BTO Mac Studio for more SSD only?

[jollino]

Hello fellow Apple users, I'm finally getting closer to upgrading my 2017 5K iMac and I'm likely getting a Mac Studio + Studio Display. I would love a 27" M2 iMac but Apple seems to think otherwise. I'm also not entirely happy about the price of the ASD (it's €1799 in Italy...), but it seems like the best compromise for a good 5K screen, hoping it will last for at least a couple of computers' lives.

I do however have a doubt about the Mac Studio itself. I've been thinking about a BTO, essentially the base model (which would cost €2449) with a 1 TB SSD (totalling €2679). And I was wondering: wouldn't it make more sense to go with the base model elsewhere and get some external SSD to go with it?

At the time of writing, I can see an online shop selling the base Mac Studio with a 512 GB SSD for €2293, which is €156 less than Apple. For about that price (€164 right now) I can get a 2 TB Crucial X9 Pro off Amazon. The only downside would be using up one of the ports, but there's no shortage of that, the boot disk needing a little nursing to make sure that app caches and whatnot don't get out of control, but I suppose that's nothing that a couple of symlinks can't handle if need be.

Essentially, BTO models can only be bought via Apple or authorized resellers, and they're never discounted . Given that I'm looking at spending a decent amount of cash on this, I'm trying to figure out what the most sensible approach is.

I think 32 GB of RAM would be plenty — I have 24 on my iMac — and the CPU is going to be way faster than my quad i7 anyway, so really the only upgrade I'd be considering is the SSD. Heck, it'd actually be a way oversized machine for my current needs anyway, but I plan to keep it for at least 5 or 6 years and I hope to start dealing with photography again, and possibly video as well, so I'm seeing it as an investment for the future.

Any insights, including "just shut up", will be thoroughly appreciated!

Thanks!

 

[Shazaam!]

Buying a refurbished unit from Apple's website saved me 10% on a 32GB/2TB Studio. Purchasing a Studio and/or Studio Display as a "student" saves a similar amount. 512GB just isn't enough elbow room, plus Apple's larger internal SSDs are twice as fast as external solutions.

 

[Mac Hammer Fan]

I bought the M1 last year with 1 TB and I regret that I didn't choose for 2TB internal SSD.

 

[wdhpgx]

I BTO'd mine, to 1tb SSD and some other things (gpu cores etc). I don't regret the 1tb at all.

I've also added an external SSD (nvme in a usb3.2 enclosure), and:

• while the nvme is 3k speed, the usb3.2 provides only 1k (actually slightly less)
• the internal SSD is more like 4-5k speed
• the external will sometimes disconnect for no apparent reason, which is annoying

That said:

• I haven't tried investing in thunderbolt enclosures, so I can't say whether the additional thunderbolt speed is worth the cost, or if the connection is more reliable
• I use the external SSD for very little, and don't notice any downside to its slower speed than the internal

Mostly, I dislike external storage and I miss the internal bays of my 3,1 mac pro. I wish I had more internal storage options on the studio.

Oh, one other experience:

• Before the studio I went the route of a m1 macmini with the small internal SSD and a large external SSD
• The problem I kept running into was that most data wanted to be stored under my homedir, ie on the internal drive, and getting data to be stored instead on the external drive was problematic.
  • And apparently in recent macos versions, having the homedir be stored on an external volume is difficult to impossible
• So ie if the data you want to store on the external SSD is easy to store outside your homedir, then it should work okay for that.
• And if the data you want to store on the external SSD expects to be stored under your homedir, then you might run into frustrations.

 

[jollino]

Thank you for the insight, I appreciate the personal experience!

I don't think I mind the "slower" speeds of an NVMe SSD via USB3.2, though who knows what kind of data I'll be working on in a year or so. I also already have several external disks with the iMac, several of which are still mechanical, so one more wouldn't matter that much (and compared to those, even a SATA-III SSD is pretty fast).

What really irks and worries me is precisely what @wdhpgx said in #4, i.e. apps that want to store data in the home directory. That's what I was hinting at with using symlinks to move stuff around, rather than moving all of the home elsewhere, but even that may become problematic if Apple keeps tightening the screws on what's allowed under the hood.

I spoke with a friends who work at a university and he may place the order in the Edu store. I suppose he can then just "gift" it to me and I can set it up in my name, get AppleCare myself and so on. The savings would be substantial: €400 less on the MS+ASD combo with the 1 TB upgrade, so definitely not a bad compromise. The downside of not being able to use Klarna or the like to split the payment up into instalments.

Thank you for the food for thought, I'll be thinking about this all a little longer! Right now the Mac Studio feels somewhat overkill for my current needs, to be honest. But as others have posted here, a "decent" Mac Mini costs almost the same as the base Mac Studio and is less powerful, so why not go with the big one from the beginning? Especially when paired with an ASD, as anything else seems to struggle with macOS's lack of subpixel antialiasing. (Or so I read, as I have no way to test that.)

Thank you all again!

 

[Steve686]

Hello fellow Apple users, I'm finally getting closer to upgrading my 2017 5K iMac and I'm likely getting a Mac Studio + Studio Display. I would love a 27" M2 iMac but Apple seems to think otherwise. I'm also not entirely happy about the price of the ASD (it's €1799 in Italy...), but it seems like the best compromise for a good 5K screen, hoping it will last for at least a couple of computers' lives.

I do however have a doubt about the Mac Studio itself. I've been thinking about a BTO, essentially the base model (which would cost €2449) with a 1 TB SSD (totalling €2679). And I was wondering: wouldn't it make more sense to go with the base model elsewhere and get some external SSD to go with it?

At the time of writing, I can see an online shop selling the base Mac Studio with a 512 GB SSD for €2293, which is €156 less than Apple. For about that price (€164 right now) I can get a 2 TB Crucial X9 Pro off Amazon. The only downside would be using up one of the ports, but there's no shortage of that, the boot disk needing a little nursing to make sure that app caches and whatnot don't get out of control, but I suppose that's nothing that a couple of symlinks can't handle if need be.

Essentially, BTO models can only be bought via Apple or authorized resellers, and they're never discounted . Given that I'm looking at spending a decent amount of cash on this, I'm trying to figure out what the most sensible approach is.

I think 32 GB of RAM would be plenty — I have 24 on my iMac — and the CPU is going to be way faster than my quad i7 anyway, so really the only upgrade I'd be considering is the SSD. Heck, it'd actually be a way oversized machine for my current needs anyway, but I plan to keep it for at least 5 or 6 years and I hope to start dealing with photography again, and possibly video as well, so I'm seeing it as an investment for the future.

Any insights, including "just shut up", will be thoroughly appreciated!

Thanks!

But what is the Studio for now?

Logic?

FCP?

I bought both an M2 Max and M2 Ultra base model.

I run 4K Pro Res video system with a Nikon Z8 and take thousands of photos with a 45mpixel sensor. Big files.

I kept the Ultra and took the Max back(which might be the one you buy refurbished...never know).
Part of my reasoning was I also want to have this beast for more than a couple of years. 32gb vs. 64gb RAM will let the workflow continue much smoother with the apps I have open in video and photo editing.

I also like the faster 1TB drive on board and have purchased a 2TB Samsung 980PRO NVmE with Acasis enclosure to add some super fast storage, along with 25TB of various SSD and 3.5" drives. The 6 Thunderbolt 4 ports will definitely make a difference since I am also running 3 4K monitors that support Thunderbolt.

Having said all of that, if you are going to invest in the future, 5-6 years in your case, I would go a step up to an Ultra.

 

[jollino]

Honestly, right now the Mac Studio would be quite overpowered for my needs. Due to a variety of reasons, I don't do anything that's that power-intensive, except for the occasional render out of DaVinci Resolve, some photo editing with Lightroom and Photoshop every now and then (I used to do that a lot more often before life got in the way), and some light code compiling. And, even more honestly, I don't even *need* a new machine.
Sure, it'd be nice to fiddle with those AI things that are optimized for M1/M2, but I have a M1 MBA for that; it's not that powerful (512/8) but it's fine, and it's actually faster than my iMac for certain things.

I could actually just get a screen for the MBA and keep it docked most of the time, as I prefer desktops and big screens over laptops, and right now it would be a solid upgrade on its own. (Battery lifespan consideration aside!)
Or I could keep the iMac until it dies out, as it has zero issues despite being six years old and not being officially supported by Sonoma, and it's fine for 90% of what I do on a daily basis.

Yet I'd still like to upgrade, in part because I do plan to resume doing creative things (especially in tandem with the iPhone 14 Pro's 48 mpx RAW images and 4K video), plus I may still be able to sell this iMac sooner rather than later. And I'd just like a new toy, I admit that. 🙃

What sort of bothers me is the display. I've seen the ASD at a local Apple Reseller and I like it a lot: it's crisp, vivid, and all that. But €1800 is almost as much as the computer itself and it's a tough pill to swallow. It would hopefully be an investment that I could keep for whatever next Mac I get, but it's still a noteworthy amount.

I have never had a 4K screen so I'm not entirely sure how those work with macOS nowadays, but I read some disappointment stories after Apple completely removed subpixel antialiasing in Ventura (or was it Monterey?).
The M1 iMacs would actually make for a decent machine in my case despite being 4.5k and a little smaller, even with an M1, if they weren't way too long in the tooth at this point, with no sign of new ones on the horizon.

Funny enough, I was in this exact situation in 2012: waiting for an iMac that wouldn't come to replace my 2006 one, so I just went with a Mini and a 1080p Dell monitor, which I still have. Then again, I'd happily keep this iMac's monitor if it could be used as such with another machine.

The Mac Studio makes the most sense, all things considered. I'm starting to think I may have to find a way to try a "regular" 4K screen somewhere with my MBA, to get an idea of how it actually works with current Macs!

 

[dwig]

A short while back, I chose a Studio M1 Ulta, base config w/ 1Tb SSD and 64Gb RAM, for primarily Photoshop work, with occasional LrC, Id, & Ai work and various document apps. I leave the internal SSD for OS and apps with all production files stored on externals, current all HDDs totalling ~28Tb. It has worked well. I plan on swapping in some SSD storage for storing "current projects" that I access frequently until completed. I'm happy with the beast.

 

[nikkormat]

Hi Jollino
It seems like we live close to 100 meters apart in Italy , I have a Mac Studio 32 / 512, a 2TB external SSD, an Apple Studio Display, a Synology, etc... If you like, I'll show you all my equipment. I hope it will be useful for your future purchases ! Feel free to contact me via FB. W Chieti !

 

[Fishrrman]

512gb really "isn't enough" for the Studio.

Upgrade the built-in SSD to 1tb.

Later on, you will thank yourself for doing this.

 

[Mike57000]

Needed 2To for internal storage (apps, personal documents and above all caches).
Using only DAS :
QNAP TR004 for 8to hard drives (videos mounted, musics, photos)
OWC Envoy Express for external Crucial 4To SSD (in progress projects).
Everything OK with Amphetamine.