

Ask HN: Mac pro alternatives - deathflute

I want to get high-end workstation at home for doing data analysis/simulation over large financial datasets, but 4000$K for the latest 6-core seems a little much too me especially considering the capabilities of cloud based computing these days.<p>However, as much as I want to do everything at amazon I still feel the need for a powerful workstation at home.<p>So what are some worthy alternatives? Preferably, it comes installed with ubuntu and is quiet.
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paranoiacomplex
What is your budget for this machine? I have been looking at high-end
workstation / server configurations for my own use, and for around $1000 for
the motherboard and process one can have the essentials for a 12 core machine:

[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182240)
(SUPERMICRO MBD-H8SGL-O Socket G34 motherboard for $244.99)
[http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105267)
(AMD Opteron 6168 Socket G34 115W 12-Core Server Processor for $769.00)

Total: $1013.99

That motherboard comes with onboard video and dual gigabit ethernet. The only
other things required are a case, power supply, some RAM, and some sort of
storage. All of this will be a lot less than $4000.

~~~
deathflute
I would say 2500$ for a non-apple machine. Yes, building my own is definitely
an option, but time is of the essence, so I prefer buying. If I had to
allocate a weekend between building this machine or hacking, I would have to
go with the latter.

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davidw
Dell with Ubuntu. Not exciting and sexy and whatnot, but powerful (configure
it how you want) and gets the job done.

~~~
sushi
I'd have suggested Dell too, two years ago. Not anymore.

The build quality of Dell is not worth money against the likes of Lenovo
Thinkpads which seem to never get old and are sturdy enough to last years.

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m0nastic
I'm actually a fan of the HP Z600 Workstations. You can get dual-processor
six-core Xeons, and unlike the Mac Pro, you can start with one CPU (and pick
up a second one at a later time).

The case is pretty well-designed, and it's quiet.

~~~
deathflute
I have one of the older HP workstations under me at work. I agree they are
quite nice. It is definitely an option but with the prices about the same, I
am a little biased towards apple.

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hasenj
System 76

I got a Core-i7 (quad core with hyper threading, the OS sees 8 CPUs), 8GB of
RAM, 164GB SSD, for about $2000

Yes, it comes with Ubuntu pre-installed.

You can get it a bit cheaper with a regular hard drive, but if you're craving
the performance, go for the SSD.

~~~
deathflute
I was looking at those. Do you have any experience with them?

~~~
hasenj
Yea it's my main laptop at home.

I got the Pangolin model, it's not slim, it's probably thicker than a typical
Macbook.

Performance wise, it's great. Although my judgement is probably not reliable
because the only thing I have to compare against is a 4 year old laptop with a
dual core centrino processor.

Usability-wise, there are a few things:

* Keys like ctrl-pageup aren't easily accessible. That's common to all laptops > 14", which is unfortunate. I got around that by configuring the terminal emulator to switch tabs with Ctrl-Shift-H and Ctrl-Shift-L. (On the other hand, none of the macbooks I've seen has the home/end/page-up/page-down readily accessible either).

* The trackpad goes crazy sometimes. This is a given for most laptops (well, except Macbooks). I use touchfreeze to mitigate that.

* The microphone is right next to the trackpad, not good for recording a live streamcast, unless you have an external wireless mouse.

* The proprietry ATI driver is not that good, the open-source driver is better. (I found it somewhat ironic). Nvidia would've probably been better. HD videos don't necessarily play as smoothly as I'd imagined they would. You'll see some tearing on xfce, but gnome on compiz looks fine.

It does generate a lot of heat so I try not to put it on my lap a lot.

But don't let that discourage you.

It's a great laptop, it's not too heavy and it's got a LED screen, which means
the picture will look good regardless of your viewing angle.

While not as pretty as a Macbook, it does have a clean and elegant design.

I wouldn't exactly recommend it as an entertainment platform, but that's not
why I bought it. I bought it because I wanted a powerful machine that's not
too bulky. I wanted a machine that I can move around, get work done on it, and
have it be powerful so that it doesn't slow me down.

It can run virtual machines without sacrificing performance (that's a big
one).

It can apt-get install stuff without taking too long to read the database (my
old laptop used to spend a long time in "(Reading database ....").

It can run tons of programs without ever slowing down. In fact I can't
remember it ever slowing down or becoming unresponsive, which is something
that I'm not used to.

The SSD really does make a difference. Say goodbye to the sound of the
spinning hard disk. (Although you still can't say goodbye to the sound of the
fan)

~~~
deathflute
Thanks for your detailed response!

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garply
You can't get a 6-core Mac pro, can you?

Actually, I'm in the market for a new Mac, as I need to do some iPhone dev.
Does anyone find the non-replaceable battery to be an issue? That seemed like
a real turn-off to me.

Anyone have Hackintosh experience? If I have >2 cores on a Hackintosh, will OS
X recognize do proper thread scheduling? How stable are Hackintosh builds?

~~~
jeroen
I think you're confusing these:

<http://www.apple.com/macpro/>

<http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/>

~~~
garply
Thanks, I didn't realize they called the desktop a Mac Pro. I had actually
forgotten they built desktops.

Actually, I guess that answers my question about threading in Hackintoshes
too.

~~~
deathflute
My co-worker has a hackintosh laptop. It is not bad, but every time he updates
something, he has to spend time tinkering with it. If you don't mind doing
that, you could try that option.

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PonyGumbo
Why not build your own?

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pilom
ibuypower.com usually has pretty good deals for high end machines. Decent
build quality and they are throwing in free liquid cooling right now.

