So I caved. It was lying there in its box, begging for me to open it. Well, I lasted 36 hours. (This was a few days ago but I hadn’t had time to post the photos)
Anyhow, a picture’s a thousand words, so here’s a million:
First thing you see when you open the box:
Got it hooked up in a temporary setup. Lovely X welcome screen. My keyboards were all wireless so I had no idea what to do, just mousing around.
I was debating whether to use my Logitech Dinovo Edge and MX610 – which I had gotten a while earlier for this purpose. But I figured I’d give Apple a shot and try out the included wireless mouse and keyboard for the full experience.
For 5 grand, it was nice of someone to finally include batteries. Very stylishly wrapped and packaged, if I may add.
These little paper tabs are a cool feature that I’ve rarely seen, making it a breeze to pull out batteries. It’s reassuring to see all these small touches that make for a great polished product.
Here’s the initial setup, testing it before starting our operation.
Hands washed and ready for surgery. Our victims. 3 (320 GB 7200.10’s) hard drives and 2 gigs of RAM.
About to open the panel.
The aluminum in all its glory. Used 2 flashes for this one.
And the insides…
I wanted to take a minute to comment about the whole hardware integration and case design. Coming from a strong PC hardware enthusiast/overclocker background just a few years ago, I have a few comments.
First of all this case is really nice. I’ve seen and used many of the finest PC cases (Antec, Lian Li) but this one definitely takes the cake, in terms of design.
On the inside, it’s a lot different from your typical ATX or BTX case. For that very reason. Since it’s Apple’s and they don’t need to follow any standards, they can design something specifically for that configuration, rather than something looser that’ll work with everything.
The hard drive bays were really cool, I liked how there were no wires going around the place, but all going through the back and having their connectors. I’m quite compulsive and like having everything totally neat, matching and orderly, so this was nice.
But there were some small issues too. There was some sort of scratch or staining on the left panel. Very slight but I noticed it under some lighting. I tried to wipe it down with a wet paper towel but Im not sure it helped. It wasn’t really a big deal though so I left it alone and didn’t want to make it worse. The biggest thing (no pun intended) was an odd gap/misalignment at the back of the case. Probably within manufacturing tolerances and wouldn’t mess anything up, but was still kind of disconcerting to see. It’s like a 0.1mm difference between one side and the other, but its visually noticable.
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=503503247&size=m&context=photostream
Adding the hard drives was a total breeze, and I’ve used some of the best mounting systems. However, acoustically Apple could’ve done some improvements and learned from other case manufacturers, namely Antec, which excels at vibration and sound control. Some silicone rubber grommets between the screws would have helped a lot, and I think I do hear hard drive and vibration noises sometimes.
Here’s the Radeon X1900 that it comes with. I haven’t tested it too much in 3D yet, but it’s supposed to be alright. Though I’ve heard some bad things about the cooler, with regards to noise and stuff. I might change it later, but for now it’ll stay.
Instructions for the RAM are nicely etched on the back of the panel. Quite convenient and intelligent, though I didn’t need them as I looked up some videos on how to change the ram and hard drives before I opened it up.
Here’s the RAM. Wintec I believe, with the official heatspreaders that apple wants and stuff.
Installation is straightforward. Everything worked pretty great.
I did run into a few big problems though, that night. All involving windows and bootcamp…
I had a complex partition structure planned, with Windows being on the 4th drive. I went through bootcamp and all, and then once I was in the windows installer it said I couldn’t do it there. Okay, so I’ll go back and create a partition on the first drive I guess… like it wanted me to. Well, no go. I exited the installer but it booted me right back into it. Holding alt just wouldn’t work (maybe I was doing it wrong at the time) — I was on a bluetooth keyboard.
Anyways, ultimately I got the CD out by holding down a mouse (3rd one I tried, cause I had bluetooth, RF and USB wacom) button on boot. Then I ran into a small issue in the dark in windows, accidentally putting in the drivers CD over the windows CD. Very bad loud sound, like a blender. It still works great though so no harm done.
Anyways, I didn’t take many pictures of the actual setup because my second screen hadn’t arrived yet. Will have that later.
By the way, call her Lotus :)
Comments
This place isn't ALL about me — just mostly.
Ash Haque
3 years, 3 months ago
Sick setup
Dennis
3 years, 3 months ago
Looks great!
Glenn Wolsey
3 years, 3 months ago
Beautiful setup, looking forward to see some more of your thoughts about the machine, dual displays, and the overall setup.
Gita
3 years, 3 months ago
This is hilarious! I thought I was silly for taking photos of the unboxing, but you’re even worse than I am! =) Congrats on the new computer; I was equally thrilled when mine arrived.
Steven Campbell
3 years, 2 months ago
It’s beautiful! The perfect setup to “intimidate your underlings and eliminate your overlings.” I’m very jealous.
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