Computers/Mac

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Magnetic Services
suffering 'studio suck'
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Joined: Mon Apr 16, 2012 11:21 pm

Re: Computers/Mac

Post by Magnetic Services » Thu Apr 05, 2018 12:00 pm

I'm looking to replace my trash can studio PC with a mac for simplicity and ease of use for outside engineers to use.

I'm definitely on a budget, so I'll be looking for a used machine. Any suggestions? Thunderbolt would be nice to have.

Also - anybody know a way to get some money back for my PC's parts? Decent motherboard, 2 internal hard drives, power supply, etc?

kslight
mixes from purgatory
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Joined: Tue Oct 13, 2009 7:40 pm

Re: Computers/Mac

Post by kslight » Thu Apr 05, 2018 12:36 pm

Magnetic Services wrote:
Thu Apr 05, 2018 12:00 pm
I'm looking to replace my trash can studio PC with a mac for simplicity and ease of use for outside engineers to use.

I'm definitely on a budget, so I'll be looking for a used machine. Any suggestions? Thunderbolt would be nice to have.

Also - anybody know a way to get some money back for my PC's parts? Decent motherboard, 2 internal hard drives, power supply, etc?
I’m a fan of the 2009-2012 series Mac Pro towers. Pretty inexpensive second hand, easy to upgrade or repair or tailor to your needs. Reasonable amount of power (up to dual 6 core 3.46ghz Xeon), lots of ram (up to 128gb)... only downside is no thunderbolt. But I don’t have any problems with USB interfaces.

As far as what to do with your PC parts? I would just throw them on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace... I wouldn’t expect to get much cash out of them. You could use the hard drives in a future Mac purchase if you got a tower.

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roscoenyc
carpal tunnel
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Re: Computers/Mac

Post by roscoenyc » Fri Apr 06, 2018 5:33 am

There's a Facebook Group dedicated to resources for upgrading those Mac Pro Towers.
Lots of good info there.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Mac.Pro.Upgrade/

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alexdingley
buyin' a studio
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Re: Computers/Mac

Post by alexdingley » Mon Apr 23, 2018 12:51 pm

I have to admit — I'm checking the web every day to see what, if any, news/rumors come out about the potential new Mac 'towers' — and when they do, I will probably just grab one of the Trash-can Macs (because I hope / half-expect the used-prices to fall a lot more than they have in the last year).

These trash-can Mac Pros have gotten panned by a large number of professionals... and I get it. I still own a 2009 8-core tower, but it's been retired from studio service and is just my backup server now (running 4x 8TB drives in a RAID — Plus I run an online backup). About 1yr ago, I swapped out my PCIe Symphony64 Card & my AD/DA-16x rig for an Antelope Orion 32+ (Thunderbolt 2) + a RAID array of Samsung Pro SSDs... and Swapped out my PCIe UAD2 Octos for Thunderbolt2 UAD Octos. Running all of this off of my 2013 Retina 15" MacBook pro. I keep it propped up in a separate room of the house, with a nearby fan running air across the chassis. It's been powered on for 12mo without a hiccup, and I regularly run 40-70 track sessions at 24/96 with tons of UAD2 plug-ins... also a solid handful of native plug-ins. And the nicest part is that Owens Corning makes 100' and 200' Thunderbolt2 Optical cables, so I can snake that cable all over the house through a small conduit and keep my hot/noisy gear elsewhere.

Once I'm ready to pay the penalty to Avid, I can finally re-join the updating PT-universe and update this MacBook pro to the newest OS — but for now, it's only 2 MacOS versions from current.... If I'm lucky, I could double the raw native horsepower by getting a decked-out trashcan mac for under $2K (sometime in the next 12-16mo... fingers-crossed) and that should last several more years (hopefully).

Pro Tip on Fixing up a MacBook Pro
With those dying MacBook Pro's, it's typically the nVidia graphics cards that heat up so much that they melt their own solder. There's a cheap & easy process which will get you several more years out of a dead unibody MacBook pro. It's called "re-flow". They use hot air to re-melt and re-seat the solder on the Graphics-card Pins. My local "mac repair" shop will do a re-flow for $150... So if ANYONE has an out of warranty Unibody MacBook Pro that no longer boots, see if that solution will work... it's way cheaper than getting a new machine. I've taken 3 different friends' 15" unibody MacBook pros (2010-2011 models) in for this service, and it worked every time. Each of those machines are still running-like new today.

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