
A maxed-out Mac Pro will cost you $53,000 – without display - jquery
https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/12/10/a-maxed-out-mac-pro-will-cost-you-53000----without-display
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vondur
Apple's completely crazy with the pricing for the new Mac Pro. $6000 for an 8
core Xeon with a Radeon 580x is a mid range machine nowadays thanks to AMD and
the Ryzen/Threadripper CPU's. The old towers were far more reasonably priced.
Unless you are really tied some Apple specific app, I can't imagine justifying
purchasing one of these machines.

~~~
Kirby64
Ultimately, if you really need something that supports 1.5TB of RAM or a 28
core Xeon, you're going to get in the same realm as Apple's pricing even if
you build it yourself.

The $6k cost includes a ton of built-in cost for the fancy case, the server
grade motherboard, and fancy power supply/cooling system.

As far as I'm aware, you're not even capable of building a Threadripper
platform with that much RAM... because you're limited to 8 DIMM slots? There's
a few things on the horizon that might address that (namely, 256GB DIMMs), but
I'm not sure those are released yet... and I bet they cost a lot more than
128GB DIMMs.

Not saying it's not overpriced... but Dell et al. probably will gouge you just
as much if you try to build a Xeon workstation.

Hopefully Threadripper drives down the Intel pricing even on the server side,
cause as of right now it's just crazy.

~~~
gizmo686
No one who needs a machine that supports 1.5TB of ram is going to buy one that
comes with only 32GB. Same for CPU. Charging someone for support for the high
end, even if they only use the low end doesn't seem to make sense.

If it is actually an issue of unit cost, sell a lower-end base. If it is to
recoup development costs, find a way to price discriminate.

Otherwise, you are charging low end users for functionaility that they will
literally never use.

~~~
Kirby64
Depending on the user base, it wouldn't be farfetched to just buy the lowest
end RAM version and upgrade the RAM yourself. When you're spending $30k on
RAM... it's probably worth some time to shop around. Whether Apple supports
it... well that's another question.

Also, if you only NEED 32GB of RAM, then don't buy a Mac Pro. This is just
like buying a Xeon motherboard anywhere else and only putting 16GB of RAM into
it. Sure, you can do that, but it's a waste of money.

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paggle
If you do the same on dell.com, hp.com, etc. you will get a similar price or
higher.

~~~
thdrdt
Yep, it is absolutely non news. And you could even call Apple's prices
competitive.

Try a high end Dell with 3TB of RAM: way above $110,000

And if the screen is comparible to reference screens from Sony you can call
the screen extremely cheap.

Edit: but I would go for HP or Dell. Better support and much easier to upgrade
hardware to keep your system up to date.

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poulsbohemian
Bloomberg had essentially the same article
([https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-10/apple-
s-n...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-10/apple-s-new-mac-
can-cost-52-000-that-s-without-the-400-wheels?srnd=premium)), clearly intended
to provoke shock at the price. While at the base level it feels a bit pricy,
for example in comparison to the base iMac Pro, on the other end of the
spectrum if you need 28 cores and >1TB of ram... if you need that kind of
capacity, then chances are you can afford it.

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nyc640
Apparently as of 2 years ago, 1 stick of 128GB RAM from Crucial could cost
$4,000[1] if purchased on its own, so at 12 sticks of 128GB RAM maybe this is
a relative bargain compared to building it yourself? Of course at the lower
end, it's not really competitive at all.

[1] [https://www.pcgamer.com/this-single-128gb-of-ddr4-ram-
from-c...](https://www.pcgamer.com/this-single-128gb-of-ddr4-ram-from-crucial-
costs-4000/)

~~~
llampx
It's extremely unlikely that you'll find ram cheaper from an OEM than buying
direct or retail.

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sneak
I did this with every high end pro Mac since I was about eight years old. I
still have the B&W G3/Cinema Display posters in storage, though I never
actually had one.

A couple years ago, I finally got to a place where I could do that and then
click Buy. My main workstation is a big black 18 core iMac Pro with an asston
of ram, and I love it dearly. It was $15k or so, and I used it to earn well
over 20x that during the year I bought it—it was a relatively small expense.

Shake it if you got it.

~~~
imagetic
What on earth do you do that made you $300,000 and required that kind of
hardware? nobody I know outside Hollywood makes that kind of money in
media/graphics work.

~~~
sneak
Nothing I do _requires_ that level of hardware; 100% of what I do could be
done on a Raspberry Pi, it would just take a lot longer and be a lot more
frustrating. A $300 beater (or even a $3000 reliable used car) and an $80k BMW
will both get you from A to B.

I provide security, software/architecture design, and product consulting to
small businesses; I have been making and breaking web and web-adjacent
applications for 20 years.

It’s super nice not waiting (as much) on one’s computer. The additional RAM is
the most important part.

~~~
nsxwolf
That would count as a requirement in my book - reclaiming as much time as
possible from my local development process so that I can spend it doing other
things.

I bought an entry-level trash can Mac Pro on launch and it's my daily driver
to this day. It's still great but is outclassed by the new MacBook Pros in
every way except noise levels. I'm sad that there is no $3000 base model like
there was previously, because I really enjoy having development workstations.

~~~
sneak
I agree wholeheartedly; my time is my only truly nonrenewable resource. I
trade money for more time whenever and wherever possible.

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imagetic
A base model isn't the best investment, and the only thing that really makes
it special is the vega II and afterburner cards which pushes the build to the
$11-13k range. That's a lot of money for a rig without a monitor or storage.

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faraday2211
The base models are an absolute scam. You get far better specs with far less
money (the gap is way bigger than usual for apple). The higher spec models are
pretty good tho.

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jrace
We just spec'd it out to $73k CDN

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esotericn
For $53K I'd imagine you can get yourself a better machine and a software
developer to hackintosh it for you and provide support. :P

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NicoJuicy
64 gb ddr5 ram, decent Ryzen+video card, 512 gb SSD and 2TB will lose you
1600$-1800$.

I wouldn't know why I would ever consider a Mac

~~~
jbverschoor
what about 1.5tb ram?

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ohiovr
What would you do with a terabyte of ram on a mac?

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NicoJuicy
For the price, buy a Tesla instead

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ohiovr
The top 10 things to do with $53,000 besides buying a mac...

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anaisbetts
Imagine spending all of that money, and at the end of the day you end up with
a monitorless computer running macOS, the mind reels

~~~
Kirby64
People do that all the time with servers because they don't expect to have a
monitor with it. When you're in the $53k price bracket, another few grand for
a monitor (or, few hundred, depending on what you want) isn't remarkable.

As others have noted, you can price a HP or Dell workstation PC for the same
price. And guess what? No bundled monitor.

