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Old 09-29-2017, 08:54 AM
jim1960 jim1960 is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2015
Posts: 5,961
Default new studio computer on the way

My early 2008 Mac Pro cheese grater gives me enough issues these days that it discourages me from recording. I was toying with the idea of buying a used 2012 12-core version but I'm not sure I want to invest money into old firewire technology. Then I considered buying a used 2013 12-core Mac Pro trashcan. They have Thunderbolt so it's an upgrade in that respect, but it's Thunderbolt 2 rather than 3, so it's still old technology in a sense. Plus, I'd be spending near $5k on a 4 year old computer. That gave me an uneasy feeling.

For a while I was trying to hold out until the new modular Mac Pros came out but that's going to be in 2018 at the earliest and may even push into 2019. A new iMac Pro is coming out at the end of this year but the base price is $5k. By the time I put in upgrades, I'm probably over the $7k mark. Seeing the price of that made me realize the modular Mac Pro will likely be even more expensive and I'm ruling that out.

So after much hemming and hawing, I'm rolling the dice on a new 27" iMac with a 4.2GHz quad core and 32gb of 2400MHz DDR4 ram. It's half the cores of my old Mac Pro but it's about triple the processing power. I ordered it with only 512gb ssd storage but I'm adding an Akitio Thunder3 Quad Mini 4-bay enclosure to the mix which will let me attach 4 1TB ssd drives via TB3. I'm adding the TB option card to my Apollo Firewire and the lack of pcie slots means I'll be selling my UAD cards (two solo and one duo) and adding a TB Octo satellite.

I've got all the components sitting in a pile here. Just waiting for the new computer to be ready for pickup. It was a special order and won't be ready until next weekend.

Fingers crossed that this machine is powerful enough to meet my needs.
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Jim
2023 Iris ND-200 maple/adi
2017 Circle Strings 00 bastogne walnut/sinker redwood
2015 Circle Strings Parlor shedua/western red cedar
2009 Bamburg JSB Signature Baritone macassar ebony/carpathian spruce
2004 Taylor XXX-RS indian rosewood/sitka spruce
1988 Martin D-16 mahogany/sitka spruce

along with some electrics, zouks, dulcimers, and banjos.

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