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Mac Studio M1 Ultra Teardown [video]
- Maursault 5y agoWas anyone else cringing during this video at both the host's constant unnecessary outbursts, but also the way he haphazardly stripped a $16K Studio? It was obvious he has experience and yet went out of his way to act unprofessional. I seriously doubt every screw made it back into that Studio. Can't wait for iFixit's calmer teardown video.
- jeffbee 5y agoIt's pretty embarrassing watching a grown man lose his cool repeatedly just because there's a cap over a CPU and some memory that are mounted on the same PCB.
- ehutch79 5y agoThis guy is kinda... I'm surprised the headline isn't QUANTUM COMPUTING MAC CONFIRMED.
- henvic 5y agoGive him a break. He's probably doing his best to make money out of his channel. Of course he wants to draw attention, and that's fine. People understand he's acting, besides doing a professional work.
- ianai 5y agoProbably the interesting thing will be if we ever get videos of deep hardware fixes of these. Like the “I bought 5 broken PS5s to fix for this video”
- buryat 5y ago> but also the way he haphazardly stripped a $16K Studio the version they tore down is $4k and even the maxed out version is $8k, don't know where you got $16k figure from https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-studio/20-core-cpu-48-core-gpu-32-core-neural-engine-64gb-memory-1tb# https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-mac/mac-studio/20-core-cpu-48...
- dylan604 5y agoThey bought 3 separate systems with montiors. Easy to see how it got to the $17k+. It's explained within the opening minutes of the video
- smoldesu 5y agoMax Tech is... really something. I stumbled upon a few of his videos a few years ago and thought it was a parody of JayzTwoCents/LinusTechTips channels, but... nope. Guy is a real gem of modern YouTube and algorithm pandering.
- pokstad 5y agoWhat’s up with not using an electrostatic mat and wrist bracelet to prevent discharging onto the electronics?
- vinyl7 5y agoIn my experience of having touched components and had static discharge, modern components (at least on PCs) are designed to handle it. I worked for a systems builder and none of the assemblers used grounding straps and had no issues. It seems like they have something in the traces to protect the critical components from static, probably to reduce RMAs from custom builders. That's not to say it can't happen though.
- brian_cunnie 5y agoI think static straps are important. I used to work at a fabless semiconductor company, Aeluros (bought by Broadcom) in 2002-2007, and one of our analog designers, Arnold Feldman, Ph.D., who designed anti-static circuitry for a large graphics card mfr, religiously wore anti-static straps when he was in the lab. In fact, all the designers (they were all Ph.D.s from either Stanford or Cal) wore straps in the lab. I asked him once why he wore a strap because until that company I had been haphazard in my use of a strap when I worked on the guts of PCs. He said that even though I might not have caused a failure, the chip might be degraded. I now wear a strap every time I work with bare circuit boards.
- pokstad 5y agoYup, degradation is the silent killer. It may work this time, but maybe a few months or years down the road it will suddenly fail.
- vxNsr 5y agoThis is fascinating, I didn’t know this was a thing. I always ignored the static strap, based on what I’d heard/seen that it was no longer strictly necessary.
- paxys 5y agoMeh. It is a $4K machine, not $16K. And a million views on a YouTube video (which this one is approaching and sure to exceed) can get you up to $40K in ad revenue. Somehow I doubt think the possibility of screwing up when putting it back together is too scary to him.
- unclekev 5y ago> And a million views on a YouTube video (which this one is approaching and sure to exceed) can get you up to $40K in ad revenue 1 million views on YouTube is closer to $3-$4k in Ad Revenue (If you are lucky) Not $40k
- paxys 5y agoIt depends on your viewership breakdown. The average is lower, but top creators who target viewers in expensive markets have reported those numbers on the high end.
- xuki 5y agoApparently the money in tech review is in affiliated marketing and not ads. I've seen people pulling 200K a year with around 100K subs.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Underphil 5y agoYeah, this is the kind of content I try to avoid. Being shouted at by a guy who uses the word 'literally' in almost every sentence isn't my idea of enjoyable content.
- louwrentius 5y agoThe video was excruciating for this very reason. Very obnoxious bro-culture presentation.
- k2enemy 5y agoIt seems there are two slots for SSDs. I'd be curious to know which storage configurations populate both slots versus just one. If Apple offers SSD upgrades like they do for the Mac Pro, it would be nice to order a studio with one slot free.
- MBCook 5y agoIsn’t this sort of how the iMac Pro worked? Didn’t it have slots, but they would only work in single or tandem, not as two separate drives? And you couldn’t upgrade your current drive, you had to blow it away since the drives were tied through the Secure Enclave? Maybe I’m misremembering. But it wouldn’t surprise me if this was a version of that.
- pram 5y agoYep the iMac Pro and Mac Pro have had the same setup. I’d assume the 4/8TB configurations populate both ports from the disk speed tests I’ve seen.
- marcan_42 5y agoIt's not the secure enclave thing. These aren't SSDs. These are raw storage modules. The SSD controller is built into the M1/T2. You are upgrading the raw storage behind a single, global SSD. Of course when you change the layout of the raw storage, the data arrangement changes and you have to reformat. It'd be like swapping out chips on a regular SSD and expecting your data to still be there.
- k2enemy 5y agoThanks for the explanation, that is very helpful.
- eyelidlessness 5y agoYep apparently two non-soldered modules. From what I read, the Pro’s upgrade program was introduced after the fact. I’d bet Studio will follow suit if there’s an aftermarket interest, and it’ll be repositioned as the semi-upgradeable amorphous version of “xMac”. It’s otherwise perfectly suited for the long lost mid tier desktop Mac, and it’s safe to assume no other internal components will ever be upgradeable again.
- onesun 5y ago
- yuuta 5y agoApple always makes incredibly beautiful internal designs - for themselves, not the users.
- spoonjim 5y agoSome of it is too much though. Why are those black stickers on there covering up parts of the components? It's like they were ashamed of the schematic or something.
- greggsy 5y agoPossibly a mix of cosmetic and functional. Maybe they identified that dust buildup can cause static issues. Maybe the plastic addresses some solder filament problems. It might also increase the device’s tolerance to vibration, or performs sound dampening.
- Casteil 5y agoEMI shielding, most likely
- gumby 5y agoTheir CEO is a master of the BOM. They aren’t including a sticker like that unless it is functional.
- tlb 5y agoMost Apple products I've owned, I've ended up seeing inside at some point in their life cycle. It makes a difference to me knowing that they're nice inside. But also, it's hard to think of products that are nice on the outside but ugly on the inside. I suspect it's because some people care and some don't, and both inside and outside reflect that.
- sgjohnson 5y ago> it's hard to think of products that are nice on the outside but ugly on the inside HP and Microsoft have both made some pretty looking laptops recently, but they are a complete and utter mess on the inside.
- robertwt7 5y agovery excited with this mac studio. with the same price of mbp14 ($3300 AUD), i can get m1 max with 32gb ram, as opposed to m1 pro (10 core and 16 core gpu) with 16gb ram. Seriously considering to buy the mac studio and take it in my backpack lol.
- nirui 5y agoI don't really care how a company arrange their PCBs. It's just like writing code, as long as the code is correct, easily readable, expressive and have great eventual performance, it's a good code, you don't have to keep your lines in a visually beautiful perfect symmetry to achieve that. The same is true for PCB design: as long as the board is correct, reasonable, stable and have good performance, it's a good board. Based on the video, in order to clean up the dirty fans in this machine (something you'll start to do eventually), you'll have to: 1. Un-glue the button rubble stand ring to access the body screws, 2. Remove the exposed power supply (Risk getting shocked or worse), 3. Detach almost everything (screws, tapes and cables) you can see, so you can un-mount the main board to access the fans. Then, after done cleaning, you have to do everything again but in reverse. My opinion is, Apple can make their circuits look like a Steve Jobs thonk pose, but if an user has to go through all that many trouble and risks to preform such simple and (rare but) routine task, this design is bad.
- kiratp 5y agoOur devs aren't cleaning their machines - it goes to Apple. As long as their techs can do it it matters not. Its cheaper that way anyway. This design optimizes for the rest of the (365 * 3) - 1 days that the machine takes less space on your desk and is whisper quiet.
- AHTERIX5000 5y agoCheaper to send the whole machine to Apple for servicing? I worked at a company where most users had simple PCs with dust filters and it took 5 seconds to clean those when fans started ramping up due to accumulated dust. I can't really see how it would be cheaper to pause all work and send the machine somewhere else for cleaning. Heatsinks and thermal pastes, no-one really cared since they should be fine for years until the machine is replaced anyway.
- Hamuko 5y agoI've definitely cleaned my work machine by myself. I imagine my employer also appreciates it, since the alternative would be to be without a work machine for however long.
- neya 5y agoBetween this and an M1 Mac Mini, which one would the HN crowd recommend for day to day programming tasks and occasional gaming?
- yakkityyak 5y agoBaseline Mac studio.
- JanSt 5y agoI own the first gen M1 lowest spec (8 GB) MBP. I can run XCode / Android Studio without any problems. I'd go with 16GB next time, because I sometimes run Xcode, Android Studio, VS Code and more at the same time which is too much for 8 GB. The M1 does handle memory really good though. Can't say much in terms of gaming but it runs Zwift perfectly fine, which is the only game I play.
- norman784 5y agoThere aren't too much games that runs on macOS and less even that run on arm without rosetta, so I agree that he should just buy a PC for gaming (maybe a steamdeck), I also own a Mac mini m1 (16gb) but I'm tempted to upgrade to a MacBook Pro for the next gen, I really miss the ability to use it not only in the desk. Also I'm curious if the entry level Mac studio will make a difference when compiling your app, I have a rust side project were it takes a while to do a clean compilation and 12-15 secs when doing incremental compilation (it really sucks when you need to wait "that much" to try some things out, mostly when working in the UI and tweaking some things). If this new Mac could take that to 5< secs It would be a huge upgrade, if not then the Mac mini is worth the bucks.
- gumby 5y agoIt’s unlikely to speed up your use case as a single threaded program seems to be the same speed on the Studio as on an MBP. You’ll notice that you can do a full build in background while still using the machine though.
- Casteil 5y ago
- hit8run 5y agoI don’t know about you but I find it extremely hard to watch this video as the guy is constantly screaming and faking emotions.
- giuliomagnifico 5y agoMe too. Watch it without the audio =) The hardware is interesting, his opinions/emotions not so much.
- timc3 5y agoYeah Maxtech videos are quite unwatchable/unlistenable but their click bait titles show up often in my YouTube results much to my annoyance
- MrBuddyCasino 5y agoBesides being off-putting in the moment, its also a blackpill on the audience of these YT videos. Apparently what people want to see is the destruction of a work of art by an obnoxious person on meth. Like giving the Pietà to the nearest crack addict for disassembly.
- louwrentius 5y agoI wanted to see the video but the presenter-bro was extremely obnoxious in my view. I really couldn’t stand him.
- ilumanty 5y agoI find it odd that the power indicator light on the front is always visible, even though the machine is clearly not plugged in. On the older aluminium MacBook Pro, it used to blend into the chassis.
- 542458 5y agoAgreed. Maybe a slightly different manufacturing process that makes the fancy laser lancing impossible? Maybe they don’t have those machines anymore (IIRC there was only really one company making the equipment to do it)?
- FinalBriefing 5y agoYea, the pre-unibody Macbook Pro had invisible power and camera lights. No idea how they made the light go through a piece of seemingly solid metal. Always thought it was a cool effect and it's too bad they dropped it.
- frosted-flakes 5y agoNot invisible, just hard to spot. There were a bunch of tiny holes that let the light through.
- _ph_ 5y agoIt is amazing, how much engineering goes into these machines - everything is designed from scratch for this form factor. It is also nice to see that the SSD are not soldered in place, though it isn't trivial to exchange them. The cooling solution for the CPU also seems to be great. However, it is pretty unforgivable that the cooling sucks in air from the bottom where it would pick up any dust on the table and might clog the electronics of the power supply. Especially as it is not possible to easily clean the internals of the machine. If just the aluminum housing of the machine could be easily removed, I would consider this machine a great design - but not so as it is. I wonder whether one should carefully apply some filter gaze around the air intakes to reduce dust intake into the machine.
- Cthulhu_ 5y agoHow would it suck up more dust from underneath than it would from the sides? I don't see a major difference with previous models or competing laptops. Also, desks and surfaces are usually cleaned.
- llampx 5y agoDust collects on flat horizontal surfaces.
- Y-bar 5y agoThe front fan grille on my midi tower (Fractal Meshify) collects a lot of dust in its intake, I presume it is because any dust which would have fallen onto the desk in front of the computer instead gets pulled into it by the fans. From my point of view having the intake lower as the Mac Studio would not noticeable increase the dustiness.
- thechao 5y agoDust doesn't crawl on to a desk from the floor; it settles in from the air. If you're placing a new computer on to a previously dusty surface then, yes, you might see an initial spike in dust coming in. After that, I'd bet that the dominate source of dust is air.
- traceroute66 5y agoInteresting observation from the video (to me at least) is the move from IEC C7 (figure of 8) to IEC C6 (cloverleaf) AC power input. This introduces a functional ground to the chassis, and so perhaps (amongst other things) addresses some of the static/dust build-up concerns that others here have commented on ?
- zeckalpha 5y agoOlder macs, like the sunflower iMac, already had the same IEC C5 connector. Some had the IEC C14 connector.
- traceroute66 5y ago> Older macs, like the sunflower iMac, already had the same IEC C5 connector. Some had the IEC C14 connector. Yes, I am aware of that. I was, however, referring specifically to this form factor, i.e. "mini" style[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mini https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_Mini
- norman784 5y agoI know that a lot of people hates apple, but I love to see their hardware and I think they are innovating in certain areas that I'd hope amd/intel start copying, like the unified memory, if they start working in that direction it will change the PC world forever (also they need to add more memory channels to their processors, 2 is just not enough for this feature). Also the PCB design looks cool, but they are not the only ones, if you buy a mid/premium gaming motherboard they are also beautiful.
- sgjohnson 5y ago> unified memory Please dear god no. First, it already exists (shared memory with GPU). Second, implementing it in the same way as Apple basically requires an SoC.
- Dobbs 5y agoYes unified memory already exists it isn't some newfangled thing. That said Apple is the only modern consumer brand doing it for a Laptop/Desktop. It definitely has some downsides, but it also does have some upsides.
- norman784 5y agoYes, but you need to setup in the bios how much memory you want to dedicate to the gpu, while apples approach afaik doesn't gpu/cpu can access the same memory, so if you for example want to game and the game requires more memory than the cpu you can get as much as ram you have. I'm on having the cpu/gpu integrated, but more powerful, if apple can do it, then amd/intel can do it too, but I suspect amd will lose their dedicated gpu market, while intel could gain more with this kind of move, but I suspect that intel doesn't care too much about the enthusiast or end users as apple/amd (I mean that apple market are end user and not server/enterprise like intel).
- sgjohnson 5y agoThere are bigger problems with that. Bundling CPU and GPU is not feasible in the present day for high end systems. There are use cases where you need say HBM2 memory. Or you need 4 outputs (most motherboards have just HDMI+VGA). It’s easy for Apple to do, because they have 0 skin in the game in gaming or AI or even GPU compute markets. I don’t think it would make sense for AMD to do it. It would make sense for Intel, to compete in entry level gaming market, but that’s it. IMHO it’s just not feasible if your product is a general purpose GPU, because there’s a lot more to it than just the processing unit.
- bullen 5y agoThat's no computer, this is a computer: http://move.rupy.se/file/xeon_1030.png http://move.rupy.se/file/xeon_1030.png
- bradfa 5y agoI feel bad for Apple's "design for manufacturing" engineering team. That looks like a horrible design to have to assemble reliably in mass quantities. So many tiny screws holding so many tiny PCBs connected with so many tiny flex cables. It's amazing how much focus Apple puts on the customer's experience and the design ascetic in comparison to making something which is easy to assemble. To their credit, they've been doing it this way for a long time, but gosh, the poor manufacturing team...
- ricardobeat 5y agoI think you have it pretty backwards. These designs are optimized for manufacturing, these are not meant to be user-accessible or easily serviceable. If it’s anything like iPhone manufacturing videos they’ve shared before, most of the device is assembled by robots.
- bradfa 5y agoI don't think I mentioned anything about user-accessibility or servicing, I was just thinking from an assembly point of view. In my experience, which has never been at the scale or complexity of iPhone manufacturing volumes, anything with screws is a big no-no. You must minimize the number of screws and having things which snap fit is greatly preferred over a screwed connection. Even when robots are doing some of the assembly. If you have any videos of robots installing lots of tiny screws in mass manufacturing, I'd be genuinely interested to see that. I'm interested in volume manufacturing techniques.
- ricardobeat 5y agoIf it is a "a horrible design to have to assemble reliably in mass quantities", fair to assume the focus of the design would have been serviceability, otherwise what would be the trade-off? The third option, which would be "Apple sucks at industrial design" seems like a stretch. Here is one from 2016 - it's using an iPhone as an example, but to be fair I don't know if this is actually used in the production line: https://youtu.be/BOY3oZ8SkZU?t=23 https://youtu.be/BOY3oZ8SkZU?t=23
- MBCook 5y agoThe size of that M1 Ultra package is just enormous. I’d love to see what it looks like under the heat spreader. It’s also interesting Apple is cooling both sides of the chip. Is that just for efficiency so the computer is quieter? Intel/AMD chips that put off way more power aren’t cooled from both sides right?
- MangoCoffee 5y ago>The size of that M1 Ultra package is just enormous i was going to make the same statement. is chiplet design the future? lets put together two powerful chip to make one super powerful chip. i guess its one way to beat the Moore's Law
- perryizgr8 5y ago> is chiplet design the future? Hasn't AMD been doing it for the past half a decade?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- LeifCarrotson 5y agoIt's not beating Moore's law, it's beating die yield curve limits. Working near the limits of manufacturability will result in occasional defects. If you only have to have a few eight-core 10x8mm chiplets and a more reliable 12nm process node interconnect die come out defect-free, that's much easier than trying to get all of that on a single giant die with 64 cores and the IO on the same die. To exaggerate, if each chiplet has a 50% chance of failing, on average you have to make 16 chiplets to get one good multi-package chip. But you'd need (2^8 * 8) = 2048 to get one contiguous super-die. with no defects.
- philistine 5y agoWhat I've heard is that the M1 Ultra has to be all contiguous to exist. The interconnact cannot be assembled later. All those M1 Ultra chips are indeed 64 cores and the IO on the same die. https://patents.google.com/patent/US20210217702A1/en?oq=2021%2f0217702 https://patents.google.com/patent/US20210217702A1/en?oq=2021...