Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “18-core iMac Pro Review: Not a Trap!”.
So this is the imac pro it’s apple’s. First true pro desktop workstation in years, and it’s pretty damn good. So i made my first impressions, video of the new imac pro using somewhere. What i’d call like a mid-tier imac pro? It was the 10 core.
The total price ran around 10 grand for that machine. The imac pro starts at about 5 000 bucks on launch day, though i did order what would be the highest end available, imac pro spec configured with the intention of making it my full daily driver, i’m gon na give it a shot and replace the mac pro. So that’s what this is turns out to be the 18 core xeon cpu 128 gigs of ram the 16 gig vegas 64 and a 4 terabyte ssd, and all that runs around 13 000 bucks, and i have actually really liked it.
So, a couple months ago i was wondering if imac pro was a trap. I was thinking i would try it, and it would just be my interim machine until that fully modular new mac pro comes out maybe this year, and that may still be true. But after using this, i can really say that i can highly recommend imac pro – maybe not this 18 core one, but this is one of my favorite new apple products in a really long time. So, of course, anyone considering buying one will want to know. Why should i get an imac pro over a regular high-end imac? You know you can get a maxed out 5k imac with a core i7 64 gigs of ram all of that for about five grand. So why pay more for this? So this is everything that’s different about this deceivingly different beast, the imac pro, so the outside dimensions are exactly the same as a normal imac, which means same 5k display, but also same big bezels and same huge chin and same non-adjustable stand. So you know part of the reason i was looking forward to the new mac pro is because i’ve never really been a huge fan of the way the imac looks. I’D rather use my own monitor. I actually prefer dual monitors and a matte finish, but that’s not to say this 5k display here is bad.
In fact, it’s excellent, it’s one of the best and it always has been, but here’s what is new number one, the space gray. Obviously i think it’s hot. I would love an even more like matte black undertone, but i know we’re not getting that so. For now i can appreciate the space gray paint the space gray keyboard, the black buttons, the track pad the black, lightning, cable, black apple stickers, even all the stuff that you can only get with an imac pro. It doesn’t save the magic mouse from dumb design, but you know at least now it’s better looking so number two.
The built-in speakers of the imac pro are actually significantly louder and fuller and better than a regular imac. Now you may or may not care about that. If you’re a pro user, you probably don’t use the built-in speakers, obviously don’t. I use an audio device to my external speakers and i also have this little satechi little hub here that plugs and gets my ports around the front and goes right into the speaker.
But if you do use the built-in speakers, that’s a nice bonus and speaking of ports. Of course, number three is those ports, so the imac pro has a 2018 workstation suite of high performance. I o has four full-size usb 3.0 ports: four thunderbolt 3 usb-c ports, an sd card reader, a headphone jack and 10 gigabit ethernet, which is pretty huge for networking professionals right there, i’m currently using most of these ports on mine. So for my external storage, the pegasus, the audio device, the red mag reader – things like that, but i have a couple left over.
So i haven’t found that i need more ports. But if i added another 5k monitor, which you can do, that would fill my thunderbolt 3 ports, but so far, i’m all right. Now again, it is an all-in-one, but technically it’s an all-in-one desktop and for any desktop i got ta say i usually want the ports to be pretty easily within reach. So that’s yet another reason why i’d prefer a mac pro but i’ll link to this little satechi hub. I got right below that like button. If you want more info on it and i’ll also link the 12 south stand, i have mine on as well.
I’Ve talked about them before in my setup, tour video, but there’s that so number four is the built-in webcam. So it’s not rocking this 1080p facetime camera, which you know this is also better than a normal imac. But it’s not that great. I mean we still have these incredible cameras. These 4k optically stabilized cameras in this little device here, but in this entire bezel of this whole imac pro i’m looking at this is the best i could fit.
Apparently not a big deal so number five is the vents and the cooling. This is pretty minor, but imac pro is dead silent even with a heavy edit going on in final cut pro or a massive amount of multitasking. It seems like apple’s pretty into keeping the fan speed low on this thing. I’Ve heard it speed up, maybe twice ever while using it and both of those times were during rendering and final cut. So the slot at the bottom is air intake and the vents at the top near the stand are where the hot air is blowing out. Some people have definitely mentioned that. It seems like the angle of the imac stand, would take the hot air output and bounce it back into the cool air vent. But i’ve never found that the fan spins fast enough to move the hot air out that fast, so just kind of hot air, just kind of rises and the cold air intake takes in whatever’s at your desk level. And that brings us to number six, the one that really matters the internals like i mentioned this is a maxed out imac pro here.
So this is the 18 core xeon w workstation chip, the 128 gigs of error, correcting memory 16 gigabytes of memory. On that vega, 64 gpu and the 4 terabyte ssd workstation grade parts, and also something that doesn’t get talked about as much is the t2 chip which is new to the imac pro. But that integrates a bunch of the smaller, formerly discrete controllers, into one like the camera’s image, processor, encrypted storage, etc and with the performance i feel like. I’Ve actually noticed a major difference in the way it feels both in heavy everyday projects and in the day-to-day, which is not something i thought i would now.
You can look at benchmarks and obviously the 18 core xeon and all the high-end specs are going to destroy a regular i7 and all of those and obviously outperform a little bit. Something like a custom built pc, but just in the way i’ve been using it. And it’s kind of like the eye test. I’Ve noticed it feels faster, which is awesome.
A lot of the most intensive work i do in the studio, of course, is video editing and that’s actually pretty gpu heavy, which matters more in final cut. Pro imac pro flies through this stuff, like an imac or even my trashcan mac pro, never quite could and of course, every imac. I’Ve tried has had vega 64., so that’s important, but cutting through and playing back 8k red code at 12 to 1 or even 8. To 1 compression on the timeline would a macbook pro.
It would just kind of chug, along with a lot of drop frames on any old mac pro, but it plays through almost like pro res on this imac pro. This is in the better performance mode. Obviously, but i can add effects colors layer stuff on top and it plays it back smoothly. After maybe, a split second of buffering, which is awesome, it makes video editing feel a lot better. It feels easier in a weird way, so from top to bottom performance has been great.
You know the bottom just being swapping around the ui and just web browsing in safari and chrome all the way up to the most demanding work. Imac pro has absolutely been worth. It for what i’ve put it through, so we actually have this kind of a unscientific scale for measuring render times and videos out of final cut pro.
We measure it in how many games of rocket league we can play before it’s done, exporting so finishing an 8k raw project transcoding and down to 4k on the trashcan mac pro, for example, uh. Would you know you hit the render button and then you head over to the ps4 boot it up fire up rocket league and we get in two to three full games of rocket league before we turn around and it’s done rendering and we can upload. We got the 10 core imac pro in here and it was the same thing you’d hit render and then you go over and fire up the ps4 get to rocket league and we’d get like one full game, but by the middle of the second game. You turn around and this thing is done already: the 18 core imac pro.
This literally happened we hit render, and then we went over the ps4 and booted it up and there was like a little software update for rocket league. So we fired that up and before that even finished before we even got to start playing. This was done exporting the video, but even when it all goes normally everything boots and you fire up rocket league we’ll get in maybe one game before you turn around and it’s done and ready to upload damn that is immensely satisfying, because now you you actually know That only the most major most intense projects will actually take a long time to render and more normal videos that are just a couple minutes. Long won’t take forever. So if it isn’t already clear by now, i really like the new imac pro a lot more than i thought i would. I am fully aware that, yes, you can build a pc with a bit more for a bit less.
You can customize the tower infinitely more of course, as a matter of fact, i still plan on moving on to a fully modular desktop mac pro when it eventually does come out, but now that imac pro exists as a product and i’ve used it, i can comfortably Recommend it to what i would consider graphics, professionals and final cut editors alike. It’S the elegant, clean super, powerful space, gray, all-in-one machine, it’s it’s the imac! I always wanted at the end of the day. This is my new full-time, daily use and editing machine for everything.
Uh for now, obviously, i’m willing to deal with the bigger bezels and the non-upgradable display and the totally sealed internals, because the performance is that good at the end of the day, that’s what i’m paying for, if you are a final cut pro editor as a professional. This is worth it: 100, no brainer, if you’re a pro using some other suite of apps, like maybe the adobe suite or something else consider if you can get away with doing all the things you do now on a regular high-end, imac or not. So if you’re in adobe, like the premiere suite or after effects, maybe not, this would definitely benefit or if you’re, in, like maya or maxthon again, you’ll benefit a lot here. But if you’re in motion or maybe something else, maybe not. But my last piece of advice. If, if you’re, considering buying an imac pro and you’re trying to think about where to save money, where you should upgrade because it’s not an upgradable machine, i would say: go with the 10 core. If you can only upgrade one thing, that seems to be the sweet spot in terms of cores versus clock speed.
Obviously, it’s not appealing to be stuck with the same amount of ram forever like you are with an imac pro, but i think the 64 gigs of the base model is actually enough for a lot of people and then, of course, if you can find the room To upgrade one more thing, i would highly suggest the gpu upgrading to the vega 64.. That’S where a lot of the big improvements with performance with final cut pro and just with moving around the os in general, swiping, back and forth between spaces. That’S all been improved with that, so all that being said, imac pro turns out to actually be a pretty good buy, especially if you’re in the categories i described all that also being said modular mac pro. This has me a lot more excited for that either way.
That’S been it. Let me know what you think, thanks for watching talk to you guys, the next one peace .