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What Would It Cost To Build a Windows Version of the Pricey New Mac Pro?
zacharye writes "The new Mac Pro is the most powerful and flexible computer Apple has ever created, and it's also extremely expensive — or is it? With a price tag that can climb up around $10,000, Apple's latest enterprise workhorse clearly isn't cheap. For businesses with a need for all that muscle, however, is that steep price justifiable or is there a premium 'Apple tax' that companies will have to pay? Shortly after the new Mac Pro was finally made available for purchase last week, one PC enthusiast set out to answer that question and in order to do so, he asked another one: How much would it cost to build a comparable Windows 8 machine?"
This is a business level product.
While you can build one cheaper using DYI parts, however the time spent in wages, for souring the hardware, software and doing the software can add up very quickly
.
Then there is also support and maintenance - will having a custom built machine cost more in the long run?
The more you spent on the machine - the bigger the margin for the DYI version - however at the end of the day - is the cost worth it for business?
Simple, add $199 for a copy of Windows, and you have an equivalent Apple machine, duh.
Why would you put Windows 8 on a work computer?
I bought my Mom a Mac Pro for Christmas.
She says GMail runs so much faster now.
Site is starting to get Slashdotted.
The Mac tax has always been about the actual parts they use and that there are cheaper alternatives. For this comparison, they try to match the parts exactly. That of course is going to cost more because you are paying 3rd party markup prices while Apple is being direct from the manufacturer. The article even admits that you can buy things like a different video card that is equivalent for half the price. The question isn't if you can make the exact same system (or as close as possible) for cheaper but whether you can make an equivalent system for cheaper, and the answer to that is almost always yes.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
They've speced a machine with half as much RAM, and the Mac has server grade ECC RAM. They've replaced PCIe storage with SATA. It's not a comparable machine. For a fair comparison, compare the Mac to a similarly speced HP server. Alternatively, at least spec the Mac lower to match, rather than maxing out everything.
Also, the Mac includes little niceties, some of which the HP will match better. I have the Macbook Pro, not the newer Pro, but by way of analogy compare Apple's reversible magnetic power cable vs. everyone else's barrel plugs. Apple does a lot of little things better on their computers. (Unlike their iOS iPhone and iPad, which I wouldn't buy.)
Yes because a business is going to purchase a Mac Pro tailored for say video editing, then 1 year later switch to high end scientific data processing? not likely.
Whether you can build a Mac Pro equivalent and save even 50% is irrelevant. The costs of the folks that offer the talent necessary to "git 'er done" in a lot of the film and graphics industries (to use popular examples) times the efficacy of the software they harness for their best productivity is all that matters. The fact that the majority of pro-level (compositing/whatever) apps are Mac-aware and optimized - and now more so or soon to be for the new Mac Pro, pretty much close the book. Have built large Linux clusters to crush a number of large computational tasks, and have always argued the "yahbbut... I could build that cheaper" case, but I think this one hits the mark *for its target market*. Buy it and get the job done. ...but damn, those monitors... ;-)
The real comparison comes in how good the machine is at doing what you need it to do. If you're making a movie or doing serious sound editing, video editing, or modeling, this machine and the accompanying software is clearly top-tier, compared to trying to assemble a full workflow yourself that includes the hardware, software, and infrastructure integration. And the fact that you just order it off the shelf and it comes with everything and integrates with everything isn't really priced into this comparison.
E pluribus unum
Why do I think they ordered those parts from the most expensive sources possible?
Well, if you read the fine article (the original, not the bgr rehash), you'd see that all the proces come from NewEgg -- not the cheapest, but also not the most expensive...
Apple most certainly does NOT have leading support on the enterprise level. I know this from direct, personal experience. "That's how it's meant to work" and "We will probably fix that in the next release (date unknown)" are both considered perfectly acceptable answers by Apple Enterprise Support.
Oh...unless you're a 100% Apple shop and already have in-house Linux/Unix guru's who can do an end-run around the limitations in OSX.
Every other enterprise vendor has a roadmap and beta products/releases they share (at least under NDA) so related vendors can prepare their software/hardware. Apple releases the next OSX and major software vendors (PGP, Symantec, etc.) take months to release compatible software.
This isn't Apple bashing, just the state of things and it sucks. I actually like most of their hardware and OS implementation but some parts make want to pull my hair out...which is awkward since I have none.
You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
It is stated that the $10,000 mac pro has Windows equivalent ATI cards (dual) costs over $7,000!
Also the Mac Pro has an SSD PCI Express card that is insanely big (1 TB) that can delivery gigs per second! That is pricy on the Windows equivalent cards too.
Bare in mind Windows 7 is showing its age. I know its cool here to be conservative and love XP/7 since Vista came out on slashdot, but TRIM is not supported for SSD PCI cards or in raid :-(
I do not think Linux is either. Of course those who are smart like to say it doesn't matter as they run Cron jobs and other hacks to get around this which is nice on a server but a little unpractical for 99% of users.
The real question at the end of the say is not that what it would cost a PC equivalent, but why would you need it?
Yes, some geek here will say (insert fringe case scenario for their mathmatica or engineering assigning or crappy SQL database) but that is becoming more and more fringe. 10 years ago when computers took 30 damn seconds to launch OpenOffice, 8 tabs in Firefox took all your damn ram, autocad would not run very well at all on your gaming card (which was just a 2d card with 3d features and not a real GPU) then workstations were more popular. 20 years ago pcs were expensive and just for light typing and simple spreadsheets where every accountant at wall street just had to have a damn $20,000 sun workstation at his desk, or photo artists needed $4,000 macs for photoshop effects etc.
If I was given a free $9,995 Mac Pro I would think it is cool for a little and maybe get a few more fps in SWTOR but nothing else. ... ok Vmware would be fucking sweet! but with a single ssd on my 3 1/2 your old PC with upgraded 16 gigs of ram they run just fine. Why bother to upgrade?
I do not think these are going to sell well at this price point just like PC workstations do not sell well. They sell in niche markets and that is it.
http://saveie6.com/
The Mac tax has always been about the actual parts they use and that there are cheaper alternatives. For this comparison, they try to match the parts exactly. That of course is going to cost more because you are paying 3rd party markup prices while Apple is being direct from the manufacturer. The article even admits that you can buy things like a different video card that is equivalent for half the price. The question isn't if you can make the exact same system (or as close as possible) for cheaper but whether you can make an equivalent system for cheaper, and the answer to that is almost always yes.
So if you can build a cheaper equivalent... why aren't you in business, building cheaper equivalents and getting rich off the fact that it's costing you less to build equivalent hardware?
Unfortunately Apple has a tendency to do weird, non-standard, undocumented things with their hardware configuration, or else I'd be using an Apple laptop myself (without OSX).
See the stuff surrounding the Thunderbolt connector under Linux for an example -- despite, ostensibly, being a standard Thunderbolt port, the Linux implementation doesn't quite work properly with Apple's hardware (hotplug doesn't work, and the OS doesn't even see the Thunderbolt port unless something was plugged in at boot), but works perfectly with the reference Intel hardware. Not to mention their exclusive use of Broadcom wireless cards, the most difficult cards to work with in general (no supported open source drivers unlike the other big two, Atheros and Intel).
We already know you can replace the three major components people generally replace in systems - so it's not like you have to max out any of those three initially. Except for the fact Apple is generally charging you less than you'd have to pay on your own for that part right now...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Corps never do these to workstations.
They replace them instead because depreciation wise it is not worth it to put another $7,000 card in a machine now worth just $2,500 3 years later right?
PCs are different as the workers who use them are treated like crap and cost centers. These are for producers who add value to the bottom line etc.
http://saveie6.com/
If you were willing to budge on the form factor, shop for bargains, and substitute various components (such as a Quadro card instead of the FirePro, as suggested in the article), then you probably could build a comparable DIY system cheaper. But people who buy the Mac Pro really don't care about that. Businesses, in case you haven't noticed, tend not to go with DIY systems for the most part. They prefer having them purpose-built by OEMs. This system is aimed squarely at businesses in the creative sector: graphics design, modeling, rendering, and so forth. (Presumably a lot of them will be dual-booting with Windows 7.)
You'd be hard-pressed to build a system that has this much power at the same low noise levels (remember, you've got two graphics cards with about a 200W TDP each, plus a powerful Xeon CPU). You might be able to pull it off with the right case (most likely a Silverstone FT02 or FT04) and some careful use of fan controllers, but this would be a lot bigger than the Mac Pro, and you'd likely need to keep it under your desk instead of on top. No DIY system is going to match the Mac Pro's combination of high power, very low noise, tiny footprint, and excellent fit-and-finish. It just isn't possible within the limitations of the standard form factors of DIY parts.
Let's let grandpa tell you kids a story since the Apple bashing has reached a bit of a frenzy lately with the introduction of a professional-grade computer.
First things first. This is not a computer that little Billy is buying so he can run the latest warez torrent of today's game du jour. This is also not a computer that dad is buying for the family to sit in the living room and run quickbooks on. No, your average neck beard is probably not looking to max one of these out so he can whip up the the latest build of the development branch of his custom linux kernel.
This computer is a business computer. It is designed and offered at a price range that will appeal to a customer who uses the computer to make money. No, not some bit coin mining operation, but real tangible money. These are designed for professionals who bill out to real paying customers for between $200 and $800 per hour. Yes, you heard that right. In the grown up world, highly productive and effective professionals bill their clients real money. When people grow up and begin to afford products like this, they are not wearing skinny jeans and sitting in Starbucks trying to look cool on a financed Macbook.
So, this is a $10,000 computer. So what? For a business purchase, let's evaluate this whole thing.
This is a computer that based on its speed and performance may allow that professional mentioned above to be 1.5 - 3 times more productive. That means more money. At $200 per hour, that's only 50 hours to recoup the cost. That's one billable week. It's a drop in the bucket. One client engagement. But wait, there's more
You see, in the business world, there's also this neat thing called depreciation of assets. It's an accounting thing. I know, I know, they aren't elite computer dudes, but the accountants do stuff with numbers and things like that. Anyway, in a basic system, the business that buys the computer gets to take the money spent off their taxes based on certain formulas. One way they do this is taking the acquisition price minus the residual value at the end of the effective lifespan (5 years) and then take the total left and divide it across the total period. Say the company buys a $10,000 computer and estimates it will be worth $1000 in 5 years time, it then takes the remaining $9000 and divides it by 5 years, which gives $1800 per year. The company can then take $1800 each year as depreciation expense on the asset. (Disclaimer for those with some accounting background, this is straight-line depreciation and there are other allowable forms that handle things different)
This means that not only does the company get to reap the rewards of more productivity but they also get to reduce their tax liability on the money they earn from it. I know, evil capitalists are keeping the man down by denying tax money. However, this is how the world works.
That is why a company will happily spend $10,000 on a high end Apple computer that some of you can't wrap your head around.
But, can't it be done cheaper by building it themselves? Probably yes. Although TFA was a non starter in that regard. Here's a hint for you just beginning your career. Business does not care that you can twist a screwdriver and put something together off newegg. Apple, for the money, provides someone that will happily offer mature support and a one-stop shop to handle repairs and other needs. Yes, the genius bar is not perfect nor is it what is usually considered enterprise level support (believe me, I do know the difference). But, it's a good option.
Move past the point that things are upgradeable or hackable or DIY or whatever. These things are productivity appliances. They are like the big screen televisions in the conference rooms or the phone systems. If something breaks, it gets fixed or swapped out by the vendor. It's cost effective and gives management someone to yell at when things go south.
So, y'all can continue to bash the product. You can happily laugh with derision at Apple while
"Draw them in with the prospect of gain, take them by confusion." Sun Tzu
They did. It's called Linux.
The real comparison comes in how good the machine is at doing what you need it to do. If you're making a movie or doing serious sound editing, video editing, or modeling, this machine and the accompanying software is clearly top-tier, compared to trying to assemble a full workflow yourself that includes the hardware, software, and infrastructure integration. And the fact that you just order it off the shelf and it comes with everything and integrates with everything isn't really priced into this comparison.
This is exactly what people seem to not understand. Not to mention trying to get support when your custom built system starts to have issues (blue screening due to drivers, hardware incompatibilities, etc.. ). When you have a project due for a client and some key piece of software starts crashing, or crashing the machine, the last thing you want to have to deal with are the numerous vendors playing the blame game.
Granted, not all software will be fully tweaked off the bat with the new mac pro, but its a system that no doubt the big players (The Foundry, Autodesk, Maxon, Avid, Adobe, etc) will target for testing and make sure their software works and takes advantage of as much of the hardware as is possible. As opposed to testing on randomly built DIY solutions.
For the price, how can you really beat a high end system thats custom built (down to the pcb level), using mostly off the shelf stuff (just assembled in a way thats not convenient to the DIY/tinkerer), supported by a single company, and is / will be used in testing by the actual companies that write the software you want to run on it?
Xeon chips are always one generation behind. Ivy Bridge for Xeon is brand-new; 'Broadwell Core' and 'Haswell Xeon' are scheduled for release around the same time (or perhaps a little later for Xeon, if memory serves).
Have you ever priced out professional level Linux video editing and 3D composting software? (Not Blender, as interesting as it is). The kind that major movie production houses use? You can't because you won't find a price on any web site. You call up a sales rep and discuss your potential build. It's one of those things that if you have to ask how much it costs, you can't afford it.
Yes, that software is out there. But it is for the big boys and girls who don't give a fig about the costs of a particular workstation since their overhead is mostly professional people and professional video and audio gear whose prices often start in the five figure range. The Apple tax is just chump change.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The Mac Pro was updated every year from 2006-2010; it was only the 2010 version that was stuck in place, probably in part due to the development of this new machine.
Why do I think they ordered those parts from the most expensive sources possible?
Or it could just be the riced up hipster case.
... $9,599 which includes 64GBs of ECC DDR3 memory, a 1TB PCIe SSD, two AMD D700 (W9000) GPUs, and a twelve core Intel Xeon 2.7GHz processor.
While there is nothing really remarkable about this list of parts, it’s the way that they are integrated that provides both pros and cons. On the pro side, you have all this workstation grade hardware in a cylinder that is less than 10 inches tall and under 7 inches wide, with the power supply inside. This makes it very easy to take it on site or pack with you.
Pack with you? Because that's a concern with desktop workstations? I guess you can discount the dual monitor setup if portability is the key? Oh, right, OSX, so you basically have to bring it with you because everyone else is running a different OS and your programs aren't compatible. I don't give half a crap about the story, or I'd go to build the thing online in a tower configuration. Maybe throw in some LEDs, black-light ground effects, a custom body job with clear side panel and glitter+glue monogram too -- You know, really rice it to the next level.
I'll bet this thing just smokes. I've always aimed high when redoing my desktop, back in January I loaded up 32GB of DDR3 RAM, 6 TB RAID V, 250GB SSD for boot and OS space and a 6 core AMD CPU, which is fairly adequate. It has to be as I'll expect it to run for 5 or 6 years before I upgrade again. I built and even beastlier machine for a friend who's doing a lot of media work. It's an absolute screamer, but again, he is expecting it to be competent for the next 5 or 6 years. I build his last one and it motored along well until he decided it was time to upgrade, too. When you spend money, you don't want to do it often.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
i think it's cheaper to have middling computers every 2-3 year cycle than a gargantuon every 6 years
Hate to break it to you, but the folks that would want to 'walk around' with their Mac Pros would sneeze at the cost. Those are the people who are dragging around $100,000 Red / Sony / Panasonic / whatever video rigs and assorted (similarly expensive) gizmos. It might even work out better with the trash can's dimensions - easier to stick in a Pelican case. The nice thing about the cheese grater is that the case is so heavy and rugged you don't need much else in the way of protection. But they're damned heavy...
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
The OS I don't care about one way or another. I prefer it to Windows in the sense that it has a functional unix-ish command line, but beyond that the GUI is irritating in different ways. I'd prefer to run Linux on it, for my own reasons, but I'd rather wait until the Haswell-EP (or whatever they're calling their 2P Xeon's these days) is released. Hopefully Mac Pro doesn't miss that generation...
But building a comparable Windows machine with parts available on the market through your favorite sources (ex. newegg) is not possible at any price. You can integrate components with equal or greater functionality, but how much system test is there? Who is going to root cause every blue screen? Trust me, more of those blue screens are hardware related than I would have believed years ago. Who is making sure the PSU can deliver the needed power for the various application loads, and that it is performing with margin? Who is doing thermal measurements, checking airflow and ensuring parts are being kept safely in their operating region? This is what Apple is doing that "justifies" the price. The double quotes are there because no other system's company out there is holding to any quality standard except Apple, and as long as that's the case, Apple can charge whatever it likes.
It's not 1999 anymore. It used to be a computer would be obsolete before anything broke. Who cares about quality in this case? DIY made a lot of sense (and Apple suffered). But now even high end users can miss 3 or more processor generations and not care. It's better to pay a bit more for something that's going to hold together.
tl;dr, as a former motherboard designer and employee of a large OEM that is dying spectacularly, I assure you that Apple's computers are worth more than the sum of their parts. I
Cheaper, certainly. But a PITA. I hate, hate, hate installing Windows.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
The last time I did the comparison, it came down to deciding which specs were really important to match and which weren't. There are many different versions of various 3ghz processors out there with vastly differing prices.
Some have more cores, some run cooler, some have more on-die memory, or more more threads, or some instruction that may or may not be useful to you. More banks of FPUs. Smaller process size. Bigger process size.
Other components are similarly difficult to compare. RAM has it's speed, bus size, timing - should you get a balanced set? Is that a thing still? Was it ever? ECC?
Anyway, I found when I gathered all the "hidden" specs and priced things out (several years ago) that the macs were actually competitive for the hardware. However, the hidden specs are hidden because the market doesn't really respond to them when they're revealed. Are they irrelevant? If you ignore the hidden specs, you can select hardware that is vastly cheaper, which although isn't the same, maybe is close enough.
Objective comparison is hard to find, and I think part of it is that there are plenty of sites doing hardware comparisons and presenting them in ways that really obscure the difference between the hardware, and there is really no consumer friendly software profiler available on the market.
Doubling your RAM isn't going to help if the programs you run are bottlenecked on loading data off the disk. Adding more L3 cache isn't going to help if your program already fits in what you have or if it spends most of its time waiting on user input. Better sleep/downclock modes would help there. The won't help for high-performance gaming.
How do you really know what you need? Which specs are really relevant?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Here is a breakdown of diy.
:Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 12 core - $2,524.00 :480 GB - $1007
Cpu
Motherboard: ASUS Z9PA-U8 - $277.99
64GB 16x4 (4 slots still free) - $720
PCIe ssd
Power supply 1500 Watt - $374
Case: $274
Video cards: ??? not currently available
Total: $5,176
Apple with similar specs: $7,899
So that leaves $2,723 for video cards, I can't find any suggested prices on the D500 or D700, except that Apple charges $300 per card to upgrade from D500 to D700.
Of course if you wanted 12 cores you could save a bundle and just get a dual socket board and 2 6 core cpus. Also the MB supports a lot more ram etc, but is a lot bigger.
Sources:
CPU: http://www.compsource.com/ttechnote.asp?part_no=BX80635E52697V2&vid=211&src=14
MB: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131915
RAM: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147307
HDD: http://www.amazon.com/OCZ-Technology-Drive-Series-Express/dp/B0058RECOU/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1388118274&sr=8-9
PSU: http://www.amazon.com/SILVERSTONE-ST1500-CrossFire-Certified-Modular/dp/B002BH3Z84/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1388118413&sr=8-2&keywords=1500watt+power+supply
Case: http://www.amazon.com/Corsair-Obsidian-Series-Performance-CC-9011035-WW/dp/B00EB6O4N8/ref=sr_1_1?srs=2529199011&ie=UTF8&qid=1388118511&sr=8-1
Everyone that disagrees with me is a paid shill
Why would you install Windows? Oh, sure, I get there might be some Windows-only apps you want, but put a reasonable VM on the box, install on that once, and just move the VM to successive new machines. You can allows throw more virtual hardware at it.
-- Alastair
xeons already have a luxury tax...
and while it doesn't make that much of a difference in the total their case was 160 bucks.. motherboard 280 bucks.. going mATX really bites. and get this, 50-75 bucks for bluetooth and wifi(wtf??).
and then going for luxury taxed firepro's. 3400 bucks each. the point with going with the pc is that you can choose something else as well. heck, you get a monster of a machine just by going with two 1000 bucks gaming cards, if you don't need that bit switched on to make it a "pro opengl" card(or just nvidias "pro" cards, either way you would shave off a whopping 4800 bucks!! that's nearly HALF OF THE FUCKING PRICE for no practical performance loss - or heck, maybe even a gain).
it's their choice of parts that makes it expensive as hell, not the choice of where they priced them from.
*luxury tax here refers to paying for something someone just building a pc at home with their own money would never buy... something that is marked up just because some companies don't give a shit.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I've seen JavaScript heavy sites that make my i7 laptop's extra fans kick on...
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Recently, we built a Supermicro Workstation 7047GR-TRF configuration. I am revising the system configuration to update the parts to get a comparable overview:
Supermicro Workstation 5037A-i - $580
Xeon E5-2643 v2 (fastest available) - $1552
Memory (4GB/ECC/DDR3-1866 x 4) - $240
Firepro W8000 (x2) - $2560
Intel SSD 910 400GB - $2000
Windows 8.1 Pro - $140
Others Accessories - $100
Total - $7,172
The base system will be pretty much high vs the $3,999 cost
In another comparison
Supermicro Workstation 5037A-i - $580
Xeon E5-2697 v2 - $2750
Memory (16GB/ECC/DDR3-1866 x 4) - $840
Firepro W9000 (x2) - $6800
Intel SSD 910 800GB - $4000
Windows 8.1 Pro - $140
Others Accessories - $100
Total - $15210
The configured system is still pretty high compared to $9599 from Apple pricing
Although specifications cannot be matched one is to one, I believe that the Windows workstation can be reduced in pricing by changing the Intel PCIe SSD and GPU to avoid using the top of the line products.
For example, using the following
Supermicro Workstation 5037A-i - $580
Xeon E5-2697 v2 - $2750
Memory (16GB/ECC/DDR3-1866 x 4) - $840
Quadro K5000 (x2) - $3200
Intel SSD DC S3700 200GB - $500
Windows 8.1 Pro - $140
Others Accessories - $100
Total - $8110
The configured Mac Pro is $8119 for the 256GB Storage and Dual D500.
So I guess the configuration will depend on the system.
For us though, we have found a more cost efficient alternative by buying a Supermicro 7047GR-TRF dual Intel Xeon socket and not using the top of the line for everything. But we are able to achieve 12 cores 2GHz, 64GB RAM, Nvidia K4000 for Display, Dual GTX680 GPU for compute, 8Gb FC Celerity HBA for around $5,000.00.
It will really depend on the applications to be used at the end. For us though, most of the applications are available in Windows and Linux configurations will limited Mac exclusivity so the PC solution is economical for us.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
You can replace the first two things via a PCIe card attached through Thunderbolt.
Why would you WANT to replace the fan which is perfectly tailored to the system and for noise levels?
But why would you replace the first two? It already has two GigE ports. You can get Thunderbolt to FiberChannel adaptors if that's what you were after. And it already supports a pretty modern WiFi stack, 802.11ac.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The service aspect is not all positive.. With a vendor built, a component failure means a 2 week minimum turnaround where you're out of a machine. If you've built it yourself it's an overnighted part and you're up and running again...and if you're crazy desperate, a drive to frys/microcenter.
If you remotely know what you're doing, your home built cooling setup easily beats the cost conscious compromises built into vendor designs, even the boutique brands like apple. It's not difficult to design a cooling system for stock clocked chips.
Finally, there's performance. It's quite easy to build an overclocked machine that'll outperform anything apple offers, even while staying away from benchmark warrior speeds. I'd rather have 8 cores at 4.6 ghz than 12 or 16 at 2.6 for 99% of the applications out there, including 'embarrassingly parallel' media heavy ones like 3D modeling and video encoding.
Yes, if you don't know what you're doing, your build's reliability will suck, but really, it's not that hard to build a decent machine yourself that outperforms apple in performance and reliability.
You can't assure me jack shit. This is an appeal to emotion. Try getting help from apple when your machine is out of its expensive applecare warranty. Good luck. At least with a home built, it'll last as long as you want it to as parts are always readily available, and at no worse reliability than the crappy refurbs apple sticks into supposedly 'new' computers when they fail. They're usually cheaper too.
It's not Linux's fault that the developers of Final Cut Pro and Lightroom specifically chose *not* to support Linux. It is also not Linux's fault that both Apple and Adobe guard and keep their programs' source code secret, so it is impossible for anyone else to compile it for anything other than the operating systems that these two companies choose to compile these programs for themselves.
Final Cut Pro and Lightroom work so well in Linux.
By the way, there exists now an open source Lightroom clone called Darktable.
There are many different versions of various 3ghz processors out there with vastly differing prices.
A 3GHz Pentium 4 should come off cheap. ;)
Pack with you? Because that's a concern with desktop workstations?
The CPU and two video cards have a combined TDP of 680 watts--and that's not including chipset, RAM, drives, power supply, etc. I hope this thing has lead weights in the bottom; otherwise, the fans needed to keep it from melting into a pile of slag will scoot it across the desk when they spin up.
You don't NEED to call microsoft for support anymore.
There's millions of geeks out there who already encountered whatever problem you have with windows and found a solution. And posted it somewhere.
Support for windows is near universal. Google for it. You'll find it 99.999% of the time.
Not so with mac. Not even close.
And of the solutions you find 85% do more harm than good.
Of course a solution to MS support does more harm then good 90% of the time.
I'm not sure you got the point of the article - they were trying to match the specs of the capabilities in the Mac using commodity parts. The GPUs in the Mac Pro are the same as those firePro parts that cost a small fortune, and even a couple of R9 290x's wouldn't keep up because of a lack of VRAM (6GB of DDR5 vs 4GB on the 290's)
I'm not saying you need those gpu's, but if you're trying to match specs, those are the ones to choose. I think it's also clear that Apple are pushing gpu-based computing at the high end (they designed OpenCL after all), so high-load gpu code is likely to be common in the pro-apps. Those GPUs will be used on a mac.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Typing on a Macbook Air that has the imprint of the keyboard on its screen because of the way the screen closes. It drops out wifi periodically. I had a Macbook before where the plastic started cracking after 6 months and Apple refused to replace it, saying it's normal wear. So no, I don't buy that a newegg component will be less well designed.
I want to play star trek Armada on the computer that can run Final Cut Pro and Lightroom.
If it can't then it's useless to me.
(yeah, i am comparing platform dependent items ( and hard drive partitioning storage types ) here. and I have no use for Final Cut Pro and Lightroom In fact, I have no idea what Final Cut Pro and Lightroom are..)
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
Yet the Mac Pro is ...
a) Round
A shape chosen for better cooling characteristics - they can get away with a smaller case, and a smaller fan to cool the same components that a square case would use.
b) Shiny
This is the only one of the items that really has little practical use. Yet what case maker WANTS a butt-ugly case? And in a design shop it looks better to have better looking gear.
c) Cool looking
This is only because it's small, but small has utility too. It means it's much easier to move around, and modern workers change workspaces more frequently than they used to. Have you tried moving one of the older Mac Pros? They looked great too but you sure wanted to leave them where they were.
d) expensive
That's not even right. For what you get it's NOT expensive, which is the whole point of the Slashdot story to begin with. It gives you a lot of power at a fair price, and some people do in fact need that much power. Anyone who does not can just buy an iMac.
There are a few rich people that will buy one just for fun, sure. But most of the people buying this system will do so because they have a PRACTICAL need for the power the system offers in a smallish form factor.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Because you have never priced workstation class parts maybe?
It is hard to find a Xeon that exactly matches the one in the Pro but the very top of the line socket 2011 Ivy Bridge EP xeon CPU is over $2500 on newegg.
The one closest to the one in the Mac Pro is this one
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117273 and it is $1111.99 on newegg. So there is one third the price of the Pro right there.
Two Firepro w7000 GPUs are 700 each and you are at 2800 more or less. now add in the motherboard, ECC ram PCIe SSDs case and power supply and you can see the Pro is actually a good deal for what you get. Those are the prices off Newegg so yes you might find them cheaper but they are competitive.
A Dell workstation configured close to the Mac Pro is actually more expensive.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
With a vendor built, a component failure means a 2 week minimum turnaround where you're out of a machine
Not with Apple, and AppleCare. If they have the same system in an Apple store often they'll just swap it out if something is really wrong...
But the way the Mac Pro is built, it would be pretty easy to swap in replacement storage or GPU or memory to fix one of those items going bad. Or two switch all your custom cards into a set of cores they had stored in the back for replacements.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You position the fans pointing upward, that keeps the machine firmly on the desk
You mention service, which is not what i was talking about - and indeed you can overnight or run down to Fry's if you have one and replace parts immediately. If you correctly guess the root cause of the failure, which is not so easy to do even if you know what you're doing. Usually you replace the obviously broke part, and it happens again some time later. What seems like a bogus PSU frequently very likely is something else that individually it makes no sense for you to root cause. A system test team would certainly do this, particularly for servers. It happens less with consumer goods.
You mention overclocking - I know many people do this, and for their own reasons it makes sense to them. However you're definitely aging your system prematurely, and you're exposing yourself to subtle data corruption via numerous mechanisms. You probably don't care for your application, but I suspect the majority of us wouldn't knowingly expose ourselves in this way. Unless you work in silicon manufacturing and you have looked at the PVT test results for several wafer lots and can convince me that a particular part should work faster than its rated frequency at a particular temperature and voltage, I don't trust what you're doing. I spend my time debugging CPUs that were binned to WORK at 50% over their rated frequency and find subtle problems for a living, I would rather trust the MFG about their speed grade. If you want to risk it, great, and if you have a system where you can justify doing so, even better. I just want the damned thing to work for as long as possible.
I never pay for Applecare, ever, and never mentioned it. I've never needed it, that's my point. I don't buy extended warranties of any kind. A product works or I stop buying from that vendor. I will happily endorse Apple, or Honda for that matter, as long as they build quality products. Once they screw me, I turn on them like a rabid animal.
I'm not trying to take your homebrew away, it has a place, I always have one or two around. But for machines that have to work, that I can't afford to be messing around with, I prefer to stick with something that was properly designed and tested.
Weird.
The PSU is only rated for 450W.
Is it powered by magical unicorns on the inside or something? Or is there some kind of lame throttling where you're either using the CPU, the CPU and a single GPU, or both GPUs, but not everything at once?
Heh, I'm posting this from Slackware, but you speak like someone who doesn't use windows applications that do any heavy lifting. Try running some higher end video editing software in a VM and let me know how well that works for ya.
Right tool, right job.
What are you implying? That wealth encourages ignorance? Well, I can't argue with that. It's not always necessary to buy the overpriced, underperforming ECC enabled xeon workstation, esp in a formfactor that necessitates further reductions in performance. A professional shouldn't have trouble doing basic maintenance on equipment he depends on, esp when it would shorten the down time from weeks to hours. The mac pro is targeted at the freelancer or smallish media production company. This is where self-builds work quite well. Their workloads are not 'that' different from the high end gamer set.
The value of a vendor? Like what? Long turn arounds? White listed BIOS peripheral lists that drive up upgrade costs? Overpriced service plans? Constant arguments with service phone jockeys over what's wrong and whether it's covered? I agree apple's service isn't terrible when compared with others, but it's still a lot worse than just doing it yourself and getting it over with. The sooner I'm back to work, the happier I am.
I don't see how you can implement a lower-level protocol (eg: raw thunderbolt DMA) using a higher-level abstraction of that protocol (eg: pci-e traffic). That's like saying you'll implement Internet-layer frames only using TCP. Similarly, I don't see how you can expose something that doesn't conform to anything remotely like pci-e as a hot plug pci-e device - the latency tolerances to remain in spec are way different for a start.
I too have implemented a driver, from a high-end FPGA to the Mac, and the OSX kernel does not get involved unless you're traversing controllers within that Mac, or the route cannot be expressed within a single transaction, or if the destination is local. It just doesn't. These are to my knowledge the only 3 reasons for the local CPU to get involved:
[1] If you have a machine with devices (1,2,..) on multiple thunderbolt controllers (say A and B), it's possible to have a route like A2 -> A1-> A0 -/-> B0 -> B1, and of course the kernel is involved then because the individual controller chips A and B are not bridged together in any other way. The kernel has to route between A0 (local) and B0 (also local).
[2] The initial spec for thunderbolt allowed a lot of flexibility with source-defined routing tables, but it wasn't taken advantage of, and the later chips from Intel removed some of that functionality (or, more likely, just reassigned the chip real-estate to something more useful). There are now potentially valid routes that can't be expressed within a single frame, and the kernel has to be involved at that point as well, to make sure packets get to their correct destination. It is, however, unlikely that users will see these routing issues in real-world scenarios, you have to have a lot of devices on multiple busses before it's an issue.
[3] The destination is the local machine. Of course, the kernel has to get involved then.
I have a lot of diagnostic code that monitors bandwidth, packet lifetime and routing, and latencies. I've run massive stress tests on multiple machines and devices connected via thunderbolt, and so far, the above 3 reasons are the only ones that an OSX machine enters the kernel for any thunderbolt-related cause. It is quite clear when the kernel does get involved compared to when it doesn't, so I'm confident that if it doesn't have to get involved, there is no interaction.
Physicists get Hadrons!
What? I've had several hardware failures on Macs over the years, and the *longest* was a five day wait -- the second longest a two day wait, and every other failure was a same day or next day fix.
That five day wait was with a moderately aged (2.5 years: out of warranty) Mac Pro having a motherboard failure and they had run out of replacements in-house, so they sent out for new ones and it took a few days to get there. They got more then just mine in on that shipment, so someone else comes in tomorrow, next week, they will have a one day turnaround. Its worth noting that the mac is still going two+ years later with no other issues after that replacement.
That repair cost me not a dime. There are worst-case scenarios with Apple where you may be sans a machine a few days, a week maybe -- *MAYBE* even two weeks, but that seems to require a level of outdated hardware that you're better served going to an independent repair shop -- but it is *absolutely* untrue that the general, average component failure of a "vendor built" machine, if built by Apple, has you out for two weeks.
It doesn't happen. Apple Stores can do a huge number of component replacements in-house, and they keep a stock of parts to do it.
Yeah, I got charged for another machines fix that was out of warranty, but it took absolutely no special work. There was no effort or drama attached to try to somehow convince them to deign to help me as you suggest. They had the part on hand, and charged me a reasonable fee for the replacement + work, and I picked the box up the next day. This was out of warranty, without AppleCare. It just cost me. Had they been out the part, it might have taken longer to get replaced-- but my experience says looking at a week as the *extreme* and not average is a reasonable expectation.
In short: I have never bought AppleCare, have had a few service needs, and only one wasn't what I'd call fast-- and it was five days (COUNTING a weekend in there, not five "business days" extending to seven or eight) and that was on a device solidly outside of their normal, expected maintenance window -- even under AppleCare.
I don't doubt it might not happen that some Apple user sometimes has a two week wait, but that is the exception and not the rule. I can get to Fry's and hope they have the part (they have /frequently/ been out of a particular one I've wanted... and I won't even talk about how often I've bought items from there which turned out defective or the service issues I've had with them as a result...) or I can make an appointment, go in, drop off my box, explain an issue, and 80% of the time, come back later that day or the next day, and its fixed.
That 80% is based on personal experience, YMMV.
Yeah, quite. The base Mac Pro actually turns out to be fairly reasonably priced for the combination of components inside, but - and this is important - there is essentially no reason to get that combination of components unless you have no other choice because you're buying a Mac. For instance, they're paying out quite a bit of extra money in order to fit everything into a smaller case, even though that'd actually be a downside for many customers. Also, most of the professional applications out there that use GPU acceleration can only make use of a single GPU, so the second $3400 GPU will be sitting completely idle for most Mac Pro buyers. What's more, as the article mentions many apps run better on NVidia GPUs anyway. Also, how many of the GPU-accelerated apps can also make full use of a 12-core CPU?
You, sir, are daring to bring facts to a gunfight.
The audacity!
I bet you're one of those guys that use a pirated version of Photoshop to crop your camera phone pics at home, and then demand that your employer drops 4k on a PS license, because "GIMP is sooo useless, it doesn't even have the contrast settings in the same menu as I'm used to!".
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
DarkTable isn't a clone of LightRoom. It is a program that is used for the same sort of work and the UI has a lot of resemblance with LightRoo, but that's about it. While LightRoom has some features that aren't (yet) implemented in DarkTable, DarkTable has many features that don't have anything equivalent in LightRoom. For instance the equalizer and the profiled denoise are absolute killer features that make working with DarkTable give you results that would require much more work in the Adobe creative suite. Also, DarkTable has openCL support, making it one of the fastest tools ever to do complex manipulations on large images in (near) realtime.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
They also skimped mightily by using a SATA SSD instead of the Mac Pro's much faster PCIe flash. Part of the Mac Pro's speed like the almost instantaneous app launches comes from the PCIe flash.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
It's not Linux's fault that the developers of Final Cut Pro and Lightroom specifically chose *not* to support Linux. It is also not Linux's fault that both Apple and Adobe guard and keep their programs' source code secret, so it is impossible for anyone else to compile it for anything other than the operating systems that these two companies choose to compile these programs for themselves.
Why would i care whose "fault" it is?
Actually it's not Linux's fault that Final Cut Pro is made by Apple now; they bought it years ago.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Nah.. you would want to outsource your products componants. You get the benefits og easily being able to rid yourself of old stock, not having to warehouse materials, at the ability to take advantage of lowering prices. That is a key benifit of just in time freight from third parties. Rumor is that dell and hp only have 10 days working stock on hand at one time and they pay the going rates as it comes off the trailers in the shipping docks.
At minimum, if you owned the production or resalrd companies, you would spin them off so they couldn't drag profits from the main company effectivly creating the same scenario.
Yeah, I'd like to spend $3k telling Adobe to use a second GPU. Oh, without actually telling them.
The only thing the Mac Pro is ahead of the curve on is form factor, and they've clearly made serious compromises to achieve that.
450W power supply? That's not a lot - it doesn't sound like you'll be getting maximum performance out of that hardware.
And this is a hardware discussion. Apple's hardware has always been competitively priced - good quality components, decent build quality, generally a good design - but only for the first 2-3 months of its life.
The next 2-3 years it's horribly overpriced, and especially if you live in the UK where Apple charge a significantly higher price than in the US.
Slashdot, come for the news for nerds stay for the spelling/grammar lessons?
Audio editing as well. full 7.1 surround mixes can consume as much ram as a video editing station can.
Then when you need to do Sync you still need the video loaded in memory as well so suddenly you start needing more than the video editors did.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Remember the applications are going to be OSX applications. So by late 2014 or so the applications will be targeted for your particular hardware configuration and tested against it.
As far as the more general issue, Apple machines tend to be balanced for general use cases in a way that PCs aren't. The result is you often get features you wouldn't have paid for but really love. For example I bought the rMBP for the SSD and the quadcore. The retina screen, which on a PC I wouldn't have gotten however has been by far my favorite feature.
10k is the normal price of a server with decent computing power. If you're surprised by this price tag, clearly you have never bought one.
I can't speak to apple's enterprise support, but I have experienced issues with MS servers and their support came through with custom fixes on the spot. We had an issue with Exchange some years ago and they escalated our issue through the night, grabbing data dumps as we went. By the morning they had identified an issue with their OS software and a patch was released to us the next day. I was pretty impressed with that level of support.
Those kind of issues are quite rare - but in a large enterprise you see rare stuff all the time. In my experience, the more vertical the app, the better the response when you have an issue - probably because they only have so many potential customers and they can't afford to piss them off. Accounting system vendors and CRM vendors get right on it. We had less luck when we encountered issues with MS office. Same vendor, different economic incentives.
I think the mistake being made is people are judging this Mac Pro based on current Apps. It's like judging the iPhone as just a cell phone and MP3 player. I'm fairly sure Apple is making a new platform, and the developers who take advantage of dual GPUs will be around shortly to make a big splash. The software cannot come out that competes with a Flame until the hardware is there.
Just grabbing some hardware and trying to reproduce this Mac pro with raw specs is not getting down to the research on latency and data pipelines that likely went on with this new Mac. For the same reason that race cars don't have trailers hitched to the back. Also -- there's a very good reason they didn't make an expandable cabinet and wanted every peripheral on a Thunderbolt attachment -- because they have a closely coupled device with little margin for error at the top end.
I'm not sure, but I'm guessing that PC manufacturers are not going to make STABLE replicas of this box for some time. They also might not have the software that justifies the investment.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
450W power supply? That's not a lot - it doesn't sound like you'll be getting maximum performance out of that hardware.
That's because they've got Flash Ram and not a hard drive. The most power hungry thing in the box is the graphics cards. Note that the add-ons will be via Thunderbolt? How does WATT usage translate into computing power?
IN 3 months you can make a point about it being too expensive, but by then there will be "apps for that" over-priced well designed system and not for the PCs that don't exist. Maybe Apple will upgrade their device? Who knows... maybe in 3 months you will have a useful point.
>>"ad space available -- low rates!!!"
Ah, so according to you a Mac Pro is a 360 led light? I suppose that the two holes in your head just above your mouth are for storing coins?
One can always point out prior art. You know it's innovative when everyone else could have done so before, but didn't & then copies it afterwards: See the iPhone.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Actually, if we're assigning fault it is partly Linux's fault, for being fragmented. There is no such thing as a Linux installer, although you can get pretty close with a .deb and an .rpm. The range of possible setups compared to the size of the market is also discouraging, increasing potential support costs. If pretty much everybody ran Ubuntu, or pretty much everybody ran Fedora, or something like that, it would be a more attractive market.
It's not Apple's and Adobe's fault that they keep their programs proprietary, unless you adopt Richard Stallman's ideology completely. Even Stallman doesn't suggest pirating proprietary software. If there's a "fault" here, it's the F/LOSS communities for not developing good Final Cut Pro and Lightroom replacements (assuming they haven't; otherwise, why the bitching?). There are simply no good replacements for a good many proprietary Windows/MacOSX programs. I can (and have) set up really nice development environments, but a lot of stuff is missing or has inadequate substitutes. F/LOSS simply does not work as well as selling proprietary software for quite a few things.
Moreover, the Mac Pro is made for people who want to use computers, not computer people. A graphic artist will normally see this as a tool for his or her calling, not something important in its own right. The artist will happily pay for hardware and software that assists him or her, and won't care where the software comes from as long as it is either supported or works well enough without support.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Yeah but all these bullshit articles misses the point and why the PC is frankly better for most of us and that is the fact that YOU get to decide what you need and YOU get to decide what is most important to YOUR way of doing things instead of being told by Apple Inc what you should and shouldn't have!
Take the system I'm typing this on...I wanted a system that would start out easy on the wallet, but could ramp up with me, that had plenty of upgrade room down the line, and because of their frankly antitrust worthy compiler rigging and OEM bribing I didn't want to go Intel. So I ended up with an AMD dual and later upgraded to a hexacore. Plenty of power for my A/V editing and plenty of horse for my gaming, the ability to go Crossfire down the line, It does everything I need and more, plenty of space at 3TB, and 8Gb of RAM means Win 7 has al my most used cached into memory.
What would have been my "choice" if I had went to Apple with those requirements? A fricking iPad, which would have been completely worthless for what I wanted to do. Sure a $10K Mac pro could do the same job, but it would be a waste of money and would spend most of its time idling. this way i have the amount of power I need and that $9300 is better off in my pocket than in Apple Inc's coffers. The simple fact is most of us aren't processing raw RED camera footage so the Mac pro would be total overkill and if you don't mind a little DIY (or you can just ask your friendly neighborhood PC shop to do it, most of us are happy to throw kits together) you can get an octocore for $450 after MIR, just slap in a copy of Win 7 and there ya go, a nice system for under $600. For most even this would be overkill so for those folks I usually recommend something like this triple core for $250 although I usually pick an Asrock board (as I've been seeing better than 70% unlocks on the Athlon triples so they get a Phenom II quad for the price of an Athlon triple) but this will do most folks for the rest of the decade easy.
The problem with Apple is their "Our way or the highway" where you are SOL if your need doesn't fit into one of only a couple use cases and thanks to everything being locked down its not like you can pick up a system and then just add what you need. My system started as an Athlon X2 with 2Gb of RAM and an HD3450 GPU, now its an X6 with 8Gb and an HD7750, no need to replace the system, no need to reinstall the OS and programs, it "just fits".
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
What I'm saying (not implying), and what the OP may have meant, is that you do best when you do stuff you're good at, and pay other people for their expertise in stuff you're not so good at. In some cases, you can do well by hiring some other individual who knows their stuff, but I've seen that backfire horribly. (Worst case I was peripherally involved with, the firm hired a college student on the basis of apparent ability - which they were really unable to judge - and religion. The guy had a lot of fun setting up what was for the time a really hot system on their dime, then when it was more or less working headed out to the East Coast, taking all the technical documentation and setup software with him. Once the hard drive caught fire it was all over, with no way to rebuild. Somebody might also have warned them about putting the computer in the next room to the skate-sharpening machine, but it's doubtful a commercial firm would have warned them either.)
If you buy Apple, you get good equipment and good support, without really having to know your hardware. You're buying Apple's expertise. It costs more than DIY, but for somebody who isn't a computer expert, it's much more reliable, and cheaper since you're not wasting $X/hour billable artist time on technical functions they aren't good at and which can be done faster by a specialist. You don't worry about trying to match low-cost peripherals, because you use what Apple provides. You don't worry about troubleshooting systems, because that's what Applecare and the Genius Bar are for. If you buy from one provider, such as Apple, you don't worry about who covers what. You don't argue with service phone jockeys about what's wrong, instead you say "Machine not work good" and let them take it from there. If you're willing to spend some money, you don't get long turn arounds from Apple.
I don't do my own plumbing, although it would be cheaper for me to do so, if I didn't value my own time. I hire people to come in and do it, and then I know it was done by somebody who knew what he was doing.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
There is a fair amount of irrational Apple hatred on Slashdot. Slashdot attracts a lot of computer geeks who appear to have little empathy, and don't really get that other people can be different without being inferior. These geeks aren't Apple's target market, and Apple doesn't really care what we geeks think. We can always get a computer that suits our purposes well by deciding what we want and ordering components from Newegg, and it will come out much less expensive than an Apple computer that similarly suits our purposes. For us, the extra stuff Apple provides is not as attractive.
Other people don't necessarily think that way. Most people just buy a prebuilt system from Dell or Best Buy or Apple, and never upgrade it. Many of these people find some of the things Apple does to be very nice, sometimes very useful, and often find an Apple computer more pleasant to use. If you're going to buy a laptop and use it heavily for the next three years, paying another $500 to make it more pleasant can be a really good deal.
This means that lots of people are buying computers the typical geek simply wouldn't buy, and many geeks just can't grok that. Since many of them don't seem to be able to really conceive of people who are just as able, but in different ways, people who do different things tend to be considered inferior, and doing things for the wrong reasons. Apple's success must therefore be blamed on things like "marketing" or "fashion", which most geeks (including me) just don't get easily, or on fanbois (strange that Apple seems to have an unlimited supply of them).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
It's like comparing Kraft Mac & Chesse to your own homemade. Sure, making your own is less expensive and has more options for upgrades (bacon)... but Kraft is much more convenient if you don't want to sweat the details, has a nice box & packaged look, and a taste you cannot fully replicate on your own.
Exactly. My billable rate is say, $70/hr. On WORK time. My own time outside of work? I get far less of that, so I value it at 2-3x the rate I get paid at work. I really do not want to be fucking around fixing broken hardware on my non-work time.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Also, something that do-it-yourself PC builders always overlook is the warranty, phone support, documentation, etc. that comes with a manufactured product (like a Mac Pro).
Those kinds of things are not free, obviously, but are almost never taken into account.