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Mac Pro Build-to-Order Upgrade Pricing Revealed
- adrianoconnor 13y agoRUMORED MacPro Build To Order pricing revealed. The clue is in the name of the website that you linked, and the article couldn't make it any clearer that these are guesses.
- unwind 13y agoTrue, sorry for not being more sceptical in the title. If I could edit I would. I don't particularly follow the Mac scene, I picked this up on Twitter from some hardcore game developers I follow.
- anovikov 13y agoRAM pricing is ridiculous, no one will order it like that, you can buy RAM for 1/3 the price and just replace it yourself. But i will buy a stock version. Plus a Dell 4K 28'' monitor. As soon as my Christmas bonus arrives :)
- jotm 13y agoSeems like everybody does this, except companies (which is probably why manufacturers still slap these high prices). It's ECC memory, though, I think it's more expensive than non-ECC (still not that expensive).
- collyw 13y agoWhat I see is most Mac owners that buy out of their own pocket have the basic models. And the team-leaders / management types always bight the overpriced stuff because the company is paying. (It mildly hacks me off when I see this in academia, where most research is publicly funded.)
- gmac 13y agoAcademics (like other knowledge workers) are fairly well paid, so making them waste time by using crappy equipment does nobody any favours. In academia — or at least in STEM and the social sciences — quite a lot of people need a somewhat high-spec machine (e.g. to run quantitative models on large data sets, compile code, process large LaTeX documents, etc). And the basic model Macs generally come with woefully little RAM and rather small SSDs. So I'm not sure it's reasonable to be hacked off.
- brorfred 13y agoComputer purchasing in Academia is strictly controlled by procurement rules and other types of regulations. One magic number is $5000- universities normally doesn't charge overhead for capital investments above this, but the full purchase has to be done at the same time. This means that I'm not allowed to buy RAM separately from the computer.
- dan1234 13y agoWhere are you getting 1866MHz DDR3 ECC RAM for less than those prices? The cheapest 8GB module I could find[1] is £75 ex VAT, 4x is £300 which is approx. $490USD. I think this compares fairly well with the $400 upgrade pricing on that rumour page. [1]http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT8G3ERSDD8186D http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT8G3...
- dmm 13y agoNewegg has 16GB and a 4GB sticks for $209.99 and $72.99 respectively. I have no idea if they would work with the Mac Pro though. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239756 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820239... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148771 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148...
- anovikov 13y agoYes real prices announced by Apple are not that bad. With this being ECC memory, that is okay - bit overpriced, but not an outright ripoff.
- chiph 13y agoApple's RAM prices are no longer extortionate. While you can certainly find it cheaper, there's the convenience factor to consider. Also, while Apple has been good about this in the past, there's no guarantee the AppleCare warranty will cover 3rd party memory. In their new laptops, it's soldered to the system board so you can't swap it, anyway. (So max it out up front)
- jotm 13y agoHmm, will Apple be blocking non-certified CPUs and RAM? Cause those princes are kinda high, would be cheaper to get the base config and upgrade it yourself...
- goldenkey 13y agoIt's possible that it is like the Macbook Air and even the RAM is soldered on. The thing about the air was that everything was so jampacked, so they were forced to do that. Hopefully not the case with Mac Pro :<
- jotm 13y agoI don't think so - the RAM is definitely removable based on the pictures on the Apple website, and I believe Xeons are PGA only, no BGA version like with mainstream chips. But if Apple limits the processor and RAM models/types in the BIOS, it would make it very hard to upgrade...
- nwh 13y agoI would be shocked if Apple sockets the CPU, they haven't done that in their other Macs for years, why would this one be any different?
- jotm 13y agoLooking at Wikipedia, there are BGA Xeons - a couple of new quad core, low power E3 models. However, all other Xeons are socketed, including the ones used in earlier Mac Pros. And all the 6/8/12 core Xeons are using either LGA-1356 or LGA2011 sockets (not PGA, my bad)...
- ubernostrum 13y agoTheir product page for the new Mac Pro lists the RAM as "User accessible". And the Pro is traditionally the one that's designed to let you tinker with/replace/expand stuff, as opposed to the laptop line which is far less serviceable in pursuit of aesthetics.
- csmuk 13y agoOuch. Very overpriced.
- Cthulhu_ 13y agoFeel free to produce a competitively priced, comparatively specced workstation in a similar form factor. [/obligatory reply]
- csmuk 13y agoGot one next to me which cost less than the base Mac Pro for a better spec: http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/z820.html http://www8.hp.com/us/en/campaigns/workstations/z820.html The form factor is not important if you're not carrying it around. In fact I'd go as far as saying it's retarded for a workstation class machine. Nothing swappable, nothing replaceable, graphics are shit, max memory is pitiful, no internal disk worth mentioning. It's a joke. A fucking expensive one designed to get slightly mental people to spend money.
- darkarmani 13y agoWhere do you see that it is cheaper? That base model is $2300 without real RAM and no graphics cards. Where are you going to get "Dual AMD FirePro D500 with 3GB GDDR5" for under $699?
- csmuk 13y agoYou don't pay the retail price. Take 40% off if you call them up.
- nakedrobot2 13y agoI'm typing this on a windows PC with 192GB ram. 64GB RAM LIMIT? WHY OH WHY? it is 2013. 64GB is not enough for many serious tasks.
- collyw 13y ago'Cos Bill said that 64k would be enough for anyone a while back. (Out of interest what serious tasks do you find require that much RAM? )
- nakedrobot2 13y agoI'm stitching and rendering very large gigapixel images: http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-tower-panorama-photo/ http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-tower-panorama-photo/ http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-gigapixel-roppongi-hills-mori-tower/ http://360gigapixels.com/tokyo-gigapixel-roppongi-hills-mori... http://360gigapixels.com/london-320-gigapixel-panorama/ http://360gigapixels.com/london-320-gigapixel-panorama/ http://www.360cities.net/gigapixel/strahov-library.html http://www.360cities.net/gigapixel/strahov-library.html Both in the rendering of the files and in the post production using Photoshop, I utilize all the RAM, and regularly use up to 1 terabyte of scratch disk. I guess video editing, 3d work, and other image manipulation stuff also can benefit from this much RAM.
- samcrawford 13y agoExtremely cool images! I found myself looking for the BT Tower in London... it took me a minute or so to get my bearings and realise that that's where the pictures must have been taken from!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- netcraft 13y agocurious about the pc - was it custom built? just interested in the other components you chose.
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- loudmax 13y agoThese look really cool, but what is the target market for $3000+ desktop machines? I don't doubt that there are some people who could take advantage of that much power on a desktop, but it seems like kind of a niche product. I work with machines that do use their 256GB of RAM, but they're all servers. I'm a Linux user, so maybe the thin workstation model feels more natural to me. My MBP has 8GB of RAM and I rarely even come close to using that much, even running two or three VMs at a time.
- marknutter 13y ago> but it seems like kind of a niche product It has always been a niche product.
- 54mf 13y ago"what is the target market for $3000+ desktop machines?" "people who could take advantage of that much power on a desktop"
- dagw 13y agoVideo editing and fx work can easily use 64 GB of RAM for even modest level of work. Large DTP and image editing work can also hit those levels. So basically anybody working professionally with video or print will have no problem putting these machines to use. At the last place I worked they had people doing fluid dynamic simulation and they always complained about having too little RAM despite having 128 GB.