Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

What can I upgrade in my MAC PRO for better results in FCPX?

Patrick Wieland

Patrick Wieland

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 5, 2011
Messages
497
Reaction score
0
Points
0
Location
Orlando,FL
Currently working on a 2010 Mac Pro. Editing in FCPX and RCX. I am mostly working with 4k files right now and they are slight bit laggy at times. Editing is pretty easy though. I'm going to be upgrading to EPIC soon and need to upgrade my computer to handle 5k better. I'm wondering if there some not too expensive upgrades I can do to get some extra life out of this computer at least for another year. Thinking I might install an SSD for my operating drive.

Setup:

2.8GHZ Quad Core XEON
16gig Ram
ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024
1x4tb HDs
 
Patrick,

Your specs say only one 4tb HDD installed? If this is the case then a SSD as the system drive will yield real results. It was the most effective upgrade I have done on my tower. I went with the 256 gig OWC drives.
 
SSD as system drive helps keep loading up the OS and apps nice and snappy. You should be working with your editing files from a decent RAID setup. Actually running 3 or 4 drives internally as RAID-0 is great, just be sure to keep regular backups. Perhaps some more RAM too. The Mac Pros, and most Xeon systems like this, unfortunately don't show their full potential without both CPUs installed.
 
What's the best RAID system out there? I have the latest 12core Mac Pro with 2 512 SSD's and 2 2TD's with 64 gigs of ram. My next purchase is a rock solid RAID system. Any ideas please let me know thx!
 
The Mac Pro's are setup well for an internal RAID. Really easy and cheap setup. An external Firewire800 drive would be good for backup, but not so great for editing.
 
No don't buy that. That would be a huge bottleneck in the Firewire. You really need to get a RAID controller PCIE card with an external enclosure to match. Or you can do an internal RAID and use a software controller. Some MOBO's come with RAID software, and you can use that if your wanting to do it on the cheap. But it won't be cheap if you lose your clients footage without a backup either.

Patrick Wieland said:
So maybe 32gigs of ram.

Would a Raid 0 Firewire800 external enclosure be any good?
Click to expand...
 
I guess the two big questions are: What is your budget? What sort of performance are you hoping to get? Do realize that those considerations may not be compatible. The OWC unit you link above is not the droid you're looking for. It's just two SATA drives in an external box., no more, no less.
 
well think of it this way, the more drives you get in the raid the better off you are. you can get more speed and more capacity! but you need a fast port to plug it into on your Mac Pro. your mac pro doesn't have one, besides if you get a pci card, no natively fast ports at all on that three year old chassis. so you need SAS or USB3 or Esata to a kick butt Raid to push it really fast. also ssds for apps/pci ssds *even better... none of it comes cheap so you might want to think about it carefully going forward, like looking at it as an investment in data safety. you need an offsite copy too man! prices add up

there are solutions that are plug and play and don't need custom pci cards, just faster ports for them. truthfully you should buy an ssd for starters and run apps on it and edit on that 1 internal drive. buy another internal drive and do time machine backups on some schedule so you can roll back when needed. its super cheap but safe and better then what you use. unless you got the money for 16 bay servers and all these crazy stuff. ps running your apps on a pci ssd if you got a spare slot would run faster

then buy a graid external with say esata, firewire 8, usb3, and do time machines on that too... take it off site besides during back ups...

your data can be safe for cheap, and you can buy a small ssd just for apps
 
Last edited:
i mean all the mac pros, even if i bought one right now just have slow native ports. its not a deal breaker, its overcome by installing a pci slot. i use graids at work and home. at work i hook them through esata, at home on my shisty old mac mini and its firewire 8 (turns 3 years old in 25 minutes, end of applecare, breaks in 26 minutes from now likely lol)

they are plug and play, no specific pci card needed to run them. just grab a big one that has both firewire AND esata (and hopefully usb3 but i dont think they do yet). that way you can hook it up through both...

as for the ssd, they are dirt cheap now compared to before. figure out how big the OS, apps are and put no media on it. for perspective i have cs5, fcp7, avid mc 6, and all the additional stupid plugin presets that come with them installed on my machine and its less then 140gbs for that plus OS and apps.. so pack in an ssd for cheap, and grab a graid. you can do this all for pretty cheap depending how big you go size wise
 
FW800 speeds are between 60-80mb/s read and write. If you are going external RAID go with the fastest possible. You will see a difference in your playback resolution in CS6. Minimum eSATA, then USB 3 has a step up and there are other options.


Here are a few tests with my Mac Pro using external RAID 0 CalDigit Drives.
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...owers-(4-1)-use-USB-3-0&p=1154882#post1154882

Patrick Wieland said:
So maybe 32gigs of ram.

Would a Raid 0 Firewire800 external enclosure be any good?
Click to expand...
 
I love it, I can't wait to buy you a beer one of these days Jeff. Thanks for watching out.

Jeff Kilgroe said:
The OWC unit you link above is not the droid you're looking for.
Click to expand...
 
I have the Caldigit 2x USB 3 2x eSATA Card installed. http://eshop.macsales.com/item/CalDigit/FASTA6GU3/

USB 3 is the fastest connection I use with my RAID 0 external drives. Looking at 170mb/s on average. Again, here are some speed tests results.
http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...owers-(4-1)-use-USB-3-0&p=1154882#post1154882

Not great but a step up and the card is only $60-100.

I wish I had 4 SSDs in my internal bays but unfortunately I spent a ridiculous amount of money on the Apple Raid Card and 3x 450GB SAS 15,000 RPM drives, so I'm riding that investment out for a while until they die.

I'd love to see some speed comparisons with a RAID 0 4x 1TB SSD internal setup.


Brian Merlen said:
well think of it this way, the more drives you get in the raid the better off you are. you can get more speed and more capacity! but you need a fast port to plug it into on your Mac Pro. your mac pro doesn't have one, besides if you get a pci card, no natively fast ports at all on that three year old chassis. so you need SAS or USB3 or Esata to a kick butt Raid to push it really fast. also ssds for apps/pci ssds *even better... none of it comes cheap so you might want to think about it carefully going forward, like looking at it as an investment in data safety. you need an offsite copy too man! prices add up

there are solutions that are plug and play and don't need custom pci cards, just faster ports for them. truthfully you should buy an ssd for starters and run apps on it and edit on that 1 internal drive. buy another internal drive and do time machine backups on some schedule so you can roll back when needed. its super cheap but safe and better then what you use. unless you got the money for 16 bay servers and all these crazy stuff. ps running your apps on a pci ssd if you got a spare slot would run faster

then buy a graid external with say esata, firewire 8, usb3, and do time machines on that too... take it off site besides during back ups...

your data can be safe for cheap, and you can buy a small ssd just for apps
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top