iMac or Mac Pro - CPU or RAM?

[AJLynn]

Dan: Good one.

 

Steven: The better heat handling of the Pro isn't because you're running it under capacity (you can run it at capacity and be fine) - it's because of the construction of the case. Look at an iMac and try to envision how much space there is for air to move and heat to dissipate. Not much. With their consumer products (see: Macbook Pro in 2006) Apple has shown a tendency to take the component manufacturers' temperature recommendations literally. They make a trade off, allowing the inside to become hotter than some people would prefer in return for being smaller and quieter, and usually this is fine - but there have been instances of parts (e.g. hard drives) failing after, say, 3 years instead of 6 because the manufacturer had written their temperature spec based on 3 years expected life, and Apple had taken them literally where in a tower computer the cooling would have been overengineered and this would be less of a problem.

 

In an iMac being used as a rendering machine, this issue would be amplified because a rendering machine spends more time making its full capacity of heat than a casual user computer. Now the Mac Pro has a lot of air circulation space, more fans, in general better cooling, because with this model Apple expects you to do things like let it crunch video in Final Cut for 20 hours at a time or render an animation in Maya, they know you have very little patience for failures and they're not messing around.

[smvwhite]

Thanks for helping me see the light guys and for your time.