New Hardware for MWorks Neurophysiology Set Up

Support
1

Hi Chris,

I’m a researcher in Tony Movshon’s lab, where we’ve been trying to spec out and buy some computers for a new neurophysiology rig that runs MWorks. My understanding is that, for stimulus presentation, we should buy two computers: a client machine and a server machine. However, we have some questions in terms of hardware requirements and preferences. Other than just presenting images on the screen, we’ll also be monitoring incoming eye tracking signals, and sending out digital pulses for rewards and signal synchronization.

We’ve been looking at both Mac Mini’s and Mac Studios, and at both new and used hardware. We know that MWorks requires M1 chips (or later), but otherwise we’re not sure how to guide our purchase.

What hardware specs would you recommend for a new set-up? Are any specs particularly important to optimize for - RAM, graphics card, processor, etc.? How different are the requirements for the client machine and the server machine?

Many thanks,

Justin

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Hi Justin,

My understanding is that, for stimulus presentation, we should buy two computers: a client machine and a server machine.

That isn’t required. Many labs run both client and server on the same Mac – although in that case, you’d want to be using a fairly powerful machine (e.g. a Mac Studio, rather than a Mac mini). But if you prefer to use separate machines for client and server, that is certainly supported.

We know that MWorks requires M1 chips (or later)

Actually, MWorks still supports both Intel and Apple Silicon (M series) processors. However, I definitely would not recommend purchasing any Intel-based Mac’s at this point.

What hardware specs would you recommend for a new set-up? Are any specs particularly important to optimize for - RAM, graphics card, processor, etc.? How different are the requirements for the client machine and the server machine?

For the server, having a good graphics processor is important, but really all the M-series chips have solid graphics capabilities, so I wouldn’t worry about that too much. A CPU with a good number of cores is also helpful, as MWorks generally runs a lot of threads in parallel. For RAM, I’d recommend 16GB or more, but even the lowest-spec MacBoor Air has that these days.

If you’re going to run client and server on the same machine, I think the base-level Mac Studio (14-core CPU, 32-core GPU, 36GB RAM) is a great choice. If you want separate machines, you could use a Mac mini for the server, though you might want to go with the M4 Pro model for the extra CPU and GPU cores. The client machine can be pretty much anything. MWorks’ demands on the client are modest, so it’s more a question of how much else you want to be doing on the machine at the same time.

I hope that helps. If you have more questions, feel free to ask.

Cheers,
Chris

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Thanks Chris, that’s very helpful!