OSX is great (Barring a few things I hate about it, but I hate things about all the operating systems.), but personally I settle for windows/linux boxes for my workstations simply due to the price and performance. I can't be bothered to deal with the headaches and weird gotchas that I've seen popup on Hackintoshes, and I'm not nearly rich enough to indulge Apple in their delusions of what their hardware is worth at the upper end.

My daily general use computer for email, web browsing, and other light workload things is a MacBook pro, but the workstation I sit down to do serious number crunching at is a Windows 10 machine. And I use a digital KM switch to link the two together so I can readily enjoy the useful aspects of both.

As for iMac systems, I simply don't trust them enough for use as a development/work rig. If something dies on it, pretty much the entire thing goes out the door while I wait for servicing. If something dies on my work station, then it is trivial to pop the case open and swap things out and 'make do' with bits of older hardware from the storage bin while I wait for proper replacements. Give up my entire computer because of a blown backlight in the monitor? ... No thanks.

I really hope that Apple decides they still want to actually compete in the production work station market rather than coast on fanboyism, and bring back a proper workstation tower design with a focus on off the shelf parts, and being able to store your drives and such in a case rather than external enclosures.

Well I'm increasingly leaning towards picking up the HP Omen or an Alienware (or something similar) as opposed to a Mac Pro, especially considering that the latest iteration of Windows is more palatable.

Well, see the thing is that I'm just not a huge fan of Windows. I generally just prefer MacOS (yes I know I'm fairly strange).

...

A little bit of research shows me that Windows 10 has added virtual desktops, a feature that I really missed when forced to work with Windows. I'm not sure I'd be as averse to Windows now that I know this.

I'm with you 100% - been a Mac user since the 90's, and its still by far my preferred OS.

However, you are in games, and games is still a Windows-centric world (and will continue to be indefinitely unless Apple puts gaming-class GPUs in all their desktop form factors). I've run a secondary Windows machine for games and game development since Windows XP, and it's increasingly 'not that bad'. Windows 10 is markedly more palatable to Mac users than previous Windows.

I highly advise keeping your MacBook (or picking up a cheap newer one) as your daily driver, and building a budget gaming PC as your development/gaming machine. You can build something that will outperform a Mac Pro on games-specific tasks for around $1,000 (less if you shop around).

I love Macs, so I'm defiantly upgrading my Macbook Pro to a new one (like that's a given, there's no way I'm not doing that). It's really unfortunate that Apple still isn't quite there yet for gaming machines, but what can we do I guess?

Mainly I didn't want to sink money into something that would not really be as worthwhile. I'm willing to invest money so long as it is worthwhile.

So a question for y'all: do you upgrade parts of your rigs? How often? At what point do you just straight up replace the rig? Mainly what I'm asking is about upgrading parts on a rig vs getting a new one.

So a question for y'all: do you upgrade parts of your rigs? How often? At what point do you just straight up replace the rig? Mainly what I'm asking is about upgrading parts on a rig vs getting a new one.

Its sort of a rolling cycle of components, more than a 'rig' :)

I replaced my video card this past year (the previous one was 4 years old). My CPU/motherboard is probably next up for replacement (I think 4 years old as well). I went to a mini-ITX form factor last time I did a bg rebuild, and as much as I love my case, I'll probably go to a fullsize motherboard next time to get access to more RAM slots, thus necessitating a new case...

So a question for y'all: do you upgrade parts of your rigs? How often? At what point do you just straight up replace the rig? Mainly what I'm asking is about upgrading parts on a rig vs getting a new one.

GPUs, frequently. I am a graphics programmer, after all. CPUs, almost never - one machine just got replaced due to a bad CPU. Crazy rare problem to have. Memory might get one mid-cycle replacement. Drives, sometimes. And then every 5ish years I'll gut the machine leaving just the case and power supply and rebuild. Typically nothing else is worth reusing at these stages. Recently I'm finding auxiliary hassles with that strategy - cases without USB 3 ports and stuff like that, plus no idea what to do with the old pulled hardware. I think in the future I'll just sell the machine whole and start from scratch.

I upgrade my boxes more on an 'as need' basis rather than any specific schedule. "Is it getting the job done without excessive waiting on my part? Then I can probably find more useful things to spend money on."

I haven't been doing much that had great demands on the graphics card in the last while, so I've been letting it slide for years now. Only real upgrades the current rig has gotten in the last while have been new SSDs and more hard drives.

Running low on storage space: Spend money addressing storage.

Finding your project is hitting a block due to lack of ram: Spend money addressing ram

Need to crunch more numbers in a shorter time: Spend money addressing processing power.

Not inducing enough headaches and your room doesn't look weird enough: Spend more on RGBs!

I keep a big case, old hard drives typically stick around as archive/legacy data stuff. Important bits get pulled onto new drives, and the old drives kind of sit around not doing much. I'll be sure I have everything I truly want off them, and then they'll eventually get pulled from the main system to make room for the next storage upgrade cycle.

But as part of my next round of major upgrades, I'm seriously considering buying a rack mount frame and rails, going with 4U boxes with big fans, and building a custom enclosure for dust/sound management. It will become part of a custom desk, give me somewhere to neatly stash a home server and a big beefy NAS box or two, some bigger UPS boxes, and bring together all the bits and pieces of hardware like the modem and such that are kicking around the room into one neat little cabinet.

Hmm, I see. So even if I went for something like an Alienware Aurora or an HP Omen, I'd probably just keep on swapping parts as needed out until eventually there'd be a point of getting a new rig. That doesn't sound too bad. There's a pretty high chance I'll go with something like an Alienware or something similar. While I'm sure it's probably better to build a PC, I'm not sure how much time I'll have to do that, so it makes most sense for me to just go on and purchase a good baseline machine and then upgrade its parts later as needed.

The Mac Pro is probably out, at least until next year (and even that is pretty doubtful). It's super unfortunate, and while I'd love to go with a Mac machine, from the advice given here, it's looking increasingly unlikely in terms of just the components I'd need to get a good high end machine.

Yeah, for self built stuff you typically just keep changing parts as you need new specs or features, or something finally fails.

I've seemed to always end up doing major upgrades after big socket/motherboard revisions so I've always started 'from scratch' with each major upgrade with new board/processor/ram, but some people will get one motherboard and have it go through two or three processors in its life as the newer ones come out for that socket, or the price on the upper end drops down to something more sensible.

But things like your graphics card will always be easy upgrades for the most part. The biggest question there is "Do you want to play with SLI/Crossfire?" Buying one card now and adding a second of the same model when it drops in price always seemed like a great idea, but for some reason I never actually managed to do it. (Mainly because I've had the card fail and need complete replacing, or just left the upgrade off to the point where it made more sense to get a vastly newer and more powerful card. I might just be very bad at this 'planning' thing I guess.) However that might end up being a little less viable these days anyway, as it seems a market trend to get away from the concept now.

Sadly I don't have any experience with the Alienware Aurora or HP Omen systems, so I can't comment too much on them.

Some of the biggest issues I've had when dealing with off the shelf hardware has been oddball things, like power supplies not actually being speced out to have any more cables than they need (An extra SATA power cable adds up in price over 25,000 units made after all), or cases simply being awkward to work with non-standard brackets/mounting points, so it pays to carefully check reviews and such for people complaining about issues when making after market upgrades.

Building a system yourself isn't a hard or overly time consuming task if you keep a setup simple. Going all out with custom water loops and the like really eat up the time, but if you're using all air, or All-in-One units in a modern case, then computers go together fairly quickly in part of an afternoon. Loads of good guides that walk you through the whole thing to be had online.

Don't let any of us bully you into building a system yourself of course, but also don't shy away from it by thinking it is some monster time sink or overly difficult.

I see the benefits of building a machine rather than buying one. Thing is partially I'm lazy :P . Tbh, I'll do some research into it as well, and if it doesn't seem like too much trouble for a lazy bum like me, I'll go for that option. Otherwise, there's tons of good options for prebuilt stuff.

The Aurora evidently does have good upgradability reviews in general. I'll probably have to think hard about what I want to do in that sense.

Oh well, at least I've more or less narrowed down my options away from Mac (as sad as I am) ((Yes I'm going to keep repeating this until the end of my days))

and if it doesn't seem like too much trouble for a lazy bum like me, I'll go for that option

Building PCs is *really* easy these days.

You only need 7 parts (case, motherboard, power supply, CPU, RAM, an SSD/HD, and a graphics card. Optionally an after-market CPU cooler if you want to overclock), part compatibility is thoroughly documented, and it all just screws/clips together.

Building PCs is *really* easy these days.
You only need 7 parts (case, motherboard, power supply, CPU, RAM, an SSD/HD, and a graphics card. Optionally an after-market CPU cooler if you want to overclock), part compatibility is thoroughly documented, and it all just screws/clips together.

Assembling the PC is easy, but selecting components can be troublesome.

Some real-world subtleties:

• Does the CPU heat sink fit into the case?
• Does the blu-ray unit come with software to actually play blu-ray media? Does it expire requiring the purchase of a new license?
• Does the card reader support gigantic SDXC cards?
• Can I use all RAM slots with a big graphics card or a big CPU heatsink?
• Can I boot from a M.2 SSD?