Maxing out the MacPro

I will admit, I am practically a recent Mac convert. It's not that I haven't used them before or liked them before. It's just that I have never had both the financial ability and the interest to switch over. I did, however, buy myself a MacBook Pro a few months ago and I have not feel any pangs of Windows withdrawal since. But that's another story for another day. This story is about the MacPro , the new Apple desktops running two dual-core Xeon chips, and how I wanted to see how those on the "other side" live.

When the new MacPros were introduced at WWDC, everyone was a buzz. Since then, there have been so many reviews and benchmarking articles that a simple search on google will give you what you need. What I felt like doing was seeing what one could order and how much it would break the bank. Here goes:

The point of comparison is, of course, what you get "standard." For a reasonable $2499, you can get:

• 2 x 2.66Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processors
• 1GB (2 x 512 MB) RAM
• 250GB (7200-rpm) SATA hard drives
  
• NVIDIA GeForce 7300GT 256 MB video card
  
• 16x SuperDrive
• Apple Keyboard / Mighty Mouse
• Mac OS X Tiger

Not bad right? If you wanted to save some cash and downgrade to 2 x 2Ghz processors and also go down to a 160GB hard drive, you could pick up a MacPro for only $2124. That's downright cheap! But we're not here for the cheap because in the imaginary world (or in the world of the design firms, et al of the world) we would be able to max this baby out! Here is what we really want:

• 2 x 3Ghz Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processors
• 16GB (8 x 2GB) RAM
• 4 x 500GB (7200-rpm) SATA hard drives
• NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 512MB, Stereo 3D Video card with 2 x dual-link DVI
• 2 x Apple Cinema 30" HD displays
• 2 x 16x SuperDrives
• Bluetooth 2.0+EDR / Airport Extreme
• Fibre Channel Card
• Apple Wireless Keyboard / Mighty Mouse
• Mac OS X Server

This comes out to a mere $17,933. The question, of course, would be if its worth buying all those components or just buying some of those pieces (hard drive, memory, video card) separately and ordering the cheapest option from Apple. That I leave to you.

If I had $18,000, I would probably use it to put a nice down payment on a car. Then again, who needs a car in New York?

Post your dream setup and tell us what you would use it for. Until next time...