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Working with two displays

Displays

Some thought required.

As I am new to the world of working with two displays, having used but one at a time for the past thirty years, I thought it might be helpful to share some thoughts on how things stand now that I use two Dell 2209WA displays with my MacPro.

Here are some useful metrics regarding the area of various displays in square inches of usable screen:

iMac 24″: 239 sq. in.
Dell 2209WA: 219 sq. in, or 438 sq. in. for two
Apple 30″ Cinema Display: 394 sq. in.

So using two 2209WA 22″ diagonal Dell displays, I have 83% more display area than in the 24″ iMac I used earlier and 11% more than the user of one 30″ Apple Cinema Display.

However you look at it, that’s a lot of surface area and while the first reaction is Wow!, in use there are some issues which need addressing.

First, given the 16:10 near-widescreen format of the Dells it makes sense to locate the Dock at the left rather than below the screen. Unless you are watching movies, most 3:2 ratio photographs use less than the full width of the screen so placing the Dock on the left makes sense, and that’s the first problem. If you frequently place files temporarily on your Desktop, as I do, then it’s a long drag-and-drop from the file’s location on the right of the right hand display to the trash can at the lower left of the left hand display. So I’m getting used to right-clicking the file and clicking on Move to Trash instead. If several files are to be trashed, I simply highlight them by dragging a clicked mouse over them and then right click and Move to Trash in one click.

Often, when working on the right display, I need to access an application. Once again, it’s a long way to the Dock on the left display as the following picture indicates (Yes, that’s the HAL 9000 on the Desktop(s) and yes, I am a huge Stanley Kubrick fan!):

Two display desktops side by side.

So rather than move the mouse pointer all the way to the left display to click on the desired application, I use HimmelBar which resides in the menu bar. I place the Menu Bar on the right display as that works well with this approach (System Preferences->Displays->Arrangement):

HimmelBar in use

HimmelBar has been around for ages and is a free download. In its current version (I’m using 3.0 (64) ) it allows the user to edit the drop down lists of Applications and Utilities, so as to avoid a core dump. I simply choose those I use often (much the same ones as in the Dock) and try to limit the list to no more than the height of the screen to avoid having to scroll. If you create an Applications folder in your user home folder (normally the Applications folder resides in the home folder of the hard drive you boot from) then you can have a further selection of personal applications to choose from. However, I avoid this approach as I simply like to have all my applications in one place for ease of maintenance and update.

While HimmelBar always resides in the MenuBar, there’s an alternative approach using a product named Xmenu which will pop up at your mouse pointer’s location when a Cmnd-key combination is struck (you can choose the second key, the first has to be Command). I find I am more comfortable with HimmelBar but others may prefer Xmenu.

So between the Dock and HimmelBar, the Application menu is never far away.

How about the physical arrangement of the displays? Here’s how mine looks:

Elevation view.

Plan view.

As you can see, the monitors are abutted along the vertical axis and sloped slightly inward to present a perpendicular view with a small turn of the head. My eyes are approximately 30″ away from the center point and level with the top of the display(s).

That leaves the issue of what to display on which screen. For work (my job is data intensive) I keep detailed lists on the left screen and items clicked in these for extensive reading on the right. That allows me to quickly scan news story headlines in a feed reader (I use the excellent NetNewsWire) and then read a clicked story of interest on the right screen.

For Lightroom I find I am most comfortable with the detailed LR screen on the right – the one with all the processing controls – with the full sized, uncluttered loupe view on the left.

Is this better than simply using a giant 30″ diagonal screen? I don’t know. I do know that when using the 24″ iMac I rarely broke disparate application displays into adjacent windows as the single 24″ screen was never large enough, whereas with two displays I find I’m getting used to the idea of using one as an index and the other for detail.

Based on my short period of use, is the second monitor a necessity? Far from it. More of a luxury. Maybe it will grow on me, but as of now I’m rather lukewarm on the concept.

X-Rite Eye-One Display 2 colorimeter

Displays

It just works!

Feb 27, 2011 – cautionary update: Read the last part of this entry.

Unless xrite updates its EyeOne software to run on Intel Macs natively, your colorimeter will become useless junk, as the forthcoming version of OS X Lion will no longer support Rosetta, which is required to run the very dated current PPC version of xrite’s software. So if you use a Mac, until you hear that xrite has committed to updating its application for Intel Macs DO NOT BUY this device. Whether you like it or not, you will migrate to Lion sooner or later.

* * * * *

A while back I sold my Monaco Optix screen profiling colorimeter in dismay at its inability to properly profile my iMac’s screen for good color matching with prints from the HP DesignJet 90 large format printer. Further, I have abandoned my 24″ iMac which was on the verge of failure, replacing it with a MacPro and two Dell 2209WA monitors with far better adjustment controls.

Since then I have profiled by eye but it’s been a bit of a hit and miss affair, and gets pretty tedious after a while. Monitors drift over time so they need to be re-profiled occasionally.

After some online research, the decision to get a new colorimeter came down to the Pantone Huey Pro ($80 at Amazon) or the much costlier X-Rite Eye One Display 2 ($201). My ill fated Monaco Optix and both these two devices are made by the same company – X-Rite – which makes a host of other color measurement and profiling tools.

Three things pointed me to the X-Rite device – one was the excellent review at TFT Central; the second was the fact that Martin Evening, whose book on Lightroom I strongly recommend, uses one. And, finally, the Huey Pro has so many simply awful reviews on Amazon that I decided that life wasn’t worth the aggravation of saving $120 for a compromised device.

Once you migrate to two displays as I have, you will quickly find that any difference in color rendering between the two will drive you up the wall. A professional quality colorimeter is the answer. Before starting profiling, turn off any screen saver to avoid having it kick in part way through the process.

The software, which comes on a CD, installed quickly on my MacPro and for the first pass I used the quick method which does not permit user adjustments of display contrast, brightness and the red, green and blue channels. While the printed instructions are cursory in the extreme, the on screen guide provided by the software was all I needed – I’m running this with Snow Leopard 10.6.1. I use two Dell 2209WA displays which have a broad range of user adjustments but I thought it would be interesting to try the ‘quick and dirty’ approach first, my manual efforts having failed to provide a half decent match between the colors rendered by the two monitors.

The software installs quickly and instructs you to place the puck, with its suction cups, on the display. As the thought of suctioning anything to the delicate surface of an LCD display fills me with terror, I simply angled the display back a few degrees and let gravity take its course, like so:

Eye One Colorimeter puck in place

Suction cups you definitely do not want to use on your LCD panel.

To force the software to read the left or right display you have two choices. The first, which is dead wrong, is to switch the cables plugged into your graphics card. It’s wrong because you are assuming that the profiles of the two outlets are identical, which is impossible given normal manufacturing tolerances. The right way to do this is to go to System Preferences->Displays->Arrangement and drag the menu bar to the display you wish the software to profile. It will appear on the display to which you have dragged the menu bar.

System Preferences->Displays->Arrangement. In this example, with the white menu bar dragged to the right, the right hand monitor will run the X-Rite software for profiling. To profile the left monitor, drag the white bar to the left.

From starting the process through generation of the display profile took all of 5 minutes on my first monitor using the basic method, though I did take the precaution of turning the displays on some 30 minutes ahead of time to allow them to stabilize. The Dell 2209WA seems particularly poor in this regard and needs quite a while to stabilize. I profiled the second screen in under 4 minutes.

The software can send you a periodic profiling reminder – the choices are none, 1, 2, 3, or 4 weeks. This makes sense as all monitors drift with age. I set mine for four weeks – whether that is often enough time will tell. Click here for the first four week update.

Here’s a photo of the two displays side by side after calibration – close, but you can see the difference. Having made a note of the names assigned by Eye One to the two profiles, I went to System Preferences->Displays and selected the appropriate one for each display. OS X does a really nice job of supporting dual displays and presents the user with a profile chooser for each.

Two profiles selected – one for each display

This first quick pass was very encouraging and presented a closer match between the two displays than I had managed with any amount of manual effort with those frustrating front panel switches. The quickest way to gauge the accuracy of the match is to drag a photograph with flesh tones of someone you know so that it splits across both displays. All I had to do was reduce the brightness on one display a tad and the match was fairly close, and certainly better than I had managed trying to do this by eye.

So now, getting ambitious, I decided to try the Advanced mode, as used by Martin Evening and explained in his book on pages 230-233. This requires the user to adjust Contrast, Brightness and Red/Green/Blue during the calibration process – options largely unavailable to buyers of Apple’s displays, whose LCD panels are made by the same company making Dell’s – LG Electronics in Taiwan. Apple Cinema displays (and all their other computers with built in displays) only allow the adjustment of Brightness.

The Eye One comes with an Ambient Light Attachment which clips on the base of the Eye One and measures the light falling on the screen – mine measured at 6500K and 970 Lux on the right display – I work in a bright room by noon light. The clips on mine were far too tight but a few moments with a fine file applied to the attachment’s three retaining tabs fixed that. My left monitor, which is slightly more shaded, came in at 6400K and 815 Lux. The Ambient Light Attachment, if left in place, has the additional advantage of protecting the device’s sensors when the colorimeter is stored in your desk drawer. Reusing the maker’s packaging is anything but easy and, in the event, unnecessary.

Eye-One with Ambient Light Attachment in place.

The Advanced mode takes full advantage of the Contrast, Brightness and RGB controls on the Dell. The process takes 20 minutes per display and here are my results:

Dell 2209WA settings after Advanced calibration

The Xrite result after profiling using the Advanced method

A couple of points. As you can see there are significant differences between my two Dell 2209WA displays, both bought at about the same time. The Right one had to have Brightness reduced to 0 and I still could only get Actual Luminance down to 140.3 – Martin Evening states that that is the maximum you would ordinarily use for an LCD display. My Right display is visibly brighter for a given Brightness setting than the left – witness that the Left display is set to 18 versus 0 for the Right. Gamma is set at 2.2, which is the PC standard. If you use the Apple standard of 1.8 your pictures will look too dark on 95% of the world’s computers, all of which run Windows and use 2.2. Finally the lowest luminance of 0.2 speaks to the outstanding rendering of blacks by the Dell monitor.

In practice, because I like a really bright display (my eyesight is not the greatest) I simply increased the Brightness on both monitors by 30 to 48 and 30, respectively, from 18 and 0. That works for me and the color match is unaffected. If my ambient lighting were dimmer I would simply turn brightness down on both displays.

The Contrast setting of 100 for both places the calibrator dead center to where the software dictates.

Color variations are low (look at the R, G and B settings) but noticeable if not adjusted, and can be fine tuned with exquisite accuracy using the X-Rite software and Dell controls, which make a just a wonderful combination in this regard. My Eye One software version is 3.6.1 – Martin Evening used 3.6.2. The current version is 3.6.3 and claims Snow Leopard compatibility, though I have had no issues using 3.6.1 with Snow Leopard version 10.6.1. I have also downloaded 3.6.3 from X-Rite (who may well have the world’s slowest file server – it takes ages to download) and it works every bit as well, but seems no different.

So how do the two displays compare after calibration using the Advanced method?

Absolutely dead on identical to my eyes. Well worth the additional effort involved using the Advanced method. This is money very well spent.

Users who are in the habit of processing and printing their pictures under various light conditions (say by noon daylight and by incandescent light in the evenings) may like to generate display profiles for each set of lighting conditions. This will be important for the best print/screen matching. In this case, the Brightness, Contrast and RGB settings for each lighting condition should be noted and input when profiles are switched in System Preferences->Displays->Color.

I have lost count of the number of times that I have read ‘experts’ pontificate how you should always look at your prints in 6500K light and how your work room should emulate that color temperature with special light bulbs. This, of course, is pure nonsense. If color fidelity is your goal, you must adjust for the light conditions in which the print will be viewed. So if your client proposes to view your artwork by incandescent room lighting, that’s what you should print for. Period.

In Part II I will take a look at how the display profiles match up with printed output from my HP DesignJet 90 large format dye ink printer.

Meanwhile, based on this first experience, the X-Rite Eye One Display 2 (which could use a simpler name) is highly recommended and for those wanting the broadest range of adjustments I strongly advise against buying Apple’s overpriced Cinema Displays, only one of which, the ridiculously costly 30″ model, comes with a matte screen. Any photographer interested in proper color profiling using a glossy screen for processing is simply wasting his time.

As for the 22″ Dell 2209WA, this has to be one of the greatest bargains on the planet – an IPS matte screen for under $300, including a three year Dell warranty which provides for delivery of a replacement before the user has to ship his faulty monitor back. No need to blow more money on the insurance scam known as AppleCare. You can buy two of these Dells and still have $300 left over for a professional colorimeter and a top class meal, had you purchased one of Apple’s 24″ versions with the mirror-like surface which will reflect your ego, if not your work.

Apple’s screens are intended to do but one thing – scream “Buy Me” at you in the store where, like that cranked up stereo system with the big bass in the music showroom, they seem so much better than anything else. (“Gee, Mabel, that iMac screen sure was impressive in the Apple Store. It just jumped out at you, didn’t it?”). Of course, once you actually start using the equipment and the headaches begin, things are a bit different ….

In his book, Martin Evening states (p. 229) “…. it is possible to buy a good colorimeter for under $250 …. and when you consider how much you might be prepared to spend on camera lenses, it really is not worth spending any less than $1,000 on the combination of good-quality display plus calibration package.” Prices have dropped since Evening wrote that and the Dell 2209WA, as the cheapest IPS panel on the market, now makes it possible to spend just $800, for which you get not one but two displays and a crackerjack colorimeter (the same he uses) into the bargain.

Follow up: Someone at EyeOne, ever grateful for free publicity, has seen fit to reference my review on their US home page for the device. Setting aside the fact that they got the URL wrong, the reader should be assured that there is no gain of any sort for me in this sort of thing.

Feel free to refer to my Code of Ethics to see what I am talking about. It will be a desperate day indeed which sees me trying to make chump change from my hobby of photography.

The HackPro and obsolescence

Hackintosh

A follow up.

HackPro builder FU Steve set forth how to build a high performance desktop computer running Snow Leopard for less than one third of the cost of a comparable MacPro here. His intent was to craft a cool running machine for reliable photo processing. That’s cool as in temperature not cool as in Apple Hype. The two are diametrically opposed concepts. In the event, his HackPro turned out to be exceptionally speedy – see his benchmarks at the end of this piece. I asked him for his thoughts on obsolescence with specific attention to the HackPro. Here they are.

* * * * *

It may seem premature to address the HackPro’s obsolescence, but I always like to think ahead.

In terms of life expectancy, the video card is one of the best there is – it’s now rebranded as the GT150 but that’s the same as the nVidia 9800GTX+. You can get versions with 1024mB but I don’t know how that would make any difference for Lightroom and Photoshop users. GPU development has hit a wall and the one I used should last quite a while.

The RAM is DDR2 800mHz. The mobo will support up to DDR2 1333mHz, so lots of room for upgrades if it makes sense and when the price falls. Meanwhile, 800mHz/DDR2 offers the optimal price/performance mix.

The CPU is the 2.83gHz Intel Core2 Quad Q9550 at $220. You can upgrade to the 3.0gHz for $340 – lots more for little more. Alternatively, you can crank up what you have to 3.4gHz (or more) and simply add a bigger cooler for $30 – there’s lots of room in the box for one and there’s a large community of users doing this reliably. I have not bothered with any overclocking tests as what I have is fast enough. Current CPU designs are peaking as the 45nM component separation is getting close to the wavelength of the electromagnetic spectrum, which limits further size reduction. Heat management will improve with the newer Nehalem CPU but it’s not an issue in the HackPro, only in laptops.

The motherboard uses the Intel 775 socket, meaning you cannot fit the latest Nehalem Intel CPU (i7 socket). The Nehalem’s advantage is better multi-threading but while Lightroom can run in 64-bit mode it does a poor job of using all four cores; until that’s fixed by Adobe the Core2 Quad will be far better than the software I’m asking it to run. If I get the craving for an i7 for some reason, the motherboard will have to be changed. $140 + CPU cost. Easy to do but makes no sense today for the applications I use. Even Apple’s Final Cut Pro for professional video editing and Photoshop CS4 are still only 32-bit applications, so software has a lot of catching up to do before today’s quad core CPU designs are over the hill.

The display is independent and you can use/spend what you want. The Dell 2209 I use may hold value well as it has no competition at its price and attracts users with specific needs – meaning photographers who cannot tolerate color shifts as the viewing angle changes. Its IPS panel is the best display technology there is and there are no signs of new revolutionary designs on the horizon.

The Snow Leopard OS seems very robust and as it’s an enhancement to Leopard and not a new design, you would expect that. That very fact tells you that the rate of improvement in Apple’s operating systems has slowed dramatically. There’s not a whole lot that needs improving. Subsequent releases seem to be minor bug fixes and when 10.6.2 comes out (imminent) you will be able to run the new Apple Magic Mouse with its touch sensitive surface if that’s your thing. There is no Magic Mouse driver in 10.6.1 though the newly introduced iMacs have it installed.

Blu-Ray will fail, in my opinion and my HackPro has none. Too costly, needs new, expensive gear to exploit fully (big screens, etc.) and introduced right into the teeth of a shot economy. Sales remain flat despite the failure of its only competitor HD DVD. Plus Blu-Ray’s huge file sizes with the US’s slow broadband invalidate the format for transmission. Still, I expect Apple to add it shortly (Yuppie and Joe Sixpack demand) and once the drivers become available you can simply install a Blu-Ray drive in the HackPro in one of the 5 1/2″ front bays (3 remain available). The cost is closing in on $100.

The HDDs are traditional 3.5″ SATA 7200 rpm with a 32mB cache, a technology that shows signs of peaking. There are 10,000 and 15,000 rpm designs available but they are smaller in capacity and run hot. I question their life expectancy. On the other hand, flash drives will come to the fore over the next few years and I expect we will all be using 1tB flash HDDs in a decade, costing under $100 and the size of a postage stamp. They will run cooler, though HDD heat is not of concern in the capacious Antec case. Meanwhile, their prime use is as a boot drive in 32mB or 64mB sizes at under $200, where they are affordable, but it’s hard to see the need for a fast boot if you never switch your machine off. I leave mine on all the time, arguing that thermal cycling from switching on and off is far more destructive to life expectancy than a permanently ‘on’ state. Think light bulbs.

Wireless 802/11n can be added for $50-125 but I see no pressing need for it in a desk top computer unless you cannot easily run a broadband cable to the case. I have no wiring issues so I did not bother with wireless. Not really an obsolescence issue.

Windows 7 has, as even members of obscure Amazonian pygmy tribes know, just been announced and is opening to favorable reviews from every magazine which derives advertising revenue from Microsoft. Time will tell if it is fast and robust (there’s zero basis for trusting MSFT on anything given the company’s record) but in the spirit of keeping an open mind, let’s assume it offers things you cannot live without. Well, it’s a moment’s work to partition the HDDs into two partitions, one with Snow Leopard, the other with Windows 7. You can then choose whether to boot from one or the other. Alternatively, you can use Apple’s Boot Camp to accomplish the same (one advantage of using Boot Camp may be the ability to see data across the partitions – Windows files from the Mac side and vice versa, but I have no idea if this works) or, smarter, use Parallels or VMWare ($50 or so + Windows 7 + applications) in your existing partition to load Windows in its own window without the need to reboot, if the performance drag is acceptable. I used Parallels on my dying iMac with Windows XP for a while and it works fine if not very quickly. Maybe, in the interest of keeping Windows as remote as possible from your safe OS X environment, it’s best to load it on a separate drive and boot from that.

Finally, resale value. The picture is very bright here. My cost, excluding peripherals, is $815, which gets me the case ($100), CPU ($220), GPU ($120), RAM ($100), motherboard ($130), DVD burner ($30), Card Reader ($15) and HDD ($100). A like configuration from Apple, Dell or HP runs $3-5,000 using the exact same parts. I can sell the machine as either an OS X or Windows box, or both, focusing on its top-of-the-line components. I should get a good price even three years hence, and have no need to sell my monitor and peripherals. Or if I upgrade piecemeal, I can simply sell the components for even better prices.

What about the greatest threat of all? Say Apple decides to make future Snow Leopard revisions run only on Macs? Well, they have a lamentable history of failure in this regard. Take the iPhone. Try as they might, the hacker community breaks each attempt within days of introduction. It’s a red rag to a set of very smart and dedicated bulls. And let’s say they succeed. Heck, I would be happy running the HackPro on Tiger, let alone Leopard or Snow Leopard. These upgrades really do very little for a working still photographer. Arguably the only value added by Leopard compared with its Tiger predecessor was the Time Machine backup utility which makes for seamless file backup. Other than that it’s a lot of fluff. Lightroom can run in 64-bit mode fine in Leopard and does not need Snow Leopard to do so.

But I don’t think Apple will do something so foolish. First, desktops are a falling part of their profit picture as Apple is rapidly becoming a cell phone company. It’s where the money is and in the iPhone they have a superb product with no real competition. Second, the Hackintosh adds value to Apple rather than taking it away. Most Hackintosh builders either could never afford a Mac or are simply making something not available from Apple – a reliable desktop with low entry and repair costs. Many Hackintosh builders are future Apple customers, so it’s foolish to write them off, and most – like me – still buy the OS where otherwise there would be no sale. And, in the grand scheme of things, sales lost to the Hackintosh are a rounding error to Apple. How many people can be bothered to a make the modest effort involved in building the best desktop for photographers on the planet, especially when uninformed comments on chat boards policed by Apple zealots consistently proclaim that the Hackintosh is junk? Still, I do love those fools as they just help my Apple stock position along!

Before I show you the comparative performance data from Geekbench, it’s worth adding a few words about the extraordinary degree of failsafe redundancy built into my HackPro. The following functions are duplicated so if one fails, I simply switch to the other and all have been tested:

  • Dual BIOS on the motherboard
  • BIOS level and application level CPU high temperature warning buzzers
  • Dual video card outlet sockets
  • Dual video card motherboard sockets
  • Matched memory pairs allow the system to run with 4gB almost as well as with 8gB should some memory fail
  • Dual case fans – if one fails the system temperature rises just 10F
  • Dual boot drives – my 1tB internal drive has a matched one in the case which is fully bootable and is backed up daily. Further I run Time Machine on an external drive which is kept in a remote location.
  • Finally – dual monitors – I bought two of the Dells!

I don’t recall seeing the word ‘redundancy’ in any Mac specs. Maybe you have.

Here are the data comparisons:


MacPro with 2.66gHz Core2 Quad Nehalem
and 4 gB RAM rated by Geekbench in 32-bit mode


FU Steve’s HackPro with 2.83gHz Core2 Quad Yorkfield
and 4gB RAM rated by Geekbench in 32-bit mode

By the way, the just introduced 27″ iMac (C2D) scores 4650 on Geekbench, making the HackPro 25% faster than Apple’s latest offering.

Finally, a few words on opportunity cost. Many comments on chat boards addressing the economics of constructing a Hackintosh wrongly attribute high opportunity cost to the process, arguing that time spent in research, procurement, construction and testing makes the whole thing uneconomical. This is not a correct understanding of opportunity cost. Time spent only has economic opportunity cost if it displaces time which could have been spent on activities providing a positive income stream. In the event, the Hackintosh builder is using time which would likely have been spent in such unproductive activities as watching sports or playing computer games or whatever. In that sense, the time invested in the Hackintosh is free and the true economic cost is purely that of the components used.

* * * * *

Thank you, FU Steve.

Only a fool would make long life claims for a computer but I think FU has constructed something with a decent life expectancy at very modest cost and with exceptionally low repair costs. Using the MacPro (an excellent machine) as a reference, the rate of change in its components has been positively glacial in the past couple of years, suggesting most of the technologies used are very much at the point of diminishing returns. The retail technology business is focusing much more on smartphones, handheld devices and small laptops. FU’s HackPro should last a while. The HackPro is the Elitist’s choice. The Macpro is for the snob.

Apple announces toaster

Macintosh

Get ready to fry.

Earlier this week Apple announced the new iMacs in 21.5″ and 27″ screen sizes. The usual Cupertino Hype tells us there’s lots to like – bigger screens, slimmer, faster, etc. So it has an unusable high gloss mirror for a screen. A minor inconvenience for jewelry buyers.

But a moment’s review of the internal design gives one pause – and I’m speaking from expertise gleaned from having lost one iMac (a 20″) and almost lost another (24″) to bad thermal engineering.

Here’s how the new iMacs look under the skin:


The new 27″ iMac’s guts

Even those of you reading this without an honors degree in Mechanical Engineering (yes, I have one of those) who did not graduate at the top of your class (I did that too, around the time I took yesterday’s snap) can see the obvious design error in the older iMacs has been carried over to the latest iteration. The hot running CPU (because it is from a laptop, not built for desktop use) and the fan below are circled in red. The direction of the blast of superheated air emanating from this assembly is indicated by the green arrow. That hot air toasts the motherboard which is a seriously cramped and compromised design lifted from a laptop to ensure everything fits with Mr. Jobs’s thinness obsession.

I don’t think I need say more, even to readers who don’t know Farenheit from Celsius.

But wait, you exclaim. You said something about a toaster?

Why, yes. The bread goes in the right hand side, denoted by the yellow arrow. It has to be super slim, of course.

The HackPro – Part II

Hackintosh

Successful completion.

This concludes the piece on the HackPro built by a friend of the blog, the pseudonymous FU Steve. Part I appears here.

TP: FU, when we last spoke you were just embarking on assembly of your HackPro, whose goal is to perform like a MacPro with none of the reliability and repair issues common to poorly cooled iMacs, while offering substantial upgrade capabilities at modest cost. How did the assembly go?

FU: Please, ‘build’ not ‘assembly’. If you are into hacking, that’s the teenage vernacular, you know! It was just as I expected – easier than a Lego kit. The only tricky part was plugging in the four small front panel connectors to the mobo (that’s hacker talk for ‘motherboard’ if you must know). The space on the mobo for these is crowded out by the graphics card, so it’s easier to connect them before installing the graphics card. These connectors are for on/off, reset, and the power and HDD activity LEDs. They are the only connectors which are not keyed, meaning they can be inserted over the wrong mobo pins, meaning your computer will not work, so it’s an area repaying attention to detail. And those pins are delicate – the heavy handed have no place here.

TP: Any other hardware issues?

FU: One big snag – the first mobo shipped by Amazon was faulty – the CPU temperature sensor would report 99C when cold and would shut the machine down. I noticed one of the CPU fan pins was bent on receipt and suspect Amazon may have sent me a used board. The board is made by Foxconn in Taiwan and there’s no way they would allow bent pins to ship. (Foxconn, surprise, makes most of Apple’s boards). Anyway, I can’t grumble as Amazon had the replacement in my hands before the original was even shipped back.

It is striking to see how beautifully made all the components are. Toyota not GM, with none of the cost cutting, design compromise and overcrowding you get in the iMac. The Antec case is superb. Properly finished, and I have not one cut on my hands. I expected assembly to take 2 hours but had to add 30 minutes for the insanely poor instructions Intel provides for the correct installation of its CPU fan. Amazing, really. The only part made in the US – figures. I finally found Intel’s own video on YouTube and it can be seen here, and does what the miserable instruction book fails to do, which is to show how to properly clip the cooler to the CPU. Surely, proper CPU cooling is one of the most important aspects of any computer design?

The only tools I used were a Philips screwdriver and a pair of cutters to remove excess length from cable ties used to keep the wires away from fans inside the case.

I originally expected to defer installation of the DVD burner (I installed Snow Leopard from a small USB drive) and a Sony card reader (CF, SD, SDHC, you name it) until later, but Antec does such a fine job to make this simple that I installed both in the first pass. You screw small rails to the reader (which occupies one of the 3.5″ drive slots in the front behind the door) and the DVD burner, connect power and data cables then slide both in until they click. The internal HDDs are mounted similarly except that they are screwed to a plate using soft silicone bumpers for isolation of vibration. The Antec Sonata III case can accommodate up to four 3.5″ SATA drives. As I will be running two 1 tB Samsung drives, I spent an additional $15 on a second Antec TriCool case fan – the case comes with one installed – to cool the HDDs. After my iMac started to fry, just like yours, it seemed like a modest additional cost.


Interior of the HackPro

TP: You are running no fewer than five large fans? Is it noisy?

FU: Five, yes. CPU, GPU, power supply and two case monsters – 120mm in diameter (4.7″). Those things can move some air. I have the two case fans on the middle setting and, with the case closed and underneath my desk, the box is silent. Much quieter than the iMac with the fans turned up.

Now while my experience with computer gamers is that most couldn’t give a gnat much competition in the intelligence stakes, the one thing I have learned from that community is its focus on cooling. Many gamers over-clock their CPUs to make games run better and apply exotic cooling solutions.

For example, there is a large aftermarket in enhanced CPU coolers to fit the Intel 775 socket used by the Core2 Quad, and many are a drop-in replacement for the stock Intel cooler/fan, offering 10-20C more cooling for $20-50. I’m not over-clocking but it’s nice to know that should I ever get the urge, enhanced cooling is a simple upgrade.

It’s common to read of gamers running the 2.83gHz CPU (Intel model Q9550) I am using at 4.0 gHz without damage, owing to enhanced cooling solutions. That is a significant speed increase which may make sense for video processing, and it’s much cheaper than buying a natively faster CPU.

TP: How warm does it run?

FU: Once warmed up the CPU never exceeds 120F (49C) no matter what I am doing. For reference, the service limit of the Core2 Quad CPU is 160.5F (71.4C) so you have lots of headroom. I noted with alarm that my iMac’s CPU reported 163F when I was using Migration Utility to move all my applications and data over – I could smell the difference ….. Mercifully, it survived long enough to move everything over. As for the HDDs, they run close to room temperature, in no small part thanks to the huge adjacent fan drawing air over them. Best $15 I have ever spent – I would rather lose the CPU than my data!

TP: How was the software install?

FU: Piece of cake. Rather than using an SDHC card as all the web sites suggest, I loaded Snow Leopard and the requisite boot loader (SL is not tampered with in any way) on a self-powered USB drive. Much faster – SDHC is a very slow medium compared to a small hard disk. The boot loader takes the place of code on a chip in Macs and bypasses the traditional BIOS used by Windows when loading. On your first boot you still need to enter the BIOS to set it up and dictate the boot order of the various devices, all of which is explained on hacking sites via Google. On this first trip to the BIOS (by holding the ‘Delete-to-the-right’ key depressed during start-up until you see ‘Prepare to enter Setup…’ at the base of the display) you are telling the computer to boot from your external drive on which the OS resides.

I found that the easiest solution was to delete all boot drives in the BIOS (‘Advanced BIOS Features’ screen) and simply tell the system to boot from an attached USB drive first (my OS and boot loader source), and then from the internal drive.

Thereafter you never need to look at the BIOS screens again which is just as well, given how ugly they are.

TP: How did you get your applicatons and data over to the HackPro?

FU: Once I had SL running I migrated all the apps and data from my failing iMac using Apple’s Migration Utility. You can do this by connecting your Mac to the HackPro using an ethernet cable or by simply connecting your bootable back-up drive to the HackPro using Firewire – USB will not work. Migration Utility will ‘see’ another Mac in both instances and you just need to tell it to move all your user settings, applications and data over. There’s no need to reload applications or to reinput serial numbers using this approach. In a couple of days I’ll remove the HDD from my iMac and install it in the Antec case where it will become a back-up drive.

If all you have is USB use Time Machine to create a backup then restore from it.

TP: OK, so this is where the rubber meets the road. Tell us about comparative performance.

FU: Easy. The best approach is with objective measurements. I always suspect the subjective approach in these things – when I read it ‘…. feels faster ….’ I ask myself what part of himself the fool writing this was feeling and turn the page. Remember, buyers tend to defend what they bought. It’s human nature.

I ran two sets of tests to get objective data. Geekbench, which focuses on the CPU and Xbench which looks at GPU-intensive tasks. These metrics give you a rough idea of relative speed between computers. Of course neither addresses broadband speed which is increasingly the slowest part.

For purposes of comparison, my iMac has a 2.16gHz C2D CPU, the nVidia 7600 GPU with 256mB of RAM, and 3gB of 667 mHz DDR RAM and is running Leopard 10.5.7.

The HackPro has a 2.83gHz Core2 Quad CPU, the nVidia 9800GTX+ GPU with 512mB of RAM, and 4 or 8gB of 800 mHz DDR2 RAM and is running Snow Leopard 10.6.1. (I ran the tests with first 4gB then 8gB of RAM in the HackPro to see if the added RAM made any difference). These are all in 32-bit mode as I do not have 64-bit versions of the applications plus 32-bit under Snow Leopard is a fair comparison to 32-bit with the iMac’s Leopard OS. Expect 64-bit to be even better on the HackPro.

Geekbench (CPU):

HackPro – 4gB RAM: 6119 (215% of iMac)
HackPro – 8gB RAM: 6250 (219%)
iMac – 3gB max. usable RAM: 2848

Xbench – Quartz graphics:

HackPro – 4gB RAM: 254 (172%)
HackPro – 8gB RAM: 261 (176%)
iMac – 3gB max. usable RAM: 148

These readings were made with the motherboard RAM voltage set to the default of 1.8v. Adjusting it to 2.1v, the manufacturer’s recommended setting, with 8gB returns Geekbench of 6211 and xBench of 259 – both worse – so it makes sense to stay with the lower, conservative, default setting.

If you want to see the readings from Geekbench for the current most comparable MacPro, the four core 2.66gHz, they can be found here. As you can see, the HackPro is some 12% faster!

Finally, for the jerk who wrote you (Jerk’s comment not published. Ed.) that this machine is seriously dated, here are video processing scores generated using Cinebench. These compare an 8-core 2008 MacPro with the 4-core HackPro, and test how long it takes to render a graphic image in various circumstances:

Single CPU core:

MacPro: 3233
HackPro: 3229 (3281 with 10.6.4)

Multi CPU core:

MacPro: 18811
HackPro: 10568 (10728 with 10.6.4)

Open GL rendering:

MacPro: 5995
HackPro: 6184 (6428 with 10.6.4)

Seriously dated, my rear. But like you said when you called me with that comment, Thomas, for every person who gets off his duff and does something, there are a hundred jerks more than happy to sit on their ample behinds. We call them losers, where I come from.

(To see the full reports which FU Steve made available to me, click the links above. Ed.)

The data speak louder than words while also suggesting that much over 4gB of RAM does’t improve theoretical performance. (In practice, more RAM does allow more applications to be open simultaneously without slowing down performance). The real world feel (ooops!) is that of a snappier machine – not dramatically faster but noticeably so. As for legacy G3/4/5 PPC applications like Photoshop CS2, they run fine so long as you remember to click the ‘Customize’ button when installing and checking the ‘Rosetta’ box – why Apple left this unchecked by default beats me. It will be the cause of endless frustration for many users unaware of it.

TP: How about performance with Lightroom, an issue of particular interest to my readers?

FU: I’m using LR 2.5 and the default installation is 32-bit. There didn’t appear to be that much difference, frankly. Even though I generate 1:1 previews when importing the RAW files form my Pentax DSLRs I would still get the “Generating larger preview” message for a second or two on many images (it’s not consistent) when going from thumbnail to loupe mode. Then I closed LR, highlighted it in Finder, hit Command-I (the letter after H, not the number 1), clicked on ‘Get Info’ and unchecked the ‘Open in 32-bit mode’ box.

Restarting LR I could briefly see the words ’64-bit’ on the splash screen at start-up and the difference was night-and-day compared to 32-bit. No matter how fast I page through my images in full screen loupe mode I never get any delay message. That’s the awesome nVidia 9800GTX+ video card doing its magic, compared to the dated (and overheated) nVidia 7600 card in my iMac. Right there I knew I had made the right decision in building the HackPro. The difference is far more striking than suggested by the statistics, above.

For the more technical among your readers, the HackPro fully implements Apple’s Quartz Extreme hardware acceleration technology to render images faster. To confirm you are running an application in 64-bit mode just fire up Utilities->Application Monitor and you can find out.

TP: How about sound?

FU: As configured the HackPro has none, but the motherboard has all the outlets you need. I bought a pair of Logitech LS-11 powered speakers for all of $20 and they have excellent sound, far superior to the dorky downward facing ones in the iMac. You connect the power and plug in the speaker cord to the green receptacle on the mobo. If you listen to music in iTunes, you can tailor the speakers’ response using Window->Equalizer in iTunes and get a nice smooth response with these. Just don’t expect massive bass with small speakers. And do avoid USB-powered speakers – USB cannot provide much current so your sound output will be limited.

TP: So what’s the real price comparison?

FU: It’s pretty shocking really. Here’s the current 4-core MacPro:

It’s a very close feature comparison to the HackPro. Both have two 1tB drives, the MacPro has a slower clock speed but superior performance quad core CPU for no net difference, and the ghastly 24″ Mac glossy screen. As the base nVidia GT120 (a rebranded 9500 to catch the suckers) is significantly inferior to the 9800GTX+ in the HackPro, I have priced the MacPro with the comparable ATI Radeon 4870. Further, the MacPro needs the AppleCare rip-off warranty to get insurance coverage, whereas all the HackPro’s parts, have warranties of 3-5 years or more at no extra cost. Apple charges you another $249 for that – greedy, greedy, greedy.

The comparable price for the HackPro with the marginally smaller – but matte – Dell 2209WA 22″ IPS display – is $1,368. That’s $3,129, or 70%, less. Buy AAPL stock with that sort of margin, not their compromised hardware.

TP: Any final thoughts?

FU: I recommend this to anyone with a bit of patience looking to create a state-of-the-art Lightroom (or Aperture) machine – anything more exotic is a waste of money for still photographers, though it may make sense for video processing. The result is easily upgraded as technologies improve (meaning as software gets ever more bloated), will run as cool as you want and divorces the monitor from the computer’s circuitry, meaning less heat in the box and a far cheaper repair or upgrade cycle – no need to throw out the display like you do with a fried iMac. Heat and life are inversely proportional to one another which, Thomas, I know will be hard for you to accept given your English upbringing.


About FU’s HackPro

Most importantly, you are removed from the tyranny of the ‘closed box’ philosophy adopted by Apple, a cleverly contrived approach intended to keep you buying overpriced, mediocre performing hardware every two years or so. Even if your iMac survives heat issues, it cannot be upgraded absent the most complex and extraordinary efforts. For all of Apple’s spin about how ‘green’ it is, the iMac is an environmental abomination – when it goes wrong, you have to throw out the whole thing. When your PC or HackPro blows, you replace a faulty card.

Best of all, when something does fail, the most expensive part in the box costs $220 (the CPU) with nothing else over $125 or so, and a replacement can be had at your doorstep in a day or two rather than having your Mac moldering at the local Apple store. And if you read of all the botched repairs of iMacs which have fried, well, life’s just too short to have to put up with Apple’s poor hardware and service. DIY is so fast and simple, there’s no rational alternative.

And it bears repeating that assembly of your own computer is substantially easier than making a Lego toy** or connecting the parts in a piece of home exercise gear, not to mention a lot more fun. Plus, unlike in either of those two fields of endeavor, you are left with $2,000 or more burning a hole in your pocket – had you elected a similarly capable MacPro.

TP: Reality check time, FU. You know, you could have bought a 2.93 gHz iMac with a 24″ screen for $1,600 – just a little more than you paid.

FU: True. And I would be replacing it two years hence when it was dead.

The iMac Just Fries. The HackPro Just Flies.


“Thou shalt not run Apple’s OS on non-Apple branded hardware”. Easily fixed.

** Postscript: “…. easier than a Lego toy”? FU Steve has kindly provided me with a slide show for readers showing the whole process and you can view it by clicking here. Thank you, FU Steve.

Cooling update – November, 2009:

FU Steve sent along some details of an update he made to CPU cooling in his HackPro. Dissatisfied with the cooling from the stock Intel cooler which simply clips into the motherboard from above, offering a mediocre contact force between cooler and CPU case, he removed the motherboard (!) and fitted a Coolermaster 212 Plus bolt-through design. This allows for proper clamping force between the cooler and case and the whole thing comes with a 120mm fan (a 4 pin variable speed like the Intel one, so that fan speed varies with CPU case temperature) for the princely sum of $30, including thermal paste.

Coolermaster 212 Plus in place, fan not yet fitted. Note the huge cooling area. The top of the fins just clears the Antec Sonata III case used.

FU told me the fan is sheer hell to install and can only be installed once the cooling fin tower is in place, as the clamping screws are not accessible with the fan in place.

Coolermaster 120mm variable speed fan in place. The red circle denotes the proper installation point for the fan clips.

Talk is cheap. Data tell the story. Take a look at the large and instantaneous drop in CPU temperatures once the fan is up an running:

Before and after. A 27-30F temperature drop for the CPU internals.

The case temperature is 25F lower than the internal temperatures shown in the graph, meaning that the warmest core – #1 – is actually running at a case temperature of 90F (32C), compared with the 160.5F (71.4C) maximum case temperature specified by Intel. Now that’s headroom!

Thanks, FU. That is very cool! Nice to see how flexible the HackPro is when it comes to enhancements.