• 3 hours ago
Transcript
00:00Hey, how's it going? Dave2D here. So Apple's supposed to release their new Mac Pro in 2019.
00:07We don't know that much about it. We know that it's supposed to be a modular system.
00:10We know that it's going to be a powerful system for professionals. And we know that it's going
00:14to be crazy expensive. That's just how professional Mac equipment is. And it's supposed to come
00:18out later this year. We don't know exactly when. It hopefully will come in 2019. Maybe
00:22it'll get pushed back. But I wanted one sooner than later. I've been someone who's been itching
00:27for a modular Mac Pro for years. To the point where I've been running a lot of Hackintoshes.
00:30If you look at some of my older videos, I have them running in the back. And this is
00:34the best looking and most powerful custom Mac that I've ever built. It's not a gaming
00:39rig. It was designed specifically to edit my YouTube videos. If I wanted to play games
00:43on this, I would have made a half dozen different choices than what I've built on this. Primarily,
00:46it wouldn't have been running Mac OS. But this is running Mac OS. And it is the most
00:50Apple-like case I've ever found on the market. So this case is called the Circle Pro by a
00:56company called Circle Studio. And because it's water-cooled, you can push your components
01:00a little bit harder. Particularly the CPU, which is really important for what I do. I'm
01:03able to hit 5 GHz on an 8-core CPU. It's the i9-9900K. And the performance on this is better
01:09than the 8 and 10-core Xeon processors in those iMac Pros, which are like double or
01:14even triple the price of this. Only their top-of-the-line 14-core model is actually
01:18significantly faster than this machine. So I'm going to talk about the case a little
01:21bit. It's not the smallest one out there. If you guys follow me, you know I like really
01:24small ITX cases. This is 11 liters, not like 5, 6 liters or 7 liters like I've seen some
01:29tiny builds. But it's really well-built, and it just looks so good. It looks so Mac-like.
01:35The panels are all CNC-machined, and the machining on this is very high-quality. There's no rough
01:39edges. All the panels come apart, top, bottom, front, and back. They all separate nicely
01:44when you unscrew it. And then they somehow fit really snugly together in this precision
01:49fit. It's honestly like Apple built a custom ITX case. And the space gray finish on it
01:53is just ripe. The side panels, they're glass, but they're really heavily smoked. So if you
01:58think about it, if Apple made glass panels for a case, they wouldn't make it lightly
02:02tinted. They would do a pretty heavy smoke like this. And on this case, you can look
02:06at the internals if you want, but it's subtle. It feels like Apple made it, but it's got
02:09this custom-built vibe to it. So this is the case I went with, the Circle Pro. And there's
02:14a lot of stuff I like about it, but there's some pretty big disadvantages. The big one
02:18is that you have to use a short GPU in it. You can put in a full length. I tried both
02:23the Vegas 64 and several RTX GPUs, but you need to use a server power supply, so forget
02:28that. And another thing I don't like about it is that it's actually very difficult to
02:31build in. I've built in a lot of tiny cases before. This is one of the hardest, if not
02:36the most difficult case that I've worked in. And the primary reason for that is just space.
02:40When you run an all-in-one water cooler in a system this small, it becomes very cramped.
02:45Okay, quick word on the hardware. I'm running some old hardware and some new hardware. The
02:49big focus on this system was just reliability. It had to be extremely reliable. I can't let
02:54it go down, like macOS on non-traditional Apple hardware can get a little dicey sometimes.
03:00So this thing's running an i9-9900K with a Thermaltake water cooler. And I would've loved
03:04to have run a different water cooler in here, because I don't think the Thermaltake's got
03:07the best performance. But this thing has a very tight fit. There's very few water coolers
03:12that could fit in here. The NZXT Krakens do not. It's also running two sticks of DDR4
03:17RAM from G.Skill. They actually came from a gaming rig, so they light up in RGBs and
03:21stuff. I wish I had better control of those RGBs on this system, but I can't complain.
03:25It's super fast memory, and it's very reliable. It's also running two sticks of Samsung NVMEs
03:30inside there. And I'm also running a 450W power supply from Corsair. It's their small
03:34form factor one. They make a 600W one, but 450 kind of does the trick. Now on the other
03:40side, you have access to the GPU. So this GPU is a Radeon RX 580 from AMD. I went with
03:48the AMD cards just for reliability. I would've loved to have stick an NVIDIA card in here.
03:52Now this card actually came from an external GPU. It's the Gigabyte gaming box. It's running
03:57an RX 580 inside there. And I had to use that thing in here, because that was one of very
04:01few AMD cards that could fit in a small form factor case. And all these components are
04:06running on an Asus motherboard. It's the Asus Z390, the ITX, like ROG Strix edition. Yeah,
04:14those are basically all the components. Now, oh, the reason why I went with that motherboard
04:18was for audio. So most motherboards that are running 9th gen Intel CPUs don't have onboard
04:24audio that works in macOS, at least not easily. But this motherboard does. That's why I went
04:29with it. Now there are things that don't work. So I don't get Wi-Fi. I don't get Bluetooth.
04:34Neither of those work. And I thought I wouldn't miss them. But the thing is,
04:37you need those for AirDrop. And well, in this system, AirDrop does not work. iMessage works.
04:42Everything else kind of works. It's just AirDrop is something that I use pretty regularly and I
04:47enjoy that I cannot get running on this system. The performance is great. CPU and GPU performance
04:53is excellent for what I do. It's not too loud. I'm running the stock fans on the Thermaltake
04:58water cooler. Hits like 46, 48 decibels on max load. On idle, it's like 30 decibels. It's pretty
05:04quiet, but not as quiet as like a real Mac system. Like if Apple built a real Mac Pro,
05:09it would be a lot quieter than this. But I want to switch out the fans. I want to run
05:13some Noctua Redux fans and those should lower the fan noise a little bit. Temperatures are
05:17good. It's water-cooled CPU and the GPU doesn't get pushed too hard for what I do. So this rig
05:22is running on a dual monitor setup. These are the LG 32UL950 panels. They're 4K and they look
05:28really clean. They're actually one of the very few monitors that I've used that had perfect calibration
05:32coming out of the box. Like I ran my Spyder on it and literally didn't have to change a thing.
05:35They were perfectly calibrated, both of them. Okay, to wrap it up, the keyboard I'm using is the
05:40Massdrop Control Keyboard. It's a wired keyboard. I've talked about it in a previous video. If you
05:44want to check it out, I'll link it below. And the mouse I'm using is the Logitech Vertical Mouse.
05:48So this is a mouse that looks bizarre and you might think it has like special functionality
05:52or something. It doesn't. It actually feels like a very normal mouse once you get used to it. But
05:56the main reason why I'm using it is because of the USB-C connection. It's one of very few wireless
06:00mice that has a USB-C to charge it. I have to use the dongle because it doesn't have Bluetooth. I
06:06have to use the wireless radio dongle on the back to make this thing connect to it. But I do have a
06:11wireless mouse at least. And that basically wraps it up. This is my custom Mac Pro and I spent way
06:17too long building this thing. Like, it was a struggle. But I hope you guys enjoyed this video
06:21because this is one of my favorite builds I've ever done. Okay, thumbs if you liked it, subs if you
06:25loved it. See you guys next time.