Mac pro help

[TheDance511]

Hello all. I am thinking about buying a Mac pro for movie editing... heavy movie editing...and i have a few questions about the Mac pro before i go out and spend all that money on it.

1) Can I buy the Base model and then add more hard drives when I need them?

2) Can I Change the Video card if I feel it gets outdated later on down the road?

3)(I am new to Mac) Can you only set it up with an Apple display or can it be any moniter?

Please give me feedback. Thank you

 

[MacNut]

You can add a bigger hard drive, but not more then one, but you can add external drives. The video card will be hard to replace and I don't think you will need too. You can use any monitor as long as the ports fit, as long as you have any standard DVI monitor.

 

[hayduke]

Hello all. I am thinking about buying a Mac pro for movie editing... heavy movie editing...and i have a few questions about the Mac pro before i go out and spend all that money on it.

1) Can I buy the Base model and then add more hard drives when I need them?

2) Can I Change the Video card if I feel it gets outdated later on down the road?

3)(I am new to Mac) Can you only set it up with an Apple display or can it be any moniter?

Please give me feedback. Thank you

1) There are four hard drive bays in the Mac Pros. You can add them whenever you like. Aftermarket prices are generally better than Apple's prices.

2) Apple supports a very limited number of videocards. If you install one that is not from Apple I would expect trouble. I think it's important to get the right one at the time of purchase.

3) Any monitor with a VGA or DVI connector will work.

Note this advice varies from the previous post, but I'm pretty certain it is correct.

 

[MacNut]

Are you sure it can hold 4 drives?

 

[dkoralek]

Hello all. I am thinking about buying a Mac pro for movie editing... heavy movie editing...and i have a few questions about the Mac pro before i go out and spend all that money on it.

1) Can I buy the Base model and then add more hard drives when I need them?

2) Can I Change the Video card if I feel it gets outdated later on down the road?

3)(I am new to Mac) Can you only set it up with an Apple display or can it be any moniter?

Please give me feedback. Thank you

1) There are four dedicated hard drive bays (only 1 taken up in the base model). In theory, you can fit two in the optical drive bays (using mounting brackets that you'll have to find somewhere else) and connect them to eitehr the PATA bus that the optical drives that come with the Mac Pro use or the two extra SATA ports that Apple has listed on their diagrams as for optical drives (say a blu-ray burner).

2) There are currently three video cards compatible witht eh Mac Pro (part of this is due to the fact that PC manufacturers haven't supported a move towards EFI from BIOS and Microsoft hasn't forced the issue with Vista).

3) Yes, the cards that are supported on the Mac Pro have standard DVI outputs (1 single and 1 double DVI for the 7300 and 2 double link DVIs for the other two cards). You can also use VGA monitors with the DVI-VGA adapter.

cheers.

 

[dkoralek]

Are you sure it can hold 4 drives?

Yes (http://www.apple.com/macpro).

 

[MacNut]

Oh My bad, I was thinking macbook pro.

This changes things, It is easy to upgrade the drives and video card.

The thing to consider is how much processing power do you need. It is best to buy what you need there then work around the other stuff.

 

[twoodcc]

Hello all. I am thinking about buying a Mac pro for movie editing... heavy movie editing...and i have a few questions about the Mac pro before i go out and spend all that money on it.

1) Can I buy the Base model and then add more hard drives when I need them?

2) Can I Change the Video card if I feel it gets outdated later on down the road?

3)(I am new to Mac) Can you only set it up with an Apple display or can it be any moniter?

Please give me feedback. Thank you

just get it, you will like it.

but as others have said, get the good video card now...