$10K Mac Pro vs. $10K 56-Thread PC? Which One to Pick?

Imagine that you have $10,000 to spend on building the ultimate workstation for your creative workflow while being strictly limited to only two options. Which one would you pick? The top-spec Mac Pro or the custom built PC? Honestly, I can’t even imagine what would be like to work with a computer that has 56 cores and 64GB RAM under the hood, but that’s just me.

Nevertheless, the video below should give you some excellent insights on the topic, especially when it comes to real-world performance of these particular supercomputers. So, without further ado, let’s jump straight to the comparison produced by Tech Guy that unambiguously unveils which one of the two systems will allow you to complete all your creative challenges in the shortest amount of time.

Apparently, even with this amount of money your choice of building the ultimate Mac Pro configuration still would be limited in a way and most probably would lack a lot of the horsepower and efficiency the custom $10K PC provides. For instance, you’ll be able to get only one processor, two GPUs and relatively limited storage space on the Mac Pro at the most.

With the PC, on the other hand, you might not even need two GPUs whatsoever, considering the amazing speed and performance efficiency provided by the Nvidia GTX 1080 available on board. When you add the two Intel Xeon E5-2690 V4 2.6GHz 14-Core processors that pack 56 logical cores in total the differences become even more evident.

But, we all have heard about the superior system optimization and higher levels of computing performance of Apple workstations. As we can see in the video, though, even with these apparent advantages, the stark contrast between the two workstations in terms of performance is still there.

It’s also worth noting that the side-by-side comparison in this video includes testing of Premiere Pro, After Effects and a 3D rendering software. Except for filters that utilize CUDA and the real-time preview, there is no usage of GPU involved, whereas all rendering processes are exclusively done by the CPU. That’s why it’s so important to invest in more powerful CPU that offers as many physical cores as possible rather than spending most of your budget on GPU instead unless you’re using DaVinci Resolve as your primary creative suite.

PC Workstation Components

• Intel Xeon E5-2690 V4 2.6GHz 14-Core Processor (B&H, Amazon)
• Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO 82.9 CFM Sleeve Bearing CPU Cooler (B&H, Amazon)
• Supermicro MBD-X10DAX EATX Dual-CPU LGA2011-3 Motherboard (Amazon)
• Samsung 16GB (1 x 16GB) Registered DDR4-2400 Memory x 4 (Amazon)
• Samsung 850 EVO-Series 500GB 2.5″ Solid State Drive (B&H, Amazon)
• Western Digital Caviar Blue 1TB 3.5″ 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive x 4 (B&H, Amazon)
• MSI GeForce GTX 1080 8GB Founders Edition Video Card (B&H, Amazon)
• Phanteks Enthoo Pro ATX Full Tower Case (Amazon)
• EVGA SuperNOVA G2 850W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply (B&H, Amazon)
• Pioneer BDR-209DBK Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer (B&H, Amazon)
• Microsoft Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit (B&H, Amazon)

Mac Pro Configuration

• Apple Mac Pro Desktop Computer (Eight-Core, Late 2013) (B&H)

• Apple Mac Pro Desktop Computer (Twelve-Core, Late 2013) (B&H)

All in all, if you are a creative professional who predominantly works with Premiere Pro or After Effects on a day-to-day basis,  investing $10,000 into a workstation would clearly be overkill. For Adobe software you can rather get a more powerful Core i7 processor instead that should save you a few thousands of dollars when compared to these particular systems showcased in the video. If you need to render with 3D software, however, you should get as many cores as you can afford in order to speed up your creative process, especially the render times.

What do you guys think? Is these $10K workstations worth it or spending such amount of money on a single workstation is just ridiculous? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

[source: Tech Guy]