New Mac & How To Connect Everything

[BigRedX]

It looks as though the funds to allow me to buy a new Mac may well be coming very soon, so I need to pick the forum Mac experts' brains on some choices and how to connect everything I need to it.

Backstory:

My current Mac is a 2010 MacPro 5,1 with 64GB RAM. The frequently used drives (System SSD, Graphics and Audio data HDs and TimeMachine HD) all live inside the computer. Archives and other infrequently needed files are on external drives which connect by USB as and when required. I have a fairly serious graphics card (NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 3072 MB) driving 3 x Apple 23" displays.

The main use of my Mac is for my day job doing graphic design for print and packaging and the main reason for updating is that the fact that most of my applications can't be updated to the latest versions has gone in the past 6 months from from being a mild inconvenience to a serious drawback. Performance-wise the current system does everything I want, although a bit more "grunt" and speed wouldn't go amiss when I need to manipulate 1GB+ Photoshop files. I occasionally do some 3D work for product packaging visualisation but it's not very complex and never animated.

For music/audio I don't have massive requirements. The current Mac is used for drum and sequencer backing programming and recording my bass and guitar parts for any songs my band is intending to release. I'm rarely running more than a dozen tracks of audio and plug-in instruments, so other than the fact I can't run the latest version of Logic on this Mac it doesn't struggle with anything I want to do musically.

What I think I want:

Mac:
Given that I currently run 64GB RAM and the M series of chips are supposed to be more efficient in their memory usage, I thinking of sticking with 64GB which AFAICS means a Mac Studio. Also since I'm mostly happy with the speed of my current ancient Mac I think the lowest spec processor will be more than adequate, as whatever I choose will be a massive speed improvement, unless my other requirements listed below would suggest a better processor will definitely be required.

Displays:
For my graphic design workflow I need to run 3 monitors although only one of them has to have a high spec colour accuracy. A physically slightly larger screen would also be a benefit. IMO, In graphic design you can never have too much screen real estate. So the plan is to get one very good 24" or 27" display and two others of the same size from the same range (so they all match as far as possible) but cheaper models. I like the way separate displays compartmentalise what is on each one (and use this in my workflow) so I'm definitely not interested in fewer but bigger/wider displays. The confusion here is how is the best way to connect them. There's one HDMI port and 4 Thunderbolt ports all of which I believe can be used to attach displays. What is the best way to connect three displays? Does using HDMI or Thunderbolt make a difference? Would 3x27" displays require a processor with more GPU cores? I don't need super high resolution for what I do (I currently run the 23" displays at 1920 x 1200 each).

Storage:
The plan is to keep the same storage model as I use currently with the system drive being used for just the OS and Applications. I currently have a 512GB SSD for this with 150BG free and probably a substantial portion of the drive taken up with old versions of Creative Cloud applications and other non-essential stuff I have acquired over the last 14 years and haven't bothered to delete. I think another 512GB drive will be fine for this, unless you can convince me otherwise.

I'll need to have all my other drives in external enclosures. My original plan was to get a multi-drive enclosure and set it up in JBOD configuration. However a test with an M1 MacMini and a USB version of one of these enclosures last year gave me massive problems with the HDs going into sleep mode and then failing to wake when I need to save to them. My plan this time to is upgrade the two data drives from HD to SSD (but keep the TimeMachine backup drive on and HD). Hopefully that will solve the problem. However I'm wondering if I should also consider an enclosure that connects via Thunderbolt instead of USB or is that overkill for what I need? They are a lot more expensive.

Sorry for the long rambling post, but I wanted to make sure I covered as much as possible of my requirements, so I didn't get recommendations that weren't suitable. However all advice would be grateful received, and if you are convinced I'm doing something wrong, feel free to try and correct me.

Thanking you all in advance...

[RichardT]

Do you need to have multiple external drives? You’ll need a dedicated Time Machine drive, but could you consolidate everything else onto a single drive? You can get vast speeds these days over both thunderbolt and USB.

I’ve got a Samsung 4TB drive and it’s fine carrying on many roles at once, and it runs on bus power, and I get more that 600 MB/s, and SSD is much less likely to fail than HDD.

In terms of monitors, the Apple website usually give good information on what models support what, but I think 3 monitors will be no problem for a new Mac Studio.

[BigRedX]

The reason for multiple drives is that I like to keep my work and music separate. Sometimes I need to do work when I am away from the office and for that I simply pull the relevant HD and put it in a portable enclosure to use with my laptop. Also for both there is a lot of data - work is heading towards 3TB and even after I archive off all the jobs I'm unlikely to ever need to look at again it will probably still be over 2TB. A quick look at available drives and 2 x 4 TB appears to be cheaper than 1 x 8TB. I just feel safer not having everything on a single drive.

Which has brought up a secondary question. Should I still be looking at SSDs or should I now be considering NVMe instead?

Regarding displays the number shouldn't be a problem, but it has now occurred to me that they use up some of the system RAM so would I be better off with more RAM for 3 big displays? Also I have read that DisplayPort via Thunderbolt is better than HDMI. Is that true?

It was easier when I bought my MacPro. Everything had its own obvious connection. Now I'm confused which is why I'm asking these questions.

[paul tha other]

i was in your place a year ago'ish ,almost , i just use my mac for recording ...i got the mac studio with 64 gigs..its a monster of a computer.(ive never noticed how loud my mixing desk is untill i got the mac studio,its so quiet) .the one thing that tripped me up to begin with was the monitor thing. my advice is buy tthe apple usb c to hdmi multiport..its 75 bucks in the uk. i bought a cheaper un branded one to begin with ,it never worked (it was worse than that, it almost worked).. i know thats expensive but its never given me any bother since i got it. you might need to get one for the 2nd and 3rd monitor,just plug the main monitor into the hdmi port on the mac..it should be able to deal with the output res that you need.i could be wrong but i think the thunderport and usb are interchangable but dont quote on me that. all i know it works for me

i got a large spinner drive for my time machine thing and ive got another 4 t ssd drive ..ive yet to test if i can use it to record onto it, i mainly use it to move sessions ive worked on and its mostly finished and ive to sort out the stems and get ready for backups

hope this help

paul

[ConcertinaChap]

Which has brought up a secondary question. Should I still be looking at SSDs or should I now be considering NVMe instead?

SSD = Solid State Disk, so not quite what I think you mean. All such drives are SSDs (unless they're spinning rust which seems unlikely). The alternatives are SATA and NVMe. SATA is the older interface and NVMe the newer, and the choice only applies if you get the SSD and a separate hard drive enclosure. Both have to use the same interface. Because NVMe is the newer stadard it supports higher performance but it does cost a little more. For historical reasons I use SATA drives and get good performance but if I were buying afresh I'd go NVMe. The other thing to watch out for is the interface between the drive enclosure and the Mac. This can either be USB of Thunderbolt, the Studio supports both on its Thunderbolt ports. Thunderbolt is blazingly fast but very expensive. USB has become rather confusing lately with a profusion of standards but the Mac Studio Thunderbolt/USB ports support USB 3.1 Gen 2 which is very fast and USB 4 which is as fast as Thunderbolt.

Hope that helps.

CC

[Spiderstu]

Regarding displays:

I run 3 LG 27inch Ultrafine 5K monitors from my M1 Max Mac Studio with no trouble at all. They were less expensive than Apple Studio Displays, and I believe they have the same panels (but the sound and physical design not as good).

I make good use of all the USB ports that my monitors offer, on top of the ports on the Studio itself. With my set up I have 4 x Thunderbolt 4 ports, 11 x USB-C and 2 x USB-A, without needing to connect a multi-port expander. I have never run out of ports to use.

My Mac Studio will support up to 5 monitors, the M2s support more.

However, if I could afford it I would trade them up for an Apple XDR display in an instant.

I don't think I've ever witnessed my M1 Max Mac breaking a sweat, but would recommend getting as much RAM as you can afford - 32 GB is an absolute minimum in my opinion and you would be better off doubling up if you can.

[ManFromGlass]

I’m going through a similar situation about figuring it all out. I lucked into a Studio Max refurbished model that gave me a larger internal hard drive (2Tb) than I wanted but it cost $600 less than the 1Tb version purchased new.
Many times I clicked on the Buy function on Apples site to check the prices of the configurations. You may have noticed the little question marks beside the Ram and internal drive choices. Those helped me decide on what machine I needed.
When they arrive I’ll be figuring out how to plug it all together too as I have an older ultrawide monitor that doesn’t have thunderbolt. I say they because I bought 2 (yikes!) and one will go back. One of my challenges is that if the new one has the latest OS then it won’t work with the RME driver and possibly other third party drivers. You can’t decide what OS you need when you buy the machine. And the current machines won’t go backwards from the OS they arrive with.

[ConcertinaChap]

One of my challenges is that if the new one has the latest OS then it won’t work with the RME driver and possibly other third party drivers. You can’t decide what OS you need when you buy the machine. And the current machines won’t go backwards from the OS they arrive with.

If it's an Apple refurb then (having bought several over the years) they always seem to arrive with the MacOS version that was current when they were made rather than the latest version, so you might be OK.

I've never used RME kit but I always thought they had this stellar reputation for keeping their drivers up to date with new OS versions. Is it that they haven't got round to it yet?

that gave me a larger internal hard drive (2Tb) than I wanted

You can never have too large a drive.

CC

[Luke W]

I've never used RME kit but I always thought they had this stellar reputation for keeping their drivers up to date with new OS versions. Is it that they haven't got round to it yet?

In fairness, macOS 15 has been out for less than a week. I wouldn't have thought it'll be long before they're back up to date.

When they arrive I’ll be figuring out how to plug it all together too as I have an older ultrawide monitor that doesn’t have thunderbolt.

My older 21:9 monitor is happily running from the HDMI port on the Mac studio. You'll only run into issues if you want to run crazy resolutions/refresh rates.

[BigRedX]

I'm 6 weeks into my Mac Studio ownership and have come across a rather unusual anomaly...

The main use for this Mac is for day job which is graphic design for print which involves manipulating so fairly large files in InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop. Recently I've been noticing very sluggish behaviour when trying to move and manipulate objects in all three Adobe programs, but it has been particularly bad in Illustrator, where almost nothing would happen immediately and often after dragging or rotating an object I would have to wait for what I did to actually be reflected on the display. I was also finding the dragging a marquee with either the magnify or selection tool often didn't show the rectangular selection area on the display and other little quirks in the interface.

An on-line search revealed nothing recent, and after tinkering with the various performance and display setting in Illustrator, I finally decided to see what would happen if I switched off GPU Performance, which had been activated by default and had a comment telling me that my GPU was compatible with the program. Suddenly everything was working fine again. Objects moved with the mouse and transformations happened instantaneously.

Why?