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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?"
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.
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"
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...
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).
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
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?
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
Surprisingly, If you read the article, it wouldn't be cheaper using DYI parts. The main advantage you would get of using DYI parts, in this case, is upgradeability.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
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
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Once you've got Windows and drivers installed, you're at a relatively even playing field. Whether you're installing Premiere or Final Cut, you're still stuck doing software installations no matter what you buy.
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?
The crux of the difference - and why the comparison is all but impossible to make - is the fact that you get to truly choose your parts, based on exactly what you need. Entry level Quadro card? $600 or so for one of them. Uncle-Sam-is-picking-up-the-tab model? $5,000 each, I think they support triple SLI.
64GB of ECC RAM? For a handful of use cases, sure. for the vast majority of workstation work? 16 or 32GB can usually suffice, and saves a whole lot of coin.
1TB of SSD? There's that...and then there's a quartet of 256GB SSDs with a spanned partition or RAID-0, possibly with another quartet of 3TByte SATA drives in a RAID5, the latter of which is possible with either no expenditure (depending on the motherboard), or limited expenditure (anywhere from an inexpensive host bus adapter to an IBM or Adaptec RAID controller), which still ends up being less expensive than having to get one of those Thunderbolt drive bay towers that cost twice the price of a half decent SATA RAID controller. Even without that, Thunderbolt drives made by LaCie are nearly double the price of internal Western Digital drives, and you'll still need to shell out $40-$60 for cables.
Super skinny case? Yeah, that's Apple's thing. Cases of every possible shape and size, anywhere from cheap, flimsy aluminum, to completely transparent plexiglass to neon lights to almost fully soundproofed to half a dozen case fans to having room for 13 hard drives or half a dozen Blu-Ray burners? Apple will never have that number of options.
The question of whether it's worth the cost really depends on what the business need is. If the business need is for cubic inches, then the Mac Pro is about the best desktop computing experience you're going to get per square inch. If any higher amount of storage is necessary, the pendulum quickly swings in favor of the PC route. If an optical drive is necessary (yes kids, there are video producers who still give DVDs or Blu-Ray discs to their clients), external drives are invariably more costly and slower than internal drives. If you've got something like a Presonus Firepod or any number of other Firewire peripherals (remember, Firewire was Apple's darling before Thunderbolt, so there's plenty of very expensive add-on gear that uses it), you're adding adapters for those on the Mac side, while plenty of PC motherboards still support it - and if they don't, a PCI(e) card that can support several pieces of hardware costs about the same as a single adapter from Apple.
The way I ultimately figure it is this: If Apple's product, as it ships, fits the bill, get it. No sense in spending time and money for redundant work. If you're looking for even the slightest amount of hardware variation, or you need any meaningful amount of onboard storage, or you can part with just a little bit of performance or the ECCness of its RAM or a nice GeForce card will fit your needs...it's incredibly trivial to avoid parting with that kind of money.
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
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.
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.
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!
You position the fans pointing upward, that keeps the machine firmly on the desk
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?
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?