February 4th, 2010 – First the 27 inch iMacs and their yellow screen problems, now comes word that the Nehalem Mac Pros have overheating problems, specifically when handling audio processing. Gizmodo reports that the processors use up to 20% of their capacity handling the audio, as well as get 15-20% hotter than normal. This happens even if you use a separate sound card.

The new i7 Mac Pros are coming soon, so if you’ve been thinking of putting down the cash for a Mac Pro, you might want to wait to see if Apple fixes the problem with the new batch. Or you could think about building your own hackintosh.

via Gizmodo

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 4th, 2010 at 7:44 pm.
Categories: Asides, Gear.

4 Comments, Comment or Ping

  1. Ralph K

    I have been thinking about buying a mac. I currently use a quad pc and I had plenty of trouble. However, with the new win 7 and the most stable daw for pc; Studio One….I have to reconsider. Perhaps the pc is catching up. I am sure mas is a better computer, however….is it worth paying double for it?

    Feb 5th, 2010

  2. Jason Burns

    Had an interesting experience and I guess I ended up double lucky. I ordered a 27″ iMac to replace my aging 24″ iMac. I don’t really use this machine for audio much (have a 2008 Octo Mac Pro for that) but after having a two week delay, reading the reports, then getting another delay tacked on, I canceled the order and bought quad core 2008 Mac Pro off of Craigslist. Looks like I might have dodged two bullets :)

    Feb 5th, 2010

  3. Sean

    @Ralph K: If you’re happy with Windows 7 (and I hear it’s quite good), and you’re using Studio One, you might not want to switch to the Mac. Almost all audio software except for Logic is also made for the PC platform, including many titles not available to Mac users. PC’s can be built to be as stable as Macs for audio work, and at a much lower cost. I personally use Macs, not necessarily for the hardware, but because I like OSX, and because I know Logic well. So if you save some money and build yourself a great PC, I’m sure you’ll be just as happy. If you want to try out OSX, you could always dual boot an OSX “hackintosh” build on your PC as well.

    @Jason Burns: You definitely dodged the bullets there and I’m sure you saved some money by getting it off of Craigslist as well. Enjoy your new Mac Pro…I’m sure you’ll have plenty of power to do almost any audio work! I’m going to try and build a hackintosh with similar specs to a quad Mac Pro soon (although I’ve been saying that for a year already), to supplement my MBPro. I think I’m done using the laptop for production…I’ll use it in my live rig instead. Cheers!

    Feb 5th, 2010

  4. DAVE

    Apple now has a patch which supposedly fixes this issue, and a OS 10.6.3 patch which supposedly fixes a lot of Logic-oriented issues as well. Granted, you must dive into the ‘bleeding edge’ to benefit.

    Apr 10th, 2010

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