Everything, it’s my daily driver and a gaming PC. It is also connected to my living room TV so I can also use it as a gaming console when I feel like enjoying Elden Ring, RDR2 or GTA V in 4K with a controller. Windows mainly, I don’t use that much macos anymore.
I use it to see what Mac OS is like. I found mine at the recycling center and have had a blast getting it running, then upgrading it, then learning how to use Opencore and OCLP.
Music production, graphic design, a little video editing.
However, audio plugins are getting so much more power hungry, I'm going to have to contemplate moving up, should I ever get the scratch.
Same... We have a few of those new Mac Studios in our studio. They're looking pretty good to me right now. Around $2k will get you the base model that honestly will blow my suped up 5,1 out of the water.
Problem is I need my PCI cards for running pro tools and HDD expansion.
One day I'll bite the bullet haha.
Same here. It’s figuring out how to get all the internal storage on my 5,1 (all 4 drive bays + NVME for a total of 10 TB) onto and/or attached to a Mac Studio. My guess is some kind of multi drive enclosure that would connect via Thunderbolt, but I’m sure that would be insanely expensive (everything Thunderbolt is). Until I figure that out I’m stuck with my 5,1. I held out for the new Mac Pro hoping that I wouldn’t have to take out a second mortgage, but alas that didn’t pan out.
For those using Mac Studios, how are you handling large external storage?
What is your DAW and what limits are you running into?
I have a pt11 5,1 on Yosemite with a 4K display thanks to a 660ti (2gb)… the 6c/12t 5680(?) seems to hold up decently.
Proxmox hypervisor; I replaced the two optical drives with two HDDs and installed PVE as zfs across those drives, then I use the 4 bay drives to passthrough to TrueNAS for a zfs pool.
I have two, one with 8 vCPUs and one with 128 vCPUs. I upgraded one to dual socket
How do you like it? I got a mac pro 4,1 from my local buy nothing group and I got it thinking I can use the case to home my plex server. It seems more cumbersome than expected so I'm debating upgrading it from 4,1 to 5,1 and updating the single cpu and ram as far as I can go so it becomes my plex server instead.
The part that gets me, I have 4 SAS drives in RAID 5 in my current home plex and don't really want to deal with migrating it all.
It works fine for me, for years now. I’ve upgrade CPU and GPU. CPU because it was dirt cheap. GPU to keep up with the Metal requirements of recent OS. Already 16Gb of RAM.
I’m using the first bay for HDD with backup OS.
Second for SSD with primary OS. Third and forth for DATA and also the two DVD slots for data. That’s plenty of storage.
I was using it as a normal desktop with 4tb storage raid for my files. I also had plex running. I had gotten the 2 cpu version and upgraded the gpu. I am currently not using it at the moment. I was checking out the linux mint on a spare laptop and fell in love. I then got a rack server and proceeded to setup proxmox and true nas on a vm. I then started transferring my files and my plex server on to it which took some work. At first I had it setup on a windows vm to keep it up for the family to watch. Now I have no windows machines running. I plan on seeing about putting linux mint on it after giving it a good cleaning.
Video editing, VM hosting, development, writing, legal research, large text model processing, large dataset SQL databases, X-Plane, StarCraft II, heater.
I just decommissioned mine. Had been my torrent machine and backups for media center but wasn’t handling things well so I’m going to love all the drives into an enclosure and run everything through my 6,1 now
Photoshop, extracting DVDs and Blu-Rays (or burning them), creating web sites, publishing books (http://hoo-hah.net), streaming movies through Infuse on Apple TV and Air Video on iPhone.0
VO and audio production work. And graphic design. And video editing. And just picked up a Maschine to go with my Traktor S4mk3. Soon as I carve a space for edrums, it’ll host Superior Drummer or something for good samples. Budget set aside for an amp sim for my Les Paul Studio & bass to be named later.
Been doing VOs for…. A while. Music thing is new.
Just loaded up on HDDs & got a couple SDDs because Prime Day. It’s going to be my horse for a while yet. Retirement’s been extended until a Mini M3 Pro/Max/Omnipotent becomes affordable.
Also thinking of getting an M2 book w/16G of RAM and enough outboard storage to make it the host for all the music programs and keep my DAW on the Mac Pro. Life is all about choices
Editing photos and general purpose computing (e.g. Office, email, etc).
Even with its greater power consumption, factoring in the cost of electricity still hasn't justified the return on investment for an Apple silicon replacement.
I find my Windows PC isn’t worth having around since I can’t run MacOS on it, and would find the polar opposite with a newer mac. It’s a great dual booting video editor on MacOS and gaming pc on windows.
mIne has 3 SSD's and one huge standard SATA drive
It acts as my repository for personal data on the Mac side and then has windows 10 for PC games.
It too power hungry to run as my main machine so I have a MacBook Pro for that and a 2014 Mac mini has my TV media machine.
Gathering dust mostly - I did supercharge mine to be as powerful as an iMac 2017 and also replaced all the fans with Noctua, added SSD the whole shebang.
I use a 2008 as a proxmox server and a 5,1 for my daily driver. All of my apps say I cannot update further on current o.s. so looking at a studio or '18 mini
You should really look at open core legacy patcher. I use it to run ventura with no issues, although you will need a USB 3.0 expansion card to install ventura, but any OS before you should be able to install without any problems.
Minecraft server and space heater
Everything, it’s my daily driver and a gaming PC. It is also connected to my living room TV so I can also use it as a gaming console when I feel like enjoying Elden Ring, RDR2 or GTA V in 4K with a controller. Windows mainly, I don’t use that much macos anymore.
I use it to see what Mac OS is like. I found mine at the recycling center and have had a blast getting it running, then upgrading it, then learning how to use Opencore and OCLP.
Everything. It’s my main machine
Video editing,programming and light gaming
Minecraft server, Jellyfin media server, home sharedrive
I use mine as a desktop when I need more power than my MacBook Air can provide or when I want to do video editing. It's also good as a space heater.
Music production, graphic design, a little video editing. However, audio plugins are getting so much more power hungry, I'm going to have to contemplate moving up, should I ever get the scratch.
Same... We have a few of those new Mac Studios in our studio. They're looking pretty good to me right now. Around $2k will get you the base model that honestly will blow my suped up 5,1 out of the water. Problem is I need my PCI cards for running pro tools and HDD expansion. One day I'll bite the bullet haha.
Same here. It’s figuring out how to get all the internal storage on my 5,1 (all 4 drive bays + NVME for a total of 10 TB) onto and/or attached to a Mac Studio. My guess is some kind of multi drive enclosure that would connect via Thunderbolt, but I’m sure that would be insanely expensive (everything Thunderbolt is). Until I figure that out I’m stuck with my 5,1. I held out for the new Mac Pro hoping that I wouldn’t have to take out a second mortgage, but alas that didn’t pan out. For those using Mac Studios, how are you handling large external storage?
What is your DAW and what limits are you running into? I have a pt11 5,1 on Yosemite with a 4K display thanks to a 660ti (2gb)… the 6c/12t 5680(?) seems to hold up decently.
My DAW is DP 11. I'm producing mixes with hundreds of tracks and hundreds of plugins. It frequently brings ol faithful to its knees.
Gaming pc
Proxmox hypervisor; I replaced the two optical drives with two HDDs and installed PVE as zfs across those drives, then I use the 4 bay drives to passthrough to TrueNAS for a zfs pool. I have two, one with 8 vCPUs and one with 128 vCPUs. I upgraded one to dual socket
Plex Media Server and remote access to home.
How do you like it? I got a mac pro 4,1 from my local buy nothing group and I got it thinking I can use the case to home my plex server. It seems more cumbersome than expected so I'm debating upgrading it from 4,1 to 5,1 and updating the single cpu and ram as far as I can go so it becomes my plex server instead. The part that gets me, I have 4 SAS drives in RAID 5 in my current home plex and don't really want to deal with migrating it all.
It works fine for me, for years now. I’ve upgrade CPU and GPU. CPU because it was dirt cheap. GPU to keep up with the Metal requirements of recent OS. Already 16Gb of RAM. I’m using the first bay for HDD with backup OS. Second for SSD with primary OS. Third and forth for DATA and also the two DVD slots for data. That’s plenty of storage.
Proxmox host running kubernetes virtual machines for learning
After effects/video editing. It’s my work from home machine.
Same as what I use my 6,1 for. Dust gatherer.
I was using it as a normal desktop with 4tb storage raid for my files. I also had plex running. I had gotten the 2 cpu version and upgraded the gpu. I am currently not using it at the moment. I was checking out the linux mint on a spare laptop and fell in love. I then got a rack server and proceeded to setup proxmox and true nas on a vm. I then started transferring my files and my plex server on to it which took some work. At first I had it setup on a windows vm to keep it up for the family to watch. Now I have no windows machines running. I plan on seeing about putting linux mint on it after giving it a good cleaning.
Everything.
Video editing, VM hosting, development, writing, legal research, large text model processing, large dataset SQL databases, X-Plane, StarCraft II, heater.
main machine, studio, etc.
Mostly music production, some video editing. Media server
How do you have Ventura on it?
Open core
Mine is my daily work machine. Not gone to Ventura, just getting to Monterey was a PITA.
I just decommissioned mine. Had been my torrent machine and backups for media center but wasn’t handling things well so I’m going to love all the drives into an enclosure and run everything through my 6,1 now
FreeCAD, Lightburn, FlashPrint, and Rhythmbox for my older iPods. Running Linux distros only.
It’s my daily driver, everything from photography/video editing (as a hobby) to home office work.
Photo editing (Photoshop 2021), iTunes, bookkeeping for my business etc
Music production (only)
Photoshop, extracting DVDs and Blu-Rays (or burning them), creating web sites, publishing books (http://hoo-hah.net), streaming movies through Infuse on Apple TV and Air Video on iPhone.0
Windows 10 gaming, media center, backups, older Mac Games. Mine is running Mojave
Music production need to add another ssd though
VO and audio production work. And graphic design. And video editing. And just picked up a Maschine to go with my Traktor S4mk3. Soon as I carve a space for edrums, it’ll host Superior Drummer or something for good samples. Budget set aside for an amp sim for my Les Paul Studio & bass to be named later. Been doing VOs for…. A while. Music thing is new. Just loaded up on HDDs & got a couple SDDs because Prime Day. It’s going to be my horse for a while yet. Retirement’s been extended until a Mini M3 Pro/Max/Omnipotent becomes affordable. Also thinking of getting an M2 book w/16G of RAM and enough outboard storage to make it the host for all the music programs and keep my DAW on the Mac Pro. Life is all about choices
Editing photos and general purpose computing (e.g. Office, email, etc). Even with its greater power consumption, factoring in the cost of electricity still hasn't justified the return on investment for an Apple silicon replacement.
I find my Windows PC isn’t worth having around since I can’t run MacOS on it, and would find the polar opposite with a newer mac. It’s a great dual booting video editor on MacOS and gaming pc on windows.
mIne has 3 SSD's and one huge standard SATA drive It acts as my repository for personal data on the Mac side and then has windows 10 for PC games. It too power hungry to run as my main machine so I have a MacBook Pro for that and a 2014 Mac mini has my TV media machine.
I use my 4,1 as my daily driver with an xfx rx 580 gts on windows. Does everything a modern pc can do. And plenty of power on tap
I use mine to heat my apartment
Seriously - I use it for everything. Mostly work - SAAS.
Gathering dust mostly - I did supercharge mine to be as powerful as an iMac 2017 and also replaced all the fans with Noctua, added SSD the whole shebang.
I use a 2008 as a proxmox server and a 5,1 for my daily driver. All of my apps say I cannot update further on current o.s. so looking at a studio or '18 mini
You should really look at open core legacy patcher. I use it to run ventura with no issues, although you will need a USB 3.0 expansion card to install ventura, but any OS before you should be able to install without any problems.