How upgradeable is the new MAC PRO?

[Medavoym]

Now that the dust has settled a little bit... what is the general consensus regarding the possibilities to upgrade the new trashcan MAC PRO down the line?

Can you physically upgrade the video cards? Processors? Anything else besides just the RAM?

I'd like to invest in one, but if the options for upgrading later on are severely limited, I will have to weigh my options.

Do we know more about this issue?

Thanks!

 

[Kwan Khan]

Processor Install Video

 

[Shiblon Wixom]

By the time you would want to upgrade the CPU the whole system would need to be replaced to keep up with overall performance, most Mac products are on a 3-5 yr cycle before basically becoming obsolete or disposable. Apple has mostly embraced the philosophy of integrated electronics, which have obvious advatages and disadvantages, such as lower cost and more compact designs.

 

[Antony Newman]

I believe that Intel's next generation 14nm CPUs will come to the Mac Pro in the tail end of 2016.
I expect future CPUs with a similar number of cores will only achieve a 40% increase in speed - Ie not that much.

For software to run Multiple times faster - SOFTWARE:
+) Must be rewritten to efficiently break down activities into multiple threads to spread over the CPU cores.
+) Must be rewritten - where possible - to make of Both x Mac Pro GPUs.
+) When Apple upgrade their version of GPU language from OPENCL 1.2 to 2.0 - the GPUs will be able to instigate new work (without the CPUs needing to 'feed' them).

Based on this 'logic' I have just bought:
+) TB2 RAID (Areca 8050T2) - should be fast enough for all data read & write needs at 6K
+) 4c New Mac Pro min spec -> 64GB OWC mem from B&H
+) 10c 3GHz chip -> should have enough grunt to feed the dual GPUs, and when not using every core, is faster then the 12c Apple offering.
+) RRX -> this will offload a chunk of CPU/GPU processing on todays Mac Pro - and any future Mac processing the 6K footage.

I don't expect I'll be upgrading the nMP at all beyond this point.
In 2017 - I'll move the RAID & RRX to the the next shiny Apple compute device.

AJ

Edit : Processor and Memory upgrade took me 3 hours. 1 hour of which was trying to find a T5,T8 & T10 torx set!
One suggestion - when putting the last 10 screws into the top and bottom ... screw the power supply in an keep wiggling Before you tighten any other of ones.
I managed to shear one of the threads trying to Pull the power supply into alignment (it was only about 1/2 mm out)

 

[Marc Wielage]

Now that the dust has settled a little bit... what is the general consensus regarding the possibilities to upgrade the new trashcan MAC PRO down the line?

OWC has indicated that the processor is upgradeable (though you have to almost completely disassemble the computer to get to it), the RAM is easily upgradeable, and the SSD will be upgradeable as soon as the sticks are available (supposedly by in about 60-90 days).

http://blog.macsales.com/22188-owc-confirms-mac-pro-2013-processor-upgradeable

http://www.anandtech.com/show/7673/owc-to-bring-aftermarket-sf3700-pcie-ssd-upgrades-to-2013-macs

http://blog.macsales.com/21980-owc-...avings-of-up-to-37-vs-factory-upgrade-options

Surprisingly, the nMP's are among the "most upgradeable" Mac Pros in a long time. There are some issues, but given Apple's past reputation, this is a step in the right direction.