Buying a new dream tower at work. Look over the specs for me and see if I am missing something.

[M A V I C]

Unless you really have to upgrade now, I'd wait. Seriously. That machine hasn't been updated in a long time. Almost no matter what route they take, the next version should be a significant step up.

Also, I wouldn't get the drives from Apple. I'd look at 2TB drives as some of them are much faster than 1TB drives. If you do a RAID1, keep in mind you double your chance of system failure. So you could do 2x1TB for the RAID1, then have a second drive it clones to as a local fully system backup.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

I would wait a couple of weeks until the six core Mac Pro machines come out.

http://buyersguide.macrumors.com/#Mac_Pro


Hopefully Apple will include new video card upgrades since the Radeon 5870 has been out for several months. The NVIDIA Quadro FX 4800 for Mac by PNY is a waste since a Mac flashed GTX285 is as fast for most things.

Money no option, I would get two Solid State Drives and put them in RAID 0 (already been done on a MacBook Pro), in addition to a pair of standard hard drives in RAID 0 for large local storage.

[Racer X]

as cool as network admins like to think a tape back-up system is, I'd just get a massive 2 TB external drive, and back-up to it every night, creating a bootable mirror of the machine. Getting IT to get you back up and running from tape can take days. OR you can boot from your back-up drive in about 2 minutes.

[clay]

weapon wrote:
If I add the raid, how should I configure the drives? I am not sure how they need to be purchased by size for the raid to be set up correctly.

Do I set it up like this?
Drive 1- 1TB
Drive 2- 1TB
Drive 3- 2TB

Or do they all have to be the same size?

I've since upgraded my drive setup on my mac pro (video editing machine, primarily), but I started out with 2 drives in a striped RAID array where I stored all my video assets (scratch/capture drive for FCP), then one drive for my project files (FCP files, PSD's, scripts, audio assets, motion projects, etc), and one drive for my OS and Apps. The setup was plenty quick for my needs.

I've since upgraded to an external eSATA tower (8-bay), and I've moved my scratch/capture drive to that (4 drive RAID), and I've added in a Time Machine and mirrored backup for my OS and "Projects" drives.

[mikebw]

Definitely get the Radeon 4870. It is more powerful than the GT120. No reason to skimp on that given how much the rest is going to cost.

[mattkime]

maybe someone can chime in on raiding for speed, otherwise your backup system isn't going to get much better than superduper.

a UPS for that beast?
dual 30" monitors?

gold plated bluetooth ports?

[jdc]

Im with Mavic and Muffman.

Wait.

Also agree with the "money no option" = SSD RAID 0 boot drive, nothing can touch that for speed

OWCs new drives got some impressive reviews at barefeats and diglloyod:

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/internal_..._Sandforce


And wireless? WTH would you ever use wireless?

iWork? for what?

[weapon]

There are lots of reasons i can't wait. I want to and I am dragging my feet as long as possible but we are bringing in more designers and vidoe guys and we need machines. I get to hand down my Dual-Core Intel 3 GHz Xeon Processors and 30" monitor for this new unit. That site has been saying don't buy for 6 months. The way Apple trickles out the updates it could be another 6 months before a new box is released. I can't wait that long.

Iwork: Our execs are now all switching from power point to keynote. They have discovered that their boring slides can look even better but equally boring with keynote.

Wireless is for a internet work around because our macs are not directly connect to the network and have no online access without it. Security reasons.

[mattkime]

>>Security reasons.

[TheCaber]

indeed