runnin away from Win

[revvy]

Makes perfect sense.

[whyterabbyt]

well, versus, 'I compared the 2-year old M2 CPU favourably to a 10-year old Intel CPU because someone said fanless PC,' and similar, one would hope it made some sense, yes.

[uOpt]

This is what I don't like about macs.

SAMSUNG 870 QVO SATA III SSD 8TB 2.5" $665

Apple MacBook pro 8tb SSD upgrade from 1tb SSD
+$2200

Not a good example:

https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/thre ... re.291504/

[topaz]

Ran away from Mac OS

[whyterabbyt]

Not a good example:

Ummmm....

"SAMSUNG 870 QVO SATA III SSD 8TB 2.5" $665" (in 2024)

versus

"Certain 870 EVO 4TB and 2TB drives are affected by early failures where they develop uncorrectable errors and some data just cannot be read from them anymore.
This seems to primarily affect drives produced in January/February 2021."

[PAK]

What about when you need more storage ?

As well as USB-C drives (Samsung T7 etc), there’s Thunderbolt enclosures which will hold 4 x 2280 drives (32TB limit) for ~$300. A PCIe enclosure will cost around the same. Worth doing if you have RME PCIe cards. Sub 1ms latencies possible - lower than literally any Windows device listed on DAWBench’s charts, despite being external.

Prices, used on this thread, are also too high for Apple. It’s really not difficult to find retail sources which are consistently 10% lower (Costco UK/US, Amazon US etc), and BF sales events can see up to 40% off retail (Usually stock clearing to go that low).

[4damind]

It therefore makes perfect sense and saves a lot of money to use a rather smaller disk only for the system, e.g. the 512 GB and then a 2 or 4 TB external NVMe for projects, video editing etc.

No it doesnt makes perfect sense. Not on a Mac, because Apple are ripping you off.

And fefinitely not on a PC. On PC a 4Tb NVME with speeds around 7000MBs can be found under £300, when Apple will charge you £400 to put just 1Tb in.

These are 2 things... yes, Apple is ripping you off. But there's the option of connecting very fast external storage media that only cost a fraction of the price... and these are all significantly faster than what most PC users use: SATA (and in some cases even faster than the internal Mac SSDs). For Mac users, this is the best solution if you don't want to pay the “Apple tax” and many do exactly the same... but for most people a “normal” SSD is enough (IMO!)

Of course, you can also upgrade your PC with internal PCI-E M2 NVMe cards and then you have a completely different performance than with SATA. Yes, and the prices are of course significantly lower... PCI-E cards are also cheaper than a Thunderbolt 4 enclosure and the data rates are higher (the TB4 enclosures I know usually go up to a little over 3000 MB/s, a well-known combination of WD SN770 and Acasis enclosure delivers around 2700 MB/s).

[PAK]

Regarding fanless PC’s - Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Unless you’re a very light use case (recording audio, not much plugins etc, and even then… ) it’d be wiser looking at systems with low speed fan designs.

Performant X86-64 parts, even the latest sub 100W Ryzens, are going to thermal throttle if you sustain high CPU loads without fans. Despite AS being more power efficient than X86-64, a fanless Macbook Air will throttle after ~10 mins at full load depending on ambient temps. The Mac Studio uses massive heatsinks (The Ultra’s is copper and adds 2lbs to the weight) and much of the internal space is taken up by the fans.

There’s no getting around physics. Less power used = less need for cooling, Thus, in that regard at least, the Apple products have some advantage

[whyterabbyt]

what most PC users use: SATA

evidence required for PCs shipped since 2020.

[koalaboy]

What about when you need more storage ?

As well as USB-C drives (Samsung T7 etc), there’s Thunderbolt enclosures which will hold 4 x 2280 drives (32TB limit) for ~$300. A PCIe enclosure will cost around the same. Worth doing if you have RME PCIe cards. Sub 1ms latencies possible - lower than literally any Windows device listed on DAWBench’s charts, despite being external.

That's true, but again 'why' ? I can do all of that in a PC for far less, and I have most of the parts already.

Sub 1ms latencies, and 8GB/s disk speeds, are all well and good, but again, overkill.

I get that you 'can', absolutely, but it's not something worth switching to (running away from) purely for most needs.

The *only* time I have to use the Mac, and it does well for that, is using Large Language Models locally... that used to be only VRAM and expensive GPUs but the Mac inline memory is not bad for it - slower, but a lot cheaper. Having said that, recent work means a lot of local AI runs okay on PC RAM now.

The same with the cooling. I don't run fanless - I run slow/quiet fans. Easily enough cooling (in the right case) and as close to silent for any needed purpose.

Nobody should change what they're happy with, but if you want ease of re-use and/or value for money, PCs are still far better. If you want lower power consumption, form factor, or a laptop.. and can afford the difference, Macs are far better.

(and if you want to develop anything server-based, or for the cloud, just run Linux and be done, as it's far better than both in that regard )

[koalaboy]

what most PC users use: SATA

evidence required for PCs shipped since 2020.

Well, they can use both, which is a double win

[liquidsound]

So, it’s all about the ability to “blow” your money away without a fan

[fedexnman]

So, it’s all about the ability to “blow” your money away without a fan

Kinda like making music and posting on kvr lol hahahahaha

[liquidsound]

So, it’s all about the ability to “blow” your money away without a fan

Kinda like making music and posting on kvr lol hahahahaha

That means I’m a fan of KVR

[PAK]

That's true, but again 'why' ? I can do all of that in a PC for far less

Far less than what though? Apple’s retail prices? It's not difficult to find lower prices.. sometimes far lower. Suddenly those differences are reduced..

As for creating equivalent systems.. Differences, like RAM on the CPU, mean you can’t quite replicate things without a PC’s CPU doing the same. And how expensive would a PC motherboard be with 6 x 40GB Thunderbolt connectivity?

The point being some of the old ways of comparing specs have lost some relevance. Which might not be a bad thing as it moves it back from "specs" to what’s needed from a computer and how it performs with software you’ll use. EG In my direct experience Cubase 12+ runs better on the Mac. Should I care about specs more, or go with the platform where it seems to be running better?

Go with your needs. For anyone using 3D software? A 4090 will smash any Mac. For audio? I’d say the roles are reversed and, for now, the PC is the one struggling. Yes, you can build a low noise system. Is it going to be as quiet as the Apple Silicon one? Probably not.

BTW Even a Mac Studio’s onboard audio is 0.896ms input @ 96kHz / 32 samples (Output is higher - 2.25ms). Less than a 3.2ms round-trip, for onboard audio! The point being not so much the numbers, but more that it makes a sound card optional for audio users with limited needs in the way of I/O. No argument about storage costs though - Apple charges about triple what it should