Yea if you max out the hardware and add AppleCare it's $18,023. I was curious how much I would save with my student discount and it was about $1,800 cheaper.
I find it quite ironic that you can get a 3 year warranty for $250 on a product that costs more than most peoples car
RAM is the limiting factor for abinitio quantum mechanics and DFT calculations. The more you've got, the bigger the system you can study. It's mostly done on clusters, actually but an octo with 32 GB...