Apple introduces the Mac Studio, a desktop PC that comes with the M1 Max or M1 Ultra soc. The housing resembles that of the Mac mini, but is a lot higher. According to Apple, the Mac Studio is faster than the Mac Pros with Intel Xeon processors.
Apple uses the Mac Studio’s larger case for a cooling system with two fans on the top that draw in air. The active cooling allows the use of the M1 Max soc, which was previously used in the MacBook Pro. There will also be a version with the M1 Ultra, which is a new Apple chip that actually consists of two M1 Max socs.
According to Apple, the version with the M1 Max-soc is faster than the Mac Pro with an Intel Xeon processor with 16 cores. The version with M1 Ultra is also faster than the Xeon-Mac Pro with 28 cores. The GPU is up to 4.5 times faster than the Radeon 5700XT in the 27″ iMac and up to 80 percent faster than the Radeon W6900X in the Mac Pro.
Apple Mac Studio
The Mac Studio can be supplied with 64GB of RAM if the version with M1 Max-soc is chosen. The version with M1 Ultra can be supplied with 128GB of RAM. The memory is integrated on the M1 chips and cannot be expanded. The SSD storage is up to 8TB and reaches speeds of up to 7.4GB/s.
The housing has dimensions of 19.6 x 9.4 cm and consists of one piece of aluminum. At the back are, among other things, four Thunderbolt 4 connections and a 10Gbit/s Ethernet port. There are two USB-C ports on the front. In the version with the M1 Ultra-soc, these are Thunderbolt 4 connections. The Mac Studio has support for Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.
Apple will release the Mac Studio on March 18. The version with M1 Max costs at least 2329 euros and the price of the variant with M1 Ultra starts at 4629 euros. The most expensive configuration with M1 Ultra with 64 GPU cores, 128GB ram and an 8TB SSD costs 9229 euros.