Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Mac Pro Unboxing & Second Impressions: The Power is Back!”.
Yeah, it’s a gas mkbhd here and yeah. Some secrets are harder to keep than others, but this is a good one. So for the past two weeks, I’ve been using the new Mac Pro, which means every video you’ve seen since then, since the MacBook Pro review has been edited on the Mac Pro. Thank you very much for watching catch you later base, but also low-key, though you guys didn’t know about this, but that’s another video, so yeah. This is something I’ve been personally waiting for for the better part of the last six years or so, since the 2013 trashcan Mac Pro came out and in tech years, that’s like forever. So while it’s a bit early to do a full review, I figure I might as well give you my second impressions or my impressions from using it daily for the past two weeks. So the box is clearly really interesting. There’S some velcro on each side. You get past that it’s really sturdy. It does kind of remind me of the original cheese grater Mac Pro box, but a little nicer on one side got your magic keyboard in its own box and on the other side, you have a Magic Mouse, a magic trackpad and a braided black, lightning, cable and I’Ll get back to those in a minute, then the last step to getting it out. The box is gripping it by those top handles and this thing is pretty heavy, it’s solid metal. So I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, but it is very dense and then in the Box we just took it out of on the bottom. You have your designed by Apple in California, pamphlet and underneath that is another braided cable, this one’s the power cable and it’s definitely sturdy and high-quality.
For that 1400 watt power supply and as a matter of fact in with the rest of the Mac Pro paperwork, you do in fact get yes to not one but two gigantic black Apple stickers. These are got to be the biggest Apple stickers I’ve ever seen. Maybe you can put them on your car or something so yeah new Mac Pro and, as you can see, two new protists play XD ours on their nifty thousand dollar stands that I’ve been using for the past two weeks. We saw this already at WWDC and I gave my first impressions there I’ll link it below if you want to rewind that a bit, but this is like a second impressions.
So here’s the specs of this machine that I’ve been using. It’S got a maxed out. 28, core Intel, Xeon, w CPU 384 gigs of 29 33 megahertz RAM and two of the AMD radeon vega, pro 2 MPX modules with 32 gigs of VRAM on each card and then there’s four terabytes of storage and it does have the afterburner card so not maxed. Out but as you can tell very nicely equipped, I probably will end up getting something around this same spec and the 8 terabytes of SSD storage, since that’s just a massive amount of room and probably some more RAM and actually any about this Mac tool on the Mac Pro gives you this visual, now of not only your storage but your DIMM slots of how you’re using the 6 channel RAM, you can see this one’s using half of the slots right now and the PCI slots. So you can see this top. One is Apple’s built-in card, the afterburner card is below it and then the 2 MPX modules, which are double height with the Radeon Pro cards below those and it even shows which unpopulated PCI slots is blocking so to share a few things. We’Ll notice right off the bat first of all the accessories that comes with the mouse, the keyboard, the Magic Trackpad are all black. So, on my desk for a while I’d had the Space, Gray, keyboard and trackpad that came with the iMac pro now you have a black trackpad with a silver base and black bottom and a magic keyboard, that’s black keys with silver base and even the Magic Mouse That it comes with goes from a Space, Gray, top and bottom two silver bottom, with a gloss black top.
Now I don’t know how many people buying a Mac Pro are sticking with the magic keyboard and Magic Mouse, but hey it’s a nice touch and then the thing is just. I know it’s off camera because it’s under my desk right now, but it is built really well and of course, the cheese grater look. We all refer to it, as is very distinctive. There’S like little spheres in the front with circular cutouts on the edges of those spheres.
Hopefully that explains it, but all around tight tolerances, not really any unnecessary gaps anywhere. It’S clean, there’s also an option to get it on wheels in the Apple store. But, as you can see, this one that doesn’t have the wheels just got metal flat feet, but I think I might actually want to get the wheels possibly and then the ports. So, okay, the main accessible ones that are on the top front, are just your two Thunderbolt ports which are next to the power button and the little white glowing power indicator.
That’S pretty basic, then, at the back you get by default to full-size and then two more Thunderbolt ports and a headphone jack, and then each GPU module is given you an HDMI and for more Thunderbolt and then all the way at the bottom next to power is Dual ten gigabit ethernet ports, nice and that’s – not a sarcastic nice either. That’S like actually really useful for me. For me, that’s the superfast internet. We can go wired in and the jellyfish drives that we headed off, but yeah only two full-sized USB ports.
I kind of would have liked to have seen a little bit more than that many many legacy peripherals at this point that a lot of mac pro users continue to use, aren’t updated to USB type-c. Yet so for me, I instantly populated those that was the the receiver for my mouse and the SD card reader. So already that’s full. There was also an internal USB, a port, but I found that when I put the mouse receiver inside it tends to start glitching and sort of get worst reception, so I never really put that inside so yeah not ideal.
I wish there were like two more USB. A ports on the back there – maybe I should just get another USB C card reader, because at this point this is my only USB type-c card reader and I kind of hate that anyway, okay opening up the Mac Pro is really as simple as it looks. There are no thumb screws like normal cases, it’s just a huge twist latch at the top rotate it half way and the entire shell slides off cleanly exposing the insides simple. As that.
So that’s where, on one side, you can see the motherboard the top containers on the right side here hold the RAM and then, if you flip it around, you can see. There’S your PCI slots, the big MPX modules with the graphics cards at the bottom and on the long afterburner card right above them and a CPU and the heatsink for it are up at the top. And you can also see that internal full-sized USB a port right above Apple’s built-in card, so I have two main takes that I’ve noticed from using this computer for the past two one. It’S really quiet and two it’s really fast.
The quietness is pretty objective. I mean you can put it it’s four feet from the mic right now and you can’t really hear it, but in a normal office environment, it’s not the loudest thing in any room. Hard drives are louder than it any fans. Anything else in the area is louder.
It’S very quiet. I don’t keep it on my desk because there’s not enough room with the speakers, but I could and I’d be fine really. The main reason it’s so quiet is because they’ve minimized fans there’s really just in this Mac Pro one fan for the power supply on one side and then three large fans at the front just blowing air through all the time. So there’s no dedicated water, cooling pump or CPU cooler, fan or GPU fans, or anything separate like that.
Everything inside is passively cooled and just depends on the airflow coming through from the three big fans at the front. That’S what makes that cheesegrater hole, design so important. It’S really an airflow design and that’s also something to keep an eye on down the road. And it’s also potentially concerned, as Linus mentioned in his first impressions, video of dust getting in because there is no obvious air filter in front of or behind any of these fans.
I like that it doesn’t intake air from the bottom. That means I can put it on any carpeted surface and be fine, but we have to keep an eye on dust that might eventually make its way into the Machine and affect thermals we’ll see, but also yeah. It’S really fast, as you would expect, from something with 28 cores and 384 gigs of RAM here’s the geek bench score. You know it’s great. It’S the highest I’ve ever seen on any computer love that I also did a black magic disk speed test and as you’d expect from the internal SSD three gigabytes per second again hilariously fast. But if I can just hold off on benchmarks for a minute the main place, I’m noticing the difference is the main place where my workflow is heavy.
The main reason I wanted a Mac Pro and that’s in video editing. So for me, that’s Final Cut Pro. So if you remember the the rendering speed test, I did in the MacBook Pro review. I’Ve rendered out this clip from red raw, and I had my times for the MacBook Pro and the iMac Pro well.
I couldn’t tell you guys in that video, but I also tested the Mac Pro on that same test. So the render speeds for this MacBook Pro were about 20 minutes they’re under speed for the iMac Pro brought it all the way down to around 11 minutes and MacPro did that same test and exported it in four minutes and 20 seconds Wow just for some reference. For some people who might not appreciate that that’s exporting that’s transcoding, an 8k red code clip I typically shooting around an 8 to 1 compression ratio, as I did with the test. Clip 2 to 1 aspect ratio, no background rendering and just went straight through in faster than real time. So it was a 5 minute clip on the timeline exported the whole thing in less time than it would take to just watch that clip so yeah.
That’S pretty great, I will get much more into detail in performance and how well it does in the full review which will be coming later and if you guys have more suggestions for different ways that you want me to test it. That’S welcome in the comments section below specific workflows and things like that. But I’ve been very happy with the performance and none of this has even been taking advantage of the afterburner card. Yet because that’s optimized for pro res footage and playback I’ve been shooting in our 3d read raw, but I will of course give this shot with pro res footage for the full review as well. That’S what it’s made to streamline, but in the meantime I am super pumped about Mac Pro.
My two weeks with it have been relatively pain-free just setting everything up again, I’m interested in what you want to see in the for review, but my take is. This is one of those tools that I’m just excited about as a creator. I feel like at this point you know 2019 2020. It takes a lot to get me inspired as a creator, because the tools I have in my disposal are so unlimited like there’s no way.
I can take this camera to its full potential, but I was pretty consistently pushing the iMac pro the fastest machine. That runs Final Cut Pro to its full potential. So it’s not like magic. It’S not like having this Mac Pro is going to make my videos better or make anyone’s videos better, but it’s just it’s it’s sort of a Headroom unlocker.
Essentially, it pulls down the barrier for what I’m willing to try as a creator because of power or speed or time, and I think for a lot of other workflows. This represents the same thing so yeah. Thank you Apple for making this, and thank you for watching this. Second prescience. Video definitely be sure to get subscribed to see the full review when it comes out. If you haven’t already and uh looking forward to seeing your comments, chat with, you gather the next one base, .