HD For Indies

Both OWC(macsales.com)& 18004memory.com have them availible to order with all apple approved specs and heatsink. Crucial.com has it without the heatsink but I personally wouldn't go with that option after reading apples developer notes. I'm sure other will jump on soon.
 

You hide hide two more drives in the second drive bay in the front. 2 drives there for your os disk raid the other 4 for your video raid.
 

Apple, would it kill you to put eSATA on these darn pro boxes? Do PC workstations of this caliber have eSATA out of the box? This is really the only thing I wish was in there.
 

A user over at Macintouch suggested using something like this...
http://www.firewire-1394.com/images/dual-esata-bracket.jpg
To make use of those two extra internal ports, not sure if that would work but it's interesting.
 

I want to get one of these but I'm going to hold out until you get the new OS with it. People buying now won't get a free upgrade will they?
 

Anonymous holdout - nobody gets a free OS upgrade unless the box ships after the newer OS is announced has been the historical precedent.

New OS is usually $130, and isn't due until spring at the earliest (and that could mean June technically).

If you want it, and need it, and it runs what you need fast enough, and can get more than $130 of incremental value out of it between now and then, I'd go ahead and get it.

-mike the blogger
 

Uhh, Mike? WHere do you see 2 extra Sata ports besides the 4 onboard?
 

Thanks Mike. I'm more of a want than a need right now. I think I can hold out for a bit, but I don't know if I can wait until Spring. I would like to wait for any Rev B changes though.
 

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/HardwareDrivers/Conceptual/Mac_Pro_0608/Articles/M43_0906_arch.html

I seen a picture of it earlier can't find it now but the apple diagram shows the 6 ports.
 

anyone know if the processors are upgradable?

As Intel plan on releasing Quad Core processors before the end of the year and that would bring a major speed increase over whats available today.

I'm guessing a Quad Core Processor would need a new motherboard anyway?
 

Wow, that's almost too good to be true. How bonkers! Six SATA ports in total.


Thanks for the link to that diagram.

Chow
 

There are two sockets so you can pull the CPUs out and install new ones. It's been done already by putting a Merom into a Mac Mini and it worked fine. Now replacing two dual core chips with two quad core chips will probably be a different matter. As you said, would probably need a different logic board.
 

Accoriding to Anandtech, this socketet xeons may be able to be replaced by Clovertown(quad core), you probably would need to upgrade the firmware tho.

*Seeing as how we were playing with quad core Kentsfield processors back in late May/early June, you had better believe that Apple designed its Mac Pro motherboards with support for Clovertown. While Apple isn't really touting processor upgradability with the new Mac Pro, it wouldn't be too far fetched to think that you could swap a pair of Clovertowns in these systems with no more than a firmware update.*

Take a look at this sites preview. Take special attention on the memory part, quite a different beast .

http://anandtech.com/mac/showdoc.aspx?i=2811