6 was fine with multi-core on Mac. The bug was introduced some time after that, and fixed in the most recent versions as mentioned by tech. Curious what OS are you running? I've had some issues beyond Mavericks with V6. You should at the very least download a temp monitor and compare to other similar machines. That way you can tell if your machine is operating normally or if there is something else wrong. I like the forums at macrumors for a resource. Apple tends to let the chips run hot before ramping up the fans, and the dual 3.46 is technically beyond what the chassis was designed for. Though it should shut down before there is a problem. I'm running 10.10.5. I haven't noticed any major bugs with V6. However, I did experience some issues when I went to 10.11, which is why I decided to go back to 10.10. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
setz Posted October 11, 2016 Share Posted October 11, 2016 Which issues did you encounter with V6 on OS 10.11? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_b Posted October 11, 2016 Author Share Posted October 11, 2016 Which issues did you encounter with V6 on OS 10.11? I can only remember the details for one of them. It involved selecting the background in the renderzone settings. I would change the background, save and close the file, but when imager rendered the file, the background would be wrong (it would show what was selected before making the changes). When I would open up the file that was just saved, it would have the previous background instead of the new background. This happened several times within a short time span. So after having 10.11 for not even a week, I went back to 10.10. I haven't experienced it since. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.