Also Macbook Air with handles and in three colours!

@4CardsMan

OK, lets make standard ATX system that similar, but more powerful and really upgradable

• $199 GIGABYTE Radeon RX 580 DirectX 12 GV-RX580GAMING-8GD 8GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0
• $170 32GB DDR4 - 2x GeIL SUPER LUCE RGB SYNC AMD Edition 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3200 (PC4 25600) Desktop
• $499 AMD 1st Gen RYZEN Threadripper 1950X 16-Core / 32 Threads 3.4 GHz Socket sTR4 180W YD195XA8AEWOF Desktop
• $145 Thermaltake Core X71 Tempered Glass Edition
• $139 EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 PQ, 80+ PLATINUM 1000W, Modular, EVGA ECO Mode, 10 Year Warranty, Power Supply
• $80 4xPhanteks PH-F200SP_BK 200mm Case Fan
• $90 be quiet! Dark Rock Pro TR4
• $159 SAMSUNG 970 PRO M.2 2280 512GB PCIe Gen3. X4, NVMe 1.3 64L V-NAND 2-bit MLC Internal
• $349 ASRock Fatal1ty X399 Professional Gaming

Total - $1830, can add pair of cheaper 1TB NVMe SSDs to make it $2000.

All prices US, Newegg or B&H.

Such system will be whisper quiet, extremely upgradable (up to 420+420+360 radiators), can add second PSU, MB really bear 4x GPUs. Does not have Thundebolt by default (can add PCIe card if you so like), but has USB 3.1 Gen 2 and 10Bit network (+2 other network cards).

@retrospective

Why Xeon? It is most performance/cost inefficient option.

For price slightly more than of cheapest shitty Mac Pro you can make pair of top 16-core AMD systems in Thermaltake Core W200 CA interconnected by Infiniband. Later just upgrade to pair of 32 (current) or 64 (next gen) core CPUs, all else will remain.

If you so like can install ECC RAM in TR4 board, it is supported.

If you are not in corporation (or big editing team) or running server 24/7 I see no point in EEC memory.

@retrospective

My whole point is to NEVER get turn key solutions for such thing, at least if you are small firm / individual.

Honest comparison is if you get better or same performance. All else does not matter.

HP, Dell, Intel - all of them live and prosper from such "turn key" things.

You know what? It sounds to me that the new Mac Pro is not for the freelancer or the dude who shoots and edits his videos part time. They don’t have to buy it. It’s probably geared towards post houses and people who’s got the $ and can’t build their own PCs. There’s no point of complaining since it’s not for you :)

Uh read what I wrote :)

It’s meant as a workstation so what’s so complicated about it? Price up a similar spec HP or Dell workstation. See the price and tell me. Do we agree?

Yeah for the majority of one man band company this is probably not the computer for us price wise. Do we agree? :)

@kellar42

Talked with my source in Apple and while he is not related to Mac Pro team it is quite common rumor that all of this had been pushed by top management and design team. All lead managers of Mac hardware team opposed the design, especially only 3 fans (that go into insane speeds with powerful GPUs due to such poor design) and designers front grill that still is 40% more air restrictive compared to simple approaches. Idea of proprietary GPU modules is also very bad. Real hardware team insisted on total water cooling and much larger case. But had no power to do it proper way.

All, 100% of latest Apple designs are horrible from thermal standpoint because all of them are made by designers, and engineers are only given orders to make stuff to work somehow in the given design.

@vitaliy_kiselev Regardless of his conclusion I think it has a pretty decent look at some of the modules and add-in cards that I didn't see covered well elsewhere.

Does it seem like this computer is built for some fictional mega-rich researcher rather than the normal creatives who have been trained and ingrained to always consume newest apple product for making videos. Why did they even create a tower that can support a 28C Xeon, 1.5TB (theoretically in the future) of RAM, and 2 x Vega II with 128GB of VRAM? Who is that system for? It's not for a video editor editing 8K RAW. You can do that on a much much lower spec'd system. What current creative workflow besides large data set compute would need 128GB of VRAM or 56 low-speed threads?

Real Apple engineers idea had been similar as above (just without shiny RGBs). Integrated distributor with pump, up to 4 GPUs and for 2 CPUs.

Apple has a long history of focusing on design, often at the expense of engineering or other considerations. In the early days, there lots of issues with the Apple III which many attributed to overheating (it did not use a fan or air vents at Steve Jobs insistence).

And then there's this great story from the development of the original Macintosh when Steve Jobs requested the circuit board layout of some of the early prototypes be changed since it was not aesthetically pleasing. That's the aesthetics of a circuit board, that no one would ever see, inside of the case. Suffice it to say the changes didn't go so well: https://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=PC_Board_Esthetics.txt

This kind of thing is nothing new for Apple, it's pretty much how they roll.