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00:00Hey what's up guys, MTBHD here, and this is the new, the newest 2020 cheese grater Mac Pro.
00:12There's a lot of things that I could say about this from the couple months that I've been
00:14using it, but mainly they boil down to three main things.
00:18One, it's extremely well made, to the point of like over-engineered almost.
00:23Two, it's modular, finally.
00:26And three, it's really fast.
00:28Now my typical review video for a piece of tech that's really good ends with something
00:31like, it's really good, you should buy it.
00:34But with this, even though it's quite good, it's more along the lines of, you probably
00:38shouldn't buy it, most people will never need this, but I'm really glad they made it.
00:45So this of course is the newest, highest end Mac ever made, and the max price that you
00:50can pay for it also makes it the most expensive Mac ever made, and you might remember everyone
00:54had a good time with their headlines with that.
00:56It's more than just that, it's the highest end and most modular tower computer Apple's
01:01made in years, and that's something that people like me were waiting very patiently, a very
01:06long time for.
01:07So, everything about the design of the Mac Pro, and I mean everything, from the inside
01:11out, is really well done, but like to the point of over-engineered, like it's unnecessary.
01:18It's the most over-engineered desktop tower I've ever seen.
01:20And most of this over-engineering is in the name of aesthetics and noise.
01:24So you might remember Apple sort of showed the world how much they really care about
01:28aesthetics and noise when they tried to make the last Mac Pro a tiny cylinder on your desk
01:34cooled entirely by one big fan at the top, but that didn't go so well.
01:38So while they are now finally back to making the modular tower form fact that we were waiting
01:42for, that did not stop them from making possibly the cleanest, quietest desktop computer possible.
01:49Like the cheese grater design with the holes up front and the mesh piece behind it, it
01:53is weird looking to the point where it's like unmistakable, you know, kind of like
01:56some other Apple products this year, but it's also an airflow design as much as anything.
02:01You see, the entire Mac Pro, when you take the shell off and look inside, is designed
02:05to be passively air-cooled.
02:08There isn't much of fans on any of the internal components, there's no liquid cooling, there's
02:12just three huge blowers at the front, one here back near the rear, and a bunch of heat
02:17pipes on everything.
02:18So the entire chassis is designed to pass as much airflow through the system as possible
02:22to cool everything.
02:23But airflow is not quiet, and even fans like these are not typically quiet by themselves,
02:28and if you have all three fans like this spinning at the same rate, they sort of amplify
02:33each other and make this whine that you'll probably hear.
02:36Now a lot of PCs do this, and this is fine, but Apple decided to make this computer quieter.
02:40They'd spin each of the fans at a slightly different rate so that they wouldn't all match.
02:45But even when you do that, you sometimes end up with harmonics that sort of amplify some
02:49of the sounds and still make it audible.
02:52So Apple's fan controller literally modulates the speed of each one of these fans and ramps
02:58them up and down so that they never match and are never steady, so that you never hear
03:03it.
03:04And it works.
03:05Another thing you might notice when the system is open is, well, number one, you can't open
03:08the Mac Pro unless you unplug everything from the back, including power, which is kind of
03:12annoying, but I guess not a huge deal.
03:14Anyway, you get it open, and you don't see any cables.
03:20There is not one single exposed cable anywhere in the Mac Pro as you get it from Apple.
03:26Now there's headers to plug stuff in if you want, but all the first-party stuff just plugs
03:30right in with strategically placed pins.
03:32So in Apple's ideal world, everything everyone makes is compatible as NPX modules, and they
03:37just slide in just like theirs, keeping the world clean, matte black, and easily modular.
03:43The only tool you need to do most of the adjustments inside is a single Phillips-head
03:46screwdriver, and then to take stuff out, you unlock this big sliding full-height PCI slot
03:52lock.
03:53That, they didn't have to do, but they did, and it's sweet.
03:56And they labeled everything, so if you don't know exactly what you're doing, they've numbered
04:00the parts in the order that you should remove them to have everything slide in and out easily.
04:04So one is the thumb screws on the side.
04:07Don't need a screwdriver for those.
04:08You can just literally unscrew them to take off the bracket.
04:11Two is the bridge between the modules, so if you have more than one, this just needs
04:15one screw.
04:16You just pop it straight off.
04:18Three is the screws on the other side, and you can see they're still connected to the
04:21bracket with a spring, so they're not loose screws, so you can't lose them without losing
04:25the whole bracket.
04:27And you get that off, and then the last step is the very satisfying lever to pull out
04:32of the PCI slot, and then your NPX module is free.
04:36Now these NPX modules inside also have no fans in them, which means they're passively
04:40air-cooled, and they rely very heavily on the airflow going through those front three
04:43fans and the heat sinks, and that has its pros and cons.
04:46The pro being, no extra fans means no extra noise, but they also tend to be thicker than
04:51most normal parts because the huge heat sinks are bigger than just putting in more fans.
04:56I mean, look at the size of this GPU versus a typical high-end graphics card.
05:01But hey, that's what they've built it around.
05:03And they've even labeled the underside of the RAM cover for instructions on where to
05:07seat your memory, depending on how many sticks you have, so you can take best advantage of
05:11this multi-channel memory we're working with here.
05:13A lot of this stuff, they just straight up didn't have to do.
05:16So they've clearly paid a lot of attention to fit and finish, so how about performance?
05:20Because that's why you get a computer like this at the core.
05:23And for me, it's been excellent, noticeably better for me even than the maxed-out 18-core
05:29$12,000 iMac Pro that I came from before I was using this.
05:33Now, here are my Mac Pro's specs, so the machine that I've been editing on these last
05:38few videos you've been watching were made with.
05:40And if you check through those options on Apple's site, you will see that I've given
05:44Apple north of $40,000 of my own dollars for a computer.
05:51So yeah, Christ, it should perform a lot better than any iMac or any all-in-one ever.
05:55Now again, most people will never need parts like this.
05:59I am a Final Cut Pro editor, that's my pro-level workflow, that's why I need the speed and
06:05power of these pieces, and for that, it has been incredible, as I've noted with workflow
06:10examples in the past.
06:11And I think animators, maybe high-end photographers can take advantage of the power of the Mac
06:17Pro, but if most people watching this, you know, video makers, YouTubers even, if it's
06:22not 4K, you don't even need a base Mac Pro.
06:26So just know that, we have a couple other Mac Pros in the studio, and the one that
06:30I'm using, those are my specs, but we've tested a bunch of different ones.
06:33I won't bore you with the benchmarks, if you want a proper benchmark-filled video with
06:37comparisons, I will link Linus Tech Tips, his video, he did a great job and you should
06:41check that out for his Mac Pro review, this thing is clearly powerful.
06:44It is definitely not more than I can ever use though, it's not invincible.
06:48For all intents and purposes, I have a maxed-out Mac Pro, aside from the 768 gigs of RAM, which
06:55could be doubled, but essentially this is the best computer Apple's ever made, and
06:59you can still watch it crawl to a halt.
07:00All you gotta do is shoot an 8K red clip at a low compression ratio, maybe something
07:04like 5 to 1, then import it onto any large timeline, 4K or 8K, suit yourself, set playback
07:09to high quality, press play, and then observe as the Mac Pro slowly starts to choke, drop
07:16frames and become unusable.
07:19You can imagine though how like a MacBook Pro or an iMac or iMac Pro would have handled
07:24that even worse.
07:25But I wanna talk about that afterburner card for a minute though because that to me is
07:29really interesting.
07:30So Apple made a $2,000 PCI decoder card that essentially just decodes ProRes and ProRes
07:39Raw.
07:40So photographers don't need it at all, coders, anyone making apps, developing, don't need
07:44it.
07:45Even if you edit in any other codec other than ProRes or ProRes Raw, you will not benefit
07:50at all from an afterburner card.
07:52But if you do edit ProRes, it will decode those streams and let you effortlessly play
07:56back tons of high res video streams.
07:58I think they've said up to 23 consecutive streams of 4K or 6 8K videos at the same time
08:06while it's basically taking that load off of the CPU.
08:09But I don't edit ProRes, I edit Red Code Raw.
08:12So why did I get an afterburner card?
08:15Well this afterburner card built around FPGA is reprogrammable, meaning Apple and Red
08:20can work together to enable this afterburner to accelerate Red Code playback.
08:25And rumor is this is something that's already in the works.
08:28Now I don't have any proof on my end or any updates that show that that integration has
08:32come to fruition yet, but the potential is definitely there for even bigger video games.
08:36And that potential exists for other codecs too, Canon Raw, Arri Raw, whatever other
08:41stuff you might be shooting that's not ProRes yet, that may eventually be optimized for
08:45the metal and give you huge performance.
08:48So maybe someday in the future I will be able to play back 5 to 1 8K Red Code and it'll
08:54just seamlessly butter through it at high quality.
08:57So overall, to wrap up the Mac Pro, let me put it this way.
09:01It's not just that the Mac Pro is a really expensive computer, it's more that Apple chose
09:08to make a very, very expensive machine in the Mac Pro.
09:12Does that make sense?
09:13Like tons and tons of the choices they've made in this computer would not be found or
09:17even noticed in many other desktop computers.
09:21The completely cable-less interior of the system, pretty sweet but totally unnecessary.
09:26The crazy fan control, the PCI lock that's really satisfying, the system for the MPX
09:31modules, the fact that every button in this Mac Pro is made of metal instead of plastic
09:36and there's pins for them, every single little thing is carefully considered and taken to
09:41the max.
09:42So those other desktop computers are for most people, which is nice, but Apple decided
09:47to make the computer that took no shortcuts and took it to the max with premium things
09:52like build quality and performance.
09:55So I'm happy they did that because I'm in the very, very small sliver of the demographic
10:02where that's exactly what I'm looking for.
10:03The downside is Apple just straight up doesn't make a $1,000 modular desktop tower.
10:10Like that's not a downside of the Mac Pro, that's a downside of Apple.
10:13That's just a product they don't make.
10:14There's a ton of products I wish Apple would make that they just straight up don't.
10:18I wish they would make like a mirrorless camera because they already make some of the best
10:21smartphone cameras out there, but they just don't make a camera.
10:24Desktop speakers, computer speakers, they don't make that.
10:28A multi-device wireless charger, they don't make that either.
10:31So add that to the list.
10:32Like $900 to $1,200 tower that's modular, Apple just doesn't make that either.
10:38But they do make this, a silent killer and I'm really happy with it and I'm really looking
10:43forward to it lasting me hopefully a decade and getting better over time.
10:48That's been it.
10:49Thanks for watching.
10:50Catch you guys in the next one.
10:53Peace.
10:54Also, Apple, the $400 wheels, they're great, but they really need locks.