New Apple Pro.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

Look under your car bonnet at the radiator, what shape is it ?

I don't understand how this is relevant?

The engine compartment would be terrible for airflow.

[PrinceTuiTeka]

Look under your car bonnet at the radiator, what shape is it ?

Broken analogy? The radiator is shaped to make the most of the wall of air coming towards it. It has a tiny depth compared to its large surface area like any good heat sink. Whereas a pc case is more like the car chassis in that it houses the heatsinks and channels the flow of air over them.

[deanox]

Theres a legitimate reason for rectangle boxes though, all to keep it modular, which has been the successful way for the last 30 years.

[Spigalau]

Theres a legitimate reason for rectangle boxes though, all to keep it modular, which has been the successful way for the last 30 years.

Correct, and with this 'revolution' of design, everything will now be daisy chained across your desk via Thunderbolt.

[PrinceTuiTeka]

From what I have seen on the animation, it is still reasonably modular. Ram still slides in and out etc. And looks like you could pull the center cooling core and then unbolt the components from the frame. It may not like the lego style of component swapping PC users are used too, but it still has the potential to be modular.

Heat is one of the big restrictions on what we can get our electronics to do (Cue Bounty Hunter) and if this increases cooling as much as Apple is claiming (or even points further innovation in the right direction) it could lift the restriction a little.

Again, Im not a mac fan, but I was under the impression that they weren't really upgradable anyway? So in Apples case, modular construction isn't a concern? May be wrong on that point.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

The only 'downside' I see is it only has flash storage, very fast and great for the OS to start up on. But I'd have to stick my 2 terabyte hard drives on the outside.

However, a much more elegant solution would be some sort of fileserver, somewhere. So maybe it's for the best, there is no need for large capacity storage to be located within the case.

[Spigalau]

Local (contained) storage may also be small & expensive.

[deanox]

I would put a domed cap on it and paint it up like R2D2!!

[PrinceTuiTeka]

^^ that I agree with. But adaption on the theme could allow the tower to be marginally taller allowing a block of magnetic storage to be put in the base maybe.

Edit: whoops, agree with spig, Deanox beat my post! ( though I agree that R2D2 would look cool)

Edit 2: Speaking of R2, it looks like they switched to cylinder cooling for droids a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

Hell yes.

R2D2 themed Mac Pro, I would so get that.



His front panel can open up to revel all the PC ports, you can pretend you are recharging him!

The air can vent out the top of his head.

[Bounty Hunter]

From what I have seen on the animation, it is still reasonably modular. Ram still slides in and out etc. And looks like you could pull the center cooling core and then unbolt the components from the frame. It may not like the lego style of component swapping PC users are used too, but it still has the potential to be modular.

Heat is one of the big restrictions on what we can get our electronics to do (Cue Bounty Hunter) and if this increases cooling as much as Apple is claiming (or even points further innovation in the right direction) it could lift the restriction a little.

Again, Im not a mac fan, but I was under the impression that they weren't really upgradable anyway? So in Apples case, modular construction isn't a concern? May be wrong on that point.

Two laws of thermo here:

Zeroth Law: If two systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third, they are also in thermal equilibrium with each other.

Second Law: Heat cannot spontaneously flow from a colder location to a hotter location. This implies that heat spontaneously flows flows from hot to cold.

So unless you can draw heat away from the heatsink, more efficiently than the heatsink can distribute heat, all sharing the heatsink will do is heat up the other processors thereby reducing their efficiency. If you could draw heat away from the heatsink more efficiently than it could distribute it, you wouldn't bother with a heatsink.

That fan blows the wrong way too, all it's going to do is suck up all the dust off the floor.....

The wires, jutting out bits etc etc in your computer don't harm airflow that badly.

Yeah it's all marketing hype bullshit....but i'll admit, it does look cool.

[Bounty Hunter]

From what I have seen on the animation, it is still reasonably modular. Ram still slides in and out etc. And looks like you could pull the center cooling core and then unbolt the components from the frame. It may not like the lego style of component swapping PC users are used too, but it still has the potential to be modular.

Heat is one of the big restrictions on what we can get our electronics to do (Cue Bounty Hunter) and if this increases cooling as much as Apple is claiming (or even points further innovation in the right direction) it could lift the restriction a little.

Again, Im not a mac fan, but I was under the impression that they weren't really upgradable anyway? So in Apples case, modular construction isn't a concern? May be wrong on that point.

Two laws of thermo here:

Zeroth Law: If two systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third, they are also in thermal equilibrium with each other.

Second Law: Heat cannot spontaneously flow from a colder location to a hotter location. This implies that heat spontaneously flows flows from hot to cold.

So unless you can draw heat away from the heatsink, more efficiently than the heatsink can distribute heat, all sharing the heatsink will do is heat up the other processors thereby reducing their efficiency. If you could draw heat away from the heatsink more efficiently than it could distribute it, you wouldn't bother with a heatsink.

That fan blows the wrong way too, all it's going to do is suck up all the dust off the floor.....

The wires, jutting out bits etc etc in your computer don't harm airflow that badly.

Yeah it's all marketing hype bullshit....

[swindle]

That fan blows the wrong way too, all it's going to do is suck up all the dust off the floor.....

This was my only real query. Why stuck it up? Seems like there are more cons then pros here. I know sucking from the top would have its cons, but more pros I feel.

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

from the website

It works by conducting heat away from the CPU and GPUs and distributing that heat uniformly across the core. That way, if one processor isn’t working as hard as the others, the extra thermal capacity can be shared efficiently among them.

I wonder how effective this will be.

With a normal PC we would have heatsink temps something like this (depending on what it's doing).
CPU  - 50c
GPU1 - 25c
GPU2 - 30c

With the Mac Pro, the temps would be averaged out, i.e
CPU  - 35c
GPU1 - 35c
GPU2 - 35c

It would be good for the CPU in this case, however the GPUs would get the same heat, even when sitting idle (and vice versa).

[Bounty Hunter]

from the website



I wonder how effective this will be.

With a normal PC we would have heatsink temps something like this (depending on what it's doing).
CPU  - 50c
GPU1 - 25c
GPU2 - 30c

With the Mac Pro, the temps would be averaged out, i.e
CPU  - 35c
GPU1 - 35c
GPU2 - 35c

It would be good for the CPU in this case, however the GPUs would get the same heat, even when sitting idle (and vice versa).

Yes and now your GPU's are working 17-40% less efficiently and they have 4-8% less temperature margin.

And your CPU is only working 40% more efficiently......

Seems pretty silly to me.

[mycoolcar]

The cooling system is similar to a watercooling loop with cpu & gfx cards in it.

If you base the size of your radiators (or heatsink) on the max heat output of all 3 chips (1xcpu and 2xgpus) then you are fine as you have enough surface area to happily keep them cool. But if the size of radiator (or heatsink) is based off only 2/3 of these items being at full load at any one time then you will run into trouble. Presumably you would think apple have allowed enough heatsink surface area to allow all the chips to be cooled at once.

I think the placement of the fan at the top is good. Heat rises, so its only natural to have the heat exhausted from the unit at the top. There are clear benefits to having one large fan, in that it can operate at a lower speed than multiple small ones while pushing a similar (or even larger) amount of air, and so is quieter.


EDIT:

Yes and now your CPU's are working 17-40% less efficiently and they have 4-8% less temperature margin.

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I wasn't aware that computer chips running at a higher temperature went slower, or required more power to operate. How does this work?

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

The cooling system is similar to a watercooling loop with cpu & gfx cards in it.

Not quite. A water-cooled system just replaces the air with water as a heat conductor. The heat sinks of each component system are still separate.

The water gets pumped to the CPU first and draws away heat, then when it reaches the GPU heatsink, the water is still cooler then the heatsink, and will still draw away the heat.

Under no circumstances will the heat from one component ever be transferred to another.

I wasn't aware that computer chips running at a higher temperature went slower, or required more power to operate. How does this work?

Electrons have a harder time getting around when it's hot.

[mycoolcar]

Not quite. A water-cooled system just replaces the air with water as a heat conductor. The heat sinks of each component system are still separate.

The water gets pumped to the CPU first and draws away heat, then when it reaches the GPU heatsink, the water is still cooler then the heatsink, and will still draw away the heat.

Under no circumstances will the heat from one component ever be transferred to another.

You have a single large loop, in this loop there are two gpus, one cpu and a large radiator. The water removes the heat from the chip, and the radiator removes the heat from the water, putting it into the air. The radiator is essentially a heatsink, as it is transferring the heat into the air. The water just removes the heat from the chip faster than air could.

I don't see how one large w/c loop is different to one large heatsink. All the chips are still sharing the same cooling system. In one system they share a large heatsink, in the other they share a large radiator.

[Bounty Hunter]

The cooling system is similar to a watercooling loop with cpu & gfx cards in it.

If you base the size of your radiators (or heatsink) on the max heat output of all 3 chips (1xcpu and 2xgpus) then you are fine as you have enough surface area to happily keep them cool. But if the size of radiator (or heatsink) is based off only 2/3 of these items being at full load at any one time then you will run into trouble. Presumably you would think apple have allowed enough heatsink surface area to allow all the chips to be cooled at once.

I think the placement of the fan at the top is good. Heat rises, so its only natural to have the heat exhausted from the unit at the top. There are clear benefits to having one large fan, in that it can operate at a lower speed than multiple small ones while pushing a similar (or even larger) amount of air, and so is quieter.


EDIT:


I wasn't aware that computer chips running at a higher temperature went slower, or required more power to operate. How does this work?

 

Not quite. A water-cooled system just replaces the air with water as a heat conductor. The heat sinks of each component system are still separate.

The water gets pumped to the CPU first and draws away heat, then when it reaches the GPU heatsink, the water is still cooler then the heatsink, and will still draw away the heat.

Under no circumstances will the heat from one component ever be transferred to another.

Electrons have a harder time getting around when it's hot.

 
What monkey said, in the case of the mac pro the 3 heat elements are in thermal contact, whereas in a water cooling system the elements have air and coolant between them.

As things get warmer, they expand. At an atomic level the distance between any 2 atoms becomes further, meaning a higher voltage is required to push the electron this increased distance.

You have a single large loop, in this loop there are two gpus, one cpu and a large radiator. The water removes the heat from the chip, and the radiator removes the heat from the water, putting it into the air. The radiator is essentially a heatsink, as it is transferring the heat into the air. The water just removes the heat from the chip faster than air could.

I don't see how one large w/c loop is different to one large heatsink. All the chips are still sharing the same cooling system. In one system they share a large heatsink, in the other they share a large radiator.

Except the 3 heat sources aren't in thermal contact with one another.

http://www.canterbury.ac.nz/courseinfo/GetCourseDetails.aspx?course=PHYS101&occurrence=13S2(C)&year=2013

MIKE THERE'S STILL TIME FOR YOU TO LEARN!

[Apostrophe Spacemonkey]

MS Paint!



In a water cooled system, the water blocks are always going to be cooler then the chips they are connected to, so they will only draw heat away.

With the Mac Pro, we have the case where the chip will be cooler then the heatsink (i.e it's idle), and heat from the warmer heatsink would be transferred to the chip.

Unless Apple have done some technical magic to stop this.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]7909[/ATTACH]

[mycoolcar]

I don't think you understand my point.

Lets say the radiator is large enough to dissipate the heat of one chip at 100% load, but not three. What would happen then? The water going back to the chips would not be able to take the heat away from the chips, the waterblock would eventually heat up and shit would break, right?

Which is the same as what would happen if the heatsink in the apple pro was not big enough. If its too small to dissipate the heat, shit will break. But if the heatsink is massively huge, then it will work fine. Same as with a watercooling system, if the radiator is too small, the heat wont leave the system fast enough, and shit will break.

[Bounty Hunter]

I don't think you understand my point.

Lets say the radiator is large enough to dissipate the heat of one chip at 100% load, but not three. What would happen then? The water going back to the chips would not be able to take the heat away from the chips, the waterblock would eventually heat up and shit would break, right?

Which is the same as what would happen if the heatsink in the apple pro was not big enough. If its too small to dissipate the heat, shit will break. But if the heatsink is massively huge, then it will work fine. Same as with a watercooling system, if the radiator is too small, the heat wont leave the system fast enough, and shit will break.

Well they're both performing work in exchange for heat, but in that respect they're the same as a car engine.

And it is effectively the same amount of work to remove 3x 35 degrees as it is to remove 20 + 35 + 50, except in the latter watercooled system your system performance doesn't suffer from shared temperatures.

[mycoolcar]

The temperatures are shared though, because the item cooling them in each example is all one and the same.

In the w/c loop it's the water + radiator.
In the Apple Pro it's the heatsink.

A single water loop operates in much the same way as a single heatsink for multiple chips.

[BerG]

Dafuq with all this math?

The thing looks cool. Just shut up and buy it.

[Pyromanik]

I guess I could nit pick.

But fuck, it might look like a big fucking butt plug and it still looks better then anything HP etc etc are doing desktop wise.

New Apple Pro.

Look at this poorly built pile of steaming shit. Ugly, and bound to break down and fuck your day right up.

Yeah but when you think about it HP are restricted by ATX format motherboards, which kinda enforce the huge brick layout, and ironically shit expansion capabilities since about any card you stick in a slot prevents almost all the other slots from being used.

eg. mobo advertising "WOW, 6 PCIe slots!" but you jam 2 gfx cards in there and boom, you can't put them in the first 2 slots because south bridge cooling is in the way, then you can't use the first slot because it's a mini slot, and every other card you wanna stick in the second slot (like sound) comes far too uncomfortably close to your first GFX, or is blocked by dual sided heatsink on it.

So 6 slots become 0 once you get the standard 2x GPU going on.