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8TB SSD and Radeon Pro W5700X Upgrade Options Coming to Mac Pro
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It is on their site in the help/support section. It has a section about every upgradeable/swappable part and there are photo walkthroughs on those pages (and video walkthroughs on Apple's Youtube).
This one tells you what GPUs are compatible. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201805
This one tells you what PCIe cards (including 3rd party like different 3rd party GPUs) can be put in. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210408
Here's how to replace the power supply. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210585
Here's the one about replacing the I/O card. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210570
This one tells you how to swap RAM. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210103#verify
This one tells you which RAM are compatible so when we inevitably buy 3rd party RAM you know it works. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210405
This page is the only one i found that mentions the internal SSD. Which only says you need to contact Apple or an authorized Apple servicer to replace the SSD since those ones apparently have a custom connector only Apple can service. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT210556
However that doesn't in anyway stop you from putting in a 3rd party SSD in a PCIe slot and possibly setting that to be your boot drive should you choose to. Like these https://www.pcmag.com/roundup/361090/the-best-pci-express-nvme-solid-state-drives-ssds
TL;DR: Everything is user upgradeable except the CPU and the internal Apple/authorized 3rd party serviceable only SSD.
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Agree 100%
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Thank you for saying this. Not every professional is editing video.
There’s bad blood between them going back all the way to 2010 where their MBP had faulty nvidia graphics cards. Nvidia refused to take responsibility, resulting in Apple having to eat a huge loss recalling them and they haven’t made up since.
They would likely be correct. What is your current configuration? I would guess that a Mac Mini would also likely serve you just as well. What software do you run? What is your actual workflow?
Then get a Mac Mini.
Again, a Mac Mini has two busses, and has a 10Gb/s Ethernet port as an option.
For what? What cards do you have in your current machine?
Again, unless you can give specific examples of what you need that one of these other machines does not provide, it is impossible to respond meaningfully.
Before I switched to a Mac Mini for most of my personal use, I had a maxed out Mac Pro, with 4 SATA drives, 64GB of RAM and 2 30” Apple Cinema Displays. In various of the Mac Pros I have owned, I had 10Gb/s Ethernet cards, and a few times Fibre channel cards. Today, I have Mac Mini with 64GB of RAM, 2 LG Ultra Wide Thunderbolt Displays, and 4 2TB NVMe SSDs in a RAID 0 config for speed (all the data is backed up to my local server) in an OWC 4m2 external storage configuration.
It is a less expensive machine, runs more quietly, cooler and draws less power. I am happy to be convinced that you have a workflow that this machine does not support, but I need some specifics.
In theory, yes, but I don't think the desktop market is big enough for a product like this anymore. For the vast majority of users who used to have lower end Mac Pros current iMacs and MacBook Pros are more than enough. It might not be worth it for Apple to put in the development time for a lower end model that won't be seeing much sales.
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Nvidia has the best performers but at the high end the performance difference is often just 5% to 10%. Even without their history Apple might still have gone for AMD just for the price per unit alone since AMD is usually dramatically cheaper for the same performance.
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I work in print design and photography. My 2015 32GB iMac quad 3.3 is quite enough for what I do. Quite the workhorse, actually.
Yeah sure it would hurt their MacWorkstation sales because most people (like 99.9% of potential customers) would realize they are just wasting money on ECC and XEON architecture. Selling Workstations and reference monitors is a niche market for a reason.
But much more than that it would hurt their planned obsolescence strategy and cannibalize MacBook Pro and iMac sales, while flooding the market with very long lasting Macs. They can not have any of that.
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Mac mini has soldered ram and hd and zero upgradeability. it’s a throwaway machine like most of apples hardware.
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What on earth are you talking about? The CPU in the base model Mac Pro (a W-3223) has a tray price of $750.
If you want to replace that with say an i9-9900KF (top of the line 9th gen i9 without an iGPU, because you don't need it) - the tray price is... $499.
So you've so far shaved off $250 from the build price.
Again, comparing the base W-3223 to the i9-9900KF, you're missing:
750GB of RAM capacity,
4 ram channels
48 lanes of PCIe
There is no way in hell you're using anything close to the same board, or able to provide anywhere close to the same I/O.
(a) I would be dubious if MPX modules would even be used in a "consumer" model. It probably doesn't have enough PCIe lanes to spare.
(b) There was literally a third party MPX module in the Apple Store to buy at launch time, on day 1 - adding frickin mechanical hard drives of all things. There is zero chance no other vendors ship MPX modules.
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No, it doesn't.
The CPU and SSD are soldered. But that doesn't mean zero upgradability. Literally just like a laptop, or an iMac: you can add more storage, PCIe cards (including GPUs) and all number of I/O products using TB3 and/or USB ports.
Does it have the same upgradability as the Mac Pro? No of course not, that's literally what you're paying for in the Mac Pro: the ability to upgrade up the ****ing wazoo, internally.
You make many good points but I still disagree. The base price of the i9-9900K is under $500 while the Xeon W-3223 remains close to $1700 (retail quoted because there is no way to know what price Apple pays) and it ALSO DOES NOT fully utilize the capacity of the hardware. I did not say Apple could use the same board but MANY of the components on the board are the same. If you think Apple is going to sell enough of these for AMD to continue to make upgraded GPU modules in the future, you have not been following the past. If they couldn’t sell enough trashcan Macs to make it economically viable, what do you believe has changed? Sure, adding in a frame adapter for SATA drives is one thing but unless the volume goes up, nobody is going develop parts for that socket.
Personally, I’d love to see a consumer Mac Pro. Dump the expensive underperforming Intel chips. Use Ryzen or Threadripper (Epyc is overkill). Make up with Nvidia. But as other more astute posters have said: Apple does not want to sell upgradable machines. They only want to sell hobbled hardware with obsolescence in mind.
You mean the people who would have bought a $3000-4000 Mac Pro with a fraction of the expansion potential, which is what Apple have always offered in the past (and which even the trashcan offered, albeit with multiple design mistakes and no updates since 2013).
Mostly, we're complaining about the $6000 model with worse all-round specs than the $5000 iMac Pro (that includes a $1000 screen) and being asked to pay a $2000+ premium for twice as many PCIe and RAM slots as we'll ever need (...and if we did we'd want more than a not-officially-upgradable 8 core CPU). It is the "8 PCIe slots vs. 0 PCIe slots" (...and the same for RAM and power supply capacity) that grates.
Maybe the $53k model is brilliant. Maybe the $9800 12 core, Vega II, 1TB config will be sweet - we'll know when we've seen actual reviews from people who aren't YouTube influencers tickled pink to have been given a sneak preview by Apple.
Let me know when someone has benchmarked the $6k version. It's like VW dropping the Golf but saying "Here's a Bugatti Veyron 'Lite' for only $200k... with a 1400cc engine and polyester upholstery".
Apple have doubled the entry price of the (already premium-priced) Mac Pro. I can't imagine what combination of misconceptions leads some people to think that isn't a problem.
Man, I wish Apple would make a middle ground display again. They do make great looking hardware, and the attachment of the XDR display to that crazy stand is pretty slick with those magnets.
While I'm wishing for things, I wish they'd drop a 16 core Ryzen in the iMac and get the MacBook Pro speaker team to pump up the iMac speakers.
I'll never get a current Mac Pro, sadly. My 8core xeon Mac Pro cheese grater sits under my desk like a silent guardian, acting as a small shelf for knick knacks.
It was a great machine!
While I'm wishing for things, I wish they'd drop a 16 core Ryzen in the iMac and get the MacBook Pro speaker team to pump up the iMac speakers.
I'll never get a current Mac Pro, sadly. My 8core xeon Mac Pro cheese grater sits under my desk like a silent guardian, acting as a small shelf for knick knacks.
It was a great machine!
I literally quoted you the tray pricing for each one - the pricing OEM vendors pay. You're quoting the retail pricing because it's the only way your argument holds any weight.
The "Trash can" Mac Pros were not viable going forward because they couldn't handle more heat. Apple literally told us this when they announced they were working on a new Mac Pro, over 2 years ago.
Darth Tulhu
macrumors 68020
That is the setup I'm looking towards, with the addition of an external GPU (for gaming purposes). In my case, I'm thinking the mini could and would be replaced by a MBA/MBP, but I'm still thinking about the best approach.
All this griping aside, TB3 is a game changer that allows us non-pro enthusiasts to really modularize everything. We just have to deal with the cable management we wouldn't have to with internal components.
In that sense, the new mini replaced the (intentions of the) trashcan Mac Pro.
I don't think it will happen because lower price will cannibalize the top end. The MacPro was never a quantity seller and was not intended to be
I have a Blackmagic eGPU and I love it. Quiet, fast and I can turn it off when I do not need the extra performance, saving money (power is expensive in California - I am way over my "allotment" (into tier three).
Very much so. If there was one machine I would wish for it is a Mac Mini with a higher end CPU and discrete graphics, in a slightly taller case - a Mini Pro. Something I will not expect until the new A-series based ARM Mac Mini hits the market in two to three years.
You're only off by a factor of 4. Actually probably greater than that since Apple no doubt has leverage to drive a harder deal with Intel than publicly disclosed OEM pricing 😂
Well, by my calculation based on processor upgrades, Apple charge about a 54% markup c.f. retail prices (actually, pretty modest c.f. some of their RAM and SSD prices - I thought it would be worse) so that $250 shaving would actually be $385. Then, of course, there's a saving on not using ECC RAM, halving the number of DIMM and PCIe slots (an i9 wouldn't be able to drive them) not needing so much power and cooling...
However: Even I don't quite believe that. Estimating relative build prices of hypothetical machines from retail component prices is pretty futile - whichever way you're arguing. We have no idea what Apple's deal with Intel is on chip prices, but as the 4th largest PC manufacturer in the world Apple certainly won't be paying retail prices... although even then that might not apply chip-by-chip: it is only speculation but they could easily agree to, say, pay a premium for Xeons and pass that on to the customer in return for a bargain price on the i5s used in MacBook Air. Maybe they'd get a better price on i9s if they could use the same chip in the Mini and iMac and buy in higher quantities. Maybe Intel gives big discounts on Core i, won't budge from "tray prices" for Xeon because its a less price-sensitive market. Maybe Intel are giving Apple a sweetheart deal on Xeons so they can produce a "flagship" machine for the new Xeon-Ws and not be tempted to talk to AMD...
Or, maybe, if Apple did decide to make a "prosumer" Mac tower it would be more economical to keep the same Xeon motherboard and 'knobble' it by leaving off half the PCIe and DIMM connectors c.f. having to make a whole new Core i board.
Basically, we. don't. know.
What we do know is that it ridiculous to suggest that the #4 maker of PCs couldn't economically make a nice, prosumer-grade Xeon tower in the $2k-$4k range if they chose too (since its something that #1-#3 and #5-#5000 seem to manage on a fraction of the resources) and still charge a decent premium for MacOS/App development.
The new MP was designed to be $10k+ for an appropriate configuration - Apple decided that "pro" now meant nothing short of "8K video workflow for movie studios" - that's the questionable decision. Trying to think up ways to kludge the MP as it is into something cheaper is irrelevant.
So more capable GPUs are always hotter? Wow, that must mean the latest stuff is hotter than the sun. Let’s be real here, they did not make GPU upgrades because there was no economy to support it.
I have no way to check your OEM pricing. Therefore I used data that is freely available to everyone.
Are you saying Apple cannot make a modular consumer Mac that shares as much as possible with the “Pro”?
... Don't you mean non-Xeon tower?
I thought the whole point of the "ProSumer" machine was that people don't want a Xeon, which expensive ECC Ram, etc etc.
Really nice post and stated what I intended but done much more eloquently.
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But that would likely be true of all the parts in the MacPro. I am assuming the markup Apple pays for components is roughly the same for everything. That said, instead of guessing at Apple’s pricing, I used (admittedly dated) retail pricing because that is something we can all see.
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Literally words from Craig Federighi's mouth:
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/core_i9/i9-9900k
https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/intel/xeon_w/w-3223
I'm saying that a "consumer" Mac would share very little in terms of the mainboard and components, with the 2019 Mac Pro, even if it were in a case that looked exactly the same.
Most of what's in it, is there either to support, or because it's possible due to using the workstation class components.
Anything related to the power supply, memory, PCI slots, ethernet controllers, CPU would all be different.
I'm not sure what a mid-range tower would cut? Where do you go from an 8-core CPU and a 3-year old Polaris GPU? The 9900K is almost certainly faster than the lower clocked Xeon W in the 2019 Mac Pro, it even turbos higher. Honestly if the 5K iMac was outfitted with RDNA graphics it would be the best bang for buck.
My guess would be a real expense is getting each Thunderbolt port to also do video. That totally precludes off-the-shelf parts. So this hypothetical tower still has to have all of the internal routing because I cannot imagine Apple introducing a tower that doesn't support Thunderbolt video.
My guess would be a real expense is getting each Thunderbolt port to also do video. That totally precludes off-the-shelf parts. So this hypothetical tower still has to have all of the internal routing because I cannot imagine Apple introducing a tower that doesn't support Thunderbolt video.