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I’ve been hearing of an annoying “coil whine” with these Toshiba SSDs Apple has been using. Seems to be a common complaint amongst the audio nervosa crowd (I’m a bit particular myself). Anyone bought a mini, or a laptop recently? Is this actually an issue?
Mankind's only chance is to harness the power of stupid.
Hold up - how can there be coil whine related to the type of NAND on the SSD? If the SSD has a supercap I suppose there could be coilwhine, although I haven’t heard it before, but that isn’t related to the flash?
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
I don’t know the whys. I’ve just seen lots of intarweb complaints about it on the mini and MBP, and some allegations that it’s somehow related to the Toshiba SSDs used.
Mankind's only chance is to harness the power of stupid.
Doing a quick Google, I get the impression some Toshiba SSDs make noise, but it’s sonething other than coil whine because as P and Spheric said, there aren’t any coils.
Yeah, there are threads on MacRumors for example of a whining noise from these latest MBPs/minis. Who knows. Anyways I got an i5/256/8gig mini. Still playing around with it but no whine that I can see.
One huge bummer is my Thunderbolt (1) drive enclosure. I got an Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter from an Apple Store which is supposed to work. It did perfectly, and then about 30 minutes later all my drives ejected and the mini immediately crashed and shut down. After this happened several times I figured out it appears to be the enclosure attachment—no issues with the mini after I unplug it. After the third crash I got a device error light on the enclosure, and according to the manufacturer it’s probably got a hardware issue.
Checked online, and these T3-to-T2 adapters have all sorts of complaints about not working properly. Ugh. I just got an OWC 4-bay Thunderbolt 3 enclosure which hopefully should solve the issue, but not cool at all.
Mankind's only chance is to harness the power of stupid.
A lot of murmurs about Apple pushing service revenue hard and I already fear how it will muck up iOS 13. If iCloud or Apple Music get any more intrusive than they already are I may be done, unless Apple finally relents and puts back in oldtimer/leave me the F alone/I’m not an idiot mode.
It’s been working fine since I got my Xs, and was working „mostly“ fine for years before that.
I did have to connect the previous phone via cable occasionally to get it to sync wirelessly again, and I had a weird issue for a long while where it would partially sync, cut off, and then sync the partial playlists back over as „iPhone special 1“, „iPhone special 2“, „iPhone special 3“, etc.
That went away at some point. Though it did then take to deleting music that hadn’t been synced before insert the house from the playlist, so I’d have a bunch of incomplete albums.
My iMac, using three, 4 GHz cores: 4h 13m
Mini, using five, 3.2 GHz cores: 5h 25m
Both together: 2h 43m
If I’m doing my math right, that’s a 35% boost. I may be able to squeeze out a little more improvement with better load balancing. I was hoping for 50%, but 35% is nothing to sneeze at.
The Mini cost $1,888 total. $1,300 for the computer, the rest was 64 GB of RAM and sales tax. I’m trying to decide if I pop for another one.
Oh... the fan isn’t exactly silent, but quieter than I expected.
Get a 2009 Xserve. They go for peanuts and if you want to fiddle with a dual socket one a bit you can slap a pair of 6 core Xeons in there. And you can add a PCI-E GPU or two as long as its not power hungry.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
I think you'll find the interface sluggish without a metal compatible GPU on Mojave. High Sierra should run just fine though, those things are plenty quick compared to some much newer gear. Some have SSD boot drives too.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Sep 9, 2019, 09:10 AM
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep
Get a 2009 Xserve. They go for peanuts and if you want to fiddle with a dual socket one a bit you can slap a pair of 6 core Xeons in there. And you can add a PCI-E GPU or two as long as its not power hungry.
Is there an updated list showing what an Xserve will take? The above list doesn't show much promise.
I have dual X5690s in my Mac Pro (theoretically the best possible upgrade you can do to that machine) and my GeekBench multi-core score is about 26,000, typical for this setup.
A 2018 i7 Mini scores 24,000 to 27,000. Here's a GeekBench comparison:
That's the top-rated i7 Mini on Geekbench, which may be a fluke, but it's best case scenario.
The memory bandwidth difference is huge. PC4-21300 in the Mini vs. PC3-10600 in the MP.
Even if physical size and power consumption didn't matter, I don't think the MP/Xserve is an upgrade over the Mini, but when you factor those two things in, it's an even worse deal.
I ran Mojave on a 2010 Mac Pro with a metal GPU. The interface wasn't laggy, but it was buggy.
I'm running Mojave on a 2009 MP flashed to the latest firmware. Some minor irritants have turned up, but I'm pretty sure they're from using an account that originally dates back to Jaguar.
My GPU is a Mac-firmware Radeon 7970. What bugs were you seeing? And what GPU?
Ahh - your GPUs were not Metal-compatible. Mojave won't install with them present without hacking. They sort-of work if installed later, but with graphical glitches. White menu backgrounds showing up as silver? Also, having a GT120 installed prevented sleep when I tried it. Even with no monitor connected to it.
You can reduce the glitches by using Dark Mode and/or "Reduce transparency" in Sys Prefs -> Accessibility -> Display -> checkbox [x]
Radeon HD 5xxx/6xxx are especially bad in Mojave. GT120 runs without drivers, which prevents sleep and makes it really slow. RX580 is compatible.
Just to add to the discussion: I used to have a 2012 Mac Pro (12 cores, SSD, 64 GB RAM) and now have a 2013 Mac Pro (8 cores, 64 GB RAM) on my desk in addition to my 2015 13” MacBook Pro. In single core tasks the MacBook Pro is the fastest. What is nice if you have 6+ cores is that the system always stays responsive.
The old cheese grater was a nice heater for my feet, and if you keep that thing running 24/7, IMHO this is something you need to consider. A new Mac mini is much more power and space efficient.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
It's the actual hardware rating on RAM capacity vs Apple's listed specs. Apple tests with available RAM modules before a model is released. Then specifies how high the RAM ceiling is. The memory controller may be designed to address more, but if available modules did not allow Apple to test that high, Apple doesn't specify the higher ceiling. And they don't update the specs later. Probably because that Mac is discontinued by the time larger RAM modules are available.
So we often have a silent bonus above Apple's official specs. A given Mac may be able to handle 1.5x or 2x the RAM Apple says it can. Once or twice, a model could handle 4x Apple's official ceiling.
Ignore Apple's official limit - use the actual figures.
Well, for the Cook-note today, I am most interested in the Apple Watch series 5, mainly because of the always on display. To me, that is the entire purpose of the watch, which is to tell the time, and not to flick the wrist to tell the time.
It was really funny to watch the event and see all of the excuses of why it would not be possible to flick your wrist to check the time or to see notifications (such as when doing a pushup), but any person with a smidge of common sense would see it is for others to see your watch, not for you to see your watch. Seeing your unique watch face at all times will be a huge seller.
I will probably buy the base model with an orange or white band and have absolutely no notifications on it (I hate being "on call" and I already have my phone for that). I will just use it to tell time, watch complications, and to tell the time. I will not use it for health measurements except as a pedometer.
The iPhone 11s do not interest me as much, nor do the new iPads.
The Apple movies look nice and only $5 a month. I might be doing this and get 3% off of that using Apple Card.
You can do 96GB in the last Xserves. I know a guy who flashed one with the Mac Pro 5,1 firmware to make it take 6 core CPUs so if the 8 core can score 26000 vs. a Mac Mini getting 27000, the 12 core one should beat it and still come in under half the price.
If you can get Mojave on it, a PC GPU should work but it doesn't kick in until after the login screen. Not an issue if its headless which it ought to be since these things are not quiet. You want to put it in a basement or garage most likely.
Someone gave me one for free so if you shop around you'll get one for less than $350 I imagine, though last I checked Macstadium were still buying up the old ones stateside precisely because they are such great bang for buck and built like tanks.
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Sep 11, 2019, 09:16 AM
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep
You can do 96GB in the last Xserves. I know a guy who flashed one with the Mac Pro 5,1 firmware to make it take 6 core CPUs so if the 8 core can score 26000 vs. a Mac Mini getting 27000, the 12 core one should beat it and still come in under half the price.
X5690 is the 6 core processor, so 26000 is the max that gen Mac Pro can do. GeekBench shows one that managed 28000, but that's the top result ever.
I like the idea of upgrading old Xserves, but the reality seems like more effort than it’s worth. I have no disposable time right now, though. That’ll change in a few months.
As for the Cooknote, treadmill’s getting up to speed... XI Pro, Friday, 7a. I don’t even really bother thinking about it anymore.
X5690 is the 6 core processor, so 26000 is the max that gen Mac Pro can do. GeekBench shows one that managed 28000, but that's the top result ever.
If I’m understanding right, the idea is to use a dual-CPU Xserve with 6 cores per socket. Unless there’s an I/O bottleneck somewhere, it should be like two Minis for $1,000.
Location: Iowa, how long can this be? Does it really ruin the left column spacing?
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Sep 12, 2019, 10:16 AM
Yes, that's my MP setup - dual X5690s for 12 total physical cores - a 12 core MP is roughly the same speed as a 2018 i7 Mini. Memory bandwidth is much lower than the Mini. You can run PCI NVMe SSDs on the MP for faster disk speed.
Mini is 150W max. MP uses a 1000W power supply, it dims my living room lights when I start it up.