Is the New Mac Pro Your Next Editing System?
Apple announced many upgrades to software and operating systems yesterday, but the biggest announcement that professional users have been waiting for was the Mac Pro. We were told that it would be worth waiting for and the new machine is clearly innovative. But is it for you?
Thermal Core
All the hot components will share a centralized, triangular, aluminum heat sink. Apple did vertical central cooling before, with the Mac Cube, and it wasn't the best solution. But this time they're adding a fan--one very good fan. I think the design has merit, but the longest side (CPU) will only be about 5" wide, and both the GPU sides will be considerably shorter. So if you're pushing the GPU hard, the heat will flow to the CPU heat sink, making it hotter before you even push it.
To me this seems like an interesting design idea--essentially, an engineering proof of concept--but whether it actually proves to be an effective solution remains to be seen. As we saw with the Mac Cube, there's a chance that this limited thermal area cannot effectively cool everything working hard for a long time--as professionals who push their gear hard often do.
Expansion
It’s true that Apple has expanded the expansion potential of the Mac Pro--but understand that they’ve done so by pushing all expansion outside of the computer. This is essentially what Apple did with the Mac Mini. There are numerous solutions for external expandability with rackmount Thunderbolt expansion cases. But GPUs are not allowed on Thunderbolt because of the hot-swappability requirement. Some users have hacked external GPUs or even the RED Rocket to work, but there's zero official support for that.
The new Mac Pro solves this with some serious internal GPU hardware. So your external hardware should just be I/O and storage. The only thing inside the unit is "thinking" stuff.
If you have considerable PCI hardware and cards, the new Mac Pro may not be the best solution for you. In time, however, external boxes may make your hardware accessible. But questions remain about drivers, and total cost.